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History of the Communal Utopian Spiritual Movement by Dau Freitag copyright © Leonard (Dau) Freitag 1984
History of the Communal Utopian Spiritual Movement
KERISTA/JUDAUISM
By Dau Freitag...the Pied Piper, one of Kerista's three main leaders
Copyright 1984 Leonard (Dau) Freitag
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EZ - Dau - Jud |  | | |
Ed: I visited Dau in Garberville in Aug 2015 to collect his remarkable 'History' with its very personal picture of the Old Tribe in New York, San Francisco, Belize and Roatan, and an unflinching perspective on Jud. Also, Dau invites correspondence and phone calls! Dau Freitag, 723 Cedar Street #17 Garberville, CA 95542 (707-923-4134) Don't call before noon PST!
I found Dau to be lucid and intelligent, and his entire 50-page manuscript is included here.
Jud is the first prophet of Kerista. His vision occurred in August 1956. Jud had the verbal vision where voices spoke to him in chorus. They told him he would be the prophet of the next great religion of the world, Kerista, which was to bring peace and harmony to the world, as well as order and a renewed unified spirit of love. Kerista would also alleviate social ills like prejudice, exploitation, and poverty. The voices implied a Messianic solving of all troubles, and the elimination of unnecessary suffering. The voices told Jud the word Kerista meant surrender. Dau interpreted this to mean surrender to God's way, the path of Tao. The voices also told Jud, "Try to do nothing." Jud interpreted this to mean, "Its impossible to do nothing." So he did what he couldn't prevent himself from doing. The voices said, "Beware of noxious trips." And also "Be agreeable." Then they posed this riddle, as a Zen koan, "Why is the clitoris outside the vagina?" Jud thought about it for years and finally decided that the clitoris is a starter button, like in an old-fashioned car. During Jud's verbal vision, Jud asked the chorus of voices why they picked him as this prophet. The voices replied, "Because you are so gullible."
Today Jud is about sixty. Kerista the communal tribal cooperative is twenty-seven years old. Before dropping out and becoming a visionary, Jud had been an officer in the Air Force who directed bombing raids against the Japanese. He used to walk amongst the dead stenchful bodies. It freaked him outto be involved in so much murder. Flying in planes in the sky amongst the clouds, he decided to search for a higher ideal in life, He thinks he's found the truth now. Later he was a capitalist bar and restaurant owner, and he also was a high pressure salesman who sold poor people stuff they couldn't afford. His conscience finally got to him on that one area.
Jud was also one of the founders of wife-swapping. Down in the jungle Jud would brag about how he was formerly called "King John" of the jet-set wife-swap balling scene. Everyone switched dates or wives at sex parties where the ticket was an attractive piece of tail. All would undress and screw in sight of each other. Jud would brag that many famous people, celebrities, actors, and businessmen participated in these activities. He would tell of how one millionaire in particular would slurp up the sperm that was dripping out of the chick King John was fucking.Jud tells these glorious stories to his current disciples, but doesn't make it public. He's refined his approach, and has long philosophical pedantic treatises on his group marriage where everyone remains single and emotionally uninvolved.
The swinging-wife-swap-balling empire came tumbling crumbling down when a con man got into the scene and went through everyone's wallet as their clothes lay in the closet.
Jud's prophetic Kerista vision of hearing voices occurred after locking himself in his apartment and smoking marijuana constantly for six months. He had recently brought several pounds of pot from Mexico. He'd just sit and smoke and read and think. He never went out. Everything was delivered. The vision occurred while reading the Koran. One of the things the voices told Jud was, "the Pied Piper would pull out the swinging people." Dau turned out to clearly be the Pied Piper the voices spoke of. Dau has made converts walking down the street playing one of his many flutes or penny whistles. Lines of streetniks would follow Dau down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley or in New York or San Francisco to the nearest Kerista headquarters.
Wendy like many others was attracted by the flute of the Pied Piper Dau. Dau was tripping on acid walking while playing his recorder down Avenue B Wendy and a few friends of hers followed the charismatic flute player dancing down the street charmed like so many snakes moving in rhythm to the nearest Kerista party. This was in 1964. Wendy was a he ... but became a she.She was over six feet tall and added some madness as well as charismatic wisdom to Kerista. Wendy had half the sex change operation. She still had to shave her beard and get her vagina made deeper. She and Dau finally after months of knowing each other had a one hour stand. Dau got weirded out and couldn't handle the weirdness. Wendy fell in love with Dau which weirded Dau out more. In a few weeks the relationship was platonicized and both Dau and Wendy promoted Kerista along with the rest of the Keristans. She opened a Kerista store for anyone to just come on and rap. Wendy had too much courage. She walked into the middle of a Puerto Rican riot in Tompkins Square park. Her clothes were torn off. The police came and took her away in a blanket. Kerista always had stores where people could gather to rap and play music. Keristans still refer to Dau as the Pied Piper.
Soon after Jud had the vision from the voices who told him to try to do nothing, he found himself spending his inheritance and earnings on an idealistic commune on Ibiza Island off Spain. There he supported hip young people he had brought from the States. One couple fell in love and ended up deserting him. He felt they had abused his generosity. In the Caribbean he traveled alone. Jud mingled with the black people of Dominique Island. He was able to tune into their down to earth level of consciousness. When Jud took his monthly mescaline trip, he noticed the natives getting a contact high with much merriment. Jud tried to help the natives of Dominique get better pay from the American banana companies. He formed them into theatre groups and rap groups. The government of the island invented a special law to kick Jud off the island. During Jud's first Caribbean sweep of experiments in community with the black native, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert came to visit the community. Leary and his Harvard friends were too cerebral to relate to Jud's native friends. I wish Jud was so earthy now.
Dau the second prophet leader of Kerista grew up in a West Side Story setting in the Bronx during the first coming of the teen gang era of the fifties. Dau was similar to Fonz of Happy Days. Then he became a beatnik poet, and his parents wondered what would become of their only child. The Bronx where Dau grew up is and was the most savage jungle in the world. Dau lived on the border of Spanish Harlme and Little Italy. A friend of Dau who is a Guatemalan Indian never had a fight, growing up in Guatemala. Dau in order to survive, had to become a martial arts expert in the most basic forms of street fighting. Judo, Kung Fu, boxing, wrestling, weaponry are all parts of this art form. Dau was forced and privileged to blend with the black and Puerto Rican cultures, as well as Italians. The bitter battle still goes on in the same neighborhood. No blacks or Puerto Ricans go past a certain area. No Italians go past a certain section. If either cross the border ... they get murdered, or almost killed. Besides learning how to fight, Dau learned how to run fast, talk smooth, and make allies from both groups of hoodlums. Dau learned Spanish from the mothers of his friends. It's inconceivable to think the Bronx has gotten worse since the fifties. All the other boroughs evolved. Even Brooklyn got culture! But the Bronx regressed into slum street nightmare junky Hell consciousness. Culture overlooked this tormented section of creation. I had thirty years of nightmares from spending twenty years in the Bronx. The Puerto Ricans say, "The Bronx, no thonks." It is the children of the Bronx being destroyed by street gang consciousness whom Dau wants to save with his communal replacements for cities idea. Dau wants President Carter to know that Dau has the solution to slums in his writings. Basically the idea is to employ the World Therapy Corps to build (amid nature) Home Farm Moshav schools. Dau voted for President Carter and sent him this idea. Dau received a polite form-card thanking him for his concern. Not only Dau, but most of the Keristans grew up fighting in the streets of slums. Observed objectively, they come off as a bunch of mellow heavies.
Dau met Jud on a merry go round in Central Park. They both happened to be riding the same merry go round. Keristans believe in retaining their childish heart. No words were exchanged between the two men, just a supreme union of smiles. The second meeting was at Le Metro coffeehouse in the East Village, about a year later. This time they spoke. They both instantly remembered meeting on the merry go round. Jud was reading poetry under the name Johnny Beard. Dau's poet name was Sagefool. Jud invited Dau to the Kerista storefront on Suffolk Street for a poetry reading a week following. Jud used the occasion to rap about Kerista. Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky were there, and other poets along with Dau. There was an argument about the Vietnam War, and Allen and Peter got up and walked out when Jud took the position that anything the U.S. does is okay, including bombing women and children. The main one who stayed around to talk to Jud was Dau, who was attracted to Jud's idea to make a commune on a tropical island. By that time Dau's family had arranged for him to work his way to Israel on an Israeli ocean liner. He wanted to work on a kibbutz. He was still Lenny at this point. But Dau changed his goal to making a kibbutz in the Central American tropics with Jud. So a week later Dau moved into Jud's store, and the first Kerista commune that actually enlisted permanent Keristans was given birth and momentum.
Dau doesn't go to see Gurus or take courses. The Gurus and institutions of spirituality can come see him, free of charge. Dau Freitag, 707-923-4134. Dau is the type of person who does everything his own way. He has developed his own particular style of music and writing. Dau's Guru is God. When Dau was being interviewed by the psychiatrist for his permanent SSI disability for being crazy, the psychiatrist asked Dau if God speaks to him. Dau replied, God speaks to me "telepathically."
Main Figures. Jud, Dau and Ez (pronounced 'Easy'), working with other leaders like Ed and Renee, Rom and Giv, gave Kerista its main thrust and popularity in the sixties. In those days Keristans were very open. People could just walk in off the street and start living in the early Kerista houses. Nowadays we are still open to some extent. But not foolishly overly so. One of the stigmas which got attached to Kerista, was free love, and drugs. Kerista did produce psychedelic Don Juan the Yaqui type Gurus. We took LSD, mescaline, magic mushrooms, STP, and other trips to gain enlightenment. Most of the early Keristan core members were psychedelic Gurus. These trips were also used to attain higher consciousness, and better deeper freer art and music. We tripped to contact and find ourselves. We tripped to communicate better with each other. We tripped to know ourselves, and to communicate with God. We tripped in order find and be found by the Tao. We tripped to grow and discover. Dau was one of the few people to take LSD mixed with a full mescaline trip at the same time. Dau has done psychedelic healing and made many meditative and art break-throughs on trips.
The free love was a range of promiscuity, wife swapping experiments, orgy attempts, a V.D. gang bang or two, and various hyper free life styles. There were always monogamous Keristans who balled no one but each other. Kerista has, and has had celibates and virgins living in our midst. The voices said pluralistic, and Kerista has always been many ways finding a way to blend and merge. Kerista has always been very interracial. Many black brothers and sisters were always in the ranks. There's a whole bunch of half black and half white second generation tribe of our children. We have a lot of half American Indian, half white second generation tribal children. We are into separate natural parentage, as well as mutual parentage. Our approaches are a mandala blend of Summerhill and Christ-spray in some Moses, and Buddha doing Yoga beneath the moon with incense wafting.
Coincidentally, the three main figures of Kerista ... Jud, Dau and Ez are all Jews, and Kerista has had a lot of Jews in it all along. Jud's original name and nose were Jewish. He changed his name to John Premont, from the Jewish-sounding Jake Peltz, and had a nose job while still a young man. Jud denies being Jewish even today. He claims to have given it all up. Dau explained to Jud that Jewish is a race that comes along with your genetic make-up. As Dau's grandfather put it to Dau,
You stay a Jew when you're born a Jew, and there's nothing you can do.
Jews are an Eastern Oriental race. Dau, Jud, Ez, Gud (pronounced good), Rom, Renee, and many other Keristans qualify to be Oriental Jews. All the great religions came from Asia. Christianity came from Judaism which came from Asia. So Christianity is an Eastern religion. The Jews let the Goyim rip off the Messiah. Jews have a right to have Jesus. However Jesus and the apostles were obviously much different than the Christian religions would have us believe. They were human men who wandered around the desert smoking hash, playing music, doing the work of the Lord. They were like a roving world therapy corps band of musical Rabbis who were liberated enough to discard unnecessary dogmas, and keep necessary ones. The predicted second coming of the entire group of Messianic figures is occurring now. The very same men who originated Christianity are North American mystics...
Reincarnated wandering Jews, Trying to correct life's blues.
A whole lot of Jews came back as non Jews this time. About half of us came back as Jews. I like a mixed crew.
American Indians are an Asiatic race scientists say. Some American Indians use psychedelics as a tool to tune into divine transcendental messages and visions. Psychedelics are tools to master mystical techniques of the East, West, North, and South. Psychedelics clean traumatic garbage from the subconscious, and open chockras connected to God.
Coincidentally, the three main Kerista leaders are all horny astrological animals. Jud is a Capricorn, Ez is an Aries, and Dau is a Taurus. Excuse the pun ... I mean horned astrological animals.
In the 1950's, long before Dau, Ez, and other famous Keristans joined, Jud tried experiments with his wife as a prostitute, as well as other women in the commune ... This was his economic plan for the commune to make a living. Jud and the men were pimps. In Jud's own words, the best money maker in the world is pussy - there's no overhead---it just wiggles around a little bit, and the cash register jingles $20.00. Every three months Jud's prostitute wife would get bitchier and nastier to him ... until finally she would force him to whip her with a big thick belt for a long time. After a while Jud got very disturbed by the ritual, and refused to do it. The marriage burnt out and broke up. It didn't take long for the bad vibes from these experiments to destroy the swanky decadent commune.
We know not what we did, in the old days sometimes. We wanted to try new approaches to living. Our idea was to experiment to determine the nature of human emotions.
Jud had noble intentions when he twice walked into a police station with a joint of marijuana. He asked to be arrested. The police were very obliging. His goal was to create a test case to legalize weed. He had doctor's sworn statements that grass was harmless. One time the establishment sent Jud to a nut house for a year. The other time it was a year in jail. After a year in the nut house Jud could not get out until he stated that he had been mistaken and was not a Prophet. These were naive, courageous, martyr-type of actions to take in the fifties. This was B.D and before Kerista's second coming or second beginning in the sixties. Now Kerista is having its third coming. Jews are natural fanatics. B.D mean Before Dau.
The Ouija Board. When the Ouija board changed Lenny's name to Dau, Gud asked the board if Dau meant Tao the Eastern religion which begat Buddha, as well as the martial arts like Kung Fu. The Ouija board replied that Dau and Tao were pronounced the same way and meant the same thing: the Way. Dau had previously found great solace and wisdom in Zen Buddhism. Therefore it fit that this vagabond poet musician receive such a name. Time has proven that Dau is a Taoist in every sense of the word. ... and then some. Gud got his name from the Ouija board at the same time as Dau and Jud got their name. Gud was Steve, and Jud was John. Gud was Dau's sidekick. So when Dau joined Jud, so did Gud. At first the Ouija board gave three letter names to everyone it wanted to name. Gud was short dark and slender. He was wiry, and like Dau, from the Bronx. Dau with blond hair and a reddish beard was five eight and a half, and on the broad-shouldered side. Jud at the time was a very obese tall Russian Jew who looked just like Santa Claus. Jud grew up in Brooklyn. Jud has a deep silken voice and is at least six four. Jud, Dau, and Ez the three main leaders all had a problem of too much charisma. Sick Jewish humor is Zen Taoist paradoxical kibbitzing.
Today Jud and his commune of male and female best friends often use the Ouja board, while at the same time they put down mysticism, magic, and old religions. Dau who is a bonafide mystic doesn't use a Ouija board. Dau and his friends claim direct contact and telepathic dialogue with God. Dau's mental Ouija board has recently given out several new three letter names.
It was Gud and Dau who got on the Ouija board one night in 1962/ It was the first Ouija attempt. No one had any expectations. But all of a sudden the cup we used for a pointer started dancing around the board. It spelled out messages all night that first night. The board snapped orders to Jud. It told him to kick out the dilletantes who were buzzing around the scene wasting energy. The board named thirty people that night to give the boot to. The board named people neither Dau nor Jud knew. Jud obeyed the orders of the Ouija spirit. Jud very formally apologized and rejected thirty old friends at the gathering which took place at the first Ouija attempt. It was hilarious as they got all offended and raised a fuss. The board permitted ne of Jud's old friends to stay, a quiet country fellow named Abel. After a while the board decided Abel wasn't on the same wavelength, and it ejected him. Abel came back to the scene later on when Kerista had a store named City Living., which Black Ken operated.
The Ouija board became a daily ritual. Gurdjieff was our main spiri connection. He signed in and out as G. Once he said, Be a humble sage. That is enduring profoundest wisdom. Other spirits visited us through the Ouija board: Gibran, Einstein, JFK, etc. Einstein commandeered the board for a half hour once, and said, All is One. Gibran would tell us to turn to particular page in one of his books we had there, and it was always apropos to the situation.
Since it was me Dau on the Ouija board along with Gud, I have to confess to this day that for a while our Ouija board experiences were in my opinion valid mystical experiences, which gave us much therapy and guidance. There were many spine-tingling experiences which gave us collective chills.
The Ouija board chilled our spines and blew our minds.
Each spirit or live-dead person had an entirely different feeling as my hand was moved by the spirit of these souls. There was a while sensation of different energy and vibrations with various great holy men.
Barbara who had the board names Hon, and her three year old son Peter joined the commune. Hon was very sweet and about twenty-eight.. Siv a twenty-year-old joined. Here name was Margaret before she joined. Rose joined, and eighteen year old Latina Deirdre joined, and ironically got the name Lov. Lov was a heavy schizophrenic witch type. Hse was into black magic, tarot cards, power games, and was a powerful chibby dark woman. Underneath her menacing exterior Lov had a good heart. Love claimed to be Gypsy, Hindu, Hebrew, and Egyptian. She looked it. She was into astrology, as we all were and are. Lov got into the Ouija board after a while. She mostly balled her old man Gud. For a while Jud had a woman Wog, He got her to bvall all the fellas occasionally. Wog left soon soon after joining, about the time Joy became Jud's other old lady. Joy was a black eighteen year old from Alabama. Initially she was attracted to a brief affair with Dau, picking him up on the street, but she ended up becoming Jud's old lady. Joy was a very good cook, and brought stability, as well as a lot more madness to the group.
One time the Ouija board sent Gud and Dau to the Yonkers racetrack to make a lot of money betting specific horses. They and Jud thought up the idea to accumulate immeasurable wealth in order to buy the tropical paradise island. The board told us which horses rto bet on. We started login blind faith in the Ouija board when our horses lost! We had to borrow money from the racetrack to get home. We were broke., betted out. Dau never gambles, except for that one time. Dau's offshoot of Kerista, JuDauism, no longer uses the Ouija board. We feel a direct connection to the forces which operate the Ouija. Therefore there is no need for a Ouija on the most major and petty issues. Jud's current branch of Kerista has continued to consult the Ouija on the most major and petty issues. At one period Jud and Joy used the Ouija so superstitiously that they would barely use the toilet or go shopping unless the Ouija board assured them if safety and good timing to do so.
Jud and Dau have different interpretation of some of the messages which came from the Ouija board during the sixties. The Ouija board mystically gave this message on day: Twelve Pricks. Jud has interpreted the message to mean a group marriage of twelve men married to twelve women... sleeping interchangeably with all the different partners, rotating by schedule every night. Every night another woman to sleep with; the woman gets a different man each night. When you get to twelve, you start rotating again. This is an authoritarian system where one must follow the schedule that has been posted on the wall. Jud's present situation has six men and nine women in it. Dau is not interested to join their group marriage.
Dau interpreted the message of the twelve pricks to mean the twelve apostles of Jesus reincarnated to help Jesus who is also reincarnated.. God informed me of some of my friend's former identities. Mos is the reincarnation of James the brother of Jesus. Victor Valentin is the reincarnation of Simon Cyrene who helped Jesus carry the cross. Jud is the reincarnation of John the Baptist. This time John gets to blow it. Rom is the reincarnation of St. Peter. God was giving me hard time about identifying St. Peter. I thought it could be Kevin Smigelski too? But Ken is just one of the lesser known apostles. Dau unfortunately has the job of Mess cleaner. The word Mess is in Messiah. It was Dau's visions which saddled Dau with the responsibility for most of the world's major and minor problems. Being a mysterious person who no one know to recognize is hard. Being Jesus Christ is no ego trip. It's a hell of a lot of work. The occasion these various messianic souls have been brought here for, is the prophesized second coming of the Christian Messiah, and the first coming of the Jewish Messiah. The two are one in the same. The Avatar for the Jews is also the Avatar for all men and woman kind, all Christians, all religions, all eclectic wisdom condensed into its most simplified form.
The Golden Age. The Kerista communal store on Suffolk Street started the Kerista second coming. The store that Jud lived in alone, soon had a dozen people living in it. The Street consisted mostly of Puerto Ricans, and Gypsies who lived in the stores like we did. Brydon who the board named One came to live in the store. He painted exotic mystical art. He painted scrolls, and designed a new Ouija board. It had dragons, serpents, with psychedelic designs. One was monogamous with Lik (pronounced Like) during the whole time. She was his old lady. They met in the store. Peter Birnham joined, and the tribe had another apartment. Peter's apartment became the unlocked Temple on East Tenth Street. There was always a lot of discussion going on, group therapy too, and mystical meditation. Not anyone could join Kerista. People with the right vibes were given a trial period to live in our midst. Soon it was obvious if the person was committed enough... and they could be asked to leave or split. It they fit, they stayed. The criterion for staying was not verbalizable. You either fit, or didn't. All the core Kerista members always found a way to agree on who could stay, and other matters. It was like one mind. A little bit of hard dope floated through the scene with a few rare users. Usually there as none around. Most of us never tried smack. Some friends learned not to abuse drugs from slight drug abuse experiences. We had expanded to several apartments. We had Hon's apartment, and more were coming into the network of Kerista houses. Collective meals were happened, and clothing was shared. Just about everythging was getting shared. There was beginning to be no private property to a large extent. Sometimes when people left, they took all the best clothes. A communal tribe of artists was growing. Everyone talked about the colorful crazy Keristans who all lived together.
Jery appeared who the board called Ez. Dau was friends with Ez before Kerista appeared on the beatnik scene. Ez the tall broad blackbearded drop-out air traffic controller joined Kerista because of what was being done, and because his friend Dau was magnetizing, with truth and idealism. Ez was in the Air Force. Dai was in the Coast Guard Reserve. Ez went to California soon after joining during the beginning of the Suffolk Street store. Later Ez returned to join the legendary loft. Ez emerged as a strong clear-headed person in the loft, and went on to be one of the three main leaders along with Dau and Jud. Ez is a sage who gives profound psychological insight like a super shrink. He shows truth to the most stubborn minds. Dau also has been a super psychiatrist showing truth to thick skulls. Ez has done the most sharing to help other Keristans for many years. Ez supported entire Kerista houses. He fed, and paid the rent to help many people. He was working in the psychedelics business, and was able to share because he had enough to do so. Dau shared the $5000.00 he and Gud got from the heiress, and supported Ez and all the rest of the Keristans for as long as a year with it. All the money was spent on sharing and supporting the tribe. Later on, when Dau received his second thousand dollar grant from Moses Moon, he shared it with his best friend at the time Ez. In the old days Jud did much more sharing. He supported his friends for months at a time. Ez has all along been much closer friends with Dau than with Jud. Five years ago Jud gave Ez two hundred dollars for rent which he needed. Also he offered to support Ez, if Ez either joined his group marriage of became an advocate of his lifestyle. Ez thought it over, felt he couldn't go through with it, and turned down the offer.
Allen Ginsberg and other famous poets were friends and visitors of Kerista communes. Some of the Keristans hung out at Ginsberg's house. A young fifteen year old Keristan named Steve had a several week long affair with Allen. One of the next things to occur was that Linda the heiress and her nervous well educated Princeton Jewish husband Arthur joined the tribe. Arthur got the name Ten from the Ouija board, but he was called Arthur more often than Ten. Their somewhat plush gigantic apartment on East Fourth Street became part of the cooperative tribal network of Keristan communes. When Jud and Joy got married at a Buddhist temple in Chinatown, with many Keristans present, the heiress treated everyone to Chinese dinner after the wedding. Oliver and his wife came on the scene from Joy. Oliver was a black muscle man from Texas who waqs built like Hercules. His wife Geraldine was Italian. Oliver did his mystical muscle act in Washington Square. He copied much of his style from Big Brown the taller muscle man. Oliver had been a mugger for a while. Kathy Plumber was a blonde, married to the black poet activist Paul Plumber (Plummer?). She left Paul and took Kerry and Kevin their mix breed children and moved into one of the early Kerista communes. For a while she was Dau's old lady. Their Kerista names rhymed, Day and Cos. When the tribe walked down the street, it covered the whole block. One time Dau led at least thirty Keristans including Giv into the Peace Eye storefront of Ed Sanders. Ed got all haughty and tense thinking Kerista had invaded. After we smoked a few doobies with Ed and playted some music with Ken Weaver .. Ed realized it was only a visit, not a take over, his paranoia relaxed and he partied with us.
Many people visited the communes, and magazines were doing articles about us, including interviews. A WBAI interviewer names Frank Brady came to investigate us. Dau became Frank's guru. Frank offered to pay Dau ten dollars for every hang up of his that Dau could cure. I made about thirty bucks. In 1978 Frank Brady was the hottest new author to emerge. Frank is a chess expert who wrote a book on Bobby Fischer. Frank also wrote the controversial book about the life of Hugh Hefner, who Frank worked with and taught chess. Now that Frank is super big shot he condescends to answer my letters once a year. I felt he was too distant from regular people, so I sent him a poem about the Snob Mob. Now he doesn't write me at all.
There was about a hundred or more floating Keristans. Most lived in the communes, but others maintained private households. There were a lot of places to go to sleep, live, and eat. People were as communal and sharing as they wanted to be. There was no pressure for anyone to share, or do anything, except for a little housework, and except for come ons. Occasionally Black Warren would say to Fran, What do you got, a jeweled cunt that's too good to fuck me? But if the come ons were refused, there was no big commotion raised. There was no rape, except for one or two instances. A false rumor has been occasionally circulated about Kerista of the old days. The rumor states that women had to ball every man in the commune. That is totally false information. We were into freedom to do, or not do, whatever anyone wanted. A mandatory rule like that would be the opposite of freedom. Everyone was basically mellow, except for Big Brown.
Things seemed to have been going fine, until the bust. In early 1964 Gestapo narcs and detectives invaded our large East Fourth Street apartment. We played music while they searched the house. Arthur asked the cops to see the warrant, and told them, You have no right to barge in her. The head detective showed him the warrant with one hand, and smacked Arthur hard in the face with the other hand, threatening to beat him up if he didn't sit down and shut up. They took us to the local police station in four paddy wagons. We sang civil rights songs all night in the jail. The next morning they took the men to the notorious Tombs. The women went to the female equivalent, the Women's House of Corrections. Both buildings have since been condemned and closed. A year of hearings, lawyers, trials, charges, lies, and some jail terms. The headline read the morning after the bust, Free love and dope cult raided.. Jud did time in jail for being nude in his own living room. Jud and Joy were just sitting schmoozing in the nude. This was construed to be a great crime. Gud and Lov were busted for balling in a secluded room. Dau was charged a public nuisance for sitting in a chair. For the first few days in jail Dau was adjusting to no mattress and the surliest criminals. Then Dau's father came to ask him if he wanted to get out of jail: All you have to do is shave and go straight. Dau flipped out and yelled Fuck you loudly at his father through the glass over the telephone. Dau's father left. Dau was sure Linda would get him out. The heiress was at the moment financing a heroin shooting gallery. In two weeks Dau got desperate, freaked out, and sent a telegram to his father saying he'd shave or do anything to get out of the dungeon of death. Dau's father sprung Dau. It was then that Dau and Gud liberated the heiress from the junkies and got her to get the other people out. So it happened that in the first hearing Dau shaved and looked straight with a tie and sports jacket. Peter Birnbaum came to court without a tie. The judge chewed Peter out for not having a tie on. Peter defied the judge and said he didn't wear ties. The judge got more irate, but finally subsided. After Dau got out of jail, he found himself unable to live up to his promise to look or be straight. He grew his beard back and didn't wear a tie to court either. He kept living in Kerista commune. At the arraignment the narcs told at least twenty five creative cold-blooded blatant lies about what was going on at the Kerista apartment they uninvitedly raided. The Keristans would go to court en mass singing. Jud was blamed and hung for just about everything. He did more time than anyone. Later on Dau's parents sent Dau to a female Jewish psychologist. The old woman told them to Let Lenny do his own thing. After all he was twenty two or three. The psychologist and Dau both just read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. The torture and suffering inflicted on the Keristans by the establishment and the police was terribly traumatic and made out lives quite paranoid and miserable. It was heavy ugly persecution which both disrupted us, and made us closer and stronger, as well as further and weaker.
Detectives put our commune under surveillance. We weren't dealing, but stil had to be cautious. These narcs were so klutzy. They'd be so obvious as to stand in front of our building on East Tenth Street which was Peter Birnbaum's house, which was called the Kerista Temple. We used it to mellow out and listen to music. It was decorated in the most exotic surreal way by our artists. One day Peter took a bag of garbage and made it look like a pound of dope. The narc lurking in front of the building followed Peter all over the neighborhood with the bag. Then Peter threw it in a garbage can and watch the cop curiously investigate the garbage. Before Keristans started sharing incomes, Peter lived by scrounging soda bottles from trash cans. Peter had just gotten out of a nut ward. Before that he lived in Morocco with Arab tribespeople. Another time narcs who busted Kerista pulled Dau into a hallway and searched him. Dau was clean. Dau showed them the Kerista newspaper with pictures of the island he had just returned from. The narcs said it sounded so good, they might just come down and join. Dau had them smiling friendly when he left. Some kind of charismatic magic. It's a lucky thing they frisked me before I scored the acid, rather than afterwards.
When Kerista was busted, Huncke the Junky took advantage of Linda the heiress. He conned her into using her money to fund a smack shooting gallery in one of the old Kerista pads, instead of getting her friends out of jail. When Dau got out of jail, he went on a rampage to liberate Linda. He was accompanied by Gud. We terrorized Huncke and his accomplice One. We saved (kidnapped) Linda and got her back into getting others out of jail. At one point Dau and Gud caught up with Huncke who was about to drive off in the Keristamobile. Gud told Huncke to give him and Dau the car keys or he'd be lying in a pool of blood, and Dau's gonna do it. Huncke handed over the keys after bitching about having to do so. After that he clunk off and stopped interfering in our problems.
During the ordeal of the after bust police treatment, the Kerista loft came into existence. Linda the heiress offered to give Dau all her money. Dau considered it, and refused the whole hundred thousand. In late 1964 Dau and Gud did accept $5000.00 from the heiress to buy the loft and support the tribe for close to a year. The money was in a joint account. All the money went to the people. Dau and Gud spent no money on themselves. The loft had belonged to Giv and her husband Bruce. When Giv joined Kerista, Kerista moved in and Bruce moved out. Jud and Joy had gone into hiding uptown to evade the police. Jud only came to visit the loft about three times. He and Jot started drifting away from the communal main stream of the tribe abd later went to Haiti to see Voodoo. The loft was one of the most phenomenal social experiments ever done. It was psychological too. Ez says it has never been surpassed. Ez and his friend Shalom Farsky came from California to move into the loft. Three of the toughest most charismatic black brothers moved into the tribe just before the loft. There was Oliver, Charles, and Big Brown the King of the Blacks.
Big Brown was the most dynamic, intelligent, handsome, majestic, well built black poet. Brown stood six feet seven at least, and used to stare at himself in the mirror for four hours at a time, admiring how handsome he was. Brown strutted around Washington Square doing his muscle act, flexing bare arms and legs with a turban, while reciting abstract poetry. When Big Brown asked someone for a quarter, he was rarely refused. Brown had been a boxer, and was the first black the Mafia couldn't chase out of the Village area. Brown had a reputation for taking on gangs of police, and gangs of hoodlums in fights. Big Brown was schizophrenically flip out and periodically become violent. When Brown drank alcohol he got mean sometimes. He would go around being scary half the time. He got tons of therapy. Brown's good side and poetry almost made up for his bad side. Brown could be more beautiful or ugly than anyone. We were always trying to get him to leave our communes, but he never would. One night Brown was pulverizing Gud and Bruce who were on the floor bleeding. Dau stooped Dom from hitting Brown with a bottle. Instead Dau squeezed a full nelson with all his strength. Brown went limp. Dau let him up. Brown asked Dau if he wanted to fight. Dau said, No, I just wanted to stop you from killing these dudes.. Brown saw Dau as his guru through the years. And Brown did change after a year or two. Another factor that helped him change was getting his ass kicked by a gang of Puerto Ricans he messed with.
The first rule of Kerista originated in the loft: Everyone wash their own dish. Everyone in the loft did some sort of art. People played music, did painting, therapy, meditation, on psychedelics. There was mutual child raising, total sharing of all property, brotherhood, cooperation, good vibes, and a group mind. There were other Kerista households besides the loft. For some people the loft was an open house where people could sleep or eat at. Anyone could apply to join permanent membership, although not everyone was accepted. A select twenty or thirty people were selected to stay. A woman named Bee stayed. Cheryl a sixteen year old black virgin friend of Joy lived in the loft. Cheryl was a celibate. Feedee Brown a mellow black brother lived there. The loft lasted a little under a year. There were about thirty mattresses on the upper floor of the two story loft. Everyone slept where they happened to find an empty or full bed. People only slept with who they were invited to sleep with. No one crept around sneakily on anyone. Except one morning Peggy awoke with a startling pricking sensation in her asshole. Jud had snuck into Peggy's bed and was fucking her in the ass. She said her day was ruined by the incident.
How long a newcomer was allowed to stay, for a night, or permanently was determined by how committed and compatible the newcomer's vibes and ideas were with the already there people. Those who didn't fit were asked to leave. I recall a time when the core members went out to eat, and when we returned we asked at least ten people to leave, we called it a shake out or purge.
Dau once had a real bad (case of) crabs. He shaved his whole extremely hairy body in front of all of the loft. It was a comical spectacle. Now Dau would shudder at the thought of it, as conservative and holy as he is now. Another night of disgrace was when Tuli Kupferberg and other prominent poets and assorted high ranking weirdos like Michael Itkin the gay Old Catholic priest, spent a night at the loft, and Jane, one of the women in the tribe made passionate love in the center of the room, with a drifter she had taken a fondness to. There was more private, than public sex in Kerista. But there was a lot of both. Modesty is a value I have learned to appreciate over the years. Love making is for privacy, as is the overly beautiful nude human body. In my opinion social nudism is too over the line of boundaries for a healthy morality. Dau doesn't practice social nudism anymore, though he was a nudist all the time he was in Kerista up until his visions at age twenty eight.
Linda and Arthur lived in the loft for a while. Many celebrities of the counter culture visited the loft. Allen Ginsberg and his old man Peter Orlovsky came to visit one night. Peter snuck a kiss off Big Brown. Wow did that provoke an exhibition. Brown slapped Peter, and cursed out the two for a half an hour calling them faggots and other assorted obscenities. Then after the whole thing, Allen ran up and kissed Big brown, which made Brown rant and rave threateningly for another fifteen minutes. But he didn't hit Allen, maybe because he had too much respect for him or his poetry. During the New York loft era, Keristans gave a talk at the League for Sexual Freedom. The founders of the League felt so threatened by the solidarity, charisma, and profundity of the Keristans, that in frustration to try and upstage Kerista, Jeff Poland and Michael Itkin started making out, to attract attention.
The surreal loft died from police harassment, and because Jud and Joy talked Linda out of giving the tribe more money. It appeared that Jud and Joy were trying to hustle money for themselves...but they only got a few hundred. Originally Linda was to buy a tropical island for the tribe. We wanted to create a village that grew crops and fished. The loft changed into several cooperative apartments. Linda and Arthur lived with Jud and Joy for a while during the time they were trying to hustle their money. That crumbled when Arthur and Linda took Jud and Joy to the chapel at Princeton University in New Jersey, and Arthur demanded that Jud acknowledge him Arthur as the Messiah. Jud refused, became irate, and immediately thereafter Arthur and Linda split from Jud and Joy. Arthur went around trying to zap everyone, putting spells on everyone. Not many of us paid much attention to him. We did accept his acid though. Then he and Linda and a few other Keristans went to Nevada to form a Kerista commune there. It didn't last long. All this time some Keristans had to keep appearing in court for trials. Linda by bribing the judge was cut loose or exonerated. Arthur ranted at the judge, You can't mess with God's powers---I am the Messiah, your petty rules don't apply to me. The judge put Arthur in the nut house indefinitely. But in a few months Arthur got out and lived with Keristans for a while. Then he went to live with his parents in Brooklyn, where he unfortunately hung himself in their bathroom. Linda disappeared, and was heard to have gotten a rat race type job.
Speaking of suicides, once Dau entered Hon's house on Houston Street. Crouched in the window was Gud. All around him were Keristans pleading with him not to jump. I asked how long this melodrama had been going on. Kis told me that they had been trying to talk Gud out of jumping for close to forty minutes. Dau yelled at Gud, Hey schmuck...if you're going to do it, go ahead and get it over with, otherwise you're holding up Kerista research. Gud got in out of the window and started laughing, and everyone was relieved. One of the people who hung around with Keristans a lot in San Francisco, a few years later, had a ritual of masturbating with a vibrator, and at the moment of orgasm he would choke himself with a scarf to increase the thrill. This nameless fellow was a chronic alcoholic. So one time he was too drunk to unravel the kerchief which he used to slightly strangle himself, and accidently committed suicide.
The part of the tribe that Linda had been supporting got pretty pissed off at Jud when he sent Joy to tell us he had talked Linda out of giving us any more money to live on. His message that we resented was, Try to stay alive. The musical vagabonds Dau, Gud, Ez, Dom, Giv and others crashed around at the homes of Keristans who had incomes. More Keristans kept getting converted to join, such as Tre the astrologer and school teacher, who was and still is Dau's close associate. And Carol and Ray some social workers, etc.
For a while Tre was Dau's old lady though now she contends the affair was very brief and shallow. In 1965 they took a trip to Tim Leary's psychedelic commune at Millbrook. Richard Alpert who is now Baba Ram Dass was in a nervous neurotic panic for half the time. He apparently felt threatened by Dau's charisma, and was not too tuned into fellow members of the same path. Alpert Ram Dass kicked out Dau and Tre at four in the morning. His reason was that they smoked pot with members of the psychedelic commune. There was supposed to be no pot smoking. It seemed natural to swim when in the water to Dau. John a wise young member of the LSD commune was kicked out for smoking grass with Dai and Tre. Dau and Tee hitch hiked in the middle of the night. A stranger put us up for the night. The next night we hitched to New York City. A year later this same John turned up while Dau was tripping with two other male Keristans in Berkeley. Then John took the three of us on the most incredible acid trip. He took our minds through all the ecstasies that psychedelics bring when used correctly. Peace, bliss, taste, humor, wisdom, friendship, ESP, revival, survival, sensitivity. What a night of insights, revealed mysteries and new dimensions of consciousness. The funny thing was that John wasn't even on acid himself at this time when he totally contacted our minds and liberated our energy.
After Dau returned from Millbrook he told Ez how Alpert had kicked out Dau and Tre for smoking and also because they had a rule that no one could stay overnight. Ez felt indignant and went prepared for Richard Alpert. When Alpert ordered Ez to leave Millbrook ... Ez sat down his two hundred and twenty pounds, and told Alpert to pick him up. Alpert strained and ranted trying to pick up the huge surly gentle master. Alpert gave up. Ez remained for several weeks and participated in LSD ESP mental telepathy experiments.
Berkeley. Next we tell the tale of Dau and Gud's historic trek hitch hiking to Berkeley. The two almost broke beatniks slept in jails, under bridges, and walked in the rain. We met all sorts of helpful people who fed us, and drove us to our destination. There in the summer of 1966, we originated the Kerista Table transition on the Berkeley campus. The Table was at first a rap center for philosophy and psychology, and required a police permit which Dau got. We had a collection can for money. Dau played the recorder, and streetniks followed the Pied Piper down Telegraph Avenue.
Many Keristans lived on no specific incomes for years. We were beatnik vagabond philosophers living by our wits and God's graces. Never missing a meal, or sleeping in the rain. It was rough, though.You always had to hustle to make sure you ate and didn't sleep in the rain. The Berkeley Kerista scene was quite something. Open Kerista houses were where all those young people came to get turned on to the soul of the hippy movement. It was the place of inspiration, music, stimulation, idealism, and magnetism. There were people like Ronny, John, and Kis. Loki a tall Norse blond, was taken in by Kerista. He was a classical catatonic burned out drug freak. He just sat around. Though he must have eaten. Finally he went to Synanon. It wasn't allowed in Kerista to shoot up with needles. People became drug free of spikes, or couldn't stay. Danny and Roland were a pair of blond actual brothers who were on the scene along with many others. Not everyone gets mentioned. For a while Dau took care of the little blond boy named Vishnu with a woman friend. The mother was away in New York and had left Vishnu with a woman friend. This woman had her own kids, and was really dragged, trying to take care of live needy cranky Vishnu. Dau gave it a try. But being without income, and living on the street made it rough tot be responsible for the cranky insecure Vishnu. Bill and Judy, some friends of Kerista took Vishnu into their fine home. He got happier and was well taken care of. Eventually the motherreturned and kept her son. Charlie Brown the Indian erected a massive teepee in one of the Keristan's backyard. Ten people at a time lived in it, and it was a colorful headquarters. Eddie got special permission from the Mayor's office for Keristans to beg.
After a few months in Berkeley Dau took off for Mexico with a dude named Gary. Then Gud hitch hiked all the way through Mexico with no money to British Honduras the supposed Kerista promised land. He thought Dau had gone there. But Dau had come back to Berkeley from Mexico. Gud had to beg in a language he couldn't speak. It messed up Gud's mind. Gud flipped out after a while, and went to a nut house. We have heard through the grapevine that Gud is now a Synanon activist. The Berkeley scene Dau and Gud started blossomed beautifully. Kerista communes and the Kerista Table flourished. Rom and Giv, and Ed and Renee, and all the other Keristans took over the Table tradition. Rom and Giv started the artful button craze. Buttons like Nirvana, Love, Kerista is Happening, Good Vibrations, etc were originated. Ez did a lot to contribute to the growth of Kerista in Berkeley. A lot of people received hospitality, food and got high at Kerista. Berkeley was very receptive to the communal, cooperative, musical, cultural, intellectual, lovingness of the Keristans. The Berkeley Kerista houses were more open than the New York Kerista communes were. Just a little. There were less seedy people in Berkeley to screen out. Of course, if someone made trouble, they were asked to leave.
Kerista should have gotten really big in Berkeley...until Jud put out his newspaper that none of the Keristans could stand. No one else in Berkeley could stand the ideas expressed in the Kerista Speeler either. The wind was taken right out of the sails of Kerista when Jud's commercial, gross, right wing newspaper hit the street. Jud backed the Viet Nam War, and called all the radicals pus heads, and insulted them vehemently. Kerista barely survived the newspapers. Only the committed Keristans stayed after that. The papers were so bad, and crass as well as boring, that none of the Keristans could stand to read such chazarai. Finally after years of not approving of Jud's newspapers the tribe of Keristans got so fed up with Jud's right wing pro Viet Name Wat stance, that there was a major confrontation between the people, and Jud. The argument became so heated, that Ez threatened to burn all the Kerista Speelers or Swingers, whichever name was more insulting Kerista in those days by representing it. A compromise was made where Jud inserted a single page saying that all the Keristans do not necessarily agree with the views of the Kerista newspapers. The ani war posture of the majority of the Keristans was mentioned in the insert. Even now none of the old Keristans can bear to read any of the writings of Jud's current branch of Kerista, which puts out a free newspaper the Utopian Classroom. Their writings are infinitely boring, and are frequently attacking couples and the family unit. Neither can the old Keristans bear to listen to Jud's rap, which is like coming within earshot of an endless tape recording. Like his writings it is pedantic, boring, redundant, and pretty much requires a large effort on the part of the listener not to walk away. Jud loves to do monologue monopolizing the scene. Dau is the opposite. He dislikes monologue, and prefers stimulating dialogue where everyone gets to express themselves. Jud's main pastime is talking. He talks and talks, and keeps right on talking. In the jungle in British Honduras, Jud used to confide in Dau, that it doesn't matter what kind of goobley gock we conceive to get people attracted, as long as people will fall for it. Just think of anything to fill in the space. Just create anything and call it Kerista. Another of Jud's quotes is, I don't care what kind of publicity Kerista gets, as long as it's publicity and Kerista is mentioned.
Kerista was the first psychedelic religion to appear in civilization in the West. Except for the American Indians. Also it was probably the first intentional communal tribe of this contemporary era. Having been at it the longest, having gone through total group therapy as well as individual therapy with each other, and having friendships together for over twenty years, should give us some sort of credentials. We have discovered truths that I dare say no one has become enlightened enough to find yet. If the world wants to get some refreshing original universal wisdom to help its decadent state...come ask us for solutions and advice.
Kerista is social tolerance. Jud says this frequently. Dau and the rest of the Keristans agree too. The way people will learn not to abuse feedom, is to be able to abuse freedom if they choose to. Keristans, especially Dau, Gud, Ez, Marquel, Onn, Dom, Eddie and Jud are known in the past for giving talks on Kerista. Jud is a never ending talking machine. He is very loquacious, and persuasive. One of the books Jud molded himself on is How to Win Friends and Influence People. Jud's schtick is monologue. Dau's schtick is dialogue. Throughout the years thousands of people have been influenced by Kerista. When Allen Ginsberg went to Russia, they asked him about Kerista. We couldn't mention all the Keristans over the years in one book. Nor could all the sins, or virtues be recorded. The results are in. Our children have turned out very well, as a result of tribal shared parentage. There are a couple of kids who got off the track, but that is their parent's fault. Our attitude on children's discipline is the middle path. We don't go overboard. But we don't go underboard, either. We discipline our children when they need it. San Francisco is one of the main places that there are several Kerista households. Nowadays no one except Jud's branch uses the word Kerista.
The Tropics. Getting back to the story ... Dau left Berkeley and hitch hiked to New York City with a friend named Sean. There in the Kerista store City Living, Dau met his first wife Pamela, whose name became Day. Dau married her a few weeks later, after she conned him into thinking she would inherit $21,000.00 on her rapidly approaching twenty-first birthday. Day was a blond from a WASP family of status. Her parents freaked out when she brought the bearded Jewish beatnik home to Richmond Virginia. In the meantime magazines and newspapers were doing articles on Kerista. We were getting famous, or perhaps infamous. Jud was publicizing our Isle-Land plan in his newspapers hoping he would attract big money to fund our projects. No backers were attracted by Jud's scheme. He showed photos of this klutzy clown Desmond Slattery in a jungle costume. Desmond had lived in British Honduras and was to lead the new expedition to the jungle, as the great white hunter. Desmond had played Robin Hood in a grade B movie once. He was about fifty. During the fanfare about going to the tropics, Dau and Desmond got into a beef verbally. Dau told Desmond he wouldn't take any orders from him. There are no boses who give orders in Kerista Dau told Des. Des said if Dau stays, Des goes. Jud told Des to walk, because Dau had done more for Kerista than anyone Jud knew. When we finally got to British Honduras, the fellow Desmond told us to look up, said Des had pulled a gun on him, and had been kicked out of the country after his bee business failed. In 1973 approximately Desmond Slattery won the longest non stop marathon talking contest in New York. He is the national king of talkers.
In 1966 Jud was finally convicted of various morals charges and spent eight to ten months in jail. The tropical project had fizzled out, and nothing was being done about it. Dau, by marrying Day, found the quickest way to get to British Honduras. Her parents bought us a VW panel truck, which we converted into a camper. They gave us the seven hundred dollar truck and $150.00 in cash to get us out of Richmond Virginia as quick as possible. We drove directly to Belize and thus became the first Keristans, since Gud's brief invasion, to arrive in British Honduras. While we were driving over the terrible bumpy roads through Mexico to get to British Honduras, a bee flew in the window and was buzzing crazily all over the inside of the vehicle. Dau went to swat the bee. Day argued furiously for Dau to let one of God's creatures live, rather than face death. Meanwhile because Dau was trying to get the bee out alive, his driving was impeded and the van went off the road. It was very near to a dangerous accident. Dau flipped out at Day. Would you save a bee, and get us killed over a fucking insect? Day backed off. Dau went on philosophize angrily how much naive bullshit there was in the hippy culture about taking abuse and being a pacifist, and not keeping your life unmarauded and unmolested. The real ideal Dau explained is to be realistic in being an idealist ... to occasionally swat a fly if you have to. Where do you think we live, in heaven? We live on planet earth, which is very cruel and hellish. We have to see evil and deal with it.
On the first day arriving in British Honduras, in early 1966, Day and Day met Brother David the black machete worker, who lived in the jungle about ten miles from the city of Belize. Brother David knew where to buy some sacred marijuana, which started the first commune of mixed native Belizeans and Keristans. Dau and Day lived in their camper near Brother David's Cracky Shack. David called it a Cracky Shack laughingly. The three ate meals together and got high. Dau learned how to use and sharpen a machete from Brother David. From Dau's own soul, and from Brother David, Dau learned the ropes of Belize and of the jungle. After about a month Day and Dau were running out of money. Just in the nick of time Jud and Joy showed up after sending us a telegram to hang on. Jud had gotten out of jail and headed down to British Honduras with his wife and baby to join his best friend Dau. When Jud, Joy and their daughter Terri arrived, they rented a house in the city. Dau and Day lived in the house by the ocean with Jud and Joy. Jud wanted to ball Day and very aggressively pushed to swap wives. Dau said he didn't want to ball Joy because she just didn't turn him on. Dau had been the first to have an affair with Joy and knew he wasn't interested in making it with her. Jud accused Dau of not wanting to ball her because she was black. Jud nagged Dau for hours. Finally Dau split and the three, Jud, Joy, and Day had an orgy. When Dau returned, he was angry and threw Day across the room. No damage was done. Later on in our jungle commune, Day hit Dau in the head with a big bottle sneakily. Day had seen too many Hollywood movies, and thought the bottle would shatter leaving Dau unconscious. There was no effects, except for Dau turning around angrily and kicking Day's ass a little bit for trying to cold konk him. No serious damage done.
So the six Keristans, including Brother David, lived in a house in the city. Dau the nature lover reasoned, Why should we live in the squalid crowded city of Belize? If we wanted to stay in an ugly city, we should have stayed in New York City. So Dau persuaded the group to move to Sand Hill in the jungle eighteen miles out of the city. All Dau's life nature has been his refuge. The slums were so oppressive in the Bronx. But three blocks away was Bronx Zoo and park, As well as the Botanical Gardens. Dow would go bow and arrow hunting and playing in Bronx park, or just walk and meditate in the great forest, or go fishing in the Bronx River with his Panamanian Puerto Rican friend Boopsie, or alone. Dau also got off by taking his dog to the park. One of Dau's hobbies is tropical fish aquariums. His ecological balance in the tank is so tuned, that no filter or pump is needed. The plants and fish maintain balance. Daus other respite from the brutal slums was the library. Dau spent seventeen years of intensive constant reading, day and night. Dau has read thousands of books. He no longer reads much. Nothing grips his interest, because he already knows it. His prolific writing makes up for his lack of reading.
We lived in Sand Hill at several rented houses, as more native people from British Honduras were joining, and more Americans came down there too. We put screens on the windows to keep out the drives of blood sucking insects. Soon the group mushroomed into about thirty people. Adventures in the jungles unfolded. We did a lot of work. We dug a thirteen foot well of clear sweet cold spring water. We rigged up barrels to catch rain water, with pipes running to the sink in our dining area. We built furniture, and grew beautiful gardens. Mangos and fresh pineapples as well as coconuts were plentiful. We ate the best creole style cooked food in the world. Fresh conches, crabs, lobsters, fish, beef, pork, breadfruit, and fresh vegetables from our garden like tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, squash, and eggplant. The gardens grew so quickly in the hot climate and fertile soil, and needed a lot of weeding. We sweated and hid from the hordes of mosquitos at dawn and dusk. There were alligators in the river we swam in, and jaguars in the bush. We were very careful to avoid tommygoffs. They are one of the most deadly small snakes in the world. They're very venomous. One day one of the local people from down the road was chopping bush with his machete. A tommygoff bit him on the finger. The man was cold dead in a few minutes. We had snake bite serum, but never needed to use it.
One morning we were about to fetch a drink of cold clear water from our deep wide well. Trapped in the well was a snake swimming and trying in vain to slither up the steep walls of clay. It was a killer poisonous tommygoff. Dau, Steve, and Day thought, What to do? The decision was come to. Knock the snake unconscious, and get it out of the well. After about twenty minutes bopping the little menace on the head, it went out. We picked it out of the water and placed it in a bottle. It squirmed awake in the bottle which was corked. We consulted the native Belizians who lived in our commune with us on what to do the little deadly. George the Central American Indian told us a folk tale of the jungle. He said if we let the snake go, it will bring us luck not to get bit. We went for the idea. We threw the open bottle far away from the house. The snake was freed.
A large iguana lived beneath our house in the jungle where we dug the well. The iguana lived from eating the six inch long cock roaches that lived in our basement. These roaches were an inch wide. It seemed there were hundreds of them. In the tropics of Belize there are more insects per square inch than anything, except maybe for vegetation. The iguana would stick its head out and look at us. The big roaches are more timid and mellow than the smaller North American variety.
Jud's current branch of Kerista believes pets take love away from people. Down in the jungle Dau had gotten a white puppy he named Power. Day and Dau had gotten the pup before Jud and Joy came to Belize. Jud worked for weeks to get Dau to get rid of Power, who was growing into a fine strong watchdog. Finally the commune had a dramatic vote on the burning issue. The animal lovers won by one vote over Jud's political power play to get rid of Power. Dau was able to keep Power. When Dau got Power, a native dog from the lumber yard, Power's mother bit Dau on the leg. It wasn't a bad bite, but no bite is good. Dau picked up a big stick and let mama know that her protective instinct was not appreciated at that particular moment.
There was no electricity or plumbing. We used kerosene lamps for light. We had a propane stove, and bought a kerosene refrigerator which one day exploded. Free love, and wife swapping experiments got Dau and others like Joel and Caroline up tight. It always seemed to hurt when one's wife preferred someone else. And it got the wife riled up when the husband messed around. A wealthy backer and his wife, Wyn and Clare Moses, came to the community. There were close to elderly. Wyn, Jud, Dau and Sal went to Placencia on a private plane to visit the black Carib primitive tribe. We drank some tequila with the Caribs. Then the Caribs got out their drums and costumes and did some ceremonial dances. Dau being a musician became possessed by the spirit and became the first white man to dance with this primitive tribe for close to an hour. It really thrilled the tribe and the Keristans present to witness this cultural break through. Dau had been raised in Spanish Harlem in the Bronx. So he always feels close to people of any race. Wyn donated a thousand dollars to the commune and made a hundred demands. Wyn accused Jud of misspending his money and said, 'You're supporting too many people, and you didn't put in a toilet!' So Wyn and Clare dropped out of the project, after balling a few people.
Maxine came down from the States. She was more than close to elderliness, and brought her twenty year old retarded son David with her. She began having an affair with George the thirty year old Indian, .everyone was a bit leery of George at first, but Jud insisted that George stay. Maxine promised her lover George that she would pay for his travel to the States. George counted on this. Toward the end of her visit, Maxine found some reason to get cold feet and back out of the promise. George felt betrayed and went berserk one night and kept sharpening his machete. Later that night Brother David found him strangling Maxine, and saved her life. George remained crazed and threatened violence if Jud or Maxine didn't give him five hundred dollars. Jud left George with Dau, who stood up to him a little bit. Jud went with Sal to get the police ... and to get away from George. The issue was finally settled when Maxine gave George two hundred dollars. Maxine took her son David back to Maryland. About a year later Maxine had her face lifted, went back to Belize, and had another affair with George.
One night we were listening to live music. In came barging the nude retarded David. He had smoked some grass and drank some rum. He was having hallucinations. He said he had seen a phantom. It was red and black and went ohhh, gesturing with his arms like a monster. On the way over, David had tried to get into the neighbor's hammock with him. The neighbor was an old East Indian man named Albert married to an African woman. David mistook Albert for his daughter Alma. David said to Albert, I love you Alma. Albert laughed as David ran off. Dau lent David some pants, and we calmed him down after he gave us a big scare plus a big laugh. David used to help Dau empty the potties.
One day Marcus a black brother was riding a bicycle around Belize, while playing a Belizean flute. He heard the sound of hypnotic music, and followed the sound. It brought him to Dau playing an American recorder. The two songsters got together and jammed, and then made friends. It didn't take long for Marcus to become a Keristan. He moved into our jungle commune along with his washtub bass. Actually Marcus was an illegal refugee from Saudi Arabia. It was Marcus who told us that the Premier of Belize was gay. Marcus was voted best performing artist in Belize before he snuck into the U.S.A and changed his name to Mustapha. He is now a street musician in San Francisco. After Maxine left Belize the second time, she left behind her retarded son David to live with Marcus, to be rid of all the trouble David gets her and her husband into. Marcus was getting David laid down there. Half of David's life has been spent in nursing homes. David's father wrote Marcus to please drown David and pretend it was an accident. Marcus refused.
The community had its share of hassles, but it kept on continuing. Steve was in it, a drifter from the States. Pete, an American did the bookkeeping with Jud. Betty a local pretty Indian gal became Sal's old lady, and eventually they were married and came to the States. Carolyn was a good gardener, and so was Joy. Joel played the drum, and painted the furniture psychedelic. We all did carpentry, and voluntarily took care of all that had to get done. Everything seemed to get shattered when Jody, Sal's ex-wife came down. She totally spread negativity. Jody was a glamour girl Keristan who must have gotten into a power trip trying to disrupt Jud and Dau's commune. Before Jody came down and discouraged a lot of people, Eddie and pregnant Renee came hitch hiking all the way from California. Jud wanted them to leave as soon as they arrived. He called them the radical branch of the left wing Keristans. It was Dau's vote that decided they stay. Jud was afraid Eddie and Renee would disrupt the community. They were pretty helpful basically. It was a mixture of Jody's influence and our bad sexual karma that started to break the communal jungle thing apart. We started to wear out our welcome. One evening a few women and a few men were bathing nude in the darkness. We were behind our house, and behind palm trees. Some curious truck drivers shined their search lights into our backyard, invading our privacy. They gossiped to the Premier of the country and we started to get noodged by the government about our morality. George Price the Premier had an audience with Jud and Wyn shortly before Wyn left. After that we felt under pressure to leave. What got us kicked out of Belize was Jud's big mouth. He attacked the Bible and championed wild sex to local Christians. I kept telling Jud to shut up, but he wanted to argue indiscreetly. We were forced to renew our visas more often. Things started to look like the hot bug and snake infested jungle was not the Kerista promised land. Many of the commune left and went back to the States. After a while it was back to Jud and Joy and Dau and Day. Most of the work Jud did was bookkeeping, and supervising, which we could have done without part of. His supervising was actually demoralizing and consisted mostly of nagging. We got more work done when he wasn't around, like when he went to Belize shopping. Once in a while Jud did some hard work, like washing a few dishes. We asked an American plantation owner where we could go to escape the bugs, heat, and snakes. He told us the Bay Islands of Spanish Honduras are beautiful. We decided to leave and move all our belongings to the Bay Islands. We booked passage for us and our baggage on the Judy, a coconut boat. We sold our VW to the Coca Cola plant in Belize, and shipped out. Jud still owns a piece of jungle which he bought when he was down there. As we left Sand Hill to go to the harbor where the boat waited, a fifteen foot long snake stood up next to our vehicle to see us off.
Once during the Berkeley era, Dau charmed a snake on the Berkeley campus for a bunch of plainclothes policemen. The police heard Dau playing his recorder and asked him if he could charm a snake. But before Dau knew it there was a box placed at his stoned feet. The police had just caught the snake in the bushes. Dau blew their minds and got the snake to dance and rise twice. Their prank backfired. Dau had no idea the snake would communicate with the music.
So Jud, Joy, Terri, and Day and Dau and their communal possessions went from Belize to Roatan Island on a coconut boat in rough seas. Jud and Joy were seasick, and Day was too. Dau who had been a sailor in the Coast Guard didn't get seasick. He supplied the buckets for Jud and the rest to puke in. Most of the people on the boat were seasick.
The first port we landed was at French Harbor, a mainly all white village surrounded by black shanties. The landlords of a particular house agreed to rent to Jud, Dau, and Day on the assumption that Joy was the servant or maid. When the landlord realized that Jud was married to the black woman they thought was the servant, they withdrew the offer to rent to us, with no explanation. So we stayed on the boat and went to the boat's next stop Coxen Hole, which was a thoroughly integrated very mellow town. We rented a house from a black lesbian who lived next door to it. Dau and two hired boys worked sweatingly into the day's heat to get the furniture ashore and to the house. Then Jud did the first day's work anyone had seen him do in Central America, which proved he was capable. He got down with the people and sweated in the sun for half a day. Jud got the while day's work credit because of his age, obesity, and the rarity of his gesture. Zada the black lesbian was carrying on a clandestine affair the whole island knew about with Evelyn a white woman, our neighbor on the other side. Everyone knew exactly what everyone else's business for the most part like a small town. There was no intolerances or not even any arguments that were noticeable on the Island. We all shared Evelyn's propane refrigerator. There was a shortage on the Island of men, because in order to make a living the men had to be seamen who were away a lot.
The Island was a paradise in every sense of the word. We were a minute from the white sand beach, with turquoise clear water, where we used to go swimming five times a day. Fish of every color swam past. Sharks never bit anyone on this magical Island. One day Day went swimming while on her period. A large shark smelled the blood, and cam swimming to within a few feet of the now panicking swimmers. Everyone ran out of the water in time, and no one ever swam while on their period. There was no crime or violence. The judge, frustrated with no criminals to prosecute, arraign, etc, went on a rampage on night by the movie theatre. He got drunk, and shot up the town with his pistol. There were no snakes or hordes of insects. Our utopia was found. There were no cars, and people either walked barefoot on the unpaved roads, or rode horses. Hogs, chickens, turkeys, and cattle were everywhere. The people, who were similar to the Belizeans, spoke Spanish and English. They were mostly blacks, but many were the descendants of English and Scotch pirates. Some were Indians. So it was a mix of many exotic mixtures. Jud and Joy's daughter was a big turn on to the islanders. The fact that Joy was black helped our public relations during the whole stay in Central America, except for French Harbor. We all fit in and made many friends on the Island. Dau went canoeing with the local men, and was turned on to how to trap fish and crayfish. The Commandante who was drinking beer with his men called Dau in and bought Dau beer. We all sat around talking in Spanish. Jud and Dau spent about a quarter of their time shmoozing in the Caribbean waters enjoying. They wrote letters and articles in the Village Voice to get more Americans down to the Island. The food on the Island was just as far out as the food in the jungle. Avocados were brought to the door along with eggs, melons, pineapples, etc. sold to us by the local people. Sometimes they even brought chicken and fish to our door. Since houses were so cheap, we rented one for fifteen a month, and another semi luxury shack for twenty. After about two months both wives Joy and Day, and Terri went by plane to the U.S. Joy and her child later returned, but Day stayed in New York City and moved in with an eye doctor. Dau stayed on the Island for many months really enjoying it, even though most of the time there was no marijuana. Dau got involved with an Island gal or two or three. Jud got involved with several Island gals. The only difference was that Dau was wifeless, and Jud wasn't. Without weed or a mate Dau still loved the Island passionately. There were very many interesting people to communicate with. The supremely divine environment was a natural high. There was so much to savor and grok. A few Keristans came to Roatan from the States, but not many. Bob who was in the Belizean jungle commune, came to Roatan and had a wild fling with a lot of the Island women. The Ouija board named him Moe, a fitting ethnic Jewish name for an Italian. Jud supported Dau on Roatan ... but it was almost similar to employment. Dau took care of Terri most of the time and did all the manual labor for the commune. Jud worked, but none of it was physical. His work was typing, thinking, and doing the books. Finally the money was short with Jud and Joy, and they had to ask Dau to leave. Dau's father sent him money to come home. Dau took the coconut boat to Miami, after being in the tropics over the year. A suntanned Dau returned to New York City in midwinter, to start a historic chapter of Kerista's history in New York again.
In the tropics there is a different pace to live by. A slower more natural, mellower pace that isn't so tense. Living amid nature tends to make one more in contact with the rhythm and naturalness of the human animal. Civilization is lacking a lot of the down to earth more primitive culture's qualities. All we need are the washing machines, toilets, and running hot and cold water. Most of the rest of the technological complex seems to be destructive and polluting.
New York. When Dau came back from Roatan in early 1967 he and Jud worked together to set up big Kerista lectures and discussions given at Freedomhouse in New York City. Jud was still in Honduras but aid the money to rent the hall for Dau to promote Kerista. Dau and other Keristans gave talks on Kerista. Moe from the Island helped sometimes. The first lecture was a dramatic success, covered by the press. The audience raised money for Dau without hardly being asked to to do so. A few hundred people filled Freedomhouse. From the meeting a store was rented by Dau for a meeting place. At the store Dau met Toe who was Jack at the time. We had weekly Kerista meetings at Toe's swank apartment. Toe was a computer programmer. Dau hadn't seen his friend Ez since before he went to the tropics. So Dau wrote Ez an invitation to his birthday party. The first thing he did was ball Dau's old lady in Dau's absence. At that time Dau had an old lady named Slu. The birthday party was terrific. Bee and her moon face husband William who took crazies in off the street attended. Bee is the granddaughter of the unsurpassable Jewish comedian Menasha Skulnik. Almost everyone was on acid, dancing and having fun. Allan Ribback, Dau's musical partner, carried in the birthday cake.
Shortly after the birthday party, Dau and Let, both men, planned a group marriage with Onn and Slu, both women. Then they tried it out on LSD. The vibes were not pleasant to any of us. It was like sticking your hand into an electric eel's tank and getting zapped. Doing such an experiment on a psychedelic shows the actual truth about such an experience. Orgies were also attempted and abandoned on LSD trips, at least once a year. One reason they didn't work was because Dau isn't bisexual, and couldn't relate to men touching his body or men's bodies touching his, nor could he relate to other men insensitively grabbing all the pussies, leaving none for him. The entire sensation of an orgy felt to Dau like a nest of intertwined snakes, unable to distinguish one body from the rest. Even if Dau had an orgy with two women, he would ball only one at a time, so it really wasn't an orgy. Only once did Dau make love to two women at a time, and thought he liked it. Later on, like his other free love experiments, he got a bad aftertaste.
Ez stayed in New York for three months helping Dau build the New York chapter of Keristans. Dau and Ez carried a presence of charisma when they hung out together. It was very noticeable, and people grooved behind it. One day when Dau and Ez were hanging out together playing music, emanating Kerista vibes and being their charismatic beatnik selves, the two friends came across a woman Dau had slept with before. Her name was Ronnie. This time she was attracted to Ez. And slept with him. Dau felt a little dejected, but figured that's the breaks. A few days later Ez came down with the worst case of the clap. Penicillin couldn't cure it. He went around forced to be celibate, and in pain for three months, until he got cured. Dau was certainly glad to have been rejected in that instance. Then Ez went back to San Francisco. In 1976 Ez went through almost a year of madness, strung out on PCP, and cocaine. He got the impression that he was a combination of the Godfather, Rick Barry, Muhammed Ali, and Jimmy Cliff all rolled into one. At Marc and Marie's house, Ez was ranting at God in general. Ez yelled defiantly at God, If you exist you asshole, do something to me for cursing you. Prove to me you exist, you non existent being. After 15 minutes of screaming at the sky, Ez summed up with, See there's no God, otherwise he's have done something to me. He went to the toilet. A moment later he ran into the livingroom, his penis clenched in his fist with yellow glop dripping. On no, I got the clap! Dau, who was in San Francisco also at the time, couldn't resist saying, That was God's thunderclap to prove that he exists. Now would you please put that thing away?
Finally after about four months after Dau left the Island, Jud and Joy left also and went to San Francisco, where Ez had been living most of the time. Meanwhile New York Kerista was growing. Lectures and discussion continued, as well as communal living.
During the time after Dau got back from the Island, he kept receiving grouchy letters from Jud in San Francisco. Nothing pleased Jud. No matter how good Dau had the New York chapter going, Jud still wrote uptight reproach letters. Finally the New York Keristans and Dau got tired of Jud's attitude. Dau thought up a way to give Jud some humorous therapy. A document was drawn to peach instead of impeach Jud. Dau went around getting signatures on the 'Document of Peachment.' After getting pages of names signed, Dau mailed the 'Document of Peachment' to Jud. Finally Jud expresses some pleasantness and some humor. The idea behind it was to blow Jud's mind. It seemed to succeed in changing his attitude to some extent. The entire incident gave everyone a good laugh, as well as a chance to express themselves.
During the peak of the New York Kerista scene, Ralph Ginsberg publisher of Fact, Eros, Moneysworth and other controversial magazines wanted to publish a second article about Kerista in one of his new magazines Avant Garde. There was a very elaborate article written on Kerista in Fact, which was the magazine that Ralph Ginsberg operated before Avant Garde. He asked Dau to come to come to lunch in midtown Manhattan near his business office. Ralph took Dau to lunch and advised him to order the cheapest thing on the menu, a chicken salad sandwich. Ralph told Dau he wanted to do an article based on a tape of some chick he wanted to call the Kerista Sex Goddess. The point Dau could let pass was that none of the Keristans knew this chick. Dau told Ralph that if he wanted to do an article on Kerista, he'd have to get it from authentic Keristans. And not some questionable source. Ralph, who had already advertised in his flyers an article on the Kerista Love Goddess, agreed to use authentic Keristans in the article. Ralph told Dau to visit Hunter Thompson who wrote about the Hell's Angels. He said that Hunter would get information from Dau and do the Kerista article. Everything was set for Dau to hitch hike to Hunter Thompson's farm in the Midwest. Dau thought it would be wise to write before arriving. It's a good thing Dau did write before visiting. If Dau had naively just gone there he would have been in hot water. Hunter Thompson wrote Dau one of the sharpest Dau had ever received. His letter stated that if any preachers showed up on his land, he would shoot them.
Meaning that he would shoot me, Dau. After I got Hunter Thompson's letter, I called Ralph Ginsberg and told him that Hunter wasn't being cooperative about the Kerista article. The whole project fizzled at this point, and no article on Kerista was published in Avant Garde.
Dau had met Allan Ribback, during hanging out at Tompkins Square in the East Village, before going to British Honduras. Like so many others, Allan was attracted to the flute of the Pied Piper. Allan was a philanthropist, and a great musician, and musical therapist. He could get the most clogged up person to play music. He had a magic to get people to relax and flow. After Dau returned from the Island, Allan took him under his wing and brought out the rest of Dau's musical talent. Allan was forty three then, and is sixty now. Dau and Allan lived together in Allan's swanky large apartment. They tripped together, and played music constantly with each other, and with others. Kerista flowed around the music more highly than ever. Allan changed his name to Allan Cowbarn to make him less aristocratic. Eventually Allan gave Dau two thousand dollars. Dau lived on a thousand and shared it with his two old ladies as well as other people. Dau used the thousand he had left to fly to California to join his other two best friends Jud and Ez. Allan was also Dau's best friend. Dau's plan was to get Kerista strong by uniting Jud and Ez who never could see eye to eye. He also managed to get Allan to come to San Francisco too. About 1974 Allan changed his name to Moses Moon. When Dau arrived at Jud and Joy's house in San Francisco Dau laid a hundred dollars on them. This was in late 1967.
After staying with Jud and Joy a week or two, Dau met Lola the rich Canadian textile merchant's daughter. She had the money to start a commune with Dau, Ez, and herself. Lola was Dau's old lady. The house was on Grattan Street. To illustrate how overrelaxed and presumptuous the San Francisco Kerista scene could get: Bruce had just balled Dau's old lady Lola, and Dau went for a walk during the incident because he was disturbed. When Dau returned, Bruce casually informed Dau that he was moving in to share Dau's food, woman and house. No you're not, Dau informed Bruce. We share what we decide to share. We don't share what we don't want to. We share what we can share. We are frequently sharing and lending to each other in the tribe. There's no pressure to share, but we share plenty of food, smoke, money, our homes, typewriters, musical instruments, etc. I just don't want to share my house, food and woman with you now. Kerista isn't forced sharing, it's voluntary sharing. Bruce was gone in an hour. The household operated with Dau, Ez and Lola for about a month or two. Then Lola's rich father Joe flew Lola to Canada, and a week later flew Dau to Canada. Her Dad tried to get Dau to work in his garment mill. Dau had already dropped out of the garment business. Dau couldn't handle more than one day of work at the factory. The family couldn't stand Dau or his free lovephilosophy. Joe offered Dau twenty thousand dollars to leave Lola. He probably wanted to impress Lola that Dau just wanted to be with her for her money. Dau refused the bribe cold. Joe wouldn't support Lola unless she finished college in L.A. Dau wanted to live in San Francisco. Dau and Lola broke up anyway.
Jud and Joy's marriage was getting in trouble from free love. Dau's marriage had died from free love. It was when Joy took Jud's daughters Terri and Lena, and left California, that Jud, Dau, and Ez actually made a commune together. The three Kerista leaders were affectionately referred to as the Three Bears by their friends. The commune in the Haight Ashbury had the three philosophers, as well as Nadine and Zipporah. Nadine had been Dau temporary lover for a week or two, and Zipporah was Ez's lover for a month or two. Never before had so much charisma been housed under one roof. Musical breakthroughs kept happening. At a large Kerista dance Dau played sax all night, along with Allan Cowbarn on the electric guitar, while Joey played conga. The tribe danced all night. Unfortunately due to poverty we had no recording equipment, so that many of the world's best concerts have gone unrecorded. After a few months the three philosophers came to the conclusion that Nadine and Zipporah did not have any dedication to Kerista and therefore should move out. The women refused to move. A big hassle came down. Nadine, her boyfriend Tom, and Zipporah were arguing with Ez and Jud about them having to move. At one point Ez slapped Zipporah across the face. Tom mentioned something about having connections in the Mafia if the women were forced to move. Jud finally used the strategy of luring Qes (pronounced Ques as in Quest) and specifically her five children to move in. This strategy produced the desired result. After the two women were driven from the household, Jud forced Qes and her five kids to move out. Qes has wanted to to be in Jud's current group marriage, but Jud wouldn't accept her because she has five children. Now Qes's children are grown, but Jud's group marriage still won't accept her because they think she isn't young and glamorous.
Born Again. Kerista was in the Haight during the supreme flower blossoming children peak in the late sixties. Kerista was still there when the Haight got seedy and violent. Now the Haight is not too bad. As the Haight began to get seedy, Dau found a mystical old lady named Marcella who was sixteen at the time. Dau and Marcella had a mescaline vision together in the meadow by Hippie Hill early one morning in 1968. It was a very intense Christ on the cross vision. Marcella interpreted the vision to mean that Dau is the Messiah. The vision came when Dau's anti-Christian Jewish conditioning had gotten cleaned from his subconscious. The vision had a profound effect on Dau's sinful ways, but not right away. It was other visions on top of the first which completed Dau's change of ways. Dau and Marcella moved in different directions after a while. It was the first bog heartbreak Dau couldn't shake, The break up was partially a result of Dau's infidelity with Christina Palafox, a full blooded Apache Mescalero Indian. The Mescaleros is a tribe that uses the sacred peyote cactus. Dau moved to Jim Morse's Castro Street Kerista house. Ez and Jud stayed in the Haight Kerista house. Jim Morse got his three letter name eight years later, which was Mos (pronounced like the green stuff that grows on rocks). Dau had no old lady again, and felt a painful yearning for companionship and children. Dau had the blues bad. Introspective psychedelic trips revealed bad karma inside of Dau, tons of it. I couldn't stand the person I had been at all. Dau realized how destructive it was to be breaking up families by seducing people's old ladies, and also to be disappointing women and hurting them by breaking hearts, and also to cheat on your old lady; and finally Dau was opened to the reality of the concept of sin. Dau realized how shallow promiscuity and greedy lust was, leaving him painfully lonely with no companion or children, just like he deserved. He realized you can't keep a woman if you cheat on her and torture her. From age 19 to 28, when Dau had these visions, Dau had about 500 lovers. He was a big whore. From 28 to 42, the age Dau is now, he has had only fifteen old ladies, plus about fifty other lovers. Up until very recently Dau was basically a celibate, waiting to meet the right mate. I can only ball a lady that isn't potential old lady material, once or twice. I get repulsed by a relationship without some romance, depth, and future. The kind of reluctant limited playboyism that Dau was temporarily into only a little, is the type where liberated women seduce him. Why fight it if you are single and lonely? Dau has months of celibacy sometimes. Sometimes Dau has months where a few days he isn't celibate. Since the popularity was there I was surrendering to it in hopes I'd come up with a wife I can be in love with permanently. Unfortunately, like most of my alienated friends, I also haven't come up with the tantric ideal mate. Dau has been a single father for eight years. Sod, Dau's son, is like an angel.
When Dau is made tense by high libido, he will masturbate as quickly as possible for it's medicinal effect. I see it as an act of God's mercy to make people capable of masturbating when they are suffering from horniness and the accompanying tensions. When Dau is celibate, he masturbates about once a week, but when Dau is in love, he makes love twice a day minimum-or used to. Now that Dau has become older, I do IT a few times a week. There is no sin in masturbating unless on is having fantasies about a married person, or some other inappropriate person. Pornography is useful to masturbate. I don't look at pictures of naked women except when masturbating. I try to keep sex off my mind as much as possible when I'm single. When I am under siege by horniness I relive myself. It's better than balling someone you don't love. Although there is a once in awhile proper time to very seldom mate with someone you don't love, if you are a non-virgin.
I will advise my son and daughter to try to remain virgins until they fall in love and get trial married. If they don't live up to that ideal, I won't get bent out of shape, as long as their morality stays high. Pornography should be kept out of sight of children, so should love making be kept private. If I'd had any sense, I'd have kept this whole book secret.
Dau may now see narrow and puritanical. However almost all the satanic trips that Dau condemns but does not attack, he has tried extensively himself and watched numerous others attempt. Years of observation of emotional experiments are Dau's credentials.
Just before Dau had the revealing bummers, he also had some positive visions. One vision, God told Dau to get a look at the Ten Commandments. While on acid he had the commune read aloud the sensible Ten Commandments. What simple profundity that struck home. In Dau's New Bible, which is the book on world peace, seven hundred pages long, living in a suitcase waiting for the world's consciousness to raise enough to be ready for it, Dau has improved the Ten Commandments to some extent. The needed a minor overhaul. Dau thinks his new Bible for today's world is as applicable as the Old Bible. Already being very well read, Dau did some more reading which zapped him. He read some Taoism, Judeo-Christianity, and Yoga. All of which he had read before. But now each profound line rang a bell. God also was directing telepathically, guiding Dau at this point in the right direction. Dau could only feel repulsion for extreme loose morals and stopped balling so indiscriminately. He had a change of ideology. Sometime in 1969 he told Jud about his new revelations to a more holy way to live. Jud flipped out and cursed at Dau, screaming at the top of his huge lungs. Dau got pissed and condemned Jud for being so greedy for women and for money. The two philosophers broke bitterly after six years of unity about many things. Dau now believed in monogamy and was looking for a wife who wouldn't cheat on him, or flirt with other men. Dau wanted to have children. Jud's weird sex trip had lost four of his five children from knowing them. Dau is not a screamer. He hates to be pushed too far. At one point he threatened Jud with violence if Jud didn't stop feeling free to scream and curse in his face. How humane to give such a warning. Jud blew it out of proportion and sent rumors around that Dau is a dangerous violent man. Dau excommunicated Jud from the tribe, as well as many others he felt were corrupt. Dau was soon to go off the deep end into righteousness and hyperprudishness. It's good to be a prude, but not a hyper prude. Today Dau is a hedonistic prude. I preached to people over zealously, and wrote them nasty letters, calling them sinners and telling them to repent. I told women not to wear micro mini skirts and other overly provocative clothing. I was holier than thou. I don't feel the same thoughts today and don't go obnoxiously imposing them on people. Currently Dau is careful to preach in a subtly fashion. Humility and not being pushy, plus being sensitive, is what communication is all about. Dau preaches in his writings more than verbally. Although he sometimes preaches verbally in a non condescending way, Dau tries not to preach too much. He knows it will be counter productive to reaching people with God's divine truth.
I'd rather be a Buddhist
Than a Rudist
I'd rather be a prude
Than be lewd.
Aside from improving the Biblical Ten Commandments, Dau has created another Ten Commandments which pertains to one of the world's worst problems at the moment: male female relationships-the Ten Commandments of tantric Monogamy. Call me up if you want to know about JuDauism and its Twenty Commandments.
JuDauism is a newish universal Eastern religion based on Judaism mixed with Taoism. JuDauism includes Yoga, Buddhism, Astrology, American Indianism, Christ, Confucius, Science, Sufi, Liberated Music, Meditation, Nature Worship, Morality, Humor, Tribal Cooperation, Sharing, Informality, Extreme Directness, Non Aggressiveness, Good Karma, etc. and a lot of original ideas never before verbalized, perhaps not even thought of or conceived of until now. JuDauists dislike affectation, which many people overdo. JuDauism developed from Kerista, the communal psychedelic tribe, which has been on the esoteric scene for twenty seven years. We were the first psychedelic religion of communal flower people. We lived experimently to determine the emotional make up of human nature. Most of juDauism's ideas are original conceptions which lie in the pages of JuDauism's creator, Dau. In Dau's writings are innovative institutions designed to solve the problems which plague society today. The details on how the institutions will operate are in Dau's New Bible and other writings.
Jud and Dau each profess to have a world peace plan. Dau's detailed world peace plan is in his New Bible which is close to eight hundred pages and has the world's troubles solved. Dau's poems have world peace solutions too. Although each world peace plan has similarities, Dau's is more encompassing, and is full of truth. This certainly has Messianic implications. Jud thinks he has found the universal truth. Jud like so many others has only a piece of the truth. His level is shallow and adolescent compared to the deep wisdom of Taoist Dau. Dau offers his teachings mellowly instead of trying to shove his truth down people's throats with domineering high pressure salespitches.
In JuDauism medipraytion is the combination of prayer and meditation. To watch Dau mediprayte is to listen to his bizarre nirvana noises. To an uneducated civilized mind, Dau's entranced possession by the holy spirit is too passionate. Twitches and grunts of ecstatic orgasmic pleasure unpredictably emit from him. He speaks in tongues. Dau never knows when these sometimes thunderous medipraytion noises will occur. These noises are the sound of the spirit in communion with God. Mystics in the wilds of India make these same primitive sounds when all the Kundalini chockras are open. Dau's friends joke that his mediprayting noises, and his shrill hyena laugh, will drive away the women. A person is so relaxed, they don't care of they sound like a hyena. Dau's unpredictable praying has scared away several women. Some have gotten blown away by Dau's shrill high hyena laugh. The rest were chased off by his spitting snot out that comes up noisily. The spitting has done the least scaring. Medipraytion has done the most. Jewish humor has done its share. Dau cleans his nose daily with warm salt water. He also performs another Yogic feat of stretching his tongue above the roof of his mouth. Dau can touch and clean the inner nostrils and the cavity of the palate. Dau has also mastered the ability of directly squirting saliva from the gland at will. He learned these acts during childhood. We love to enjoy our wildness which flows in the groove of Tao.
Moonwater. Coming back to the story...After the visions, and curtailment of promiscuity, Dau met Barbara who became his Cherokee-Sioux American Indian wife. Her first name change was to Kerista. As soon as Dau and Kerista moved in together on Castro Street, Dau threw away all her cigarrettes. She was glad he did. Dau met Barbara at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park in late June of 1969. There was a violent fight going on at the time. Dau said, Let's go someplace where it's more peaceful. The vibes here aren't too groovy. Dau learned Tantric Yoga's fine points during his six year marriage to Barbara.
Tantric Yoga is one of life's healthy addictions. Life's success depends on substituting healthy addictions like romance, nature, meditation, music, art, and God for unhealthy addictions. The human animal is an addictive creature. If we can guide our addictions there is nothing wrong with it. To try to fight our addictive nature is futile. I'm addicted to occasional pizza.
Dau and Kerista wanted to leave the city, and be around nature. They moved in with Peace, God, and their three kids on the Russian River. God was Howard Hamburg, now head of the Renaissance Fair. A community of unity was a place for the rest of the tribe to visit and swim. The forest was refreshing. Dau's dog Taurus enjoyed swimming the river and living in the country for the first time. Dau and Kerista got married by a Rabbi in Santa Rosa on August 4, 1969, rented their own house and lived in the woods. Before they knew it they were pregnant. Eight months later a premature girl was born, Anonya or Noni. Dau and Kerista lived up around Russian River for about a year. After a year they lost their house. Because we had no car, we had trouble finding another house. Something told us to go to New York to bring our daughter to see Dau's parents who had waited so long for a grandchild.
For four years, 1970 to 1974, Dau and Kerista were trapped in Yonkers. There we decided she'd go by the Indian name Moonwater. At the same time Dau decided he didn't want his new philosophy attached to the connotations of the word Kerista, and also stopped using it. Dau took on the name Shalom. All this time Dau's parents never called him anything but Lenny. It was in Yonkers that Dau created the ShalomMoonwater Church, which later developed into JuDauism. For awhile in 1973 Shalmon and Moonwater went to Lancaster Pennsylvania to meet Moonwater's Cherokee mother. Moonwater's family had broken up so she didn't know her mom. After a few months of the red neck area with Shalom working in a redneck factory, we moved back to Yonkers. We wanted to escape Yonkers, but didn't know where.
Most of Shalom and Monnwater's stay in Yonkers was suffering. Because of our bizarre unstraight mixed color appearance we couldn't get decent living quarters. No one would rent to a hippy with an Indian wife. We froze in slum dwellings and no heat and hot water. Shalom's bones got arthritis from the wind blowing in the apartment. We were demoralized by cockroaches, rats, cold and noisy environments. We were living with blacks, who also suffered slum conditions, and a few persecuted me for being white. Even today I'm hyper sensitive to the cold. I have to wear gloves most of the time. I have to keep socks on my feet. Because of sleeping on floors and on cold hard places, my back is bad. My emotions are severely damaged by the disease poverty, and my emotions are damaged by the physical damage. If the super rich didn't hoard so much superfluous wealth, we'd have some reasonable amount of comfort. You don't never see no rich people suffering the cold or sleeping on hard floors with rats and cockroaches crawling all over.
Because science still has not come up with a decent form of birth control ... Shalom and Moonwater kept getting pregnant every year using the diaphragm. Indians are very fertile. Moonwater's mother had something like twenty pregnancies. Moonwater did well, but finally when she got pregnant the third time, while having an infant and the first born who was barely more than an infant, it was the last straw along with being demoralized by terrible housing, and a feud with Shalom's parents who could have helped had we been on speaking terms. The existential fickle finger of fate and karma gave us the circumstantial screwing. Karma works in two ways. If you do evil, you suffer to pay for it. But if evil is done to you and you are innocent, that is injustice. A reward awaits in the future for those who are wronged. Either in this life or in the next.
I got sidetracked philosophizing ... Moonwater broke down and wasn't able between morning sickness, and all the pressures, to give proper attention to Tamara the six month old. Anonya our first was eating well and healthy. Shalom was intensely working on his writing. When he noticed the baby was being neglected he and Moonwater took the child to an adoption center. The baby needed hospital care to recuperate from malnutrition. Tamara was offered food, but because the flow of love was mischannelled into a nervous breakdown from the parents, the child refused to eat. It was a vicious cycle. We believed in abortion, but coul;t actually do it to our own. After we brought the child to the adoption agency ... all hell broke loose. Child Protective Services took our older daughter noni away for being shy, and because our house was messy. Noni was given to Shalom's parents by the court. Tamara recuperated and was adopted by a wealthy family in Westchester. After all that shit went down... our son Hasad was born. Sod is the nickname for Hasad which is an Arabic name which means Kind. Shalom thought up the name and only found out it had meaning later.
Dau now realizes he should have left Moonwater when she expressed psychotic tendencies during the Yonkers period. She would cream yell and curse for hours on and end furiously insulting Shalom with obscenities. She also would become insanely jealous of the watchdog Shalom kept as a hobby. At one point she even accused me of having a clandestine affair with the dog. She would work herself up into a frenzy and beat on the poor dog with a metal tube from the vacuum cleaner. It was all Shalom could do to restrain her from hurting the dog. Finally the dog did what Shalom warned would happen if Moonwater didn't transcend violent hysterics. The dog started snapping at her whenever she came near him. The moral is ... you don't beat for no reason on a Doberman, and epect him to stay your friend. Shalom had to get rid of Black, the Doberman.
Another Yonkers trauma among the many I don't like to bother writing or thinking about ... was some fanatic from a fascist religious fanatic group called the Avatar threw Shalom's typewriter out the window and then tried to throw the babies toys out too. Shalom had to bodily throw the lunatic out. Shalom had written to them telling them that he was the Messiah. Apparently this group doesn't allow people to think the way they want to. They usually beat up anyone who says anything they don't like. The Village Voice did an article on the incident written by Shalom, exposing this group.
Back West. It was Ez who, in 1974, wrote to Dau in New York. He offered a rescue plan. In two weeks Barbara, Dau, and Sod were driving our weak old car across the country heading for San Francisco and our tribe. (Since it was Kerista rescuing us, I felt comfortable assuming my old identity as Dau, and Moonwater simplified herself back to Barbara) It was the worst trip ever. Sod kept pulling on the steering wheel, and the car wouldn't go up the Colorado mountains, even though I was pushing my leg down on the accelerator with my hand, with all my might. Iw as doing all the driving, and it was too cold for any of us to sleep at night. At eight miles an hour each mountain it would have taken us ten years to get to San Francisco. So we changed our route to the desert. When we got to San Francisco, Eddie was at Ez's house drunk and with no pants on, no underpants either, but glad to see us. The tribe welcomed us warmly and musically. It was great to be home, and most of all with friends. We sold our car to Ez. Things were into a flowing communal partying lifestyle.
In 1975 Dau was managing a building with many stores attached. The job was very demanding while very low paying. The job and the city were giving Dau a nervous breakdown. Dau and Barbara longed for nature. Eddie and Renee rescued us from the city, and the murderous rat race job. They had been managers of a building, and it had driven them crazy, and that's why they moved to the country. We moved to a teepee on their land in Humboldt on July 5, 1975. After awhile we rented our own cabin near Ed and Renee and their three children. We did a cooperative transportation thing with Ed's truck. We played music together, and ate together. We worked on each other's places cooperatively. Dau and Barbara adjusted to the slow primitive country way of life. There are no conveniences like plumbing, or electricity. Some people have running water. I equate these long haired idealists living away from the world ecologically with nature, with the Essenes that Jesus studied and lived with. The idea is to withdraw from the ugly world, and create a paradise. Eventually Dau got a car. He and Barbara bought land with Big Hand, Eddie's brother, and his pregnant wife Jenny. Dau cut all the necessary firewood without a power saw. The land was incredibly beautiful, but secluded. Dau's big husky helped drag dead trees home for Dau to cut with the chain saw. Dau worked from dawn to dusk sweating to get the cabin and the land around it capable of surviving the bad weather in the winter. Dragging firewood, or cleaning sewage were difficult, as well as bathing ourselves or our dishes. Dau and neighbors worked on the dirt road to make is passable during the torrential winter rains. Many a time Dau and friend worked all day with a come-along to get vehicles out of the mud, or retrieve them from hanging over a cliff. People cooperate a lot in the back woods like the pioneers. The land was the goal that had been motivating Dau and Barbara for all their lives. Now the ideal had been reached. With persistence and a lot of hard work ... a comfortable paradise would eventually be hacked out. The cabin sat on top of a mountain top with a spectacular view. It was at the apex of achievement and hard work that things went radically wrong. Barbara became influenced by the extremely loose hippie morality. She had been moping about the cabin as though her face would fall off. Dau offered her a vacation to the city in the early part of November, 1976. Instead of visiting relatives there like she said she would, she cheated on him for the first time in six and a half years. Dau had never cheated on her. The shocking surprise hit Dau like a double atomic bomb. He hadn't expected a sneaky trick like this. He always felt he could trust Barbara. Dau cried and almost died. He pleaded with her to come home. The pain never let up. She came back to the same area he lived in but would not come home. She started drinking excessively. Stories tortured him She was balling all the young dudes in the area. She was too into partying to take proper care of Sod. She was into leaving Sod with the raunchiest people for days at a time while she wildly ran around.
Dau tried to find a new old lady to live on the land in the forest with him. He contacted on of his old Kerista lovers named Teddi in Chicago in late 1076 or early 1977. There was much to do about Dau's mail order bride, who had been in love with him in the old days of Kerista. The waiting lasted longer than the actual relationship. It took Teddi two to three months to get to San Francisco. The magnificent marriage lasted three days. The relationship proved incompatible mostly because Teddi wouldn't abate from touching or hugging other men. Teddi was glad to be on the scene with her friends even though the mail order marriage was a dramatic failure. Dau went back to the boonies alone and miserable, and with no one to help with land payments. After several attempts to find other male or female partners, Dau gave up and abandoned the lonely land.
Then Dau divorced Barbara and got custody of Sod. For a few months Dau and Sod lived with Mos the eccentric celibate hermit. Then for several years Dau and Sod wandered around San Francisco together. They frequented various parks and playgrounds. Dau uses his SSI money to make copies of his metaphysical poems. He distributes them for free during his wanderings. Dau's music is given to the world for free too. People ask Dau how come he doesn't charge for his poems, or put out a case or cup to solicit money while playing music. Dau never pan handled in all his years of vagabondage with no income. Dau has always disliked the kind of work that regimented or enslaved him, or that required he give a salespitch. Art is love which is pleasurable to give. Giving is its own return. Giving generously and sharing give one the karma to find themselves getting good luck. What you do good comes back to you invariably. That is karma. I don't ask for money, but I wouldn't refuse it. If I have enough to share with my friends, I invariably do so.
Dai is sort of a roving Rabbi with a floating congregation. Dau works with children, helps adults to get their thoughts and lives in order, gives advice on most problems, and in general fills his time with constructive actions. We look for favors to do each other.
Today there are two branches of Kerista. Jud's branch of basically newer people. And Dau's branch of JuDauism which consists of the old-time well-known Kerista tribe, as well as new people. Now Jud's branch of Kerista is very formal. Jud needs formal events to hang out with friends. Dau's branch is often eating, hanging out, playing music, and doing spontaneous things in our homes together. Jud's branch of Kerista ran Kerista dances, and volleyball games in Golden Gate Park. Dau's branch of Kerista has frequent informal spontaneous gatherings and outings, as well as invitation type parties with a lot of music. Jud's non profit corporation puts out a free newspaper the Utopian Classroom. The non profit corporation makes a good profit selling paid ads in the free newspaper.
In Jud's commune the phone conversation can be put on speakers all over the house. Recently Jud and Dau had a telephone argument. Jud offended Dau by denying that Dau is the co-founder of Kerista. The delicate alliance was blown when Jud as usual became offensive, and defensively tried to claim all the credit. This argument was on the speaker system when Dau politely hung up. Now Dau and Jud are not on speaking terms. During the phone argument, Dau pointed out that it was Dau and Ez mainly who inspired the young people to be Keristans. It was people like Rom and Giv, Eddie and Renee, and other Keristans who made Kerista palatable and popular to the young people. Kerista took off like a rocket when the flower children Keristans got the ball rolling. Dau stated that Jud did more to ruin Kerista than anyone else. Jud's newspapers and verbal aggressive assaults on everything under the sun didn't conform to his megalomaniacal teachings, weirded out a lot of people to Kerista. Jud is impressive to shallow dilletantes.
But he was not impressive to Allen Ginsberg on one particular day. Jud and his Kerista entourage had a booth at a big spiritual conference. After not having seen Allen in many years, Jud was anxious to lay his schtick on him. As he tried to sweet talk Allen, Allen stopped him in mid sentence and said, If it doesn't have Dau in it, I'm not interested in hearing about it. And walked away. Jud and the entourage went into shock and refer to the incident frequently.
We know enough to take the Archie Bunker of poetry with a grain of saltire, which is Jewish humor. Jewish humor backwards is Romuh Hsiwej. That could be interpreted as roaming Roman sewage. These visions and cosmic fantasies about reincarnation could be real or not. I don't insist that it is true. We are studying the accuracy of these messages or visions. Kerista and JuDauism, legend of the past, present, and future. Our focus is the present, much more than on the past. We want to free the world from corruption, and suffering from vices this time around. We are also focusing on the future, when our children will inherit this mad dying world. There are many ways to study that which comes from contact with the soul, and direct connection to God. We use books too. But mostly we learn from life, which Lao Tsu suggested. We made the mistake which brought us down to earth and humility. We know enough to not be self righteous or elitist. There are profundities to be found everywhere. Because we are eclectic we incoroporate anything relevant to progress and perfection. Perfection is the ability to correct our mistakes. Snobby fools assume they have found the truth which no one else has access to. Everyone has access to the truth. It's just a matter of letting truth pour through you. To live the truth is the ultimate.
On July 26, 1983, when I was just finishing this manuscript, my brother Ez passed away from a massive heart attack at forty-six years old. He died of being too sensitive; trying to work out in the gym very competitively after no activity for years. He refused to ever go to a doctor. Kerista hosted the funeral. Dau delivered a long eulogy and proclaimed Ez a Saint in JuDauism. The videotape of Ez's funeral with masses of close friends is preserved. It was the highest event ever. Dau played music and wept.
We who are left are still clinging to the start we made in the sixties. We have dispersed. We are fragmented. That's all right, we had to get our lives in order. It is my dream that this book be dedicated to a renaissance of the flower and beatnik movements. A return to unity. Let's start the rebirth. Let the music begin.
During the 70's Dau was musical partners with George Winston. Larry Coryell jammed with Dau at Moses Moon's house. Ez often spent time with Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm. Sometimes Dau did too.
In the 60's Jack Kerouac's teen daughter Jan lived in our commune for many months.
For being a grouch with a vicious temper, Jud got kicked out of his group marriage in 1992, and it fell apart. One of the women who had been in the 30 person group marriage from the beginning said, For twenty years we suspected Jud was a power tripping manipulator and a jerk. We finally concluded that such was the case.
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