The erudite wild man of American letters came to speak at my small college in Vancouver, Washington in the early 70’s. It was a few years past the Merry Pranksters and the bus and the acid tests.
He called his talk “The Venusians, the Egyptians and Washingtonians.”
He seemed tired but the wizard of wonder slowly got his own ram shackled bus of a mind up to cruising speed—
crossing light years of imagination, crawling over the wreckage of Kerouac, the naive excesses of the 60s, the “celestial books” that LSD gave you brutal access to, and the wisdom of the ancients who speak through the millennia in coded signs and semiotica, the bull necked ex-wrestler really had only one message for us: wake up. Think for yourself.
Thanks, Ken. For everything.
Message received.
