in my 1967 Commodore Yearbook....,a Impact Symposium Program, from a highly political Gathering at The Memorial Gymnasium,,,,on my birthday, no less! This day still lingers in my Consciousness over 50 years afterwards,.......Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Strom Thurmond and Allen Ginsberg.......by the next morning, i had experienced a huge shift in my thinking, got drunk with Stokeley Carmichael, smoked weed with Allen Ginsberg and 'slept' with my housemate after breaking up with my girlfriend, Barbara Stein, only hours before...A week later, i awakened at Vanderbilt Univ. Hospital from an overdose of sleeping pills...then, ..a month later, i sold my gold watch, bought a ticket for Proud Clarion "to win" the Kentucky Derby....which he did!.....and, inspired by Allen's poem about 'sooty penises', left Nashville to live in an Airstream trailer...in Warner Robbins, Georgia.....where i wrote a book, put it in a box, and mailed it to my 'lover' who had escaped Vanderbilt, also, and had landed in Washington State......Later, the Book was returned to me, via Parcel Post, and became the first of my many 'book burnings'.....A sheet of yellowing pulp paper brought this all into focus.......Hmm.....rather than worship this Nostalgia.....i'm going to burn the Program in my driveway.....Yes! Perhaps this prevents 'Living in the Past', even though it WAS the year of The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Electric Prunes, The Jimi Hendrix Exprience, Surrealistic Pillow and The Doors......Then, suddenly, i was almost 24 and the page turned.....i drove my car off a cliff and moved to Atlanta......with only a camera, a typewriter, some notebooks and some thrift store bellbottoms, fringed leather boots and a couple of psychedelic t-shirts....turn the page....new chapter.......