The day came when he had to lift the red hot cauldron out of the path to the door, scarring forever into his forearms the eagle and the serpent, twin signs of the ancient conceit which claimed a relationship with the the Compassionate One. He possessed nothing but the clothes he wore and an extra pair of soft boots that made certain kinds of motion so effortless. His mind's eye saw the world as a meadow muffin that should not be stepped in. He had trained hard to be able to avoid the pitfalls of civilization. He simply wanted to eat, sleep, and look. John O'Boogy had no ambitions beyond that. In March,1967, a prematurely aged, shaved headed, yellow robed white man stepped off the Sima Maru at the Port of San Francisco.

***

        There were always people who watched. They watched from the safety of booths in all-night cafeterias. You could see them all sharp eyed from behind the glass that separated them from the sleepwalking crowds. They hung around parks, post offices, the outside tables at fast food places. Watchers were especially drawn to ports of transportation where they could view the industrious workers and rushing passengers on planes, trains and ships. The ones in the bus stations were suspect. If they followed you into the bathroom you knew it was not to see your culture. But the others were a hands off crowd. It was a pair of the latter who saw the robed white man with no hair walking up the pier, his head swiveling like a ventriloquist's dummy as he marveled and gawked and exclaimed. It was his laughter that drew them closer. He was delighting in the sight of a puddle of oil covered with dew that caused a dark rainbow reflection of the morning sky.

        "Hey man! Far out! He's a priest of some kind, Zen or something. Very groovy!"

        "Yeah. maybe he's a friend of that Chinese guy, Seeksing. The one in the Mission."

        That 'Chinese guy' was the last of the Patriarchs and had the robes and scars to prove it. He had a small makeshift temple in a rundown building in the Mission District, a neighborhood of low cost lives and violence for free. His place was always peaceful, always safe. The gangs never bothered him nor he them.

        "Too cool! Lets get him over to Seeksing's and watch some groovy action. He looks like he doesn't even know where he is."

        In truth, John O'BOOGEY did not care where he was. Time and place had ceased to matter. Those were not big items at the monastery and that was the only 'place' he remembered now. The war and all his murderous activities had been expunged along with the night terrors and sweating sensuality that is built in to the male to ensure release of old sperm. There were other ways to keep the prostate healthy. He walked on the balls of his feet, his hands loose by his sides ever ready to wave at a seagull or smash bricks. A smile seemed tattooed onto his lips.

        "Hey, man! Do you need a place? I mean, are you hungry or sleepy or anything?"

        The questioner was young beyond her years, a college failure due to the need to be cool, and ready for anything. To be another kind of human being. Twenty three, slim to skinny because food was not the main goal in life, long stringy black hair straightened with a clothes iron every night in the secret white sanitation room, her name was Sunflower and she was very hip.

        "Yeah, man, we, like, have a place, dig? And it would be so cool if you would, like, be with us, like, tonight?"

        Her boyfriend was fred, a name he made no attempt to hide or capitalize. 'Like, its a people name, you know?' he would say, 'Like its from the street. My grandfather was a fred too. Like, everything is fred, you know?" His nuttiness was widely known in the flower community where he was called 'Lower Case fred', Case for short And he was very deep.

        At first John wondered who was speaking and to whom. He had been contemplating a dog that was trotting down the wharf with a rat in its jaws. He looked up and saw the two children. He saw their hair, their eyes, their dress code, and he understood. That understanding was the beginning of his fall from grace.

        "Yes," he said softly, "I would like that." The hippies were quickly to see that this holy man never said thank you.

        The three stuffed themselves into a brilliantly painted, sputtering, smoking VW bug and started across town to Golden Gate Park. John continued his gawking and head swiveling and laughing.

        "Man," exclaimed Case, " it's so good, you know, to like, well, find someone who sees life's humor, like everything IS kinda funny, isn't it?"

        "No."said John softly.

        Sunflower hummed what she believed were holy melodies, shouting to people she knew, pointing out trivial sights to John. She saw a space for the bug where there was no room and Case shoved the smoking car bomb into it.

        "Cool!" exclaimed the two hippies.

        "Not really" said John softly.

        The park was an anthill of humanity. Color was the major theme of everything. Clothing flowed, draped, enwrapped, encased, and did everything but conceal bodies. Hair swirled about a thousand heads, unwilling to be bound. Feet were bare for the most part. Smoke spread like fog carrying sweet earthy fragrances, sharp tangy aromas, the stinging smell of sweat. Within this cloud there was constant joyful motion. Men danced awkwardly, unaccustomed to emotional public display, hands in the air and eyes tightly shut as though to deny the stumbling steps of their brothers. Women whirled just to see their clothes try to fly away. Seduction clung to the celebrants like monkeys on their mothers. And everyone was young.

        John, Sunflower and Case strolled across the grass, the two children stopping every few inches it seemed to take a hit off someone's pipe, laugh and poke at friends, wipe the tears from weeping youth overcome with gladness, until they stood within a circle of trees where sat the kings and princes of the movement. Old poets left behind when the beatniks left town expounded to thralls with pretensions of literacy. Refugees from the business and cultural world laid plans for feeding and housing the mass of youth coming from every part of the country. A group of impresarios calling themselves The Paternal Pooch arranged and rearranged free concerts. Drones from every level of the common hive debated the concepts and pinched the budding philosophies to see their resiliency. The inner circle was occupied by Riggers, the serious folk who saw to the welfare and safety of the masses and planned revolutions never to see any kind of light, let alone that of day. As John O'Boogey, Shaolin monk and former assassin, entered the clearing a palpable quiet descended, a veil of curious respect. Everyone waited. John looked about him and saw the same things he had seen in the two children, and was assured that he was in the right place. Now he needed to know if it was the right time. He smiled. A youth on the fringes snickered and made vague martial arts motions with hands and feet. John stared for a moment realizing how easily he could snap the pencil-necked geek in two, and threw back his head and laughed.

        There are certain sounds that define animals and humans. The gurgles of a joyous infant. The suckles of the babe at the breast. There are the sighs of the young in love and the moans of the old and worn of life. All the vocal signs of distress or loneliness, pain, suffering, fear, are signs of the animal nature and that nature is essentially innocent. No matter what your cocker spaniel might do it is always in harmony with the innocence of spirit. It can do no other because that is the limit of its realm, to always be in a potential state of prayer. Laughter is refined only in Man and is one of the signs of divinity. Or malevolent stupidity. All kinds of laughter, from the chuckle of pleasantness to the shrieking giggle of hysteria, are part of the definition of a human being. And there is the rough laughter of the ignorant at old women pushing market carts full of dust and muttering to themselves or the snigger that goes with someone else falling down and says, better you than me. But this was different. It issued from the bowels of humor, the very sphincter of joy. It was a thing of calculation when O'Boogie first learned it. Now it was second nature. Laughter is always a draw for the human soul but this was designed to capture, to hold, because it was the laughter of Love. Love of life, love of color and sweetness, love of the absurd. It was an attractive agent discovered by wanderers in deserts and mountains where all that stood in the way of them and Hell was Joy. They learned that joy, utilized it, refined its elements, experimented with it, observed its effect on others, in every way put it to study and use. Then it was transmitted across the millennia to disciples who repeated the experiments as their daily lesson. Being a westerner by genetic code, O'Boogey had a propensity toward mischief and mirth. His teachers had honed that proclivity to the sharpest edge until he could heal with laughter. Or kill.

        "Wow! Never heard anyone do that before."

        The pimply young boy began to laugh with John. It quickly rolled on out of control inspiring giggles from several young women. Babies cooed to it, waving chubby little fists in the air in time with the outburst.

        "The beat is everything, man!"

        Like the wave of an earthquake it spread, knocking down theoretical walls and native superstition. It burst on the scene and into the mind and memory much as a warrior rushes to battle. It cleaned them up, set their feet solidly on the Path and waved them on their way. All it did for John was garner several dozen instant admirers who would, by degrees, become his willing slaves. John Stuart Bradley O'Boogie could not have cared less. He was still hungry.

        The laughter spread like morning fog. The word went from mouth to ear that a holy man was in the grove, someone who could make even the dour leaders of the serious center crack up and roll on the grass like bear cubs. The crowd became a crush, the laughter became design, and there was the odor of new born myth in the air.

        "Come and sit with us! Please!", said a poet. "We have great need of those who can command the Joy." And he shuffled his butt around to make a place in the sanctified circle. "Who brought you here? How did you find your way?"

        O'Boogie knew this man's needs; To be recognized, to be celebrated as one of the originals, to be picked up by the passing bus. His language was as stilted and biblical as his clothing was loose and modern. The dichotomy left a space that was filled with himself. Truly someone in need of development, thought John.

        "I was standing on the pier when Sunflower and Case said I should come and be with them. I thought to do that because I have not eaten in three days and perhaps they might help me find food. Besides, they are nice children, pleasant company."

        The poet had a shrewd and jealous eye which picked out the two from the crowd. Them? he thought, nothing, mere ciphers. But no matter. We can take it from here.

        "Where you from, man? I dig the very groovy threads!"

        John wondered at the language shift. The first was closer to what the poet was; Pompous, with an overweening sense of importance driven by the engine of empty desire. That, at least, was the way his teachers would have put it, but then they would have fallen down laughing. John just noted it as a split in personality the poor fellow was not aware of. Or he was a calculating sycophant disguised as a prince of the street. Whichever, it made no difference to O'Boogie. He was still hungry.

        The Riggers scowled when John sat in their circle. It was usual for the lesser beings to be invited, at the very least, to ask. But he was such a strange figure, this white man with the robes and accent of a shaolin priest. There had to be benefit for the tribes in him somewhere. They would find it, form it, learn it, disclose it to the masses, and maybe then he would be one of them. Whatever he was or knew was the property of all.

        The Riggers were called that because they had abandoned their surnames for the term 'rigger'; Harold Rigger, Robin Rigger, Sam Rigger. And their women were the Dugs; Suzi Dug, Sara Dug, Hortense Dug. One did not say, "I dig it!' in their presence without receiving a few words concerning respect and loyalty. They were very big on loyalty. They conceived that to be the glue that bound them, their mandate for leading the masses. Without respect there was no center.

        Their leader, or the one who passed as that for the public, was O'Bannon. A spare, blue eyed, smooth cheeked professional rabble-rouser with the winning smile of a school boy and the temperament of a moray eel. He would always do what he thought best and lord help the poor stoned hippie who stood in the way. O'Bannon watched John with what he believed was his best surreptitious gaze. He had learned how to see the periphery while seeming involved with other things. It stood him well while watching the truthful reactions of people who would have shown him only a pleasant exterior otherwise. The monk could read the slightest changes in bodies as plainly as others read a paper, so to him it was as though the Rigger was in his face. John gazed down at a flower pressed upon him by a sensual child on the street. He studied O'Bannon in the way O'Bannon was studying him, only the Rigger had no idea he had been made. At a precise moment, O'BOOGEY stretched and yawned.

        "Where's a good place to eat?" he said.

        "No need to go somewhere else. We will be feeding them in a few minutes. You are welcome to join us, if you have no dietary problems," said O'Bannon, suddenly shining his winning smile on John.

        "Yes," said O'Boogie softly. "I see, and thank you."

        That the Rigger had referred to the others as 'them' was not lost on the monk. He noted the term and the feelings that went with it, and marked a mental X by the name, O'Bannon. Must watch this one, he thought. He will know where, when, and what. Anyone with that much arrogance could be played like a piano and made to decide for himself in favor of whatever John wanted. That was academic however because the monk wanted nothing. He lay back full length on the grass. The gentle San Francisco sun bathed him, soothed the little aches garnered from long days in cramped ship quarters, and in less than a wink, John Stuart Bradley O'Boogie, shaolin/assassin/monk-at-large, was asleep.