The Making of New Age Man, Chapter XVII (cont2)

The Evolved Self

When an authority tells me how to stay in good health, or in any way to be successful, I think about it. Most of the time authority is wrong. I'm fair skinned. Exposure to the sun has caused five squamous cell cancers on my left arm and one on my right ear. I've had them surgically removed, and several basal cell cancers removed. I've been going to my dermatologist twice a year to get pre-cancerous growths burned off with liquid nitrogen.

My step-daughter gave me a jar of bath salts and a body scrubber to go with my jet tub in our new home. I scrubbed the dead skin off of my arms every time I bathed and noted that the skin on my arms took on a new vitality. At my last examination, with no pre-cancerous growths on my arms, I told my doctor what I was doing. She thought it was hard on my skin. She recommended that I quit. The skin on my forehead is sore to the touch. I've been rubbing my forehead with my finger tips. The roughness has disappeared. After a few minutes of rubbing the soreness goes away. The next time I rub the soreness is less. It's gone except in two small areas. The skin on my forehead is revitalized. I think I've solved my skin cancer problem.

Twelve years ago I was having chest pains. I could not walk a block without chest pain. My doctor told me I was a candidate for open heart surgery and put me on a beta blocker. Two years later we retired, sold out, bought an RV, and hit the road, spending a lot of our time in the national forests hiking. The chest pain went away. Against the advice of my doctor, I quit taking the beta blocker. I was having a problem of frequent urination. I was getting up two and three times during the night to go to the bathroom. Six months after I quit the beta blocker, I didn't need to get up once during the night.

Twelve years ago my left hip was aching when I walked. An X-ray showed that I had arthritis in my lower back. That problem persisted until I got my jet tub. It's mostly gone now. I'm walking without pain.

The building site for our new home was rough. I've done a lot of work. I've lost 20 pounds and my waist is 3 inches less. I've gained back a lot of my strength. I feel 20 years younger than my 83 years.

Last October, nine-and-a-half years after we took up full time RVing, Karen said she hated to think about living in an RV the rest of her life. I told her not to think about it because there was no way we could ever again afford a home. The price of real estate had doubled since we sold our home-as it turns out, because of the greed of lenders making millions by putting people in homes who could not afford a home. Their fraud upset the law of supply and demand. Were they thinking about those people they put in homes? The politicians apparently thought so for the decade it was happening. Now they pat themselves on the back for letting the taxpayers finance a bailout of the economy. Say the politicians, those poor people who bought homes they could not afford were taken. They should be left in their homes. The government should buy their mortgages and reduce their payments, again at taxpayer expense. It reminds me of my one-man taxpayer revolt and the reaction. To everyone, I was a bad American trying to get out of paying my fair share. The American people are brainwashed.

One week after Karen's comment that she hated to think of living the rest of her life in a trailer, we received a letter from the Veteran's Administration advising me that my claim for being permanently unemployable due to a World War II injury had been approved. I came home with my ears ringing from cannon fire and my hearing over the years grew steadily worse. It had been two years since I put in the claim. The benefits were retroactive. We received a large check and monthly payments that would allow us to buy our new home.

Writing my life story makes it easy to trace my progress over the years. In 1973, I wrote a letter to William Saxbe, President Reagan's Attorney General, claiming the income tax, as implemented, was unconstitutional. President Reagan had said as much. The President doesn't run the country. The bureaucracy runs the United States.

At the time, rather than a disabled World War II veteran, I was a taxpayer, the sucker who keeps the bureaucracy in the business of running our lives with an iron fist. The bureaucracy keeps its lawless power by giving people who don't work taxpayer money. The federal wheel of fortune came up on my number when I reached the magic age. I hate to mention this, it makes taxpayers furious to be told "I told you so," but with the system America has put in place it's natural that I would get a new home at taxpayer expense.

I would have preferred that I would have been left to keep the fruits of my labor, but it didn't happen that way. I had to wait until the bureaucracy decided it was time to give me my reward, the bureaucracy that left me without the bare essentials of life, with Congress' approval, for daring to challenge my tax burden.

Karen and I are in the perfect home for us, in the perfect place, and doing what we want to do, when we want to, 24-7. It's like dying and going to Heaven. Only this we're enjoying is man's heaven. It won't last another generation. I'm hoping and praying it will last until I go to the real heaven, but with my growing younger I may have to endure the inevitable bankruptcy of America along with my fellow Americans-when everything and every human in America becomes the government's to do with what it wills, and woe be unto anyone who doesn't like it. We're looking to government for our answers. We're ready for it to happen. We've seen it before. What makes anyone think it can't happen again?

It's easy to trace my life. It's all recorded. In 1975, I set out to reinvent myself, against the will of the establishment, using my own judgment. I fought taxes. In 1980, after three failures in marriage, I found the right woman to spend the rest of my life with. Everything since my departure with the establishment went right. In 1981, if anything could go wrong it did for eighteen years. Why?

The same as in 1975, in 1981 I was out of work and could not come up with an answer. But in 1981, I was not faced with financial worries like I was in 1975. I had the wrong mate in 1975. I had the right mate in 1981. The sea called me back. I departed Portland, Oregon for South Florida with my mate. It was an emotional departure, not a necessary departing. It was against good judgment.

My plan was to purchase a boat and sail to the Virgin Islands. Everything was going according to plan. I'd picked a boat captain to sail with me. His occupation was sailing boats to the Virgins to be used as charter boats. I had a contract with a chartering league in the Virgins to video tape the places charterers go and make  sales promotion presentations they could use to attract charterers.

The course the boat captain took to the Virgins meant up to a week at sea. We would sail east from Florida 400 miles and then tack south, carried all the way by the trade winds. I'd never spent a week at sea. My former two years of boating had been island hopping in the Bahamas. I wasn't looking forward to a week at sea. I was going fly Karen down.

A boating couple we met talked me out of my plan. They had sailed down the island chain that stretches southeastward from Florida into the Caribbean. We'd be heading into the trade winds. Rather than practical, it was an emotional decision.

We sailed to Georgetown on the southernmost island in the Exumas. Up to this point, the island hops were short---what I'd been used to. We waited at anchor in Elizabeth Harbor for three weeks, waiting for the wind to lay. My patience ran out. We motored into strong wind and steep seas 25 miles to Crooked Island and anchored. We were on the lee side of the island, out of the seas. The next morning we motored around the north tip of the island and southeastward, into the wind, to Clarancetown. The fuel dock was in water too shallow to carry us. I emptied two five gallon cans into the fuel tank and motored over to the fuel dock in our dinghy. The fuel tank would have held another five gallons, but I didn't bother. There was another fuel dock near enough.

A captain of a boat anchored near us decided to turn back. I had my doubts of going on. But determined, we headed on down against strong wind. It turned out that the fuel dock where I planned to refuel was on the other side of the island and no way to get there. At our next anchorage, a distress call came in on the radio that a boat had struck a reef nearby and went down. The next day we motored to the sunken vessel. She was laying on her side half submerged, the crew in a dinghy tied to the stern. They boarded another boat and we went on with my thinking it could have been us, and it was two days later.

We ran out of fuel sailing across the Caicos bank.  I was heading for the lee side of a small island to anchor when I ran onto a "boiler" (a small reef coming straight up from the bottom 30 feet down.)  We were stretching our luck. The sun was too low. the boilers could not be seen until you were on them.  If we had not run out of fuel we'd have been off of the Caicos Bank in a few minutes and able to sail the eight miles to South Caicos and fuel. 

We managed to be pulled off before the seas and rocks pounded holes in our boat. We were insured but the insurer refused to act. It cost us $10,000 in legal fees to make them perform. Our boat was finally delivered to us as good as new fifteen months later. We moved aboard and hung a for sale sign on Bold Venture II. Our savings were gone. We were working for a living.

Karen produced most of our income. My business ventures in an apartment complex and a one man video taping business didn't pan out. Our lives in Florida were stressful. With me, it was a constant battle with bureaucrats. Karen's job was stressful. With both of us in bad health, we decided to retire and sell out. We could make out by living in an RV and picking up part time work along the way.

For the first time in eighteen years, our lives turned from a hard time to a good time, all because instead of using good judgment, I made emotional decisions. At this very moment, the American people are in an emotional snit, and subject to making serious mistakes that might not be undone for no telling how long, if ever.

I wonder what kind of a world this would be if we looked within for our answers. What would become of the ego and drive for power? Would we not evolve into a larger self, in greater control of our lives? Why do we need authorities in control of our lives?