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How it had turned out was all the newcomers scattering to the winds and the old-timers coming down to town to catch their breath. Jack had come to visit Virge and me while Simon and Kathy hung out at Prior Road. John Eastman took care of the animals for a few days.

After our brief visit with Simon, Kathy, and the folks at Prior Road, Jack and I headed up the lake to relieve John.

We told the ghosts to get the fuck away from us if they knew what was good for them, and walked around talking about the various things we had to do to get this place in shape.

After three very down-to-earth pleasant days at the farm, planning and good talks with Jack, playing with Zeke, as noble and beautiful as ever, Jack and I headed back to Powell River. He took Kathy and Simon back up the lake and I hitched down to Vancouver.

When I told Dale about visiting the farm, he chided me. I was supposed to have gone for only two days and I was supposed to have had Virginia with me. He accused me of trying to play hero again.

I apologized without knowing what I was apologizing for and warned myself about trying to make any sense of it. I wasn’t supposed to think. I was just supposed to follow doctor’s orders.

We left the apartment and moved back up to the farm toward the end of June. It was OK with Dale as long as I promised to come to see him every two weeks.

It was hard to be graceful. I felt weak and burned-out. I was being watched. I was being treated with kid gloves. I needed it. I hated it.

There was no way for things to be right. I needed time. Everyone around me needed time. Time to get stronger. Time for everyone to relax.

Balancing. Too much pressure, I’d crack. Too little, I’d never get any strength. One day I’d feel tough as nails, fed to the teeth with people tiptoeing around. The next day I’d find myself shaking, holding my knees, ready to hang it up and check myself back into the nut house.

When I went back to the farm, I don’t think I had any real hope of making it my life any more. It was more like I owed myself and everyone else there a graceful exit. It was like getting back up on a horse after you’ve been thrown. It was like a lot of things, but it wasn’t much like Eden. It was the best of a lot of lousy alternatives.

Getting well outside the hospital seemed a lot like getting well inside. The dos and don’ts made no sense. My friends’ judgments of what were good and bad signs were as ridiculous as the hospital’s. There was no percentage in trying to get people to understand. It probably wasn’t possible and it seemed like what had gotten me into trouble in the first place.

I went back to the farm because I knew it. I knew the hopelessness of my heroism there. The farm knew the hopelessness of my heroism back. There was nothing I’d be tempted to try there. I had tried it all. I had been burned. It had been burned.

Other places, other people would tempt me and me them.

The experiments of spring had all the makings of a superhippie summer.

It was a nothing summer. Thank God it was a nothing summer. Thank Simon, Kathy, Jack, and Virginia that it was a nothing summer. Thank me.

I did to the farm what Thorazine was doing to me. I was a down.

Clay Foot was my new private name for myself. Ol’ Clay Foot don’t go around saying stop that shit or I run amuck. Ol’ Clay Foot he just walk into a room not sayin’ much at all and everybody be cool. Just like that. Ol’ Clay Foot he don’t have to say nothin’.

There was a moratorium on heaviness. Everyone went back to sleeping with whoever they had slept with before I went nuts. New visitors weren’t exactly discouraged, but we weren’t out recruiting either.

Three months of nothing later I headed East. I was feeling pretty strong. The trip had Dale’s blessing. He said I had made remarkable progress but I still had to avoid being a hero, I still had to keep taking Thorazine, I ought to see a shrink now and then; but all in all he thought I was out of the worst of it.

Three months of nothing isn’t quite fair. After the dynamism