Inside our home it was one of the most amazing and wonderful communities that I had ever co-created.
Outside our dwelling and in many ways the dwelling itself was one of the very worst if not the worst place I had ever lived.
It all started in the late fall of 1982 when I was in profound pain over a breakup with a girlfriend who I lived with. Almost immediately and before I could find another place to move into, she began dating around, and soon stopped coming home till mid to late morning the next day.
Walter who attended one of her spiritual support group meetings asked her who the artist was as he noticed my nature photography on the wall.
Through this, he and I met and within three months Walter who himself was recovering from a difficult breakup found his own apartment to move into and invited me to join.
Heaven: Scenes from our Annual Talent Show Parties
We lived on the second story of a triple decker unit in the Winter Hill section of Somerville. Our neighborhood was working and lower middle class, mostly white and a rather worn section of town.
Tufts University towered about 1.5 miles away, and Harvard Square - gateway to most of my social and community life - beckoned me from 2 miles away in the opposite direction.
Walter’s immediately shared his vision with me, of starting a community art center that would support budding musicians and other artists. He was also a great poet and song writer himself.
Fresh from my Masters Degree in Creative Arts Therapies, I committed myself to be the world’s first and foremost practicing Psy-meteorologist, using weather as therapy, healing and metaphor for personal transformation.
Once Walter and I established a comfortable household, he invited his musician partner Keith to join us from Wisconsin.
Keith was also recovering from a difficult divorce and needed support. Once Keith moved in, things moved into gear.
At first, Keith and I having very different perspectives and personalities frequently found ourselves uncomfortable with one another. Eventually we learned to accept our differences and become friends.
In the interim, Walter who was an excellent mediator sat down separately then together with each of us and processed.
During his time with me, Walter discovered that he could visually see energy patterns in people, especially centering on our life energy meridians.
I discovered that I could visually see chakras or life force energy centers. We soon put our two systems together and grew immensely from the process.
Heaven:
Within months, at my suggestion we formed a group that I named the Art/Life/Spirit group. The purpose of this group was to offer spiritual support and a prayer circle for spiritual artists.
We determined that while many people can be artistic, it was the highly sensitive and spiritual questing types of artist who we wished to meet and support.
Our group swiftly coalesced as a vibrant magnet for the Community at large that drew numerous fascinating individuals who either joined or passed through our circle.
Members included a vivacious Afro-American woman who called herself Queen, a singer-song writer who Keith started dating & performing with, several of my artistic & spiritual friends, fellow dance community members, and a couple of Walter’s friends who included a poet, a fellow who loved to work on VW’s and a humorist.
We invited Jeff Crock, a prominent life energy awareness instructor to give a workshop for our group. I immediately included this insightful work in my budding life energy healing practice.
Eventually a cat who was the sole attendee to a workshop that I offered but didn’t take (I left the doors open, he walked upstairs and into our apartment) adapted us. It was a beautiful black and white cat who I named Finesse.
Finesse was also a healing & very spiritual cat. Once he walked from two rooms over, through our healing circle and directly on the genital area of a woman in the middle who we were working on but as men wouldn’t dare touch. He merely laid there, looked up at us and started purring.
Sometimes he also sat in the kitchen meditating in a sunbeam that splashed through the window onto the floor.
Walter, playfully posing for a Somerville News article on Psy-meteorology and photo of me performing at our Talent Show Party
As artists, we decided to host an Annual Talent Show Party. We held it in the very middle of winter – Late January- when frost coated the inside of our windows.
We packed up to 30 people into our small apartment, and performances of poetry, music and humor lasted up to nearly midnight. Otherwise, we enjoyed lots of loving ambience and camaraderie that included great food, much cheer and warmth that served to coalesce even more ice on the windows.
Walter in astounding generosity offered to pay all the rent except utilities for about a year to free up extra money for both Keith and myself to pursue our passions. This was a tremendous healing for me in that it was the very first time in my life that I was in essence paid to follow my dreams.
During that time, the Boston Globe newspaper published an extensive article about Psy-meteorology, and Boston Magazine – Boston’s upper crust publication- did a wonderful article including a photo of a weather system drawn across Keith’s bare back. Boston’s WBZ radio, the 50,000 watt all talk/all news radio station featured me as a guest speaker, and I counseled callers from across New England over the air.
Keith and his girlfriend-partner began to perform at coffee houses, Walter honed up his book of humor, and both Walter and I grew immensely in our life energy awareness work.
Eventually, both Walter and my friends urged me to start up a life energy healing practice.
Hell:
As wonderful as our community life was, it was an amazingly awful neighborhood. In fact, I still sometimes get dreams at night that speak of the bleakness, desolation and oppression that the neighborhood represented for me.
Have you ever been in a situation that was so polarized between brilliance and darkness that all you could do was to stay put and enjoy the greatness while sweating out the dark? This was it for me.
Inside the house it was a constant bath of noise. We lived on Broadway, one of the busiest streets that ran through Somerville. There was no insulation between the floors and the violence was almost unspeakable.
A man weighing about 300 pounds lived above us. Every morning and again at night, it sounded like an elephant walked on my bedroom ceiling. I knew not of any white noise machines at that time, and tried to turn on the radio for the static end of the FM dial. However this didn’t work well, as the radio would tune into drifting frequencies that then suddenly blasted fuzzy music or words into the room.
The other bedrooms were no better; one was tiny & dark with no windows and the other, about the size of a small closet straddled Broadway with its incessant noise.
One year a small business next door doubled in size and installed a huge central air conditioner between my bedroom window and their wall facing it. It literally rattled both my bedroom floor and windows, especially in the summer trashing my sleep.
After several months of this, I introduced myself to the business owner and gently asked if he could install a noise buffer. It took awhile, but to my amazement he did it! This was one bright spot for me.
At least one or two weekend nights per month between one and three a.m. a tremendous CRASH shattered my sleep, followed by deafening silence.
Another drunk or drugged driver had just smashed into a cement light pole at the top of our hill. Bright street lights revealed the crunched car with its glittering stream of fluids running down the street. Within minutes, sirens blared into the night as police and firemen rushed to the scene.
Walking out the door was a profoundly dangerous proposition. I endured several attacks by clean cut, shorts & T-shirt clad white youngsters usually aged between about 18 and 23.
One threw a rock from across the street at me just a block from the apartment in the middle of the afternoon. When I glared at him, he walked over to me and invited me to fight him. Next thing I knew, a fist stuck my face.
One evening as I walked towards Harvard Square and my dance community, a distant unearthly scream of a woman apparently being attacked filled the night air. I felt so helpless and angry for what she was going through, and wished I could have done something to help her. The haunting sound stayed in my mind for quite awhile afterwards.
Within months as I walked home from Harvard Square one night, two very clean cut white men started walking along side of me. They proceeded to tell me that they intended to beat me unconscious then place me on the rail road track for a train to run over me, and for no reason except the sport of it. They did not want my money, they only wanted to create carnage.
I calmly asked for them to refrain, but next thing I knew one fist hit my face, breaking my glasses as they cut my nose and flew off. The next punch hit my stomach. I knew that they were serious and began to holler like I’ve never hollered before.
Suddenly about 4 people showed up to my rescue, including a woman carrying a bamboo pole. The young men sleeked off into the shadows.
We called the police to file a report, but the police apparently used to this type of thing took about 45 minutes to arrive.
Ironically, after that I considered buying mace to protect myself, but was told that I would have a 30 day wait before approval.
Keith who was built like a lumber jack usually drove his car, but when he was out walking he was sometimes accosted as well.
Once a group of kids who I would estimate were middle school aged taunted me for being a Harvard University person (using a derogatory term next to “Harvard” that I forget now).
But it wasn’t just me. Our next door neighbor, a sweet elderly woman told us that there was a recent break-in robbery just two doors down from our apartment.
Late one night as I took a very short walk down Broadway, a car screeched to a halt near me. Suddenly a woman passenger leaped out, and a fellow jumped out in hot pursuit. She seemed to be running for her life, but he caught up to her and forced her back into the car which then sped off.
One afternoon as I was doing laundry at the Laundromat, a middle aged Asian man came in crying. He was tied up in wire, his arms and hands completely immobilized. He had been robbed and bound – in broad daylight and his attackers had gotten away.
After 2 ½ years our household broke up due to significant life changes for each of us.
I moved to Brighton, a better suburban neighborhood, but our apartment endured a break-in, door smashed in with possessions thrown all over the floor.
Since that crucible time, each of the three of us has gone on to lead successful lives.
Walter has given many comedy performances and combined some of his work in life energy healing with comedy. He choreographs what he calls “energy theater” and also conducts laughter yoga sessions.
Keith broke up with his girlfriend and went on to meet & marry the love of his life. Together they work with disabled children using the expressive arts and drama.
I went on to establish a private practice in life energy healing and counseling, created and directed an internationally acclaimed storm chase tour company, and authored the book “Birthing Your Life Dream”, teaching many workshops along the way.
