Letter from Brian Barritt in Amsterdam to Commodore Leri in Folsom Prison, Sept. 1973

Hello Tim:

Nice to know you're OK and reassuring to know that your nervous system is in your control and mind functioning with the same sizzle as always.  Christ man, the three months I just finished in the Amsterdam jail were longer than the three years I did in England.  Prison is a bore but it does get the extrasensory mechanisms moving.  Helps to catch up with the reading too; I read all the English books in the library, murder, rape, robbery, all the things a good con should know.  Even found a copy of Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness -- for long termers I guess.

The last few weeks I was the only English speaking guy in the place.  The Silent One wandering through the prison structure like a spectre with the three dumb monkeys on my back Saying Nothing, Understanding Nothing, Contributing Nothing except a few words in pidgin Dutch and an occasional bleep of enthusiasm.  They they let me out, steal my money and buy me a ticket on the first boat to England.  In the detention cell at the Hook of Holland I meet her, Jane, seventeen years young and it's her first deportation, she's traveling back on the night boat, the same boat as meeeee!

Well like it's just cosmically planned baby, that's all.

I am showing her the constellations as we cruise beneath the occult moon before she tells me she is a boy!  Total embarrassment, absolute disorientation!  Just what a con needs on his first night out.

So many odd and funny things happened to me from when I was deported till I arrived back in Holland with a fresh passport 48 hours later.  Even the fuzz goofed and paid me 50 pounds by mistake.  Omens coming in thich and fast, Bonne Chance to rebirth.

BUSINESS SECTION:  You asked about Michel Hauchard.  I made no agreements, settlements, with him.  We got photostats of the correspondence between the lawyers and our suit against him was coming together nicely when Hauchard split the country.  I didn't have the bread to chase him around France.  With a little help from Joanna I might have been able to do more but my letters asking for information were unanswered or the content ignored.  When you were in Afghan I told Michel he could keep the quarter of a million from Bantam and no hassles from our side concerning the rights to your future works, if he got you out of custody or delayed your flight back to the States.  Later when Sue was in Amsterdam I offered to drop the case against him if he sent her $5,000.  Nothing was put in writing.  He did not help in any way.

SOUNDS:  David Bowie.

LITERATURE:  Simone Vinkenoog translated Confessions of a Hope Fiend into Dutch.  I am going to Switzerland -- soon as Davie Log has finished his holidays and is back in England for the new terms.  To see what is happening to The Psychedelic Prayers, Carl Lazlo says the publisher still owes money to the printer and is having trouble with distribution -- as always.  A photostat version of Neurologic has been done in German by Gruner Zweig.  I'm glad to see the Germans are on to it.

PERSONAL:  Met Elizabeth's father.  Sargeant Pepper himself.  All the guys of his generation have minds like the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  So I'm sipping my sherry and trying not to look too sexy when it strikes me that this sprightly old rooster is ogling his daughter.  He was so jealous, man I was amazed.  I am sexually ignorant about father / daughter relationships but I can tell when a guy is aching to fuck my chick and Dr. Ellioo-Cooke is coming on with a heavy bedside manner.  Liz thinks it's all a gas but I don't think he'll ever make her.  Not with those classical sounds anyhow.

When I reflect on it, incest seems a good idea.  I believe it to be an evolutionary method for strengthening existing genetic combinations.  All the animals do it now and again to purify and reinforce herd characteristics.  Inbreeding is a stabilizing force, a survival factor designed to balance out the evolutionary pressures that cause constant change in the species, but for God's sake don't tell anyone.  How the incest taboo came about I've no idea, but it came early on when the earth needed populating and as much variation as possible was needed so that evolution could get moving, and I see no reason for this archaic pre-Cambrian attitude to continue.

THE CITY:  Feeling very immortal lately with my lotus feet in high-heeled silver boots, ice cream coat (white satin drape) and thoughts going off like fireworks.  But without each other to orient by, Elizabeth and myself would have difficulty in keeping our Circuit 6 Show free from the terrestrial realities whirlpooling around us.

Adam is a whirlpool of cults, scenes and shows.  Magicians have been laying down these trips since '66 and disoriented time travelers come spiraling into the city and zap into some mind-web or other before they can get a psychological bearing.

Adam is like living an immense brain.  Really, Tim, it's very moving to see how the Time Underground has nurtured this incredible being.  The visions we saw in the early 60's are a living entity now.  Sci0Fiction monsters that turned out to be friendly after all.  Oh it's wearing patched jeans and it's broke most of the time, but in terms of human relationships it's the deepest and most profound model ever.

At present Adam has the highest mass consciousness on the planet.  I doubt whether it will survive the leap from Circuit 5 to Circuit 6 and still head the evolutionary thrust, but at this moment, before the first neurological city is pinpointed, Adam acts as the model point of the earth's spiritual energy supply.*

Well, as you see we are in love with the city and the city is in love with us.  We have not too much difficulty relating to the authorities in this setting, but one foot over the Dutch border in any direction and the pressure is full on against us.  Your letter says, "It is very good not to be in an adversary position with the law."  But Tim, it's the law that's in an adversary position to us.  I can't remember ever having committed a crime by my DNA standards.  I therefore figure I ain't committed any crimes.  The closer I follow my nervous system (the Buzz) the more I am in tune with the evolutionary goal, it would be a crime if I did otherwise."

The "straight" world is amiable here.  The Underground and hippies are often treated with respect.  The Netherlanders are an easy-going race at heart, and since millions of guilders pour into the country via young cats who come to smoke the almost legal pot, the burly burghers of protestant Holland have a civic duty to respect their strange modes of dress and ultra-violet hair -- as long as they have bread.

But it is more than that, really.  It's not just bread that motivates the Dutch amiability.  They have respect for the intelligence of some non-conformists; they have seen many pleasant changes and Holland has a history as a refuge for the persecuted.  The Pilgrim Fathers stayed here a while after being pressurized out of England.  It has a lot in common with Switzerland as a harbor of safety as well.  And on the other side of the coin Sergius Golowin tells me the Dutch hired the Swiss mercenaries to capture the East Indies for them.

Sometimes glimpses of the year 200 appear through chinks in the city's time stream, electromagnetic love-songs drifting through the streets, reflecting in the canals, twining fleur-de-lys round the spires of Baroque churches, the feeling of family, the strong warm glow of "home."  Electric symbiosis.  Comforting force fields of mutual respect.

NOTES:  Mutation does not happen by accident, it happens to those who put themselves in the position and place where maximum possibilities for change can occur, after that it's just a matter of Bonne Chance.

HOW TO GET YOUR EGO BACK:  Love thyself, and then find someone you like better.

Some things in the air.  Since we received your letter we have had visitors from Swiss every week enquiring about you.  Giger, Sergius, Carl Laslo, Brumbar and this week Kristoff from the Hesse-Haus in Corona.  I think your time in prison is nearing an end.

Simone Vinkenoog suggests that I start a correspondence with you with the view of publishing later.  If you think it's a good idea we'll do it, just let me know which questions to ask you.***

Brumbar is a first class artist.  As soon as I get some slides I will send you them.  I am very impressed by his work; there's softness, tenderness, strength and humor in them.  They are healthy pictures.  We neurologicians badly need a coherent symbol system.  The "occultist" has a wealth of traditional symbols to call on.  The eastern trip is alive with radiant images.  The neurologician has nothing really beautiful to look at.  There are too few Sci-Fi artists about.  What is needed is contemporary illustrations, parables to the alchemical and eastern ones.  I put some of Brumbar's pictures in the pages of Terra II and the book blossomed from an Underground production into a jewel-like scripture.

Imagery is very important right now.  How about a mandala like the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming with the eight circuits illustrated so that the whole system can be taken in at once?  Hedonic textbook?  Cats are tripping out on Hindu and Buddhist symbols when they should be building up memory archives based on contemporary and futique views of the scene.

Have you designed Tarot cards yet?  If you have something in mind, flash me and I will ask Brumbar to do it.  Posters are a quick way of telling people that a contemporary religion / philosophy exists.  Everybody has been waiting for a neurological Tarot for ages and a science-fiction will become standard equipment for time travelers.

Our experimental tolerances have reached immense proportions.  We are having difficulty finding enough stimuli to satisfy our habits.  Really, we need freezing till 2000 and waking up when the earth's intensity ratio has risen a few points.****  However, as Terra II gets nearer to the White Hole at the center of our galaxy and the stars are more numerous, we should meet and exchange information with other extra-terrestrials and the most sophisticated ecstasies of the Milky Way will be at our disposal. Unparalleled joys will streak and sizzle along our ganglia while Nirvana's and Satori's crackle and pop and awesome blue-white blasts murmur extra sensory obscenities to our souls.  (Progress is measured here in terms of how much ecstasy can you take on the Pleasure Meters of Total Bliss.)

I make my entrance wearing my ice cream coat of vivid satin and silver high-heeled boots, Liz in amber and gold, red high-heels, smoking a phosphorescent cigarette.

We enter from opposite sides of the stage, meet in the middle, kiss, and merge into electrical life from flashing zig-zags of lightning.  The lightning forks; we exchange bodies.  I am Liz.  She is me.  The lightning slows to a pulsing golden glow as we divide into our two separate forms.  We are looking at each other out of each others' eyes, we are the same entity and also two different entities at the same time.  I take a draw on my cigarette.  Brian blows a kiss to the audience, we exit together in a shower of stardust.

Bye Time
Love
Bonne Chance
Brian

_______________

* A most intelligent comment.  Barritt knows that a neurogenetic migration is in the air.  Like a good Evolutionary Agent he inquires about the next ecological niche.

** A common complaint of futique mutants who cannot gear inner to outer.  Who fail to realize that each stage must be externally mastered and used as launching pad.  That each hive establishment must be re-assured.

*** Example of future-reality fabrication.

**** This is the highest point of Old Brain thinking.  The New Brain response is:  Brian, don't be so passive.  Swim West and carpenter the future.