02/21/2026
A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to a few friends and asked if they had any interesting stories they would like to write for the next issue of Venom & Truth, and this is one that was sent to me:
"Okay, so my old man didn’t really leave me with much. He definitely didn’t leave me anything in the way of money or property. Nothin’ like that, but what he did leave me with was a whole shoebox full of journal entries and photographs. Diggin’ through his things after he passed taught me a lot about who the man. He used to tell me stories, but none too revealing. With all the notes he left behind, I feel I finally understand why he was the way he was. He spent the mid-sixties somewhere around La Honda, California, hanging around the edges of Ken Kesey’s place. I say edges, because as my old man would put it, he “never quite fit in with the rest of them.” The pictures he left behind are not pictures around the “Further” bus or the estate, but off in the surrounding woods with other outsiders like him. He was always the guy in the back of the photos. The recluse wearing dark denim, shades on, not looking at the camera. It’s hard to describe, but you could tell he was never as “high” on the collective joy as everyone else. He almost seemed to be deeply and unsettlingly sober. S**t, even when he was trippin’, you know? He used to tell me that the Merry Pranksters were the first to make him realize that “freedom” is just another way to cope with how tragically finite we all are.
Dad didn’t hang close to these people because of “Flower Power” or the “Groovy” nonsense. No, he was into Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche before the counterculture ever caught wind of them. So, when the acid finally hit La Honda, everyone there saw it as a tool for melting into a puddle of universal love, a way to escape the rigidity of 1950s America, hold hands with God, and kill the Ego. But my dad didn’t want to float; he wanted to dig. He believed that true enlightenment wasn’t about the warm embrace of God, but more about integrating the cold depths of the abyss.
There was a conflict that started one day when he tried to guide someone’s trip into more uncomfortable territories. And during those days, when the Acid Tests were underway, when the room was spinning, and the Dead were playing their chaotic, deconstructed blues, people would inevitably start to freak the f**k out. The Pranksters standard protocol was, “steer them back to the light.” Distract them with bubbles and colors, or positive affirmations. Literal spiritual bypassing before there was ever a term for it. The problem was, my dad would always do the opposite. He’d sit with the person in the corner and tell them not to look away, “the demon eating your face is you. Invite him in. Ask him what he’s hungry for.”
You can imagine how well that went over with the “Peace and Love” crowd. They looked at him like he was some sort of psychotic vampire. None of those people wanted truth. They only wanted the aesthetic of truth, and they did not want to bleed for it. One of the craziest journal entries Dad left behind was a story about a bonfire in 1965. He said he was doing his usual thing, going on about the Shadow self and about how the Pranksters were only creating a new dogma; nothing any different than the Christians they all claimed to reject. He told them that, by denying their darkness, by labeling every “bad trip” as a “bummer” to be avoided rather than a lesson to be learned, they were just lobotomizing themselves with chemicals they approved of. He told Kesey to his face that “Further” didn’t mean going forward into the light; it meant going down into the dirt. Like the shamans of old.
As you can guess, the rejection was swift. It wasn’t a violent expulsion, I mean, these weren’t the Hells Angels, but there was a sort of social “freezing-out” that was colder than anything any other establishment could have done. They called him a “dark cloud.” They said he had “bad vibes.” They told him he wasn’t “on the bus,” and THAT was the ultimate excommunication phrase in the Kesey camp. If you weren’t on the bus, then you were part of the problem. They couldn’t even see the irony in how they created their very own “Us vs. Them” dynamic indistinguishable from the military industrial complex they hated. They were the “chosen ones,” and anyone who brought up the reality of suffering, violence, or entropy was a heretic in the church of mandatory bliss.
He was asked to leave La Honda a few weeks later. He told me it was the most liberating moment of his life, and what he realized about those days was that the counterculture was terrified of the very thing they claimed to be seeking: the totality of the human experience. They wanted the shamanic ecstasy without the shamanic dismemberment. They wanted to be in tune with the gods, but only the nice, benevolent gods. These people were trapped in the light, blinded by it, and unable to see, as Carl Jung would say, that a tree cannot grow to heaven unless its roots go down to hell.
After that, my dad spent the rest of his days as a cynical recluse. He raised me. Worked on his bike and read history. That’s about it. He never trusted a hippie again. He used to say, “Beware the man who claims he has no shadow. That’ll be the one possessed by it.” And he was right. We saw what happened when the sixties ended. The “Love Generation” didn’t know how to handle the darkness of Altamont, or Manson, or the hard drug scene. Because they had spent years pretending darkness didn’t exist, they didn’t develop any antibodies for it; therefore, they were left vulnerable when it arrived on their front lawn. They collapsed, or they sold out and became the yuppies of the 1980s.
Look, my dad taught me, “Screw John Lennon. You will never find peace by pretending the war is over; you find peace by becoming a better warrior.” He never got back “on the bus,” and to be honest, I’m glad. He walked home in the dark, and knew exactly where he was going.
So, here’s to the bad vibes. Here’s to the buzzkills. Here’s to the people who are willing to ruin the party because the house is on fire and everyone else is dancing to the crackle of the flames."
[This story concludes. But I want to know yours.]
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Rebel against meaningless. Venom & Truth is an independent journal for the philosophically inclined. We explore the darker corners of culture through Gonzo journalism, satire, and Jungian analysis.
