005
    so, that was a sample of how they worked - how they came up with ideas and into what their performance was evolving into, especially when they started doing video for cable access, which was right around this time.
    robert took the classes that were offered on camera and editing. after he learned the right way to do everything he started experimenting on doing it the wrong way. in the shows he edited sometimes the picture would break up or begin to roll. he'd fast forward or slow down parts - or record them running backwards, also fast and slow. the same sort of stuff he used to do with his audio tapes.
    the first series of shows they did were called, it (not to be confused with robert's imaginary band - he doesn't remember which came first), along with some subtitle. one was subtitled, sex with dogs. this was aired (cabled) during a time when the access people were getting slack from the city about obscene content on some of the shows people were putting on. though robert's and kathy's shows weren't obscene, in the usual sense, the access people thought it best not to list a show called sex with dogs in the cable guide - but they still put it on though. in these shows kathy and robert would set up the camera and just improvise something. they'd shoot raw footage and robert would then chop it up and mix it - both the video and the audio. the end result was something that would only make sense if you were high - which was sort of the point. or would make you high if you weren't. psychoactive art. one show they shot using angled mirrors that then reflected back to the monitor. the effect was like looking down a long hallway in which robert and kathy would appear and disappear at different spots as they walked into and out of the mirrors' line of sight, all the time babbling away the way they did, of course.
    around this time christian cable shows were becoming big. all these 2-bit snake oil evangelists who were before only on some 30 mile radius uhf station discovered cable and set up their own networks. they'd have couple shows like jim and tammy, paul and jan that were just them sitting talking about jesus and shit on some god-awful tacky southern plantation styled set - which said a lot about where their religion was at and coming from. robert and kathy decided to copy them.
    they needed their own religion. so they made up the artchurch (see the artchurch pages on this site to see more about that). they made up a guru - the dada-ananda (originally the bogus rama). they hunted through the dictionary to come up with the name of the artchurch. it represented sort of what they "believed in" - if anything. it was reformed. it was smorgasbord. it was potluck. it was non-linear. it was propulsion. all of which was the way they worked and how they were inspired. the metaschizophrenic science represented how robert's thinking worked and how he put information together about life, the universe and everything. they were ready.
    it was pretty much the same as before, except robert and kathy would sit on a couch and improvise about the religion and the dada-ananda. the show was now called, praise it! when robert separated from debbi, around this time too, and moved into a different house, they made up something about that they were now broadcasting in the praise it! bunker after being attacked by the christian satellites to get them off the air (cable). robert became da-fritz rainbow-da wearing a psychedelic moomoo and a mask he fashioned at work once. it was based on a harlequin mask. it just covered the eyes and had a long pointed nose. he changed it with different colors along the way but the final version was all black. kathy wore her nun's habit from agoraphobia and was sister-something-or-other. it changed with each show. they were a sight to behold - tacky in their own right.
    during the shooting of one of these shows, rachel was with them adding that wholesome family touch all religious shows should have. she joined in with comments once in awhile wearing one of robert's clown masks that he used to wear before making his own. she finally came up with the statement, "there's is no government". cut. that's a wrap. kathy had also learned ventriloquism and bought a red rat puppet. this was red rat. it put in its own two cents too. she made a little priest's collar for it. they did a number of these shows, which were also shot and then edited, when the director of community cable access asked them if they wanted to do the same thing live. she would get a studio crew together. it could be a phone-in show. they said, sure.
    the new studio live show was called, this is it. it was sort of like doing their performance art in a gallery again. they would drag all this stuff in along with them. they did it once a month. kathy would paint banners that would have various quotes from people or nonsense things they'd make up. they went in costume. robert remained dressed as da. kathy started dressing up in various other costumes. one included a mouse head mask which looked really freaky. at first they tried keeping with the artchurch theme but that soon broke down into freeform improvisation. robert would bring written prepared text and pontificate from a podium that was part of the studio set. he would lose that as well. the director and crew went freeform too. there was no direction. the camera people shot whatever they wanted. the director pulled out all the stops on the special effects board. then there was the phone-in. people would call and start out asking what the hell was this? this is it, they would reply and then babble on. frustrated, many people just hung up. but some stayed on. robert and kathy would tell them to read something or tell a story or whatever. as they did so, if they did so, robert and kathy would keep going on with their own word salad improvisation. kathy brought a dictionary and would flip through it throwing out words and definitions. or she sometimes brought in her favorite poets and read from them. robert started bringing in notebooks and randomly read from them. they would sometimes get calls from people who would say they were stupid, or worse. at first the phone guy hung up on them but they told him to let them stay on and they'd deal with them. some of them would just want to say, fuck you, or whatever - a popular one was calling them faggots on crack - and then hang up. some wanted to continue with their abuse. it all went into the mix. once in awhile though these people, mostly boys, would eventually come around and get into it when they realized their negative comments were having no effect on what was happening. nobody got shocked or tried to argue with them. they were just jerking off into the wind. one time some guy was being abusive and robert started jumping around the studio beating on his chest and grunting like an ape in response. the guy hung up. robert remembers one woman who called in and started out asking what is this? about 20 minutes later she was howling over the phone. they had two phone lines and sometimes the callers would start talking to each other trying to figure out what it was.
    soon the access director turned the show over to this guy, maurice, who had his own video effects boxes he'd plug in. the show went up another level - beyond psychedelic. the crew was almost always new. the access center had a studio class set up to show people how to use the studio or work on a studio crew. after the class they sent these people to this is it to get their feet wet. the camera people would stand there with their headsets and wait for instructions. they didn't get any. finally they'd see what was going on and get into it and roll and twirl the cameras around or zoom in and out or whatever - or all of that together. once this couple friends of robert's came to see the show and participate in it. before the show they asked robert what they should do. he told them to stand off to the side and stay there. midway though the show the guy was hopping around the studio like a frog and she had grabbed a mike and was reading gertrude stein. this went on for a number of years. this was also their sgt. pepper - or maybe their white album.

    meanwhile, in the real world - or what presented itself as such - robert and debbi separated. robert's first reaction to debbi saying she wanted a divorce was to say, fine, i'll just leave and fuck you. then he thought about it and decided that it was probably a good thing. he'd have his own life. he could come up from the basement and live in his own house. and that's what happened. they first moved to debbi's new house, she took over the housing certificate they had had since the kids would be living with her. then, after a month or so, after he had enough money for a deposit, he found his own house. they fucked their last night together and as he was driving off he put his wedding ring from his left hand to his right. he still wore it for the kids. it wasn't so bad. he set up his studio in the living room and was more or less ok with it - except for not having the kids around. he had them on the weekends but that wasn't enough. he wasn't the type of father who did things with the kids - except take them to movies - like go to the zoo or whatever. he improvised with them. it was all in the moment and now most of those moments were gone. he had agreed to a divorce with debbi, not his kids. his kids and him weren't the problem. and this wasn't their home. they bring stuff with them when they came over, but most of their stuff was at debbi's house. when she and he agreed to split up, they agreed to split everything 50-50. this was not 50-50. and it got worse.
    soon after he got his house, his hours at work were cut. he was now part-time. he couldn't afford the house. he had to move. he found an apartment that was cheap enough. it was only one bedroom. now, not only did the kids not have all their own stuff with them, they didn't have their own rooms. and the place was crawling with cockroaches. he spent a very dark depressing winter there. he tried telling debbi that this wasn't working. she more or less said, tough shit. she couldn't think of anything and neither could he. except he thought maybe they could rent a duplex together so he could be closer to the kids and they could spend the night in either place depending on where they wanted. she said, no. she didn't want him that close. this was the first sign that it wasn't what the kids might want or need that mattered to her but what she wanted for herself.
    the following spring he moved again. he found a remodeled garage with a big yard. it was still only one bedroom but it was a little more cheerful. he planted a garden. he had nightmare. she got poisoned once when she walked through the neighbor's yard who had put down massive doses of weed killer on the tall grass. she almost died. he had the wood stove. it was sort of ok again. he built bunk beds for the kids but he hadn't put on a railing. daniel kept falling out of the top bunk. he forgets if he ever put on a railing. once when they were over and debbi had been pushing him to make sure they did their homework he got in a fight about it with rachel. he got mad and threw all her stuffed animals out the side door into the yard and sent her to bed. he was still inhaling all those chemicals. he fell asleep later in his chair, which he did a lot of, and the phone rang in the middle of the night. rachel had left and walked back to her mom's house - they lived close to each other. debbi was pissed.
    he didn't work much on tapes during this time. he doesn't know why. maybe being down in the basement like some disgruntled teen-ager with his wife/mother upstairs inspired him. he no longer felt that angst. he didn't know what he felt. sort of empty. he still wrote though. endless notebooks about nothing.
    but this house wasn't working out either. he had been paying bills with his credit card. it was almost used up. the reasonable thing would have been to get another job. but he was never reasonable. he hated the job he had. why would he want to go out and get another? and printing jobs were hard to come by. the computer and copier age was coming. he thought of the unreasonable thing. he would live in his car - at least until he could afford another place, he thought. that's what he did. it was ok. he could take showers at the school where he worked. at night he could hang out in a bar or cafe. he visited the kids at debbi's house. she didn't like that. now it was his turn to say, tough shit. he still could take them to movies. he could tuck them to sleep at night. but then he had to go. he remembers one time when rachel hugged him and wouldn't let go. don't leave, she said. but debbi was standing in the doorway and tapping her foot. he had to go.
    he eventually bought this beater old van to live in. he could keep his clothes with him and it was more comfortable to sleep in than his car, which was a small toyota. he let a student at school drive his car. she worked in the print shop for financial aid. she got in an accident and totaled the car. the insurance paid him more than he probably could have sold it for. he got a cold weather sleeping bag for the approaching winter. he found places around town where he could alternate parking. one was at a freeway rest stop. one was under a bridge. the cops came there once but didn't tell him to leave. they just warned him it was dangerous. he knew that. one was in an industrial area. it went ok. around this time was when he started driving the car for the art professor. she had hired a student to do it but he got sick. she came into the print shop - which was next to the art building - and was talking about it and he said he'd go. it was summer and the print shop was slow in the summer since it was at a school, so his boss let him. the professor wanted the car and the art stuff in it in nyc for the summer. he'd drive there and she'd fly him back. he'd get to see his folks who all still lived in new jersey, except his brother. it was a good deal. he made it to ny in 31/2 days. at the end of the summer, she flew him out and he drove it back. he did this a couple of times. the second year he took rachel. she chipped a tooth in his sister's swimming pool. a couple of years later he did the same thing with her husband's car driving it west to portland. he took daniel this time. as they were driving back he wouldn't get out of the car the whole time except when they slept. it was winter so they paid for motels this time. he remembers driving over the last mountain range just before it was probably shut down. they were the only ones on the freeway. there was snow and pine trees. they were listening to a classical tape. it was very zen.
    so this went on for awhile. then debbi told him she was starting to go out with guys and he had to call first before coming over. he felt mixed about this. he didn't really care who she was fucking - if anybody. in fact he felt ok with that. he'd been her first serious boyfriend and look what it had gotten her. he was glad for her. but he didn't want some guy coming between him and his kids - especially as tenuous as their relationship was at that point with him having no home for them. which was exactly what eventually happened. dear old ron. ron patton - some relation to the general himself - or so he claimed. let this name be named. ex-coast guard and cop wanna-be. talk about going in the opposite direction for debbi. she even had used his commodore 64 computer, which he had let her use, to find him. he ran some bulletin board - this was pre-internet.
    this was trouble.
    the trouble came when he moved in with her and started playing daddy to the kids - though she said he was only trying to be their friend. this included disciplining daniel which debbi allowed him to do. daniel didn't react to this very well. once when robert had come over to pick him up he was told that daniel was at some place for run-away kids. had he run away? what happened? when he started asking questions about it, he was told it was none of his business. this put him through the roof. he left, but later he called her and started demanding answers - rather loudly. she told him to quit calling her. he called back. this time ron got on the phone and told him this was harassment. maybe so, but he wasn't about to let this asshole tell him that. he hopped in his van and was determined to let him know that with a tire iron. he calmed down somewhat by the time he got there but still pounded on the door. debbi came to the window and told him to go away and come back tomorrow and she'd talk to him. he left again.
    the next day he was still pissed. who was this guy doing anything with daniel and who was debbi letting him do it and then to tell him it was none of his business? was this the 50-50 part? this was far from what they had agreed to - as far as he was concerned.  50-50 indeed. so he shows up. he was in full improvisational performance mode. this was a pissing contest, with both ron and debbi, and he thought he'd get to them by undercutting them - or him. debbi let him in and said she'd get the number where daniel was. still no explanation was forthcoming. robert started to sing, my boyfriend's back and you gonna be in in trouble, hey na, hey na, my boyfriend's back. he went over to where ron was sitting and got on his knees. he felt his leg moving up to his crotch. hey, i bet you got a big cock there, don't you? he said. you're the man. ron jumped up and grabbed him by the throat and pushed him against the wall yelling, call the police, i'm going to kill him. robert kept singing my boyfriend's back. debbi came back and ron let him go and sat down. she gave him the number and told him to leave. you didn't say he was queer, ron said. robert turned and said, you'll get yours, asshole. to which he replied in his best clint eastwood voice, make my day. but robert was satisfied that he already had.
    the next day, or the day after, robert was served with a restraining order at work. he read it. it was interesting. debbi said she had felt threatened and it was good her boyfriend was there to protect her. she said robert had smelled like marijuana and was probably violent because he was high, and when he had gotten in his van it looked like he had lit a marijuana cigarette before he drove off. how had he threatened her and her boyfriend protected her? was she the one who he was threatening, if he was threatening? would he be threatening if ron wasn't there? - if he hadn't gotten on the phone to tell him off the previous night? marijuana cigarette? during the time he was performing this he was chain smoking camels. that's what he lit up in his van. he remembered back when they were married, she used to say that she could tell when he had gotten high at kathy's because he always came home in a good mood. was he violent? provoking violence maybe, and he knew it, was counting on it, it was too easy - but wasn't he the one slammed against the wall by someone who was threatening to kill him? so who's report was this? hers, or ron's - the big hero?
    he was thinking he should have worn his mask, maybe then debbi would have gotten it. probably not though. the fiction was too strong. once again, he was the one who was crazy. but that was the only way he could see it - the only way to bring it to the surface. it's what he always had done when faced with other people's self-serving bullshit. it never did him any good but at least he knew what the score was.
    but he started thinking that maybe he was crazy. what the hell was he doing anyway? how did he get out of this? how did he get into it? what was it to begin with? he talked about it with kathy. she told him he should drive out to the beach and chill out. he did. he got nightmare - who he had been keeping at the print shop since he lost his house - and went. they had fun.
    to flash into the future of all that, at last report ron had finally had someone make his day - that someone being debbi. they broke up. they had a house and she moved out. he stayed there but since he wasn't working she still paid the mortgage. he was depressed. they sold the house. he had nowhere else to go but he had to move out. he now lives in a motel with the money from the sale. maybe someday he'll be living in his car too. score two for debbi. robert feels like calling him up and congratulating him. welcome to the club. how's your day going now, ron?
    robert doesn't consider himself divorced. he doesn't know what it was. when he was served the papers they only set in stone what was already going on. he had nothing to say about how his kids were being raised or by whom. the divorce pushed its way through without him being able to do anything to stop it or change it. there are three signatures on the divorce papers, debbi's, her lawyers, her judge's - all women. his doesn't appear anywhere. he didn't agree to anything. he tried to get a lawyer but she had gone to legal aid to get hers. when he called other legal services they seemed to be unwilling to go up against one of their own. no one would represent him.
    he tried to go see debbi's lawyer to talk to her but he was kicked out. they were the ones making this antagonistic. before the divorce he and debbi had gone to a lawyer to have their wills drawn up. a little too late for that but they were concerned about the kids and who would get them if the two of them died - though now that was unlikely since they weren't together. they didn't want them going to anyone in their families. they made kathy and her husband guardians. so they could agree on that. robert wondered why they couldn't do the same thing with the divorce - both of them go to a lawyer and have it drawn up. he thought they agreed on everything - or should have. neither wanted to be together or wanted anything from each other. the only issue was the kids and who should have say over them and their lives. to him they both should have. they were still their only parents no matter who else came into it. debbi got all of that.
    he didn't understand her. why did she do that? why did she insist on control and then tell him it was none of his business? why had she let ron in when daniel made it clear that he didn't like him? for himself, if he had the kids and he met someone and either or both of his kids didn't get along with them, that person would have to go. but not her. she was determined to get this guy ron - or maybe any guy. and if that meant her own son had to go, then that's what it meant. that's what had pissed him off. and he's still pissed off about it considering what had all come out of that. when he thought about it they had just acted out her own parents' divorce. maybe that's how she thought divorces went or had to go. he didn't know. he didn't know what the fuck happened. some best friend she turned out to be.

    before this he had done a gallery show on his own. it was at this space that was a bar/rock club/gallery called blue sky. he wrote them a proposal saying he was going to do this and that - he forgets what all he had said. he got a week. but when the time came, he had nothing. he had to do something though. what he decided to do was to bring a bunch of junk he had collected over the years, which was stored in debbi's basement, and build an installation right there for the whole week. he didn't know what though. around this time he was working on the crew of another cable tv show called, where's the art!?! he started out as a camera guy. but stevie who was the show's host and creator kept yelling at her director about how she wanted lots of chrom-a-key. that's like what the weather people use on tv to show the weather maps behind them and movies use for special effects. they never gave her chrom-a-key. he thought that if he was director he knew what to do - knew what she wanted. she kept saying it. it wasn't too hard to figure out. but they kept trying to do a straight show. as one director after another left in frustration he decided to volunteer. since she had no one left, she said, yeah. he went into the control room and tried to figure out how everything worked - especially the chrom-a-key. after a couple of shows he finally did. she was happy - well, as happy as she was going to get. she was quite the bitch.
    anyway, the point of this was that he had just dumped a bunch of stuff in the middle of the floor at the gallery and not much was coming out of it so far. he was talking to her about this show and what he was trying to do with it. she said they'd all come over and help after the cable show. they did and suddenly it was all transformed. everybody started stringing stuff and hanging stuff and before too long the space was a web of art - what he would later call webs of chaos. some other guy, doug, happened to be there too. he helped as well. he came back again to do more. it was pretty cool. but the people at the bar bitched about it because they had to walk though it to get to the bathrooms. some guy got pissed and said it was bullshit and he wanted to destroy it. robert said he couldn't destroy it because anything he did would only be part of the process that created it even if he tore it all down - it was all the same thing. this apparently was too heavy for him and he left. toward the end of the time he had to do his installation - maybe it was two weeks, he can't remember - the gallery owner told him he had to take it down because he was having bands on the weekend. robert thought that would be great. people could work on the web while the bands played. the guy didn't buy it. so down it came. it all condensed into a ball about 3 feet wide. he threw it into his van and brought it back to debbi's basement.
    this whole thing was pretty cosmic to robert. he started thinking of his art as magick. at that point his mind was fluid enough that this made sense. he decided to start working his magick with objects and things. he'd sit in a park somewhere and improvise moving and placing objects and try to feel his way around in it. around about this time he lost his job. he went in one afternoon, which was when he worked, and his boss started yelling at him for how messy the sink was. apparently her boss had come to yell at her about it. robert said it wasn't just him that used it. but somehow it was all him. he finally had had it and told his boss to get fucked and walked out. he drove away. the next thing he remembers was sitting in this park watching ducks. great, i just lost my job, he thought. he went back and talked to the personnel manager who had always been nice to him and asked whether that was actually what he had done. he explained about the separation with debbi and that he was under a lot of stress, etc. she told him that maybe he should take a leave of absence for the summer while he straightened out his life. he said, ok. so that left him time to sit in parks, or wherever seemed vibrationally suited, and practice magick. this was all concerned with metaschizophrenic science. or else he was nuts.
    this one time he was with rachel and she told him that ron's truck had been stolen. hmm, robert thought, maybe i am doing something. it later turned out that ron's ex-wife had hired someone to steal it. but what gave her that idea? robert thought. was it what he was sending out that found a willing receiver? this was how his summer was going to go.
    he hung out at this one cafe during the day. that guy, doug, used to come by and see him. robert was wondering if he was going insane and doug told him it was all just performance. easy for him to say, robert thought. at night he'd move to a bar and hang out there. he didn't really drink. he'd usually order a coffee and brandy and then drink refills of coffee. he drank coffee all day. this probably didn't help his mental state. his diet was pretty much coffee and cigarettes, with an occasional bagel and creamcheese or a slice or two of pizza. he also hung out at kathy's. he asked her if he could just sit in her backyard awhile sometimes. silas was a great gardener. their yard was always full of flowers and was very peaceful, very zen. but his being there soon started freaking silas out and she said he couldn't come over any more. he understood. around that time he had seen a movie called s.p.l.i.t. it was sort of like his and kathy's project secret show. the big computerized machine controlling everything and then this guy sabotages it through chaotic improvisation. that's what robert thought was really going on. that's what he thought he was doing.
    at the cafe and bar was this woman called rose - not her real name. he never found out what her real name was. it might have been roxanne. she would sit and stare into space all day. once in awhile she would talk to him and told him all what was going on in her head. she was doing the same thing. she was manipulating the whole thing in her mind. meanwhile he was still living in his van. then one night this other woman, susan, shows up at the bar. she was pretty whigged out and said that she needed a ride home to this small town outside portland. robert gave her one. the whole time she's talking about demons and angels and stuff and how everything is coming down. it somehow fit in with what robert was thinking. when they got to her house they ended up fucking.
    the next day he had to go back to see his kids. she went with him. they all went to the park. then robert had to go meet with kathy at a friend of hers. they were going to shoot some video. her friend had some of his own equipment. robert left susan in the van while he did this. after they were done shooting an excellent improvised video - they had shot one a few years before this called, bongo mirrors, which ran as one of the it shows - he told them he had someone waiting in the van. they were surprised. why hadn't he brought her up? so he went down and got her. she went into her crazy act. she started wandering around and messing with stuff and washing up in the sink and talking to herself and soon it became clear to all why he hadn't brought her up. so they left.
    they went back to her house but on the way his van broke down. by this time she was really going and robert was going right along with her. they were talking about jesus and lucifer, who they called joe and luke when they were sitting in this bar talking about it. it was all order and chaos and yin and yang and all sorts of other stuff and they were archetypes. robert didn't know exactly what it was but it was making sense somehow. sometimes she'd channel jesus, sometimes she'd channel lucifer to explain things. once he did too - lucifer to her jesus, who she said were brothers. lucifer was the oldest. it was sort of like christian witchcraft. in the middle of this she took him to a car dealership and got some salesman to let them take a test drive in one of the cars. while they were driving she talked the guy into stopping by robert's van to try to jump start it. it didn't start. robert was amazed at this. he asked her, how the fuck did you do that? they had looked like hell. we're protected, she replied.
    anyway, this all went on so far and then it couldn't go any farther. robert had enough. he last saw her standing in a field up on this hill. he decided to walk back to the city. on the way he stopped by this guy's print shop where he had worked a few weekends who was a friend of stevie's. robert didn't have any money and he was going to ask him for bus fare. the guy took one look at him and drove him back to the city and fed him when he got there. he said he understood what was happening to robert. he said the same thing happened to him years ago. he said just to ride through it. back in the city, robert borrowed kathy's truck to go get his van. he brought along this old hippie drunk from the bar to help him. he had to switch batteries to get his van started. they drove back to the city and parked his van on a street close to the cafe and the bar. it never moved again until it was towed. when he saw doug and told him what all had happened doug laughed. it was still all part of the performance to him. and maybe it was.
    so the summer went on this way. he once had gotten some acid and did it with rose. she talked like crazy. she told him about how the world was a manufactured dream and she was designing it and manipulating it but there were forces against her trying to take over so she had to always be on her guard and stuff like that. it always seemed to be about this battle between good and evil to people. robert sort of understood it but when it came down to it he couldn't get behind it. the world seemed more complex than that to him. it wasn't black and white. what about everything that wasn't good or evil - or was a little parts of both to different degrees? he was still doing his magick but he wasn't sure what he was trying to do with it. doing battle with those who thought the world was divided between good and evil? he wanted to throw a spanner into that and get people unlocked from it. no more good and evil. no more us and them. he stayed for a week or so with some junkies. he had met her at a grocery store. she brought him home once awhile before this time and was giving clear indications that she wanted to fuck. he didn't though. he doesn't know why. but they finally kicked him out and he went back to sleeping in his van. he was running out of money. he still had some of his latest portland idiot. he would walk around downtown and hand them out to people. when somebody took one he'd say, well it's free but if you could spare any change or cigarettes that'd be cool. he couldn't out and out beg. a lot of people gave him money - and cigarettes too. so he went on a little longer.
    then a notice was put on his van that unless it was moved it was going to be towed. he went back to the college to see if he could get his job back. nope. the shit was hitting the fan here. he didn't know what to do. he was walking around once and he found a grape stem and some string. he began twisting them around each other while he was walking. was he nuts? was he what? he didn't know. then he thought, why not find out? he looked up the county mental health. it was close by. he walked in with his string and grape stem. he waited. then he got to talk to somebody. he started babbling about everything. he doesn't remember what he said but at the end of it the guy called over to a shelter that they ran in a hotel in old town. there was a room. he sent him over. he went. when he got there they showed him around. he thought, do i want to go this way? he remembered the shocks. he thought of the state adjustment and assignment centers. he told them he'd have to think about it. he walked around the block. he went back in.
    rocket sleepwalk.
    he got a room by the stairway where everybody hung out near the office. he still went to the cafe and bar. he got two meals a day at this greasy spoon restaurant for being in the shelter. he was assigned to a counselor. when he went to the counselor he was logical and rational, or so he thought. he explained how he knew what was going on. he explained his laingian theory about it all and how it worked - he even threw in some about campbellian and jungian archetypes - two other people he had read and was impressed by. his counselor told him that perhaps he didn't belong here. robert thought about this. what was the deal? just because he understood he was crazy and why he was crazy they weren't going to help him? the next time he saw his counselor, he flipped. he said he was tired of all the bullshit. he said he didn't know what to do. he had just about had it with people and all their games and manipulations. he said he felt like walking down the street and randomly cracking heads open. his counselor said, wait here a minute. when he came back he had forms for robert to fill out that would get him on state disability. he was then sent to the social security office to apply for social security disability. he was in. he didn't know whether he was faking it or not. that was pretty much the way he felt, though he also understood what was behind it. he spoke from his primal being - the caged animal going ape shit. which was real? he didn't know. he didn't care. he had gotten it to stop, for awhile at least.
    he also started going to this other cafe that was also in old town. it was sort of a hip spot for whoever was hip at the time - or even not so hip, like him. he knew a woman from the college he worked at who worked there - she also had worked in the print shop. she used to give him free food. he'd hang out there and drink coffee and write in his notebooks. that was all he had to do. debbi's divorce was coming up. he didn't know what to do about that. as he said above, no one would represent him. so he had to end up letting it go by. oh well.
    he met this guy mike at the shelter. they sort of hung around together. once one of them had gotten some acid - he forgets who. they dropped and went wandering around forest park in the dark. they didn't get back until the next day. debbi had told him that she was moving in with ron to his house which he had just gotten back from his ex-wife. she said that robert had to get all his stuff out of her basement. he first grabbed his taperecorders and tapes and brought them back to the shelter. he started playing his tapes in his room. he also started dragging stuff off the street back there to continue practicing his magick.
    mike used to play canasta with this woman/girl (she was 23, he was coming up on 40) kristin who was one of the staff people who worked nights. robert started hanging out with them. he and kristin used to talk - mainly what it was like being crazy and what that meant. he lent her doris lessing's briefing for a descent into hell, which he somehow had with him. it was a subjective account of someone who went insane. doris lessing was a friend of laing. she had also written the four-gated city which also dealt with insanity in a different context among a group of people, which had also played into his metaschizophrenic delusions over the summer, that he had also read. then a few nights later he came into the cafe in old town, called la patisserie, and she was there before she had to go to work. he asked if he could sit with her since the staff weren't supposed to socialize with the shelter inmates. she said, ok. she said she had been reading the book and that she was writing to him about it. she gave it to him. it was about how she imagined having a room with a comfy chair (her words) that she could invite him to and talk. then she went to work. they began seeing each other outside the shelter where no one would probably see them together. it was all moving in one direction. he told her that he would move out of the shelter and find another hotel, now that he was getting checks. she brought him home. they sat out on her porch and talked for hours. they went to get take-out thai food. they went to bed. at the time she was sleeping in her closet for some reason.
    he found another hotel room nearby. it was very small. he could touch the walls widthwise with his outstretched arms and hands. it was across the street from la patisserie which would be where he would spend all day, only going back to his room to sleep. he and mike got some shopping carts and emptied out his van. it was a race between the city and the bank that had lent him the money to buy it as to who would tow it first. that had been his raft like the insane man had his in lessing's book. they took all of it to a friend's from the where's the art!?! crew apartment. he forgets exactly how but he got most of the stuff from debbi's basement to the basement of the where's the art!?! store. the art queen had a store front with coin operated art in the windows. then he had a falling out with her - she yelled at him one too many times - and kristin came and took it all, plus the stuff from the guy's apartment to a storage space he rented. the storage space with all his found junk was larger than his hotel room. and some nights when she wasn't working kristen would bring him home to sleep with her.
    so that went that way for awhile. then one day he and kristin were at safeway by her apartment and they ran into this other guy, paul, from where's the art!?!. he was the audio guy and had also done camera for this is it. he said he had a semi-finished attic that robert could rent for cheap if he wanted. they went to look at it. it was an attic divided into a few rooms with a bathroom, no tub or shower - there was a tub downstairs - and a kitchen sink, stove and fridge. he took it. he got nightmare back from debbi, who he'd given her to when he lost his job, and they moved in. he got all his stuff from the storage space, which included the first web of chaos. and now he had a place where the kids could come over. he'd only seen them a few times over the summer.
    at first they both came. then rachel not so much while daniel more so. he was doing acid now and would come over to robert's when he was tripping. back a while ago robert had talked to him about drugs, asked if he was doing them. at the time he wasn't. robert told him that he shouldn't until he got older but if he did he wanted to know. now he knew. daniel had started doing drugs while at the runaway shelter the previous spring. great. another point for debbi and her boyfriend. then once daniel said that he wanted to trip with him. he thought about it and then decided, why not? so they did. maybe not the best decision but it was the one that he made. he wasn't going to stop daniel from doing acid and he thought he'd be able to show him what it was about and what he should try to get out of it. ultimately daniel left his mom, where it was made clear that he wasn't exactly welcome, and came to live with robert. she didn't object. she was probably glad to be rid of him and all his not getting along with ron. they hung out at the cafe together, once in awhile tripping.
    he and daniel decided to buy a sheet of acid. they would sell off part of it to get the money back and eat the rest. the first sheet they bought from some kid from his son's school was nothing - a dud sheet. they went looking downtown. they found someone selling acid in front of this club. they bought some and it was good. they went back and asked the guy if he could get them a sheet. he said it'd take awhile and he'd need money up front. they chanced it. meanwhile, robert was downtown once and met these guys from california who had this stuff called wage peace they were selling. he tried a hit. it was great. it was smooth without the usual edge and very colorful. he went back to buy a sheet. at the same time the other stuff came in. it was good too. this was the day before robert's evaluation for ssd. they hadn't decided if he was crazy or not. but also they were deciding, if he was crazy, if he could handle his own money or if they would have to entrust it to someone else.
    robert had had a few evaluations along the way in order to keep getting his state disability checks. one doctor he was talking with answering all his test questions asked him about the teddy bear he had in his overall pocket. rachel had given it to him and he carried it with him to have her close to him. robert sneered and said the teddy bear told him to kill people. the doctor told him that he wasn't crazy but was severely depressed. robert said, no shit and told him why. at another time the state office had told him he still needed to be seeing a doctor since he was no longer at the shelter. he went to this other county clinic on the east side where he was now living. the doctor said he should be on meds. robert said no. the doctor said it was his choice. but his state worker decided otherwise and said he had to take them. he went back and got some. they gave his prozac which was that year's wonder drug. it was even on the cover of time magazine. he took it. they then pronounced him stable and said he didn't have to see them anymore. within a week or two he was so fucked up he couldn't tie his shoes. he stopped taking it.
    so, the night before his ssd evaluation he had dropped two hits of acid that he was testing to see if it was any good. he was also at a church of elvis wedding at the where's the art!?! store. that was one of the windows where you could get married by one of the coin operated machines. the art queen, they had made up again, wanted him to come as da to help them celebrate. so robert donned some of his clown clothes and mask and tripping his little brain out, he went. he was out all night. the next morning when his appointment came up that was how he showed up. he was scared. the appointment was for room 101. he thought of 1984. was this where they were going to get him? was this it? he went to room 101 and walked in. he was surprised. he was expecting a receptionist, instead he was right in the guy's office. he was surprised too. he had expected robert to knock first. he told him to sit down. he began asking him the usual psychotest questions. then that was it. robert started asking, well this is great but who's going to help me get my kids back and straighten all this shit out? the guy pushed a button under his desk. another guy came in. he was asked to leave. awhile later he was informed that he had gotten his ssd along with a fat check for payments back to when he had applied. so now he was a government certified loon. he bought a bike.
    kristin meanwhile was on and off. she wanted to see him. then she didn't want to see him. then she wanted to see him again. he wished she'd make up her mind one way or the other. it was driving him more nuts than he was. part of this, he thought, was the influence of her girlfriends and roommate. they were political feminists. men were the cause for all the problems women had. they were the ones telling her not to spend so much time with him. one night he had gone over there and they were all sitting around reading the scum manifesto. he had never seen it before. they enlightened him, laughing about the parts where it said men were all lowly abject turds. he admitted that in most cases that was true. he certainly felt like one a lot of the time. kristin could make him feel like one. later he wrote a piece about it.

    here i am a lowly abject turd floating around in a toilet bowl rejected by the body of the great wonderful woman.
    she's flushing the toilet to get rid of me.
    oh no! i refuse to go down.
    she flushes again and again.
    still i refuse.
    i bob to the surface again.
    frustrated, she finally scoops me up and throws me out the window.
    i lay on the ground dissolving in the rain.
    i sink deeper and deeper into the earth.
    down and down.
    then i feel myself being sucked up.
    up and up and out and out.
    finally i come to the sun again.
    i flower.
    then, after time,  one by one my petals fall off.
    i grow fat and heavy.
    i droop down.
    i become round.
    and then, what do i see?
    the great wonderful woman walking toward me.
    i reach up and pluck myself off.
    care for an apple, my dear, i hiss smiling.

    - he figured his all encompassing taoism trumped their dualist feminism -

    this on and off went on for about almost a year before she finally said she wanted to break off being lovers but still be friends. ok. she wanted them not to see each other for a month in-between. fine. except they kept running into each other during that month. but during that month he met someone else. a rather large someone else. they met while doing a where's the art!?! art-a-thon, a weekend long where's the art!?! show over labor day. robert wasn't directing anymore. he was just a guest. that was where he met the lovely suzanne, as she called herself.
    one time she brought him home, his home, after the show. they sat around and talked. he told her about kristin and how they had broken up and were going to be friends after a month. they fucked. they started going out. unlike kristin, she seemed to want to be with him all the time. then the month was up. kristin called him and said she wanted to see him. they met. he told her about suzanne. that's good, she said. she told him about the guy she almost fucked but didn't. oh well. so this went on, him going out with suzanne and seeing kristin once in awhile. then it happened that he and kristin started fucking again. suzanne was pissed. i thought you told me that was over, she said. he said he thought it was. she left.
    she had a daughter his son's age. they met while they were going out. they liked each other too. he went to her prom. they performed in the rocky horror show together. then sometime after that she showed up at robert's house saying she was moving in. hmm, he thought. this is getting strange, almost incestuous. but he let her. her mother wasn't too happy but let her daughter do what she wanted. he was now going out with kristin again. but it soon fell back into the on and off thing again. then suzanne showed back up. she said she still wanted to be with him even though he was back with kristin. he told kristin this and she said, fine, do what you want. so he was fucking both of them. and still eating acid the whole time. and doing this is it. and doing his magick. and being crazy.
    for some reason he was in love with kristin despite her on and off wanting to be with him. he put up with it. despite her friends, and away from her friends, they could get along. one of things they had talked about when they had met besides lessing and laing and being crazy was daly and gyn/ecology. she even had bought him daly's wickedary. she was the one he wanted to be with. suzanne not so much. they started getting into arguments. finally she left again. after awhile her daughter left daniel too.
    he felt that he was to kristin what suzanne was to him. he explained this to her once. she laughed and said he was right. but she was a drug to him. when they were separated for that month she had left a sweater at his place. he had to put it away. her smell on it it drove him nuts - horny nuts. she was talking about breaking it off again. no more lovers, no more friends, just the end - nothing. they started getting into arguments all the time too. they were in the middle of one in the cafe when robert started getting chest pains. he kept on arguing. she finally stopped it and said she was taking him to the hospital. they went to the emergency room. they both thought he was having a heart attack. it turned out to be pneumonia. she brought him home and then said that was it, good-bye. the next night, despite the pneumonia, he gathered up everything she had given him and rode it over to her apartment and dumped it on her porch. it took a few trips. he was at the cafe the following night and she came in and told him, fuck you.
    so now he was alone again. he sort of felt relieved. that whole thing was a little too much. so he went back to hanging out and writing in his notebooks. that's when he met all his friends. there was this underage club near the cafe called the x-ray cafe. it was run by these two guys who were in this band who came on where's the art!?! a few times. he knew them. they would come over to the cafe to get coffee and sit with him. there was a woman who came with them once in awhile. the two of them became friends. she began sitting with him too. she had a friend who was a very tall large queer named, trevor, who was into crowley and the oto and death in june and stuff of the left hand path. he began sitting with them.  another woman, rose, who was also the first woman's friend came over to sit with them. she was a writer too and was interested in what he was writing all the time. he let her read some of it once. she read it and said it was the deepest most confusing thing she had ever read, or something like that. she never mentioned it again. then there was this english guy, michael. he had come over to be with rose. they had met when she was in england. robert didn't think that she expected or wanted him to show up. these people plus and minus a few others were always sitting at his table when he was there - and he was always there. once he was there with some people at his table. he had to go somewhere to do something. when he got back sometime later his cup was still there and there were still people at his table but not the same ones as when he had left.
    daniel was around somewhere. robert didn't know where half the time. he had dropped out of school. robert told him he needed to find a job. he tried to tell him that doing drugs was ok as a luxury but only after basic needs were met first. first you needed income, then a place to live, then pay the rent and the bills, then if you wanted to do drugs then do drugs. he never quite got it. he put drugs at the top of the list and didn't bother with the rest. he had a job once in awhile, mostly washing dishes, but didn't keep them long. he had his own friends he hung out with. mostly street kids. he was driven by angst from day one. he was also somber and defiant. he had to know why for everything you told him to do. both he and his sister were scorpios. they both were very independent. this was why he didn't worry about them too much. they knew how to take care of themselves. for rachel it was laying low. she saw all the trouble her brother got into for standing up for himself. so she kept herself to herself.
    one time he and daniel were up in the attic. it was hot. it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. there was no insulation or heat. he had put in his woodstove for the winter but it only barely warmed one room. the other rooms had ice on the inside of the windows. so he was typing out some of the stuff he'd written in his notebooks. he had gotten his computer back from debbi. daniel was pacing around. he started scratching the walls as he did this. he was pushing to see where the limit was. robert didn't say anything. he ignored him. apparently ignoring him was the wrong thing. daniel picked up a vase and came over and hit him over the head with it. it was soft ceramic so it broke easily. but that was the limit. robert picked up a stick that was lying around - rule of thumb thickness - threw him on the floor and hit him with it. it was one of those slow motion moments. he hit him on his legs where it would hurt but not damage anything vital like his head or something. he wanted it to hurt. he hit him hard enough to give him welts. he yelled, is this what you fucking want from me? i could have been beating the shit out of you since you were born. if this is what you want i'll give it to you. he then stormed out. he went downtown to the cafe. he cooled down somewhat and called home. both he and daniel apologized to each other. this is how it had always been and would be between them. they'd explode on each other and then get over it. fathers and sons. weren't there a few songs written about that? tull did one, so did harry chapin and cat stevens. shakespeare and greek myths are full of it. ever since we were apes. we're still apes. it was this delicate balance between violent anger and forgiveness that robert had felt ron had stepped into and interfered with. what the fuck did he know about anything? what business did he have in it at all? none.
    robert had applied to get section 8 housing - where you rent a place and they pay part of your rent according to a sliding scale based on your income. he had no chance when it was just him, but now he was a single parent. it took a year but it finally came. he went house hunting. he found one in northeast portland - the "black part" of town. there was a nice black old woman on one side and a biker gang on the other. there was a bahai temple next to them and a block long baptist church across the street. pretty smorgasbord.
    they moved but daniel didn't spend much time there. he was at his girlfriend's. she was the second woman, rose, who robert had met at the cafe - the one interested in his writing. she was also a part-time printer but she was mostly supported by her parents. they were moving back east so she was about to lose her apartment they had been paying for if she wanted to stay in town. she asked him if she could stay with him. he said yes. he had an extra room. one time she and daniel were at this is it. she was dressed up like a dominatrix. she had a motorcycle. she offered to take daniel home. later when robert came home they were both in her bedroom, the door closed. her parents then had moved back and once again set her up in an apartment after they'd seen where she was living. that's where daniel spent most of his time. he would only come home when they had a fight - which was often. he'd hang around all depressed for a few days beore going back. so robert had found the house and moved all their stuff by himself with the help of paul who was probably glad he was going. he wanted to finish off the space and turn it into a real apartment, which he did eventually. in fact he started it when robert and daniel were still living there, tearing out walls and stuff.
    he himself was still spending most of his days at the cafe.

    robert had been doing his own private show and magick above the x-ray cafe. these floors had been burned out and were all dark and full of pigeons and their shit. some workmen who were remodeling a restaurant around the corner in the same building saw what he was doing which involved a few mannequins among other things and started talking about how he was performing satanic rituals up there. maybe he was. he didn't know. so he was told by the x-ray guys that he had to stop. so he hauled all the stuff he had collected there back to his house - in suzanne's vw bus. he had also done a solo performance at the x-ray itself involving tapes and his da babbling act. he had also done a show at another overage club which used to have carbret night on sundays. people would sign up and put on their own show. he thought that he would try to reproduce this is it. he'd get something going on-stage and he had a mike out in the audience so people could say what they wanted along with it - sort of like how the phone-in worked on the cable show. no one showed up beside kristin and suzanne. this was back when he was going out with the two of them. no audience showed up either except a few people at the bar. oh well.
    before this he had done another performance at the x-ray with his make shift near non-existent conceptual "band" - wasted space. paul - the guy who rented him the attic - played guitar and they would play sometimes together. like eric and tom before, he had the idea of rehearsing things and stuff like that. robert still had the idea of freeform improvisation whether people knew how to play or not. as well as his synthesizer, robert had a bass from a friend who had gone to europe or south america or some place and left it with him. this time people showed up, including kristin and suzanne - it was the first time they met - and her daughter and daniel, plus paul and some people from where's the art!?! it was quite a bit of freeform improvised noise. none of these people had played together - except him and paul. some of the people never even played but took turns on the bass. some had their own instruments but had only played by themselves before. plus his tapes. during the show robert was so caught up in it babbling into a mike that he didn't notice that everyone had gone outside to smoke cigarettes and hang out on the sidewalk. the only thing playing was his tape. he went outside and said, hey, we're still playing, you know. they came back. at one point some drunken indian had taken the guitar away from paul saying, let me show you how to play this thing. robert handed out orereo cookies to the audience. these were the same people in his "band" who didn't show up for his carbret show. they probably thought they had made fools of themselves and weren't about to do it again.
    then along somewhere in there more or less he and kathy did a show in la patisserie cafe. the cafe did not have a gallery space itself. they just hung art on the walls. bland art. the kind of art people hang in cafes. but he and kathy treated the cafe as if it were a gallery space. it was sort of like sorry for the inconvenience and his blue sky show combined. the owners of the cafe had gone away for a few days while they were setting up, otherwise they never would have gotten away with it. they brought in and hung up shit all over the place. on the walls, from the ceiling, everywhere. kathy was making banners out of fabric by that time. they hung some of those along with his collages. he even brought in the web of chaos ball from his blue sky show. when the owners got back it was already a done deal and they let them keep it up though they weren't too happy about it.
    during the month long installation they did two performances. robert did one thinking he'd gather up his conceptual band again and they'd play. again, no one showed up except paul who refused to play and just sat at a table in the back. he had brought his guitar and amp so some people played that, mostly rock riffs that they knew. so that didn't go off too well. the second performance was him and kathy. they came in full this is it garb and set up at a table in the center of the cafe. robert was in one of his clown outfits and wearing swim fins slapping around the place. robert had made a cassette tape of one of his tapes to play over the stereo system. they had two people videotaping it, daniel and suzanne. kristin was there too. she sat at the counter and pretended she didn't know him. she denied him three times that night, he thinks. maybe more. suzanne, while they were performing, went around to the people at the tables and interviewed them with her camera in their face. this was a saturday night and it was mostly people out on dates. they didn't know they were going to run into this. they were just out having coffee after dinner or a movie or something. so kathy and robert were in full tilt improvisational mode running around babbling away about everything and nothing. a few times paul, who was also there but only watching again, picked robert up, threw him over his shoulder and carried him downstairs. the cafe was on the second floor above a jazz bar. robert would then come back up shouting about how that could be any one of them. somebody could just come and haul them away at any time. so watch out.
    then they took it all down and robert had another web of chaos ball. he thought of them as being dormant.
    besides this is it, robert was still doing edited shows and putting them on cable. many were about the artchurch. one he remembers shooting himself as da sitting up in his attic apartment - he'd bought a video camera with his ssd money too, besides the bike. the apartment was pretty much a mess. it looked like one of the galleries he did his web of chaos shows in. he went on and on explaining things people needed to know about the artchurch and the dada-ananda. when he went to edit it he laid down half of it, video and audio. then he laid the other half on top of it with the two audios running together side by side and with the video flipping back and forth from one to the other, the original and the second half. this made him appear to be jerking around while he was talking. what he was saying was a word salad. it looked scary. he was scared. the artchurch is scary. the dada-anada scares everyone.
    there was another cafe that opened in old town - across the street from where the mental health shelter used to be - called the howling frog. it was run by some kids he knew from the college he worked at. one of them he used to play music with a few times. it was a converted storefront. it had the cafe in front and a large open gallery space in back. robert and kathy decided to do a show there too. they said they could. it was more of the same. more junk and strings and ropes and wires and cables strung all over. more collage constructions, etc. a shopping cart hung on the wall with police caution tape wrapped around it and around everything else. as the show went on the more it kept changing. people were invited to do whatever they wanted with it - even bring in their own art or junk. change it however they wanted. mostly people stayed in the cafe part.
    portland has this thing called first thursday. it's the first thursday of every month when all the hot shot galleries open their shows to the public. people wander around from gallery to gallery taking it all in, and hopefully buying something. anyway, the howling frog people wanted in on this. they wanted their gallery to be taken seriously. they were somewhat dismayed at what robert and kathy were doing - which was basically trashing the place - because it didn't fit. what was for sale? and first thursday came around and a few people stopped in to take a look. they didn't seem impressed - except one guy. it was some old guy in a business suit. he told kathy and robert that his wife was dragging him around to all these galleries and this was the only one that he liked. so who can tell?
    before this - the weekend before - when kathy and robert were just setting up the show, there was a guy scheduled to perform some of his industrial music. ok, that fits, they thought. but the guy came in and took down most of what they had put up and covered all the walls with black plastic. this was the 90s now. black was in. everything had to be dark, darker, darkest. none of this hippie shit or whatever it was. the following night robert did his own industrial performance. he brought down his tape recorder that had its own speakers and played a loop that said, you're not into reality. he let it play awhile, then smashed the taperecorder with a splitting maul. robert and kathy did one performance during the show. again improvised babbling. this time some of robert's friends who had been on this is it joined them. most people stayed in the cafe part and ignored them. too cool for school. he didn't try the wasted space band thing again. he had gotten the message.
    they asked them to take down the show early so they could repaint the walls before the next show. one of them, who was the one in charge of running the gallery who apparently was an art major and had apprenticed in nyc for a year somewhere, told them what they did had been done before. he'd seen it before. oh well. so much for that. sorry we trashed your gallery with our bullshit unoriginal art, dudes. and sorry we didn't sell anything. but we had fun anyway.