Transforming difficult memories

into healing understandings

California State Senator from Silicon Valley who added self-esteem to the political dialogue.

He was a famous California State Senator.

He brought self-esteem into the political narrative. He cared about human souls.

He published A liberating vision: Politics for Growing Humans.

I met him first when he came to my University of California at Berkeley political science class. His talk about what he was trying to accomplish by making politics more human and humane fascinated me. I almost worked for him but fundraising wasn’t then, and still isn’t my racket.

Through him, I met another man who became a karmic contact in my address book, diary, mind, heart and soul.

Healing Collage, please excuse him, a great humorous light memory at and in Esalen’s famous hot tub

In the late 80’s I was temping for the Executive and Marketing floors at Taco Bell Corporation. The money was good, and it gave me freedom to take longer than two weeks off per year. The head of the real estate department thought I was crazy for not nailing down a full-time gig. He once said, “When you get serious, Katy, bar the door.” I never really quite knew what he meant. I only know that I didn’t know what the word freedom meant until the day I graduated UCB and had an open slate in front of me.

I called Vasconcellos’s office. I thought perhaps I could interview him. I was to meet him at the Newport Beach Yacht Club. When I got there I was escorted to his table, but John was making rounds in the very loud and crowded state room. There was only one other older gentleman sitting at John’s table.

I’m not going to publish his name. I’ve often wondered about the personal and private. I understand the desire to protect one’s privacy, and yet, deep in my core, especially in the modern era, I know how infinitely hard that is to accomplish. For the gentleman in the second collage, he is no longer on the planet.

I collaged in high school but picked it back up in 1993, the day my baby brother was taken off the planet at the age of 31. I was 33.

I digress again.

Something about me woke this man at JV’s table up. He was one of the senator’s long-time donors. He pursued me for over two years.

I let him take me to lunch. He showed up with bloody crusty scars on his eyes and face. He’d had a face lift to woo me.

He bought me gifts. The first one was a camera. I was taking one of those longer vacations, two and a half months as a paid house and animal-sitter on a friend’s large property in the state of Washington, above Seattle. This man wanted to visit me there. I said, “No, that doesn’t work for me.”

He kept trying.

Just how much of this story should I unfold for you? We finally began a relationship that lasted under five years. He pursued me for decades after that ended, but I could never go back. He wanted to marry me. I wouldn’t. A year ago I was looking to see if he was still alive. His ex-wife answered one of the numbers and told me how all of his family thrived in spite of him. I listened for at least half an hour of each of their children’s and grandchildren’s successes. She told me about her second affluent marriage partner who has passed, and then her current happy and prosperous marriage.

For weeks I had an uneasy feeling in my gut. I remembered so many details about how our intimacy started, what he used to say about how his wife didn’t understand him. A triple Scorpio he was a lust-driven man. Her answer for years, every time he touched her was, “I gave you four children. What more could you possibly want?”

There are many parts that are funny (I should show not tell) but I’m still wondering how deeply to go into this when what I’m really trying to describe was how I happened to create the collage one night, why I did it, what happened after I did it, and how I’ve felt ever since. A recent very real healing journey.

In my diaries for those years I wasn’t very calm. I wanted to write but I had to work. Working zapped my energy and it was hard to focus on that within which wanted and needed to erupt and evolve outside of my logical head and responsible heart.

Earlier this year, I’d gone through two large boxes of photos and found two heavy bags of pictures from this period of time. He shared with me lots of beauty, all the while offering me opportunities that enriched my conscious and writing selves. I got to take a 12-day Dr. Brugh Joy workshop in Prescott, Arizona. This man invested in Joy’s life’s work as well as the senator’s.

About four months ago, it dawned on me how miserable the end of his life had been. He married two more times, both of them taking half his remaining fortune for the short amount of time they spent with him. He’d asked me to marry him right away. I declined. Why? The white picket fence, the big fancy white dress and wedding party was never something I aspired to… early on I looked around the circle of women in my family and didn’t see happy women. Why would I subscribe to that?

This man was very controlling. He bought the half million dollar condo right on the ocean to seduce me. I’d been chasing the beach for years; so close and yet so far. Look at the writer’s desk he created for me to do my work from 3-5 when he was bowling on Mondays.

I’m not exactly someone who can write on another’s time schedule. Plus, being above the ocean with the waves crashing on the rocks below was agitating to my already disturbed heart. Would I never be happy? He had a friend whom he had loaned lots of money to. This guy was a writer. He told him if he talked to me about writing, he would forgive some of his debt. This is what that guy told me, “If he gives you a buck, he wants a buck fifty out of you.”

I felt sorry for him even though I know he was a difficult, aggressive, controlling personality who did horrible things, said his daughter. I believe he emerged from his mother’s womb weighing between 9 and 11 pounds. That must not have been an easy delivery, for her or him. He was smart, did well in business, worked hard to provide for his family, but a part of him remained unsatisfied. Something inside wanted to live his dream and bring his truest needs to the surface to reconcile. He was certain I was a key to that satisfaction.

We traveled up the state, into Oregon and Washington in his motor home. He rowed us in a boat across Lake Louise. I got to SEE the Sylvia Beach Bed and Breakfast for Booklovers in Newport, Oregon because of him. He took me to Maui where he paid for me to have scuba lessons. We got to experience a few New Year’s Eve consciousness raising conferences in Asilomar with Brugh Joy’s community. Ellen Burstyn was there one year. She too was a student of Brugh Joy’s. As was Streisand.

One night I gathered the frame, the two bags of pictures, a pair of scissors and was sitting on the couch watching television. Not at a desk slaving over it. It fell into place. I wanted it to be a memory of the good things he tried to do for me. I wanted the beauty of this world he appreciated and shared with me to remind me that even though I fought with him constantly, he did try his best to create a peaceful pleasant experience for me to hopefully finally surrender to completely.

When I finished the collage. Something strange happened. I got viciously nauseous. I ran and prevented a catastrophe. Then I went to bed. From that day forward until trying to write this, which stirred up some of the more difficult memories, I was happy every time I walked by the collage. Content that I’d given this man some peace and pleasure, and he’d shown me a way of life I wasn’t aware of yet.

I knew all these years that he was 11 months older than my father. Neither of my folks liked him much. I found out the day the senator died. It was a day I happened to have a change of heart about a long-term drama that had been dragging me down that year after my second cancer treatment. Clarity all the way around. I’d searched for an obituary but I guess his family didn’t want to remember him in a positive way and/or make it public.

This man’s karma came and bit him in the ass. He didn’t have much of an asset, probably no asset left when he died. I may be wrong. I kept my distance. A friend of mine from elementary school always wonders why her ex-husband’s karma doesn’t seem to come around. I’m now convinced it does.