The Dana Street Saga

Life in Berkeley thirty years ago;
Searching for love and meaning

In order to give an idea of where I'm coming from, I've decided to add this Preface. Hopefully, it will give some illumination to the following pages.

I began keeping a journal in May, 1970, while I was in my first year of theological school, and just two weeks after my father had died. An unconscious part of me may have foreseen the profound changes I would soon go through, and wanted me to record them.

My mother had died (unexpectedly to me, though she knew she was dying) when I was 11 years old. As a result of that sudden loss, my emotional side had sunk into the unconscious, and my rational side had come to the fore.

I was also late maturing, and always the smallest kid in my class until college. So I spent two years in the Army to let me catch up with my contemporaries in size and maturity.

Back in college, I met and married Penny, and went on to graduate school to get an MBA, and a good job with IBM, in which I was quite happy for several years, and we had a bright and happy daughter, Cici.

Eventually, my growing opposition to the war in Vietnam led me to leave the business world. I thought I could work for social change as a minister in a liberal church. At least it sprung me free from the corporate suburban rat-race before it was too late.

So we had sold our big house in suburban New Jersey, and moved to student housing in Chicago. We found ourselves immersed in an exciting world of ideas and study, antiwar and social activism, psychedelic drug use, and attempted self understanding.

While a hospital chaplain the summer after my first year, that submerged emotional side was slowly returning to the surface. One evening, while Penny and Cici were visiting friends in Hawaii, I had a visit from my friend Brad's wife, Pat. She told me that she and Brad had broken up that summer.

That evening was when my emotional side broke the surface, and transformed me, in what I experienced as a "peak experience." Pat, who was a nurse in a maternity ward, was an appropriate person to facilitate my "rebirth." And from then on, my emotions took me on a roller coaster of highs and lows.

While I still loved Penny very much, and we'd never been unfaithful to each other, I began falling in love with my friends' wives. I began to experience the emotional adolescence I'd never known as a teenager, and it took center stage in my life.

Brad and I became best of friends that second year, and I adopted his hippie appearance and manner. And Gail and Drew, another student couple, also became our very close friends. And so it was that two or three times a week the five of us would meet to have great stoned cosmic raps about the meaning of life and love, and other great questions. We grew closer and closer.

Gail's father had also died that year, and she went through big changes too. She and Brad fell in love, and Drew spun away in despair. She and I also expressed our love, as did Brad and Penny.

By the Spring of 1971, I knew that ministry was not for me, and dropped out of the program, but hung around there with my friends, wondering what to do next. In the Fall, Brad and Gail, and Penny, Cici, and I moved in together.

But we'd gotten too high together, and now we experienced a group low, and we became more alienated from each other, as we were no longer able to sustain the levels of love and care we'd established. Gail and Brad struggled to salvage their relationship, and Penny and I both pursued other love affairs, none of which had any future.

Windy was one of my loves. She lived in a commune down the street, and we had a brief intense love affair while Penny was in New York with a lover, and Windy's 23 year old hippie boyfriend was away on a summer job. But he soon came home, and I was heartbroken as she chose to work on that relationship, and let me go. Mary B, another theological student, helped to console me after that heartbreak.

But finally, agreeing that we needed a new start, Penny and I decided to relocate to Berkeley with Cici, a new chance for new beginnings. We made an exploratory trip, found an apartment on Dwight Way near Telegraph, and soon made the move, in the Spring of 1972.

We tried to work out our relationship, but we were like two twigs who'd been floating together down a gentle stream until we'd hit the rapids, and now were on divergent paths. We loved each other, but each of us needed to follow our own path. We were best friends in the new and different world of the counterculture, searching for an uncertain future.

And so begins Volume 4 of the journal, in June of 1972.

previous - next - - index - - - - I Ching

Start at the beginning?

Read the Preface?

If you'd like, you can leave me a comment in
my Guestbook.
Thanks.

If you recognize me or anyone else in this saga, I'd love to hear from you.

If you think this journal is a good read,
please CLIX me,
so others can find out about it too.

previous

next

index

Preface

Beginning

Cast

Latest Entries:
Waxing and Waning
Sneaking Out
Losing Marcy
Very High and Very Low
Anticipation

Go back to:
June 1972
July 1972
Aug 1972
Sept 1972
Oct 1972
Nov 1972
Dec 1972
Jan 1973
Feb 1973
Mar 1973
Apr 1973
May 1973
June 1973
July 1973
Aug 1973
Sept 1973
Oct 1973
Nov 1973
Dec 1973
Jan 1974
Feb 1974
Mar 1974
Apr 1974
May 1974

Began Jungian Analysis here, and ended it here

For more complete
I Ching commentary.