my thumb whenever a vehicle or driver
seemed unsuitable or unsafe to take me for a ride.

Epilogue

Hidden between UCSD and the Pacific Ocean were burial grounds, Rama
said, that were sacred to Native Americans. Surfers on their way to
Black's Beach passed through this land of cliffs and ravines. They
pointed to a graceful, white mansion and said, "Heyyy, duuuude, that's
Atkinson's place, duuuuuuuuude." Several properties south of the UCSD
Chancellor's mansion lay a burned-out car abandoned on a charred
foundation. The address seemed to be 951, but in my mind the missing
tile was in place: 9514 La Jolla Farms Road, where Rama became
"enlightened" and where I moved into darkness.

It was 1988. I parked my Volkswagon Bus at a mall one-and-a-half miles
east of campus and walked with Nunatak toward the sea. I had cut
through the not-yet-bulldozed chaparral just east of Interstate-5 many
times since returning to UCSD--a twenty-seven year old
undergraduate--but now the sun was setting and the air seemed heavy.
Suddenly, I had a sense of where I was going. During the past two
years I had dealt with my Rama experiences intellectually. But you can
only sit cooly, unmoved and protected on the cap-of-things-that-were
for so long before the cap blows and sends you tumbling. There are
many ways to grapple with the enormity of what lies beneath the surface
world of reason. I approached 9514 La Jolla Farms Road.

The last time I got near the place had been the year before, with a
friend. "I lived there once with some radical people," I had told her.
"One of them became... enlightened."

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"That's where Atkinson lives," I said, pointing away.

Now, as the sun sank in the Pacific, I stood with Nuna on the edge of
the property. I took a few steps forward but quickly stopped cold. I
could almost hear Rama saying in his Kermit-the-Frog voice, "Make
millions of people happy." I stepped to where my room used to be when
suddenly, superimposed over blackened concrete slabs, images appeared.
Rama was in the kitchen cooking for a hundred spiritual seekers. Rama
was in the meditation room giving a talk beside a larger-than-life
photo of an Indian guru. Rama was at the same spot giving a talk
beside himself. Rama was in the garage surveying stacks of WOOF! Rama
was offering me cookies to cheer me up because I doubted his
enlightenment--my *friend's* enlightenment. Rama w