CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

That Spring I travelled to Europe with my father, stepmother, sister and stepsister. I liked Europe – I tried to speak French and pretended I was alone and not with those American tourists. I graduated from the 8th grade with the feeling I was destined to always be alone. My mother separated from her second husband and we moved back into the house in town on A Street at 11th Street in Arcata. I hated high school before it even started. I felt fear every day.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1979 – it was written in the future.]

This was the year at the ‘ranch’ – my stepfather’s farm on the Arcata bottoms up against the Lamphere Dunes near the beach. I disliked my stepfather and my mother was clearly distressed by this marriage of hers, but I chose not to give a damn. I had a little hut that was a sort of detached bedroom. I listened to Cat Stevens and drew pictures and watched the rain. I took very long walks along the one lane roads of the bottomlands. I decided that I liked math, and over the course of the year – the end of 7th grade and beginning of 8th grade – I went from being rather remedial at math to being very good at it.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1978 – it was written in the future.]

This year was the ‘exile from Eden.’ I ended 6th grade at Centering School, and began a VERY traumatic transition to 7th grade at public middle school. I have always believed this was the single most traumatic experience of my entire childhood – more than my parents’ divorce. My mother chose this year to remarry, too. I was very angry and resentful about this. 7th grade sucked.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1977 – it was written in the future.]

5th through 6th grade at Centering School were the best years of my childhood. I was popular at school, I learned a lot, and I was relatively happy, in my low-key way. I we meditated after lunch. We voted on what to study. We made a lot of art projects and did drama. We went to camp at Wolf Creek and slept in canvas-covered geodesic domes.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1976 – it was written in the future.]

That Spring my parents divorced. 4th grade sucked. My mother enrolled me at Centering School, a private, alternative, ‘hippie’ school for 5th grade. I really liked Centering School. I walked the length of 11th street, from my house on the edge of the hill as A Street down to the school, which that first year was in the Methodist Church (that it rented) near Q Street. I staged mock ‘superhero battles’ with my friend Steven during recess.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1975 – it was written in the future.]

Moore Avenue school closed, and I ended up at Alice Birney Elementary in Eureka for the remainder of my 3rd grade year. I walked home sometimes, alone, and it seemed very, very far – epic. Then that summer the commune house in Eureka seemed to fall apart, and so we took a long trip to see my grandparents at their summer home in Colorado. My parents forgot my 9th birthday – I think they were stressed. I started 4th grade at Edgemere Elementary School in Oklahoma City, because we were staying with my grandparents there. By Christmas, however, we were back in Arcata and I was at Sunnybrae Elementary.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1974 – it was written in the future.]

I liked Moore Avenue school. My best friend was Steven. And I was friends with his sister Jeannine too. Along with my sister, we formed a sort of idyllic, hermetic community of children. This is the time when the Eureka H Street house experiment began: my parents bought a giant old Victorian house in Eureka that we shared with another family – it was like a commune when you added in various attachments and relatives on both sides. Each year at Thanksgiving we drove to La Honda (near Palo Alto) for a giant hippie hanksgiving event.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1973 – it was written in the future.]

I remember the drive from Arcata to Eureka with dad in the Model A (1928 Ford – dad’s main car), because school was at Moore Avenue in Eureka but we lived in Arcata. Sometimes at night, driving home late in the Model A, the loud roar of the old car’s engine would lull me to sleep. I developed the idea that there was an alien landing site somewhere near Indianola. I think it was because of the colored airport lights at Murray Field, north of Eureka along Highway 101. I also remember thinking that the aliens were watching me. I KNEW that if I could behave in a sufficiently idiosyncratic manner, they would ‘rescue’ me from my exile on Earth.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1972 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1971. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1971 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1970. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1970 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1969. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1969 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1968. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1968 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1967. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1967 – it was written in the future.]

Rumor has it I was alive through all of 1966. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1966 – it was written in the future.]

I was born. I was disoriented. I cried. I ate. I wiggled and gazed. I don’t recall much.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1965 – it was written in the future.]