Oh, wow! This is a nice trip to reflect upon! (I'm writing this Jan 1, 2020 after returning from a spa day in NJ with Cynthia & Amanda!). Wilhelm Reich is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting people that's lived. He was a Austrian medical doctor. He was Sigmund Freud's main student. He had his books burned by the Nazis for his anti-fascist views and controversial opinions about how human sexual energy is expressed biologically.
He ended up building this private research laboratory in Maine to study a scientific phenonoma he called Orgone. Reich build boxes made out of wood, wool and steel wool that he claimed accumulated this Orgone energy and scientific instruments that were able to measure the effects of acculated Orgone in the enviroment. His clinical trials on cancer paitients claimed sitting in passive, orgone accumulator boxes could heal people. (Similar to the work of also-censored Royal Rife!).
The FBI ended up arresting Reich, banning and burning all of his scientific books and papers and he died in prison!
Thursday, August 11th
As we were leaving the East Village, there was a really great rainbow!
In the morning I noticed we would be near Portsmouth, NH and I called Katie and asked her if she wanted to join us on our last minute road trip. She said she couldn't and we hung up. Then she called back a few minutes later and was like, "Nah, fuck it. Come get me!" Hahah. Yay! And that's how Kate joined our roadtrip!
Our hotel had a lovely view of Lake Rangely. In addition to taking lots of photos, years ago I wrote a text-based diary web-program that sends me an email every day asking me what happened. If I reply to the email, it saves the entry into my diary database! (Nerd! Nerd!) Usually, I just jot down a few notes, but back during the summer of 2016, I was writing more full-length entries. Here's the one for this day:
i awake in a hotel room. the smell of the cool maine air rising off the lake outside gives me the
feeling of being high school teenagers away on some summer camp field trip.
but we are not teenagers. we are three middle aged adults who have
all turned 40 this year, or, in kate's case, are about to in several weeks.
we have all had long-term partners get sick of us and all seem to feel
that the things that they were sick of were, all in fact, real faults of
ours that none of us had any hope of improving and understood why each of
these would be hard for someone to live with.
we are on an adventure to visit the museum of wilhelm reich, a man who believed in an
underlying life-force that his society and culture denied exists.
after stretching a bit and having some coffee, i
roll a joint. i go outside and smoke most of it by myself on the balcony
while i admire the view of the lake and the fresh air. the motel parking
lot that was packed with cars when we arrived late the previous evening, is
empty of all but our black volvo station wagon. despite the 2 grams of
high octane bud i've smoked, i feel clear headed and lucid. "smoking to get
sober," my brother once wisely remarked upon the
phenomenon to me.
but i find i like to smoke before graduating into the second, more
rigorous half of my 30 minute long morning foam rolling routine where i
subject all of my sore muscles individually to the deep investigation of
many different foam balls, wedges, logs, and other shapes all designed to
wiggle into some grouchy, neglected nook of my body and try to break up the
soreness, what we were later to learn wilhelm would call, muscular armoring.
i finish foam rolling and busy myself rolling another joint.
ten minutes before noon, when we're supposed to check out, we finally get up to get
our stuff packed. we may not be adults who have all other aspects of our life
sorted out, but we are well-versed in the ways of quick-packing and
light-footed gypsy travel. the room is empty in minutes and the volvo is
loaded up. john cracks a second beer and packs a little marijuana
pipe while sitting in the front passenger seat with the door open.
an older local couple of mainers strolls past looking at us with poker-faced curiosity. i wonder if she can smell john's mary jane and wonder if what she thinks of it if she can. she catches me watching her and i give her a big genuine smile. she has won me over with her new england poker face. she sees my smile is genuine and smiles back. i see her husband notice my smile peripherally but he doesn't turn his eyes or head to investigate further. not out of unfriendliness, more of a no-nonsense hurry to get to the motel office to get some kind of thing squared away.
john hands me his giant ring of keys and i'm excited that i get to drive. i'm a little sore from driving the previous day, but the museum is only 10 minutes away. i try to leave the motel by way of a parking lot with no exit. i make one of the many u-turns that we've made on the trip due to not knowing where we're going and phone, map, gps problems. it is both funny and frustrating at the same time. but mostly funny.
i take a deep breath and remind myself "there's no hurry. you're on vacation. there's no rush in getting there, you've got all the time in the world." this seems helpful until i wonder what i'm going to say to myself when i'm not in vacation and i am in a hurry. well, no time for that now.
we find our way to the museum without incidence. we stop outfront of the sign but stay in the car so i can take some pics. we drive further down the road to see if we can see any of the rest of the estate, because what we can see is chained off. we see that there's nothing else down the road and turn around. get out to take pictures of a dead pine tree that is lit up bright orange like it's ablaze all the way to the 30ft top of its branches.
a car passes us and laughs at the 3 non-locals standing in the middle of a
dirt road all taking photos of a tree. i used to be the only one with a
camera, now i'm just another pigeon pecking at the same crumbs. time to
find some new bread, my friend!
we drive back up to the museum and park. while we're looking in the door
of the only building that's accessible, a red car zooms up and a spry 75
year old woman jumps out and runs, albeit with a slightly hunchbacked trot,
over to the porch where we're standing.
she doesn't slow as she walks up the steps and walks towards us. it's clear that if i don't move she will walk right through me in order to get to the glass door i'm standing in front of. i march up the steps with her and while we're walking in step she says "are you familiar with wilhelm's work?" "yes, very!" i proudly answer. this is the correct answer and i can she she's pleased. i'm pleased to have pleased this non-nonsense dynamo who is now marching up the porch steps towards john and kate who are standing in front of the door.
she unlocks the classroom and i go over to he car to change into pants. it was 90 degrees in portsmouth where we picked katie up, it's now 58 degrees and misting rain. she comes running out of the classroom, back over to her car and drives up to the chain to unlock the roadway up to the mountain top on which the rest of the building of the wilhelm reich trust overlook the lake below.
the older woman is flying up the mountainous gravel road ahead of our car. i don't bother trying to keep up. weed has slowed my ability to depress the accelerator with any real meaning. i park the car and the woman informs us that it's going to take them a while to open the museum and suggest we walk down the trail and visit wilhelms tomb.
And that's the end of my little diary entry that I wrote! Back to your regularly scheduled ad-hoc captions as I look through these photos and try to tell a story....The path through the woods eventually gave way into a beautiful clearing.
The museum is filled with Reich's inventions, experiments, gorgeous paintings and his living quarters can be explored pretty much as he left them. We spent a few hours looking around - very cool! Unlike any other museum I've ever visited!
Awww, travel buddies! It was magical that I got to bring these two people together! Thanks for making my Wilhelm Reich Roadtrip dream come true, you two!
