Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

As noted last time: during the three-month-or-so gap between the previous letter and this one, Peter and Marcy and I left Harbinger, but I don’t know why or exactly when.

By the time of this letter, we were living in Modesto, about 70 miles east of the east side of San Francisco Bay. Don’t know what led us there in particular.

Content warning for this letter: metaphorical use of the word slave to mean job, and descriptive (rather than pejorative) use of the R-word (which I’ve redacted).

Side note: It turns out that the “Doman-Delacato theory” that Peter refers to in this isn’t supported by scientific evidence.

dear parents——

well, nothing new to report job-wise, yet… i’ve been trying to “cop a slave” for seven weeks now, ever since we came to modesto, & no luck yet… i think i told you about scoring 100%, 1^st out of 30, on the test for engineers’ aide in city traffic dep’t, shaving off beard, cutting hair short, white-shirt-&-tie for interview, but not hired… & 1^st out of 8 on phone co. test, no openings… no openings at p.g.&e. (pacific gas & electric)… not qualified for 2 jobs xxx through employment agency (engineers’ aide & quality control assistant)… 100% on test for science teacher’s aide, but it’s a poverty-program job & i guess we haven’t been poor enough long enough, they hired a girl w/ no science background… i’ll take a test for ‘eligibility worker’ for welfare dep’t on 14 feb., we’ll see what happens…

anyway, aside from all that, we are all well, happy, healthy, ever-hopeful… jed is a continual eruption of teeth (5, working on 6^th), giggles, gleeful shouts, discoverings, first steps, explorations, assorted bodily fluids, & unalloyed joy… i’m cleaning up the yard & garden (applying for membership in rag-& bone-pickers’ local #12, but they discriminate, unlike the golden-gate scavengers’ benevolent association…), doing odd-jobs around the place (plenty odd, like stringing barb-wire fencing, collecting guinea-pig manure for the organic compost-heap i’m building, building spice-racks for kitchen, repairing a shower-flex-hose, changing baby’s diapers, mopping floors, painting tarot cards, cooking (soups & salads), building a log & plank bookcase & rearranging 6-800 books into some semblance of order, burning trash, doing people’s natal charts, patterning stevie*, & many more)

anyway, dorothy, marcy, & i want to take a course in spiritual healing starting feb. 7, next friday… dorothy of course has the $36 tuition fee, but marcy & i have only the $10 you so kindly sent for Christmas… so what we wanted to ask, is, could you possibly (comfortably) manage to lend us $26, $36, $62, or $72, or $80, TO BE PAID BACK IN FULL BY APRIL… (because if no job turns up here i can always will use ace-in-hole, & take home $1000/mo. as journeyman-welder in s.f., & “cry all the way to bank”…)

hoping something will come through, with love,

peter, marcy, & jed

*(patterning--moving his arms & legs & head in a rhythmic crawling-creeping pattern, to establish neural connections his brain never made: to establish unilateral dominance, according to doman-delacato theory of mental redacted by Jedation…)

In this letter, I have no idea who Dorothy and Stevie are. Dorothy is mentioned again in the next letter or two, but I think never again after that.

For more about the spiritual healing, see next letter.

Regarding the job issue: I don’t know what money Peter and Marcy and I were living on during this period. Unemployment and other state aid, maybe? Or just the generosity of friends, and what Peter and Marcy could pick up doing occasional jobs here and there? Not sure.

Peter had previously worked as a welder, so I imagine that his idea that he could go back to that was less impractical than a lot of his ideas for making money. But I don’t think he ever did that. I’m not sure why—don’t know whether he really disliked it, or just had other things he was more interested in, or what.

Facebook post for this letter.