Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties

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Houseboat Summit Changes Part 3 CAESAR'S GARDEN LEARY: Caesar watches! He's watching, and every time we dig a little hole in the pavement and plant a rose, a hundred thousand consciousness are changed. Don't worry about it. We can have nothing to do with the steel. We can't fight with Caesar over who's going to run the television-prop-fake-show. The only way to end the war in Vietnam is to let's ALL drop out and change the American consciousness as quickly as possible. WATTS: Well, fundamentally it's always been said I think... GINSBERG: Now, what can I drop out of? LEARY: Don't take your teaching post at Cal. GINSBERG: Don't take my teaching post at Cal...That's one way, but that involves money. I need the money. VFA: You should just give it away. GINSBERG: But I've been giving it away...that's why I need the money. (laughter) The diggers say abandon money... VFA: You don't necessarily have to abandon it. LEARY: Get rid of it. Pass it on faster and faster... VFA: Money is stored energy--it may be real or it may not be real and should be given away within the community. GINSBERG: What about Pound's idea of money? Pound said that where money came from was that somebody got a million dollars in gold, and then the government gave him sixteen million dollars credit. In other words, he could issue sixteen million dollars worth of dollars--for a million in gold. So just the people who had that gold, presumably, had credit. So Pounds, idea was that all credit should come form the government. SNYDER: Well, within the subculture it moves more and more towards exchange, toward giving and exchanging of what you've created, and getting food for pawns, literally...and keeping it within the community. GINSBERG: What if you want a piano? LEARY: Different ones of us, at different times, have more energy that can interact with the culture. In the last four months, I have been making about eight thousand dollars a week and I didn't have enough money in Seattle yesterday to buy a package of cigarettes. Let's go on, and be more practical. SNYDER: Well, I think there are two problems with practicality. The one is right now, and the second is when technological advances have made mass unemployment. I mean this society at least, is moving towards the point when everybody will just be given money. As a matter of fact, the American economy could afford right now to put everybody on a minimum income dole. And it would cost them less, probably, than the one-tenth that goes into social work. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY WATTS: And incidentally, Gary, it would cost us less to bribe the whole of Asia than to fight any wars there. SNYDER: Just dump money on China. WATTS: To dump money on China, to give everybody enough clothes, enough food, enough housing, it would cost us less than fighting the Vietnam war! SNYDER: So the problem of bread is merely an interim problem, and I see it as being a question of flexibility, and willingness, and a boddhissatva spirit of service...like being willing to work for the post office. It's a temporary problem. GINSBERG: If we were to bribe Asia...bribe China, and feed China and everything like that...how could we do that and simultaneously drop out into purely separated pueblos, or family units, or tribes? LEARY: Well, that's a fantasy of the times. A delightful fantasy to show the ridiculousness of the robot-fake-prop television show. Now Practical Step Number One, I suggest, is that we encourage, in every way we can, including with our energies, the setting up of meditation centers of tribal landing pads in all the cities of the United States. I would say Step Number Two would be to... GINSBERG: That requires a corporation, doesn't it? SNYDER: No, it doesn't. LEARY: Not at all! Nothing like that. It requires Ron and Jay, who've already done that. SNYDER: But it requires that you be able to serve food next... Any good ashram serves food. LEARY: So the diggers have been starting on that. SNYDER: So now where are we gonna get the food? GINSBERG: The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is incorporated. VFA: You get the food be acquiring land. That's the basic thing, to acquire land for people to go to. LEARY: That's Step Number Three. As the people move from the city they've got to meet each other and form these tribal..I would say, reincarnation groups because the people who are ready to drop out and turn on will come to these centers and they'll wander around and they'll form natural cellular groups and they will leave the city. A MODEL BE-IN I would suggest, as Practical Step Number Two, that the Human Be-In in San Francisco be a model. We've all tried different models of summer schools, of institutes and research projects and individual drop-outs...psychedelic celebrations and so forth...and the Avalon and Fillmore and so forth... I would say that the human Be-In was a tremendously important thing in the consciousness of San Francisco. Now if that thing could happen in every large city in the country...And again, the beautiful thing about the Be-In was it had no leadership, it had no big financing, it will just grow automatically. GINSBERG: Yeah, but we're accused of being the leaders. We're not, though, you know. What were WE doing up on that platform? LEARY: That's a charge that doesn't bother me at all. VFA: There were fifty people up on that platform and every one of them was a leader. So were the people in the audience. The reason was that nobody came out and said, "We ARE the leaders," because that's bullshit! GINSBERG: Nobody claims to be the leader, but I remember sitting up there showing my body off. VFA: Every time they say "you're a leader," you point to Snyder, you see? GINSBERG: Well, I do that anyway. SNYDER: Yeah, I know, but the press has a leadership complex. WATTS: Oh, they want to find the ringleaders... GINSBERG: Yeah, they keep calling Gary my disciple...and they have me blowing his conch horn. WHO'S IN CHARGE? WATTS: ...one of the four philosophical questions is: Who started it? And whenever the police or the press barge into a situation, they want to know who started it. In other words, because they're still thinking about God and the first cause and they want to know... LEARY: Who's in charge... WATTS: ...who started, who's in charge, and so on... LEARY: Who get's the credit, who gets the blame... WATTS: Let's get back to a fundamental thing. I think that what you are really--all of you--are having the courage to say, is that, the absolutely primary thing is that there be a change of consciousness in the individual...that he escape from the hallucination that he is a separate ego in an alien universe and that we all come to realize, primarily, that each one of us is the whole works. ALWAYS Each one of us is what is real and has been real for always and always and always and will ever be... And although the time language may not be appropriate here, nevertheless, we are that, and to the extent that it can't be spread around... That's what you and I are, and we lose our anxieties and we lose our terror of death, and our own unimportance... That this is the absolutely essential ingredient, which if we get hold of that point, all the rest will be added unto you...In the sense of, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you." SNYDER: Right. WATTS: Isn't that what you're saying? I mean, isn't that absolutely basic? And even if this is only realized among a statistical minority (crash in background of photographer falling into woman's lap)...minority of people... LEARY: That's a tender sight. WATTS: Even if this is only realized by a statistical minority, nevertheless, it's IMMENSELY powerful. LEARY: It affects consciousness. WATTS: It affects everybody. LEARY: I would add to practical step number two that more celebrations be set up all over...more Be-Ins...That April twenty-first, the solstice, be a nice time to try to arrange--in as many cities as possible, because that'll be spring in the northern cities where it's hard to have a.... And one thing I've learned in the last few months is that all of these experiences should be out of doors...What about April twenty-first? SNYDER: Yeah, sure... WATTS: And in Central Park, hah! SNYDER: ...and then in July with the Indians in New Mexico--big gathering of tribes. MAHA-LILA It just occurred to me, the practical details...The model of it is something like the Maha-lila. Like, you're asking, how's it going to work? Well, now, the Maha-lila is a group of about three different families who have sort of pooled their resources, none of which are very great. But they have decided to play together and to work together and to take care of each other and that means all of them have ways of getting a small amount of bread, which they share. And other people contribute a little money when it comes in. And then they work together on creative projects...like they're working together on a light show right now for a poetry reading that we're going to give. And they consider themselves a kind of extended family or clan. When they went to the Be-In, they had a banner which said Maha-lila. Like, that was their CLAN banner. LEARY: Yeah, I saw that... That's the model. SNYDER: That's the model... And the model for the time is that breaking out of the smaller family organization we work in slightly larger structures, like clan structures, in which people do work at various jobs and bring in whatever bread they can from various jobs. But they're willing to pool it and share it and they learn how to work and play together. Then they relate that to a larger sense of the tribe, which is also loose... But for the time being everybody has to be able--from time to time--to do some little job. But, the reference is...The thing that makes it different is...that you don't bring it home to a very tight individual or one monogamous family unit, but you bring it home to a slightly larger unit where the sharing is greater. I think that's where it starts. MATRILINEAL DESCENT LEARY: The extended family is the key. SNYDER: The extended family is, I think, where it starts. And my own particular hobby horse on this is that the extended family leads to matrilineal descent and when we get matrilineal descent--then we'll have group marriage, and when we have group marriage we'll have the economy licked. Because with the group marriage...capitalism is doomed and civilization goes out (laughter). LEARY: Practical step number three (laughter) which I would like to see...I would like to suggest that June twenty-first, which is the summer solstice, we try to have an enormous series of Be-Ins in which... GINSBERG: June twenty-first? SNYDER: The summer solstice. LEARY: April twenty-first we have Be-Ins in different cities... WATTS: No, March the twenty-first is the spring... SNYDER: The equinox is on March twenty-first, solstice is June twenty-first. GINSBERG: What's an equinox? SNYDER: That's when the nights and days are equal. LEARY: Wherever I said April, I want to take that back. I should have said March. GINSBERG: Solstice? WATTS: The sun's standing still at Xmas and midsummer... SNYDER: Midsummer's night. I think we should encourage extended families everywhere. WATTS: Well, it's very practical to encourage extended families because the present model of the family is a hopeless breakdown. Because, first of all, the family is an agrarian cultural institution, which is not suited to an urban culture. All the family consists in a dormitory...where a wife and children are located, and the husband, who engages in a mysterious activity in an office or a factory, in which neither the wife nor the children have any part nor interest... From which he brings home an abstraction called money. And where there are lots of pretty secretaries in the scene in which he actually works. BONDS OF GUILT And so, they have no relation whatsoever to what he does, and furthermore, the awful thing about the family, as it exists at the moment, is that the husband and the wife both feel guilty about not bringing up their children properly, and therefore they live for their children... Instead of living out their own lives and doing their own interesting work in which the children would automatically become interested as participants and watchers on the side. As it is, they are doing everything, they say...We live, we work, we earn our money for you darlings, and these poor darlings feel all these things thrown at them and they don't know what to do with it... And then they are sent away to school, shrilled off to school as Dylan Thomas put it...to be educated for everything and nothing... LEARY: By strangers. WATTS: By strangers... LEARY: Who are of dubious...aah... WATTS: Who would teach them all sorts of purely... LEARY: ...moral, intellectual and sexual characteristics. WATTS: Right (laughter). Abstract formulations and things they'll learn, and ...the family has no reality. And the greatest institution today in the American family is the babysitter. Someone just to take the children out of our consciousness while we enjoy ourselves. VFA: And the DEATH sitter, to take the old people out of our consciousness...And even DEATH has been taken from the people. OUTSIDE THE GROUP WATTS: And the DEATH sitter, exactly...The courtesy of the mortician, yes... A good death is no longer possible, practically... SNYDER: I have a four stage thing...Uh, American Indian technologies... WATTS: Practical now... SNYDER: ...meditation centers, group marriage, and periodical gatherings of the tribes. LEARY: I don't agree with group marriage...We are a tribal people. You cannot have infidelity in a tribe. Infidelity...ah, sexual freedom... SNYDER: Infidelity is defined as going outside the tribe. LEARY: ...is anonymous, impersonal, anthill sexuality... Every woman... SNYDER: Now, wait a minute. LEARY: Let me finish... Every woman is all women... If you can't find all women in one woman it's YOUR problem. Infidelity cannot be tolerated in a tribal, seed carrying... GINSBERG: Who's tolerating! SNYDER: Infidelity is defined as living outside... GINSBERG: We're talking infidelity...What about homosexuality? We're...(laughter) SNYDER: ...is living outside the areas of your commitments, Tim. Anthropologically...and, actually... GINSBERG: What's going to happen to me? (laughter) LEARY: You're going to have nine children. GINSBERG: What if I don't want them? LEARY: You told me you wanted to... GINSBERG: Sometimes, but not always... SNYDER: No, here's what I was driving at...uh...Tim... GINSBERG: But you're a Catholic...or something...(laughter) SNYDER: Let me say this...Let me answer what he said there, Allen (laughter). LEARY: I'm an Irish Catholic...May I have the wine, please? (laughter) GINSBERG: What Mario Savio said...(chuckling) LEARY: What? GINSBERG: That you were an Irish Catholic...(laughter) LEARY: Well, the Celts of course, have...a long history of... GINSBERG: What should Mario Savio do? SNYDER: I don't know... LEARY: Drop out, turn on, and tune in. WATTS: I think, Tim...you're being a little acceptive here. I do think it's possible for some of us to have found all women in one woman... SNYDER: I want to get back at something...Just let me say something with him...(meaning Leary: Ed.) Infidelity means denying your commitments. Now, if your commitments are within a group marriage, then fidelity is being true within your group marriage. And infidelity is being untrue or dishonest outside of that. Now there are some cultures in South America in which all forms of marriage are {accepted?} There are group marriages, polyandrous marriages, polygamous marriages, AND monogamous marriages. WATTS: By group marriages. ..Just a moment, let's get a question of definition here. GROUP MARRIAGE SNYDER: Okay. A group marriage is where, a number of people--as a group--whatever the number is...announce...a marriage is a social announcement of commitment...announce that we will be responsible for the children we produce and for each other. WATTS: Now, in other words, all males and all females in this group can be in mutual intercourse with each other? SNYDER: But not outside the group... GINSBERG: You make rules to take care of that...You gotta bring in... SNYDER: I'm not making rules. I'm just telling you what the anthropological precedences are in these things. It happens that in this South American culture that the majority of the marriages are monogamous, but it also happens that there are some polyandrous, some polygamous and a few group ones. I think that what we can allow is...people to combine in whatever combinations they wish. LEARY: Oh, I would certainly agree with that. LOVE OVERCOMES VFA: Can I illustrate that? If my old lady wants to fuck anybody in the room here it's alright with me, but if she fucks...uh...J. Edgar Hoover, I'm going to get very upset (laughter). SNYDER: She should get a prize. She'd be doing something for the nation, baby. LEARY: Yes, he'd be making love not war (laughter). WATTS: Well, you're simply saying that if she does that she's not at all the sort of person you thought she was. And that you've been deceived. SNYDER: What you're saying is endogamy...Within the tribe it's okay, but outside the tribe.. GINSBERG: Why make rules? Female VFA: I don't think it's possible, in the first place, for anybody's old lady to fuck J. Edgar Hoover. VFA: That may be the problem! WATTS: Oh, that question is academic (he laughs). SNYDER: But I wasn't ...You know, like your idea of fidelity...Fidelity is perfectly reasonable, but fidelity simply means: in terms of the areas of commitment you've established for yourself. LEARY: That is beautiful... a beautiful model...and I think it requires a little consciousness, which I hope will come quickly to the human race, Gary. SNYDER: I think we've had it. WATTS: No, but I don't...I don't think that you should talk about...When people, just as Lao-tzu said, when the great Tao was lost there came talk of duty to man and right conduct...and so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. That actually, the only possible basis for two beings--male and female--to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom...and say, I don't put any bonds on you, you don't put any bonds on me because I want you, I love you THE WAY YOU ARE! And I want you to be that... The minute you start making contracts and bonds and signing on the dotted line, you are WRECKING the whole relationship. And you just have to trust to the fact that human beings should be legally allowed to trust each other, and to enter into a fellowship that does not involve a contractual arrangement. LEARY: I think we all agree with that. WATTS: You know, because if you don't do that YOU'LL KILL IT! SNYDER: In primitive cultures marriage is not a contractual arrangement; it's a public announcement. WATTS: YES! SNYDER: It's a relationship which is made public. LEARY: What was your fourth point, Gary? SNYDER: Occasional gatherings of the tribe...tribes! That wasn't a point... it was an activity... Say rather than group marriage... extended families. Extended cooperation structures, in other words. American Indian technologies, meditation centers, extended cooperative clan type...or extended family type structures with much more permissiveness in the nature of the family structure than is permitted, say, in Judaeo-Christian tradition, and gatherings of the larger tribes periodically. VFA: Gary, in a tribal situation, isn't it true that the tribe has a fantastic distrust of other tribes, and there is a whole set of magic rituals set up to protect itself from other tribes? SNYDER: Not necessarily... No... LEARY: I think that when Gary talks about tribes, he's not talking about...just the past...what we can learn from the past...I think that we can learn from the history of tribal relationships that there has been this neighborly antagonism...this territorial--distrust.. GINSBERG: The Jivaros... SNYDER: What a beautiful trip! VFA: We'll have a common enemy--for some time, which will make that... GINSBERG: An enemy? Wait a minute... VFA: A common enemy, in that, there will be people trying to destroy this concept taking place in actuality... LEARY: All the German tribes got together to protect against the Romans. Which will lead to practical step number five...I think that some thought should be given--to organizing a legal protection--for our co-religionists. Now we want to avoid any sort of leadership, or tight organization, but there must be some way to work out models in tribal alliance... to defend ourselves--lovingly, against the legions of Caesar. The model that we worked out, which our lawyers tell us, looks pretty good...is--that the tribe gets together and puts down on paper, it's tribal code, it's sacraments, it's rituals, it's center; and it states very clearly that it is going to worship--this way, in this place. Specifically what that means is that any group of people can get together and put down on paper--how they worship. Which, by the way, is a good exercise in seeing how centered the group is. Because it makes psychedelic sense as well as legal sense. And, then...The group is protected legally to worship... I would like some practical consideration given to how we can provide--legal protection. The model that we've worked out--of a group getting together and filing papers, for what is essentially a license... GINSBERG: How has that worked out so far, Martin Garvus, in New York, filed papers as an injunction against the FDA. LEARY: We're waiting until I get back. A GOOD COURT CASE SNYDER: I don't know how this would work, but if one good court case, or a freedom of religion issue was won in the Supreme Court--that would solve the problem down the line just about, wouldn't it? LEARY: No, it doesn't! cause we have to take into account, Caesar's anxiety about what we're doing. It's got to be done on a tribe by tribe basis. That is, your tribe has got to file...Allen's tribe will help your tribe. You'll lose in California, perhaps, because the lower court judge was unsympathetic; but you'll win in New York State. SNYDER: This issue will be won in the courts, though? LEARY: Yes, we'll attempt to set up--an overall church hierarchy, but simply that... WATTS: To put this down specifically, you are saying that small clubs of people, who are like minded, should incorporate themselves as non-profit religious organizations and should state their constitution, their by-laws, their liturgy. LEARY: In every state, you can get a very small amount of money, a corporation form. If you want to start a bowling alley, with three of your friends, it's all down there. You just fill out the places, in this mimeographed form, and file it...It doesn't cost any money to file it, and you've got a legally incorporated religion. It's so simple to do. WATTS: Yes, but there needs to be spelled out the absolutely practical A-B-C legal terms in which this can be done. INCORPORATED RELIGION LEARY: Well, I suggest that the next issue of the ORACLE carry a half page, or a full page--manual on "How to form your won religion." VFA: One of the steps there is that...in incorporating--there should be nothing in the rules of the corporation that is illegal--in the state of California. That means that if the group is going to use LSD or marijuana--it could not incorporate. LEARY: ...you don't worry about that. If five hundred groups form in California--and, of course, it's moot. It's unsettled as to whether illegal or not, and immediately, there's your first case. If they say it's illegal, then you say, what's illegal? Holy marijuana--that's been in use for five thousand years? There's your first case. Instead of being paranoid, and waiting for the police to bust you on Haight-Ashbury, let's take a loving-game move to clarify the situation, which REALLY disturbs the police and it disturbs the San Francisco papers and it disturbs the San Francisco legislature. Let's take this first initiatory step towards them. SNYDER: Well, the ACLU, Marshall Krause and Dick Wertheimer, are trying to figure how to set up a GOOD grass case, right now. And move it through as a test case. UNORGANIZED OBJECTORS WATTS: Well, let's go back and take a certain historical perspective on this once again. For example, a parallel problem arises with regard to conscientious objection. There are a lot of conscientious objectors who don't belong to any form of religion. They're not to say, Quakers or Jehovah's Witnesses, and their objections are based on philosophical grounds. Well, AT LAST, the government has been moved to give fair consideration to these cases. Now, on the same principle, freedom of religion does not involve that you belong to a specific organization or that you have belonged to this religion for so long. After all, supposing St. Paul had been challenged on the Damascus road...How long have you belonged to the Christian church? LEARY: But practically, Alan, it does... WATTS: Now, but this has to be argued... LEARY:...Because this case that was argued in Los Angeles last week was lost, because the fellow was busted and then he had to prove afterwards. If he had simply filed a paper ahead of time, before he was busted, the strength of his legal argument would have been much stronger. WATTS: Yes, but the thing is still unconstitutional. because the constitution does NOT say... that to exercise freedom of religion, you must have belonged to a group of X number of people for such and such a time in order to prove your sincerity... LEARY: But practically, the judges want you to... WATTS: It's your conscience. GINSBERG: This case has to go on appeal still... LEARY: Oh, I...I bless it and I hope that it does go on appeal. THE ANARCHIST'S CREDO SNYDER: I have a very strong feeling about a lot of what Alan says here. And old left wing political type of organization, namely the anarchist...blessed be their memory... Good old anarchists practiced one thing, and that was they wouldn't use the courts. And a conscientious anarchist, if robbed, and able to identify his assailant, would not turn his assailant into the police because... LEARY: Why do that? SNYDER: Because, he said, if I'm going to be an anarchist and deny that I need the state I'm also going to deny that I need to go to the state for protection. And I feel very much the same way about... LEARY: I think that's romantic, Gary. I see a situation... SNYDER: I'm not going to go to a lawyer and ask him to incorporate me, you know... GINSBERG: Did you go to a lawyer to get married or divorced or anything? SNYDER: Yeah, but I mean in terms of a religion. GINSBERG: Yeah, because you can prove you're a big, formal buddhist. SNYDER: I can't prove it, actually, no. I really wouldn't feel like doing that, and I don't think the people at the Mahalila feel like doing that. LEARY: We're not telling anyone what to do. We're suggesting a way of dealing with this mutant revolutionary problem. I see us as in a dark ages. We're little tribes getting together; there's feudal lords and barons and kings and dukes and so forth. And they own the land because they've got steel and we're under bayonet point. SNYDER: That's too paranoid. We're on the verge of winning, really. LEARY: Oh, no doubt about that. MONEY BEGETS? WATTS: Yes, because the people who are wielding the bayonets have no satisfactory life and they know... You know, it's like producing all sorts of goods that are increasingly inferior, and you make lots of money, and then you've made the money, and what are you going to spend it on? There's only the inferior goods made by the other people who are in the same racket as you are... LEARY: All right. Practical Step Number 6, which was suggested by Allen's last comment about conscientious objectors: once you start these little religious groups you automatically have a solution to the draft problem. At Millbrook we formed our little religious group. People come to me all the time and say, "What should I do about the draft?" And I say, "DON'T JOIN IT! DON'T JOIN THE ARMY!" And once you start your religion, since we are of a belief that everyone is Buddha in the religion, everyone is either a guru or a monk or on the road, there's automatic protection against the draft which forces young seed carriers to kill other seed carriers. LEGAL SOLUTION So that the tribal solution, to establish yourself legally as a tribe, as a religious totem tribe, not only protects you in your use of the sacrament, but it protects you in many ways--it protects you in the handling of money. If you go out and make money, then you have to pay in income tax. The income tax then goes to support the war in Viet Nam. If you form a religion, the money that's taken in is used for the religion...the formation of the legal tribal groups ...I don't think we should be ROMANTIC anarchists... SNYDER: YOU'RE the one who said, "Drop out." LEARY: This is the way to drop out. SNYDER: But you're accusing us of being romantic if we say we don't want to use lawyers when we drop out. LEARY: All right, fine, I admire you for dropping out farther than I am. (laughter) SNYDER: Farther than thou. (laughter) LEARY: I assure you, Gary, that as soon as I've done this little yoga bit of passing on what I've learned and what I've thought about, I'm dropping out too. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life... GINSBERG: What would you like to do? "BABY HASH" LEARY: I'm going to go away to a beach and life on the beach. I'm going to take LSD once a week and I'm going to take hashish once a day at sunset and I'm going to have babies and I'm going to learn from our babies. SNYDER: That's beautiful. What are you going to do? WATTS: I'll tell you. I am trying to act as a pontifex, which is a bridge-builder, between two worlds: the world of the people who are anxious and concerned and square and think that they can use their wills to put things to right, and therefore are asking what should be done and what should not be done; and on the other hand, the people who know that this is a delusion and a farce, and are dropping out. And I'm going to stay BANG in the middle and I'm going to learn the languages of both tribes. SNYDER: What'll you do after that? WATTS: This will take me the rest of my life. (laughter) SNYDER: Tim was talking about what he was going to do after that. LEARY: No, I want to comment on what Alan has done in the last ten, fifteen, twenty...I don't know how long you've been doing it...you have been living completely dropped out. And the tribute you paid Gary, I think should be paid to you. You've never collected your IBM check from the establishment. And you have influenced hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people. WATTS: But that's only to say, Tim, that I've been in the position of somebody running his own private business. I'm my own employer, I run my own business, like somebody who runs a barber shop on the corner or... LEARY: I wouldn't say that. I would say you're a wandering guru. You don't attach yourself to an ashram. You are, in the classic sense of the word, the perfect, effective, wandering mendicant. WATTS: Yes, it's true I do that, but I also support seven dependents. GINSBERG: I want my tribe card! What I want is to get some land and settle there, alone or with people, with enough money to support electricity and a large house, and fiddle around with manuscripts and go walking in the woods and then rush off and take a plane to India. That's what I'd like to do. LEARY: What are you going to do in India? GINSBERG: In India, just wander around and then apply for a visa to China...and find out how a tribal society does there, too. WATTS: I'll tell you what I do want to do after all...when I'm through with this bridge-building business, when I'm over seventy years of age, I'm going to retire to a small plot of land... LEARY: Would you say "drop out", Alan? (laughter)