Beyond TV Perception
In his book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle writes, “Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.” While sitting on a beach watching the sunset, you are present. Sitting in your living room watching the sunset on the tube does not count as being present. You are a detached observer. I used to call this TV perception. Nowadays, I would call it smartphone perception.
During my first 36 days in the combat zone, I was, technically speaking, present. But after 19 years of TV glut, I was still a detached observer. There was just enough action to think of myself in a war movie, but not enough to overwhelm the senses. One day, a man in my platoon was wounded by sniper fire. We laid him on a poncho and four of us carried him to a medevac chopper. I was aware of this being filmed by a war correspondent with us on the operation. I was thinking, “Wow! Here I am, in a war movie, carrying a wounded Marine to a medevac chopper. Maybe I’ll get to watch this scene someday.”
That all changed on the 37th day when my company fought on a hill against elements of the 21st Regiment of the North Vietnamese Army. The 3rd platoon was the first to move up the hill. My platoon was in reserve, but not for long. The 3rd platoon ran into a buzz saw and we went up next. At the base of the hill, six of us—our machine gunner and five of us with M-14 rifles—were ordered to get online and move up the hill. I was held back a couple of steps when my rifle jammed. I tossed it down, picked up the rifle of a dead Marine, and moved quickly to rejoin the others. I was just a couple of feet behind them when I heard a weapon much more powerful than our M-14s and the enemy’s AK-47s. It turned out to be a 12.7mm machine gun, the equivalent of a .50 caliber.
I watched our machine gunner, Sergeant David Shields (pictured below), whom we called Scotty, because he was of Scottish descent, get shot by that terrible weapon. The bullet entered his forehead and exited through the back of his helmet with a fountain of blood. He fell backward, in slow motion, already dead before hitting the ground.
There is no need to delve into the three hours of total insanity that followed. Suffice it to say, for the rest of that first tour of duty in ’66 as well as the second tour in ’68, I was fully present. I survived. TV perception did not. And that is a good thing. The war may have screwed me up in certain ways, but it also increased my awareness of my environment—especially the beauty, the majesty, and the sacredness of nature. In my experience, there have been two activities that have enhanced that awareness: walking and motorcycling.
Walking for exercise began when my knees could no longer tolerate all the pounding on the pavement. At first, I did not consider walking a viable alternative. Far from it. I had run far enough and often enough to experience runner’s high. Whoever heard of walker’s high? It seemed like giving up fine wine in favor of Welch's grape juice. Whoopee!
My attitude changed when I started walking every day with my friend, David McQueary, who was also forced to give up running. At first, we walked the same route each day: from the Downtown YMCA southeast through the Missouri State University campus and beyond for a total of 4.6 miles. One day I suggested we start walking longer distances, taking different routes in all directions. Before long, we covered every neighborhood within a six to fourteen-mile radius of downtown.
It is amazing to live in a town for so long and discover how much you never noticed. When you are walking in the moment, unconcerned about hurrying from point A to point B, you have time to stop and investigate the discoveries you come across. One such example is the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. I had driven west on Chestnut Expressway between 65 and downtown hundreds of times. Yet I never noticed the cemetery located about a quarter mile east of Glenstone. David suggested we check it out. Later, I researched it on the internet. It is a Black cemetery. Its opening in 1919 was mandated by the Jim Crow laws. If it were not for our walks, I would have never heard of Myrl Billings, one of the first people to be buried there.
Myrl was a Springfieldian who lived on Prospect Avenue. He fought in World War One with the 369th Infantry, known as “The Harlem Hellfighters.” They fought alongside French forces all over France. As a result of the unit's steadfast courage, France awarded the 369th with the Croix de Guerre, their highest award for military valor. In addition to receiving the award with his unit, Myrl received a second Croix de Guerre for his individual heroic action.
After the war, Myrl Billings returned to Springfield in 1919. Unfortunately, his return to civilian life was short-lived. His health had deteriorated because of all the gassing he was exposed to on the battlefield, and he died one year after returning home. But during that brief period, Myrl made his mark on Springfield history by organizing the Norville Stafford American Legion Post for black veterans and was one of the founders of the first Boys Club in Springfield.
It would be nice to be able to see the entire country on foot, and some have. As for me, I have seen a large part of it on motorcycles. On one trip, back in the ‘90s, I rode my Harley 3,000 miles, the first leg of which was from my home in the Ozarks to Colorado Springs to attend a Marine reunion. From there, I toured Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas.
My all-time favorite motorcycle adventure happened fifteen years earlier on a bike with half the power and comfort of my hog.
I had just completed a year of study in philosophy in the doctoral program at the University of Arizona. I had decided to leave academia and move back to the Ozarks. But first, I wanted to buy a motorcycle. I was inspired to do so after reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, a man after my own heart. As this passage makes clear, Pirsig understood the meaning of TV perception:
“You see things on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car, you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window, everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle, the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
Shortly after reading that, I went to the Honda dealership in Tucson and bought a 550cc Honda motorcycle.
My friend and fellow teaching assistant, Pat Milanich, was a single mother raising three boys and two girls while earning her Ph.D. The youngest was 10-year-old Kyle. He was an independent kid who hung out at a nearby park where he made friends with the homeless people there. I suppose I initially took an interest in Kyle because he had no dad around.
During a visit to their home one day, Kyle challenged me to a game of marbles. I explained that I had not grown up playing marbles as a kid. That night I bought a collection of marbles and a leather pouch to put them in. I went to his house the next day and announced I was ready to learn how to play. He showed me how, and the game began. His four siblings gathered around to watch. Kyle was showing off, capturing my marbles. But things took a turn for the worse when I began getting the hang of it. I captured all his marbles, and he was struggling not to cry. What can I say? I have this pathological need to win any game I play—horseshoes, tennis, backgammon—you name it. Why should marbles be an exception? It’s a game, ain’t it?
My wife and I planned to move to my hometown of Springfield, Missouri in the fall. Before leaving Tucson, I wanted to embark on a motorcycle adventure--like the kind Robert Pirsig described taking with his eleven-year-old son. I spoke to Pat, and she agreed to let me take Kyle on a trip to California. With the upcoming moving expenses and renting a place when we arrived in Springfield, money was tight. I solved that problem with the help of a Mexican friend who gave me a good deal on a pound of quality weed from Oaxaca which I broke down into ounces for sale to my friends and their friends in California.
Our first stop was LA, where we spent a couple of days cruising the beaches.
Then it was on to The City—San Francisco—where we stayed with my friend, Sam.
We rode up the coastline and stayed with my good friends, Randy and Kitty, exploring Sonoma for a couple of days; headed back to the City, then down to Santa Cruz to see my friend, Joe; enjoyed the beauty and splendor of Big Sur; rode back to LA for a day; then down to San Diego to reunite with some old friends; and finally, back to Tucson.
Ten days, 2,200 miles. Now, that is living in the present!
Kyle is now 56. I contacted him asking that he write down his recollections of the trip and how it impacted his life. He dictated the following to his daughter Ashlee and she typed it out:
It’s 1977. I’m ten years old. My mother is going to school at the University of Arizona taking philosophy, and met a man named Gary Harlan. This is how it started. He came over and for whatever reason, I guess, was either interested in me or felt sorry for me, or whatever. In my eyes, he tried to help Mom. She was raising five kids and I was the youngest at ten. I remember him bringing over a nice little leather pouch, full of marbles. I played marbles. I remember starting off well and winning most of his marbles, but apparently, Gary was a quick study and learned really fast. He took all my fucking marbles. I looked at him as this kind of big, tall, cool kind of dude that would spend time with me. Being that I didn’t have a father or anything, it was nice to have an interested party. Soon, he was going to move back to Missouri. He wanted to take this motorcycle trip and asked Mom if I could go with him, and she said yes. I don’t remember if I was excited about it, or whatever, but just the fact that an adult male was interested in what I was doing, or my life, was enough for me to want to hang out with him. We went on a motorcycle trip. I remember falling asleep on the back of the bike. Every so often Gary would pull off the highway and he’d go under an underpass and smoke a joint. Then we’d get back on the road.
I remember some scenery, but not a lot of it. I remember specific locations - going to San Francisco and staying with a friend of his. The place felt like it was ten stories up. There was this staircase that went up to this apartment. I don’t remember the friend, but I remember, for whatever reason, that staircase. It was a wooden staircase that went up, turned, went up another flight, turned again, went up another flight, turned again, and it just seemed like it went on forever. It seemed like it was way up there at the time because everything is on hills and stacked up tall on the coast there. I remember going to the Golden Gate Bridge and taking a picture.
I think the way the trip impacted me the most was the connection with Gary. To me, he was a big, tall dude that rode a motorcycle and commanded authority. No one had ever been like that with me, I had never had an authority figure. My brothers were maybe the exception, but they were worse than me – gave me a lot of shit. From that point I looked at him as a father figure. Several years later I went to Missouri and lived with him for the Summer. He was with a woman named Martha. They were kind of like a mother and father sort of deal. There was a park nearby and they had these big Dobermans.
Even though we didn’t spend years together, the trip impacted me deeply. That trip gave me the trust in him to let him be a father figure. There were other friends or guys around, but I never looked at them the same way or trusted them enough to invest myself in them. At that point in my life, I was a loner. My brothers were much older than me, the oldest 15. I never made a lot of friends at that age. All my friends were much older and they were all homeless people or bums or alcoholics that hung out in the park in Tucson. They weren’t people that could provide structure. When Gary came around, I looked at him as someone who had it together. He was probably thirty or something. An adult, at least. I remember him demanding a certain amount of respect. I wouldn’t talk to Gary the way I talked to the other people I knew. I would say “Yes, sir,” etc. Maybe that’s just the Marine in him.
I eventually went into the military and had no problem fitting into the culture, even though you’d think that I would. The events of that trip were not as important as the way I felt at the time. I was just so happy that someone took an interest in me and wanted to spend time with me. At ten I don’t think I had any idea - oh a cool guy, a motorcycle, and I get to get out of this shithole and do something different. But now, looking back, I know and contribute so much of my thinking process to him.