Death of Three California Artists

Twenty minutes past my eighteenth birthday, my childhood friend, Bill Arnold, drove his car onto the bend of the railroad tracks outside Ogden Utah, and turned out the lights. Bill had chosen this spot knowing the engineer would not have time to stop the train that he knew was coming because he drove home this way when he got out of work at twelve midnight. Bill was a dishwasher.

At the moment of Bill’s death, I and doing a painting in the living room at the Glendon house. I had moved my easel inside in order to watch our favorite movies. The Old Man and the Sea, and Of Mice and Men, were guides, our surrogate fathers, Bill and I determined to be men in spite of our fathers. We wanted to be integral men, and integral artists. We wrote poetry beyond our years.

For reasons that confused me, when we first met, Bill wanted to be Lenny to my George. I was twelve, and Bill thirteen. Perhaps this was fair, because I was George Sterling to Bill’sLondon. This is how a childish play went, from the moment we met. Being six foot three and one hundred and eighty pounds made Bill a Lenny to all his schoolmates. I heard of Bill before I met him. A friend told me there was this new kid in class that played football with his shirt off in October, when it was cold!

“What’s so odd about that?” I asked my amazed friend.
“He’s got big welts across his back! Someone’s been beating him.”

“Get him Lenny! fight back!”

This was my black to light period, where I painted my canvases black, and then waited for inspiration, for the light to come, and tell me what to render. I wanted to rely on my intuition. I painted a row of cottonwood trees receding around a bend. They were brightly lit By what? I asked. I painted in railroad tracks. The bright lights of a train, was my answer. Then I painted a boy by the tracks watching the train approach. I put blonde hair on him, then stood back.

“Hello Bill!”

The old man was rowing home with his fish, his skeleton that was devoured by sharks. He is trying to make sence of his life. Steinbeck’s movie had preceded Hemingway’s tale. George creates the dream, points Lenny’s attention to the horizon, and ends his beloved friends life lest he fall into the hands of stupid men who will be wanting justice. Lenny has taken enough blows.

Days after my beloved sister, Christine drowned in the Pacific Ocean, someone put her painting ‘The Crossing’ in the window of the Rosamond Gallery. I was offended. In one of our rare conversations since our falling out, Christine asked me if I had seen this work.

“This is how I dealt with Bill’s death.”

After Bill’s funeral I went to his fathers house on Athol,and down in the basement. I wondered if Bill’s little studio he build was still there. It was. On the door was nailed a envelope. Inside were my poems I gave Bill to type up, a year earlier. On the envelope were these words; “And ending.”

I stopped writing poetry. I stopped rendering works of art. I quit my job, and drove up to Oakland in order to take part of a Great migration of pertinence. I took LSD. I died!

Steinbeck was born in 1902. My grandfather was publishing his California stories in 1909 in Out West magazine. Like Christine, John lived in Pacific Grove. Like myself the California writer went to live in New York as a young man. As far as I can see, Steinbeck did noting in his life that would allow him to draw upon his own life’s experience. However, the story of my life, my family and friends life – is Steinbeckish – and Hemmingwayish! In tha naals of creativity, no artist or writer has ever been in a position to ask this;

“Why did we die. And what became of the beauty we behold, and shared?”

For years I concluded I suffered from Survivor’s Guilt. This is what was wrong with me, when people asked. However, the truth is, my intution had come under attack – my Divine Intuition!

When my Rose Reading at the Berkeley Psychic Institute got under way, the young woman that sat seven feet in fron of me with her eyes closed, looked very agitated.

“What’s wrong?” The guide asked, standing in the back of the room.
“It’s his mother. She’s right in my face – and in a rage! She doesn’t want me to read her son!”

Jon Presco

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbeck’s paternal grandfather, had shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Germany, is still today named “Großsteinbeck.”

In February of 1968, my two friends and I walked down this path to
the sea after dropping one of most powerful doses of Owsley’s finest
LSD to date. It was unseasonably warm.

http://www.dancooperart.com/pages/country/calif/pathtomclures.html

After walking along a sandy beach, Kieth Purvis, and James Taylor,
began to climb this beautiful rock that the sun sat upon. I followed
after them. Halfway up the LSD began to kick in, and all of a sudden
my legs felt very weak. Almost to the top, I looked up and saw Keith
and James walk into the sun. This was a very powerful dose, and I
knew we were in for a ride.

I stood up at the zenith of the rock, for just a second. I was
wearing hard-sole shoes and suddenly my foot gave way on the jagged
rocks and I was going down – hard! I found myself tumbling down the
steep side of the rock and put my hands out to stop my slide over
the edge. A jagged rock tore into the plam of my left hand and tore
away the flesh exposing part of the bone. I had stopped my fall just
a foot from the edge, my feet almost dangling over a two hundred
foot fall to the sea below. I was looking at sea lions on a rock
below, and thought that they would be witness to my fall if I could
not get back up.

I called to my friends, and they came to my rescue. One held the
hand of the other as he came down the slope and grabbed for my hand
to pull me up. This accomplished, the three of us sat huddled atop
this rock staring at each other and our incredibly dialated eyes.
The first part of a LSD trip can be harrowing as you feel all this
energy shooting up your spinal colomn, and it is best one be on
their back, in a secure invironment. Our looks told each other this
was more then a powerful dose. Someone said they could not move.
Someone said we have to get off this rock while we still can.

The sun was now an hour from setting. We literally crawled down from
that rock, hanging on to each other, helping each other over the
most difficult parts. There was a rocky bridge about seven feet
across.

In 1988 three Seers at the Berkeley Psychis Institute told me I had
died on this beach carrying all this guilt that was not my own. They
also told me I had two children, I unaware I had given birth to.

http://www.wrybread.com/gametone/leftcoast/mcclures-pano.shtml

http://www.wrybread.com/gametone/leftcoast/mcclures.shtml