33rd Haight Streeet Fair dedicated to Waterfall

David Wills singing one of Waterfall’s favorite songs, ‘Well, well, well’ to open the 33rd annual Haight Ashbury Street Fair which was dedicated to Waterfall.

Don French has great pictures of the fair at http://www.flickr.com/photos/39108059@N00/sets/72157624153901737/

This is what Don has to say: I created a gallery of images from yesterday’s annual Haight Ashbury Street Fair here: http://www.donfrenchphotography.com/Events/2010HaightAshburyStreetFair/img_8597c.htm. I tried to capture the color and flavor of this unique fair in these photos. I hope you enjoy them. I strongly suggest that you view the photographs full-size rather than in the index. Use the Next link above each image to page forward through the images. If they are too large to fit on your screen without scrolling, try pressing F11 to get more screen real estate (press it again to get the screen back the way it was). If they are still too large, here is a site that has smaller images: http://www.donfrenchphotography.com/Events/2010HaightAshburyStreetFair/Smaller/img_8597c.htm. But they really do look their best at the larger size and you can see more detail. For those of you who live in the Haight, if you see someone you recognize and know their email address, please send it to me, as many people asked if I would contact them once I had the photos ready to view. Thanks!

Waterfall brunch in the Peoples Cafe, Saturday,12:30 PM, June 12th 2010

Please join Waterfall’s sisters Joan and Kathleen at a Waterfall brunch in the Peoples Cafe this Saturday at 12:30 PM, June 12th 2010 the the day before the Street Fair.
If you were a friend of Waterfall, or like the Waterfallian, please join us for an informal get together.

Think K.INK
Radio Waterfall’s Proposal for a New Way:
The Innernet.

An Organ plays as the
Reverend Waterfall pontificates from the beyond.

Most folks don’t know
That all your cares are free:
If you are clever with your foe
You’ll win, when we agree.

That what we need to teach
Is less suffering for all
But there’s no need to preach –
It’s not your butt in war.

What we want are ways to seed
The place where politicians work
With motives of constructive help
Not personal greed.

What’s needed is a way of bliss.
Not nasty, godly bigots
With their, “Don’t do this,”
And their, “Thou shalt nots.”

Our rulers could discover, one day
A philosophy at a different site
To the current, Yankee way
Where, “We have the right.”
(Because you can’t.)

The cause of most wars
Is the cutting off of trade roots:
Think Spanish gold bars
Or opium sold by British brutes.
(And oil all over.)

It‘s obvious that war is sales
Marketing by another name.
Forget the army: Bring in the prose.
Let advertisers direct their game:
And Basques will smite their foes
With an ad campaign
In Spain.

Or make all wars illegal, with fines.
We’ll sue for peace, what nerve –
Put the judges on the front lines.
Keep the jurors in reserve.

His handlers say that Bush was just
“Defending his fam-ily from lust.”
With wealth, as power’s plum.
For, “He who has his thumb
On the purse,
has the power.”

Said Bismarck in his feathered-top.
To the Reichstag then did order
That, “Eloquence won’t stop
My army at the border.”

These schemers are not immoral,
With code of honor to dismiss.
They don’t fair-share at all
They are amoral blight
With a world-view, like this:
The end makes mean right.

Of course good folk may do
Horrible things too
But bad people do not do
Any good at all.

But spiritual thought of any kind
Is suspect as trite today.
Maybe it’s time for us to find
A graceful, easy way.

In contest with privilege, and its perks
Let our noble Constitution talk
For we have a vote that works
To help the lame man walk.

Use the Innernet! That’s my thesis.
Say no to the Gods of Do Not.
This Innernet of bits
And peace is
The best we got.

If there is meaning to life’s flux
I think there should be in it
A song of peace that rocks
With an element of spirit.

The wild disorder of life is found
Where ’ere the Innernet’s in flower
’Tis there I kiss the fertile ground
Of spiritual power:

–Wills with Waterfall

Sicut cogitamus fuerit.

As we think, so it will be.

Wills wrote it, Latin by Tom the Scholar

Stupid for Peace !

Photograph by Jeff Spirer copyright 2007

A very endearing glimpse of Waterfall at the Peace Parade in 2007, San Francisco Civic center. This may have been his last big street demo.

See http://davidwills.wordpress.com/

What‘s a lad to do?

And this was the edited version of the previous post as it appeared in the Volume 3, number 7.75, July issue of the 2004
The Waterfallian

Act 1. A conversation
It is a Tuesday morning with the breath of a fog scout overhead. In a rent controlled flat, two long time neighbors kick back:

Waterfall: What to do?

Wills: Talk is cheap…

Waterfall: As Henry Eight said, “If I talk a little wild, forgive me, I got it from my father.” I’m searching for the essence. No one can say I have an axe to grind – for I have no axe, nor yet a grindstone. Take the story of Rumi’s elephant. In the dark each person thought the part of the beast nearest them was the whole – mistaking the bit for the it. I’m not looking for the parts, I seek pure thoughts, I want simple truths¬ – a big one being: What or who gave us the right to invade Iraq? I’d ask Dick Cheney, but there’s none as deaf as those who won’t hear.
I wonder, was it Saint Matt or Saint Pete who said that? Maybe it was, Jesus! The old, testy fundamentalists, with their farts of aggression posing as leadership, most definitely do not love the baby Jesus with his blessings of mercy and forgiveness. Some people are so deaf to sense. You can’t make a zealot hear that their zeal is misplaced.
I think that’s why The Waterfallian is here: to prove we have a different intention than the mainstream press. This is not a game – I think it is a noble attempt to express a heartfelt desire: to create peace in the world, to find a way other than divide and conquer. No more bait and switch. I’m trying to describe the human attempt to express the ineffable – but if you grasp it, it tends to slip away.

Wills: To tell the truth, it’s not easy. When people have a guilty conscience, they like to be lied to. It’s what the Bush gang counts on…

Waterfall: Like in the sixties when the Gulf of Tonkin was used to fan the Vietnam War, or in the thirties when the Nazis used the Reichstag fire to elbow their way to power, we now have these Weapons of Mass Delusion in Iraq, just another formal device in the history of corrupt statehoods to promote aggression. Jesus! … But no, not him, for he spoke in peaceful koans; we call them parables, or are they proverbs? “Put your sword up, Peter.” For repubs that’s quitters’ talk. The Pope and Cardinal align themselves with the more demented aspects of the old way: the crown, the robber barons, and the court. ’Twas always thus – the state is corrupt. Nothing I can do but say my piece. Pelosi, Kerry, Boxer, they are in the cross hairs of these god warriors. But beware – if the pig smells like aggression… Take Kerry. Where’s he at? Would he still say, “Who wants to be the last to die for a mistake?” Even Gore has found a voice of honest indignation against the war. When do we hear Kerry speak out loud for peace?

Wills: Soon. The apparatus of state does not like this war. Bush is losing it – he looks scared. I think the Christians are turning against him, with his godly violence gone awry. I got ten bucks says Bush is a one term twig. Too much Dick, too little brain…

Waterfall: Yep, It all goes back to the Manhattan Project, where Openheimer, Fuchs and Teller came up with a leap in power of what can be destroyed. Tactically it was Openheimer and Fuchs against the fascists, but the project was co-opted strategically by the rabid Republican Teller as a way for the major power to stay that way. Now it’s gone to their heads.

Wills: They are so not cool. What‘s a lad to do?

Waterfall: At the simplest level I’m reaching for a place where I can’t be threatened by some landowner’s idea of self-aggrandizement, with the loss of my home. I’m trying to describe a time when we need no more head honchos.

This writing was heavily censored by Waterfall when I wrote it, he thought it, “Self hating.” He didn’t like the “dog haired sofa” line amongst others. However now he’s not around to complain, I now happily present…
a play for reading.

Act 1. Two men are in a room. It is a Tuesday morning with the breath of a fog scout overhead. In a dank, third floor, rent controlled flat, the rumpled neighbors kick-back, Wills is sitting on a dog-haired sofa, trying to get a word in, while Waterfall favors the worn armchair as he talks without pause to avoid unnecessary conversation.

Waterfall: (Balancing a plate of spaghetti and corn chips on the arm rest) What to do? (Leaves for the kitchen.)

Wills: (Looking askance at the cat which is too close for comfort.) We could talk about …

Waterfall: (He returns with the ketchup.) At the Waterfallian no one can prove we have an axe to grind. We have no axe, nor yet a grindstone. Take Rumi’s elephant. In the dark each person thought the part of the beast nearest them was the whole – mistaking the bit for the it. I’m not looking for the parts, I’m searching for the essence, I seek pure thoughts, I want simple truths¬ – such as, “There’s none as blind as them as what won’t see,” or even deaf as them as won’t hear… Was that Saint Mat or Saint Pete who said that? Maybe it was Jesus? Some Americans are deaf to sense; you can’t make a zealot hear that their zeal is misplaced. Like I said, “There’s none as deaf …”

Wills: (Glaring at the cat, which is now on the sofa picking at the loose stuffing in the split seam piping.) Americans are good people with a sense of fairness. I’m sure religious people are turning against Bush, with his godly violence gone awry.

Waterfall: (Shaking out the ketchup.) I’m trying to describe the human attempt to express the ineffable – but if you grasp it, it slips away; I’m reaching for a place where I can’t be threatened by some landowner’s idea of self-aggrandizement, with the loss of my home. I’m trying to describe a time when we need no head honchos. It all goes back, to the Manhattan Project, where they came up with a leap in power of what can be destroyed. Tactically, it was Openheimer and the socialist Fuchs, against the fascists, but the project was co-opted strategically by the rabid Republican Teller as a way for the major power to stay that way. But the cat got out the bag. Propaganda has turned peoples minds. “There’s none as deaf …”

Wills: (The cat attempts to get closer.) Propaganda: When people have a guilty conscience they like to be lied to. It’s what the Bush gang is counting on…

Waterfall: Who is Kerry now? Would he still say, ”Who wants to be the last to die for a mistake?” The people I vote for are unquestionably against pre-emptive war, the non-aligned community. I think The Waterfallian is here to prove we have a different intention from that of the right-wing press, this is not a game – this is a what I think is a noble attempt to express a heartfelt desire to create peace in the world, to find a way other than divide and conquer. No more bait and switch.
(Discovers the ketchup lid is still on.) Like in the sixties when the Gulf of Tonkin was used to fan the Vietnam War, or in the thirties when the Nazis used the Reichstag fire to elbow their way to power, we now have these Weapons of Mass Delusion in Iraq, just another formal device in the history of corrupt state hoods to promote aggression. (Too much ketchup hits the plate.) Jesus! …He spoke in koans; we call them parables, (or are they proverbs?) “Resist not evil,” is a paradox, and it was probably Peter who put in “He who lives by the sword…” The old testy fundamentalists, with their farts of aggression posing as leadership most definitely do not love the baby Jesus with his blessings of mercy and forgiveness. “Put your sword up Peter.” For them it’s quitter’s talk. The Pope and Cardinal align themselves with the more demented aspects of the old way: the crown, the robber barons, and the court. “Render unto Caesar.” ‘Twas always thus – it’s corrupt. Nothing I can do but say my piece: Pelosi, Kerry, Boxer, they are in the cross hairs of these god warriors. Be aware – if the pig smells like aggression…

Wills: (Shouting to be heard.) Hey – despite War College rhetoric, the apparatus of state does not like this war: bad for biz, many US troops and mercenaries will soon be leaving Iraq. Peace and love. (Cat jumps to floor, eats ketchup overflow. Stout parties exeunt.) Curtain.

Noto Bene, por favor: Water’ was right – the Demo’s became corrupted, and the yanks are still over there.

If you visit the Waterfallian, please be generous and leave a comment. Thanks.

Ah, memories . . .

William Francis Sheehan, known by friends as Waterfall, and by his family as Bill, arrived at 12:20PM on 25th December, 1944 and caught the bus at 2.15PM on 27 February 2010.  His loving parents were William Francis Sheehan and Esther Coll Sheehan.

How to go gently into the night…

The day of Waterfall’s big shift was the Saturday of the full moon with a Jupiter ascendant – it was a good day to travel, so I heard. An unruly crowd of respectful friends and friendly family came to see him off, with the tender help of Drs. Brad Sharpe, Nora McGee and Kara Bischoff and the staff at UCSF, who advised and made Waterfall’s journey as comfortable as possible. Many thanks to all who worked so long, dedicated to helping create a spiritually honest passing.

With us all standing around, he asked for the bed head to be raised, and waved the curtain open, the better to see the view of the Marin headlands.

At the beginning of his journey Waterfall showed brave Viking spirit – he was the Irish King off to Valhalla, the Buddhist wise man, saying his prayers, waving his rattle, leading us all in a chanted Om and singing his favorite songs. He went graciously courageous, fully aware of his going; surrounded by loving family and friends. His sister Joan said he just stopped breathing, a peaceful face.

For many of us it was the most moving and truthful event of our lives.

•••
Next day, after a breakfast for thirty-seven or more at Peoples Café, and a beer at Murio’s, we marked the occasion with an impromptu Waterfallian-wake and a birthday party barbeque for Brigie’s 20th, with banjo and fiddle rockabilly.

•••
In accordance with the wishes of Waterfall’s next of kin, his sisters Joan and Kathleen, Izu has arranged to  have some of his ashes scattered to the wind at a memorial on Hippie Hill at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, 13th March 2010, with subsequent sprinklings to be announced.  Water’s wish was that his ashes be blown away in an ecologically responsible way – but he was concerned because he did not know what was the better way..

Waterfall will have the next Haight Ashbury Street Fair dedicated in his honor on Sunday, June 13 2010.  More information at http://www.haightashburystreetfair.org.

What people said at the breakfast for Waterfall

•••
“Love heals and then reveals” – Eco

“Every village needs its elders, its fools and its wise men. Thank you, Waterfall – Richard Ivanhoe

“Waterfall: My favorite memory: singing Jingle Bell Rock with the sleigh bells at Christmas dinner, and his incredible depth of knowledge.” – Ann Zakaluk

“Whenever we lose a character of such warmth, light, and peace a part of myself uncoils further towards bliss. I only hope that I can honor the life that has bettered mine.” – Jared

“We will miss you, Waterfall, here at breakfast.” – Indigo Hotchkiss

“My Water, you’ve been my best brother and friend for 26 years. I love you forever. As Jimi Hendrix said, ‘I’ll see you in the next place – and don’t be late.’ Love.” – Ezu

Your family and we are all connected in Love, our San Francisco family of Love and Music. Aloha my friend. – Teddy from Hawaii

“Your family will all miss you, your sisters, Kathleen Newe and Joan Sheehan; your brother-in-law, Albert; your nieces and nephews, Theresa, John, William, Nicole and Noel.  You took a different path from us but we three were blessed to be together at the end and we are grateful for that.  We are proud of you and will miss you.  We thank all your friends for their kindness and love to us.” – Kathleen and Joan

The Dream

I emerged from out of my dream
This morning as from a river
Pulling myself up to sit a moment
As it clamored away behind me
Into the currents of the night
With just a memory or two
Fished up like pieces of clothing
As from some raucous swimming escapade
A cacophony of voices gradually drifting away
As I turn to fix a cup of tea
And so I’m told will this life fade
As I pull myself out of the river
Of its belief onto another shore
And what will remain?
No doubt Love will be the ground
Upon which I sit recovering
As I sat this morning on the edge
Of my loud but vanishing dream
Drifting away like some Riverboat Casino
Music and loud voices fading.

– Indigo

Nobody’s gone.

“I am a Will–I–Am, I am Francis, called ‘Waterfall’, in the famed Irish family of Sheehan from Cork and Donegal, Eire, brother of Joan and Kathleen Sheehan of New Jersey.”

“I was a big baby”, said William, who became the all-round Varsity strong Irishman – he played fullback on the grid; on the diamond he had a hundred-mile-an-hour arm. He was prevented from throwing ball at the juniors, and eventually his own teammates, all because his speed and strength was too much for the safety of the school insurance.

William Sheehan studied under the Jesuits, then at St. Peter’s College, Jersey City and graduated with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Detroit followed by four years as a draughtsman in Detroit, at the Ford Motor Company(?), where Waterfall worked as a systems engineer, specializing in transmission. He had innovative ideas on how to quickly change batteries in electric autos. For some reason he had studied nuclear engineering too. One night in 1969 he, a self described regular guy, and three roommate friends decided to go to Woodstock, “… to see some bands.”

It was a life changing experience. He was there throughout the Woodstock Festival, from which he never returned to the corporate world.

•••
Waterfall catches the bus…

After Woodstock in 1969, Bill became Waterfall, was with the Hog farm and Hugh Romney, aka Wavy Gravy, riding in the famed bus, ‘Furthur’, and cooking stew for many. He forsook his old lifestyle, and became an integral communard and a resident at all the communes mentioned here in this lengthy quote from Timothy Miller, at the University of Kansas. The communities interrelated and Waterfall stayed at Drop City a while.

Drop City

“… Other experiments pointing the way toward the communes that spread like wildfire after 1966 took place over the next couple of years. Most importantly, probably, Drop City was founded in southern Colorado in 1965, a colony of bohemian artists who saw themselves as creating a whole new civilization, rejecting paid employment and making their art inseparable from their lives. In housing themselves they created some of the most memorable communal architecture ever, geodesic-style domes colorfully covered with car tops retrieved from junkyards. Drop City was a major inspiration for the communes founded over the next few years.”

The Hog Farm

“Back in California another commune began to take shape as Drop City was getting under way. In 1965 Hugh Romney and friends were offered the free use of a farmhouse and thirty acres overlooking the San Fernando Valley if they would tend the owner’s swine. From that beginning emerged the Hog Farm, which burst into national prominence as the “Please Force” at Woodstock. The Hog Farm is still very much alive and well today, with a main enclave in Berkeley and a second location, Black Oak Ranch near Laytonville, where Hugh Romney, now known as Wavy Gravy, runs his clown camp.

The Diggers.

“Not much later the Diggers began contributing to the cultural scene in a way that would influence and promote communes. Living on society’s leftovers and espousing a belief that everything should be free, the Diggers took all kinds of people into their several communal households. Others emulated the Digger example, and for a time informal urban communes and crashpads proliferated. Some of the scenes were chaotic, but others functioned well and introduced thousands to a new way of living.”

The Diggers were an especially strong influence on Waterfall.

Lou Gottleib and Morning Star.

Set your chickens free! was the rallying cry of Lou Gottlieb, who housed a commune in the former chicken coops on Wheeler’s Ranch. And Waterfall lived there for a year – it was another life-changer, about which he often talked.

“As the Haight-Ashbury began to develop into the country’s premier countercultural enclave, this landmark commune of the new era began to take form 50 miles to the north. Lou Gottlieb, the bassist and resident guru/humorist for the popular folk-singing group the Limeliters, purchased a thirty-two acre farm in Sonoma County near Occidental. His friend Ramón Sender moved to the property in the spring of 1966, and others soon followed. No one was turned away, and the population grew steadily for a year. Then the summer of love arrived, 1967, and soon hundreds were living at Morning Star Ranch. Gottlieb became passionately dedicated to the precept of open land, turning no one away, and at one point deeded Morning Star to God to avoid taxes. (The judge said not so – god owned no property.) The gospel of open land did not sit well with the Sonoma County authorities, however, and conflicts soon flared. Before it was all over, county bulldozers leveled the hand-built structures of Morning Star four times. But those dedicated souls did not give up; some moved to Wheeler’s Ranch nearby, which Bill Wheeler opened to all comers when the situation at Morning Star became desperate. Others moved to New Mexico and started a new Morning Star there near the great communal mecca of Taos, which had blossomed after the founding of New Buffalo in 1967.”

It was at Morning Star that Waterfall arrived after Woodstock along with the Hog Farm busses. After his stint at Wheeler’s Ranch Waterfall moved on to become involved in founding of the Rainbow Gathering. Here’s Wicki on the subject:

The Rainbow Gathering

“The first Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes, a four-day event in Colorado in July 1972, was organized by youth counterculture “tribes” based in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Twenty thousand people faced police roadblocks, threatened civil disobedience, and were allowed onto National Forest land. This was intended to be a onetime event; however, a second gathering in Wyoming the following year materialized, at which point an annual event was declared. The length of the gatherings has since expanded beyond the original four-day span, as have the number and frequency of the gatherings

“The Rainbow Family has no leaders, no structure, no official spokespersons, no official documents, and no membership. Documents are produced as needed and maintained by various groups, and certain themes are consistently seen in this Rainbow literature: Love, Peace, Non-violence, Respect the Environment, Non-commercialism, Volunteer, Respect, Consensus, Diversity.

Waterfall was a regular at the Rainbow Gathering for many years, I think the last Gathering he was at was in 2004.

•••
Waterfall’s spirit.

“I am a priest in the Universal Life Church, empowered to marry,” Waterfall often said. As one smiling, dark-goateed man in a sweater, Teddy, said at the memorial breakfast, “He married us, and many others.”

Waterfall had studied the Upanishads and the Rig Veda, was quite at home with an Om. One of his old roommates, Eddy, told me at the wake, that it was because of Waterfall that he was a Buddhist.

Water, as we called him, had many loves in his life. He was as equally emotionally fulfilled by his activism, blockading Three Mile Island; demonstrating for peace at the Nevada test sites; helping King Salmon spawn, marching for peace in San Francisco. Most recently he stood at the Vigil for World Peace with the artist, Cat Bell, and poet, Richard Ivanhoe every month in the Panhandle.

He told me a couple of weeks ago, that he was disappointed he hadn’t lived to see a change for the better in the world before he went, he loudly said he was mad that world peace had not yet happened. But I told him he had created the beginnings of another time to come, and that it was only by speaking out, as he did, that change could really happen. He said the truth to be found in his words is like the movement in the ‘Butterfly Effect’. I said that his is a voice that will live on, causing great revolution through the power of his concentrated beginnings.

•••
Nobody’s gone… Waterfall was a voter and activist in the Nobody for President Campaign that began in 1976 and he used the construct often in his writing, as he said, “I’m Nobody’s fool.”

•••
Waterfall was a fool at the All Beings Parade.

•••
Cat Bell recalls meeting Waterfall at the Grand Piano on Haight in 1979, when he lived over on Church and 21st. After a romance with the older widow, Ms Boycott in Mill Valley, he moved into 548 Ashbury around 1984 where he had many roommates including most recently (since 1991 and 1996, respectively), Alice Rules, the photographer and Gordon Ruark, who owns Puppy Haven, the pet store on Stanyan.

•••
Another Waterfallian activity of which he liked to tell was that he was the third person to cook the sit down meals at the Haight Ashbury Food Kitchen at Hamilton Methodist Church, around 1984.

•••
Asked by Pablo Heising in about 1995, Waterfall then opened the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair every year with his Caped-Guruman act – four blasts on his conch, to the north, south, east and the west. With the assistance of the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk the first Haight-Ashbury Street Fair was held in 1978. For 33 years, the annual street fair has featured arts, crafts, and music. Over the years bands have included the Jefferson Starship/Airplane, members of the Dead, the Tubes, Metallica, and Noel Redding. The next Fair is to be dedicated to Waterfall.

There’s video of Water’ blowing the Conch at the Fair to be seen at http://www.haightashburystreetfair.org/drupalhasf/hasf/history

•••
Waterfall published a small flyer, The Waterfallian, three or four times a year, from 2002 to 2010. A number of back issues are available and there is a web site http://waterfallian.wordpress.com.

•••
We will all miss his presence.
– David Wills

Waterfall’s ilnesses were many and fatal… congestive heart failure, emphasima, pneumonia, blood clots, diabetes, etc.

Please add your corrections and additional information here:

Waterfall’s Peace University on Alcatraz

This is an oil I painted for Water, based on his description of an imagined University of Peace on Alcatraz.

Larry Todd advised me on some aspects of the coloring and form.

Bill McCarthy sends his regards: “We’ll always feel his presence as we travel in the four directions on our journeys through life.”

Waterfall in  blue, with friends, including Alice Rules, holding child.

Dear Friends,

My heart is feeling great sorrow as I reflect on the passing of our  dear friend Waterfall. His life was an inspiration to the people of the Haight Ashbury Community – through his music, his philosophy and his  generosity of spirit. Waterfall’s kindness in opening his home to so  many of us as a community gathering place, and when in need as a place  to stay, will live on as a legacy of his Love many years after his passing. Waterfall was one of our community’s true leaders and a lifelong believer in the enduring spirit of the Haight Ashbury – Peace, Love and Community.

His spirit will live forever in our hearts and minds, and we’ll always feel his presence as we travel in the four directions on our journeys through life.
Billy

See y’ later Water’.

Be here now, and remembered…

Saturday 13th March 2010.

We had a good send off for Bill on the Hill.

He was known by many of the seventy five or so people in the crowd as Waterfall. He had his blowing in the wind rite at Sharon Meadows, on the lower slope of ‘Hippie Hill’, by an appropriately large Gum tree, where drummers sounded the knell  of passing time.

Bill’s sister Joan, her husband, and Bill’s blond niece with a videocam, and I walked towards the Hippie Hill. I said to Joan, “Have you any idea what will happen.” We agreed that neither of us had any idea.

But earlier I had asked Camille Houston to call Ann Cohen, and so Ann had arrived with her traveling harp and gently assumed the post of Choreographer General. Sitting regally with the rapt gaze of a seer, Ann steered us and we became as one in a circle, 175 feet in diameter, we Omed away, drew in closer to Ann’s command, and like a Quaker meeting of friends and family many stood and spoke aloud. Some read from The Waterfallian. Others told tales of past adventures. Alice will send pictures. Camille organized Daffodils en masse, many brought rugs but the weather was spot-on sunny.

There will be an issue of selected Waterfallian back issues someday…

Please leave a word or two, memories, quotes of what you said, what happened at the Hill and the like.

What Waterfall said Ghandi answered when asked about British civilization

When asked, “What do you think about British civilization?”

Ghandi replied,

“I think it would be a good idea.”

Water waxes with spirit and determination, with decency and respect for creation…

I am Leviathan, a humpback whale, my kind lived peacefully in the oceans of our earth for eons before hunter man the conqueror and destroyer came to kill.

Great white sharks will attack a young whale if it strays from the pod, but until the men came, an adult whale had no enemy, other than the occasional big squid, who usually lost.

When the men came, first in their wooden whalers with harpoons it was bad, but then the steel ships came with their noises and explosions. Massive submarines, even bigger than I am, invaded our territory, bringing with them their terrible blasts, and an all-pervading noise that dooms our kind. Many great whales have been killed by these infernal war machines, some even torpedoed for sport and target practice.

Before the coming of monster man and his aggressive nastiness we could peacefully swim the seas for a century or more, making and listening for the music of the waters. Our songs delight us dwellers of the deep, songs that woo, songs that call us to breed.

Now the humans who inhabit the dry quarter have grown more degenerate, they maim and lay waste to people from other cultures and call it “collateral damage.”

The words of Chief Seattle, a champion of our kind, are more relevant today than ever. He said that these colonial invaders cannot be stopped, they are ruthless, even as they claim to be good, he said they are clever, but not wise.

Now, swollen with greedy pride over their power of domination, they blood the oceans with their aggressive sonar, their deadly war noises.

I, Leviathan, implore you to stop this madness.

I ask all you humans out there with spirit and determination,

with decency and respect for creation,

to stop the wars on land,

to stop the wars in the sea.

Please save us, the whales.

– Waterfall

Sicut cogitamus fuerit.

Imagine that.

Imagine turning the Pentagon’s five faces

Into a free roller-rink –

Its pentagonal shape so apt, I think.

To make this happen close all US bases

And de-commission the Pentagon –

With a roller-derby there, and the military gone.

To attain a sustainable, peaceful democracy,

With creative diplomacy for all –

Return Guantanamo to Cuba for a flamenco hall!

We’ll end the US Empire, you see

As all empires must –

With ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Sicut cogitamus fuerit.

As we think, so it will be.                                                                                                    

Waterfall spake and Wills wrote, Latin by Tom

The picture is of Corporal CS Wills RAF 1928, or so.

Om shanti salaam shalom peace

Alice Rules photograph of Waterfall in self referential T-shirt

Om shanti salaam shalom peace

…all the credo’s, fatwas, papal bulls, and dogmas from all organized religions throughout recorded history offer just the faintest  reflection of the divine.

The idea that only your dogma describes the great Mystery is to light a candle, yet call it the sun.

Om shanti salam shalom peace

– Waterfall 2010

Waterfall: The generals are in the Pentagram leering in the wishing well.

Photograph by Alice Rules

The legend of Foggy Bottom

On another rock long before time or space the people had vanquished the tyrantosaurus by cleverly stealing their eggs. Freed from their cares in the interim peopledidn’t want war any more they could bike to yakka. Work where they liked. They soon quarreled about whose cave was nicer and whose god was worse and mo bad.

And such and such and on and on.

Now Lillyupshand was no Earth.It was shaped more like a celestial potato spiraling through the void.

Well into its late motor assembly line stage there was terrible conflict. Half a century of potatoes and social unpleasantness had killed many Lillyupshands The remainder were war weary. They united for peace, for an end to organized mayhem.

The end of a great war between the Dillytians and Elbeenians War was over. The people rejoiced But the generals were all a dither…

The generals are in the Pentagram leering in the wishing well.  They put the old King’s gold coin in the bucket and crank it down to the whale in the well. Sending a gold coin to Behelzebub. “Anybody there?”

Behelzebub throws it back to Foggy Bottom tells the munitions makers, “Here are my terms. If you want an answer so people will be in fear forever and you will always be in power. All you have to do is renounce your mother. “Morality is for chumps. No fair play, only winning counts.  No sharing, only arguing more and more. No absolute truth. No good or evil.  Say whatever it takes to win. If you really worship Moloch, He Of Money and War, declare your evil deeds to be good. If any should questions you to be evil, be ruthless, say these words every day: Divide and conquer all hail Behelzebub and his minions Gog and Magog and their mighty Moloch.

“No, this is not about roasting or eating your own children. No, far from it. All that really matters is power: To dedicate yourself to power for its own sake. Insanity for its own sake.”

The generals are in the Pentagram leering in the wishing well. The old 8-ball answer in a fortune cookie…

Waterfall

If you lose your sense of Wonder, Life’s not Sacred anymore.

Photograph of Waterfall by Alice Rules

The Waterfallian

A New Day Dawning

November 2008

If you lose your sense of Wonder

Life’s not Sacred anymore.

Imagine turning the Pentagon’s five faces

Into a free roller-rink –

Its pentagonal shape so apt, I think.

To make this happen close all US bases

And de-commission the Pentagon –

With a roller-derby there, and the military gone.

To attain a sustainable, peaceful democracy,

With creative diplomacy for all –

Return Guantanamo to Cuba for a flamenco hall!

We’ll end the US Empire, you see

As all empires must –

With ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Sicut cogitamus fuerit. As we think, so it will be.

– Waterfall spake and Wills wrote, Latin by Tom

Like a river

Roll river roll

over me

over me

Flow river flow

to the sea

Who’s that a calling

Well well well well

Hold my hand

Well well well well

Night is a dawning’

Spirit is moving

all over this land

– Waterfall

The Hydrology Issue

If you understand the story

you never have to remember

the words.

Like a river

Roll river roll

over me

over me

Flow river flow

to the sea

Well well well well

Who’s that a calling

Well well well well

Hold my hand

Well well well well

Night is a dawnin’

Spirit is moving all over this land

God said “Noah, build me an Ark

Build it three hundred cubits long

Thunder’s gonna speak

Water’s gonna roll

You’re gonna reap just what you sow

Well well well well

Waterfall

Hydrology lesson

The father sun warms the surface of the mother sea.

And vapor rises, leaving salt behind.

Snow clouds leave glaciers on the continental devide

Then the river flows backto the salt sea like sea men to a womb.

With global warming the temperate glaciers retreat then vanish.

The unintended consequence:

No fresh water to re charge the ground water

And the temperate zone becomes parched,

Waterfall 2002

Politics, spirit and common sense

What did we set out to do?

Change the world.

Do  we  promise freedom

from drudgery?

We get people thinking

Give voice to their nuance.

Stimulate talk, if only to say, bah!

– Waterfall with Wills

Waterfall

Rainbow Prophesy

God said “Noah,

build me an Ark

Build it three hundred

cubits long.”

Thunder’s gonna speak

Water’s gonna roll

You’re gonna reap just

what you sow

Well I dreamed I woke with Angels

Truth and beauty

lighting every face.

No more war,

this shore is

a mighty fine place.

The storm is over.

Repopulate the land

but you remember

Where you take your stand

Truth is always true

and at your command

So love each other

this is the Promised Land.

The St. Stupid’s Day Oration

Waterfall blows conch at the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, Diamond Dave Wittaker in attendance, the year Merle Saunders died.

Photograph by Alice Rules Copyright 2010

Waterfall’s Proclamation.

The St. Stupid’s Day Oration:

In which the Oracle

Describes how,

When the True Course

Of our Affairs is endangered By the Mendacity

Of the Greedy

And Power-Lustfulness

Of the Blue Meanies,

We must Act.

For, when seas boil,

Poles melt, whales weep,

Air becomes foul,

Chickens sicken,

And cows go mad,

The human race

Calls out for Grace –

Or at least some Mercy

In its place.

If you must be all wrong

To make me write

Then peace between minds

May never take flight.

For joy and fun to flourish

We say end grim slaughter

Bring back the laughter.

– Waterfall and aviD

Now I, Wlliam Francis Waterfall, Sheehan…

Now I, William Francis Waterfall Sheehan,

urge all planetary citizens

to counsel for the end of the scourge of war

plaguing our planet.

On behalf of all universal life:

the Airy Flying Creatures,

the Denizens of the Deep,

and all those of us Walking on Terra Firma,

we petition all governments to renounce war

as state policy,

and to cease the manufacture

and development of arms.

“I, Waterfall, on behalf of universal life, do urge you to join me in suing for peace. I urge you all, from young seekers to old founders; all Muslims and Christians

W’fall looking serious, stands on a metaphorical box:

Photograph by Alice Rules, copyright 2010,

I urge you here with the call for peace;
to Hindus and Sikhs and Agnostics, atheists,
Know Nothingarians and those of Mithras;
Science and Confucius – I say we join you in peace;
Wiccan, Buddhist or Jain, Cargo Cults and Magicians,
to all I say, peace, and for god’s sake hear me!”

Why should you vote for nobody’s boss ?

Why should you vote for
nobody’s boss for president?

Because it’s a good solution to
illegal U.S. imperial power:

Nobody is willing to share.

… liberty and equality… will be best attained when all people alike
share in the government to the utmost.
– Aristotle, 384 – 322 BC

Nobody leads by example.

And now the matchless deed’s achieved
Determined, dared, and done.
– Christopher Smart, English poet, A Song to David, 1763

Nobody is for free speech.

The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty,
and can never be constrained but by despotic governments.
– George Mason, Virginia Bill of Rights, 1776. A founding father, he did not sign the U.S. Constitution because it lacked explicit individual rights. He eventually succeeded in adding the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, to the constitution.

Nobody has goals.

Life is real! Life is earnest
And the grave is not its goal
Dust thou art, to dust returneth
Was not spoken of the soul.
– Henry Longfellow, 1839

Nobody is willing to resign.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint, but to do good.
– Rufus Choate, lawyer, Speech to the Senate, 1841

Nobody needs no power.

Politics: Who Gets What, When, How.
– Harold D. Lasswell, American political scientist, title of book, 1936

Nobody turns the Pentagon
into a roller rink.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio broadcast, 1945.

Nobody believes world peace
is possible.

God and politicians willing, the United States
can declare peace upon the world, and win it.
– Ely Culbertson, contract bridge expert, Must We Fight Russia? 1946

Nobody dismantles the military.

…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…
by the military industrial complex.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address, 1961

Nobody wants no power.

When power leads man towards arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations.
– John F. Kennedy, 1963.

I say world peace, global equality,
and planetary harmony for all!
– Waterfall
I am nobody’s boss and I endorse this vision.

On Establishing Peace First step.

On Establishing Peace

All in Waterfall’s own words.
August 2007

First step: Cease-fire!

Peace on Earth NOW!
Stop all war.

There are none as blind
as those who will
not see
and
there are none so deaf
as those that will
not hear.

On Psychedelic Vision

Those who know,
may not say
And those who say,
may not know.

Stupid for peace:
Cease-fire, please.

Abandon the idea of war.

For the world
to stop all war
bring beauty
to the world!

Wage calm. We seek a Spiritual Democracy.

Photograph of Waterfall and Big Bones by Alice Rules copyright 2010

What Gives?
A democratic inquiry for disparate minds

We lust for peace! We are the lustycrats, and how!
Just a little odd, a bit different – but you can live with that.
We seek a Spiritual Democracy, the spirit in your mind’s hat.
Labor shows us how to right a wrong: End prohibition now!
As we wage calm, we find enlightenment’s doors.
‘Do as you would be done by!’ we sing and learn
We can disrupt ant-like behavior by giving in return.
Empathy is a choice – our morals need moral laws.

We need honest loose morals – lose the immoral rule!
The only ‘no’ we need, is ‘No greedy aggressors’.
Repeal the corny laws to deflate the moralizers!
Temper the religious extremes with balm’s fuel.
Put some fun in the fundamental chat.
Enjoy yourself – do as you would be done by.
You’re kinda odd? You lust for peace?
A little bit diff ? We can live with that.

– Waterfall and Wills
From the Waterfallian October 2007

The Journal of the High Church of Haight

This tree looks to have been trained about three hundred years ago to be shaped for ships timbers.

The direction of the flock

To influence the direction taken by a flock of birds in flight, all it takes is four-percent (1) of the birds to direct the way and all the others follow. Experience shows it is the same with people, all it takes is a thinking few, for the four percent to arise and be heard and direct the public discourse. (Waterfall thought that this interpretation of what he said was elitist. I said it was science.) The call has been heard, now the roar is of ‘We, The People,’ as we join the chorus with a howl for the indictment of our false leaders who got us into this quagmire of fire. We declare peace! We say cease fire! Yes to fun funds! No to funding feuds. Sound the retreat.

We and others say opposing war and ordering that we cease aggression, are signs of sensible maturity; that to apologize to the world for lashing out in anger, and to make amends with an ‘iizya’ (2) proves the strength of our mind and body. The more we talk among ourselves the more the talk spreads, and the greater the effect of our thoughts upon the actions of the government. Soon a groundswell of people unites in grand alliance to rid the nation of this disabled duck and his oily schemers that kill, these crooks-in-law, the petty thieves who gave us our bill of wrongs, these unwise white men.

Talk, talk, and then – talk some more! Talk ‘til the walls shake, for talk will guide our actions; will create action for peace from your strength of mind.
–Waterfall and Wills

1 Current research in a science magazine I can’t find.

2 A practical Islamic answer to the Christian presence in the Arab world: on the Palestine, Syrian border in the early 7th century, the Melkite Christian John, Bishop of Ayla, made peace with the Prophet, with an ‘iizya’ payment of 300 dinars. Using this example, perhaps the Prophet would say today, “The USA owes Iraq an iizya payment.” From the Way of the Mystics, the Early Christian Mystics

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” – – Oscar Wilde

From The Waterfallian June 2007 Volume blip Numb one

Durga image to ponder on

The ten chakra colors and you
including ultra violet, brown and black.

This graphic aid is a new, old way towards sensitive feelings. To find out where you are today, fast for three moments, stare at the picture, close your eyes, and avoid all stimuli through stillness to see the colors of your body’s currently active chakra spaces – inside your eyelids. What colors are you seeing most strongly? The colors are shown here on Durga, with their influence on the self; their symbolic manifestation of your life; together with Sri Lakshmi’s ten qualities and objects of existence. Through study of the color associations in the minds eye, this chart can help lead you to an awareness of your current bliss. OK, three, two, one… Close your eyes, see where you’re at.

Ultra violet, essence,
the manifestation of nothingness, beyond the beyond, spiritual luster.

Violet: crown, an emanation of velocity,
the expanding cosmos, a universal spirit of others doing to you, as you to them.

Indigo: third eye, intuitive sight, the light, peaceable society.

Blue: the throat, communication, the sky, power of the people.

Green: the heart, healthy environment, growth, harvest.

Yellow: the stomach, home, grain, food.

Orange: the genitalia, pleasure, fruit, beauty.

Red: base of the spine, meditation, magma, good fortune.

Brown: the legs, movement, the land above, achievement.

Black: the feet and toes, roots, the living earth below, capability.

Use this simple guide to find your personal space,
and as an aid to living a life of bliss through self awareness.

– Waterfall and Wills
From The Waterfallian 5 October 2006

Creating a Nation of Bodhis

Art by El Lissitski

Bodhi: Our term for the Sanskrit Bodhi Sattva, a name for the Buddha Gautama before he got the light, and a name given to those who are headed that way, but who put off the pay-off until they have taught others what they know and made the world a better place.

The more Bodhis there are, the better the world. A Bodhi is like some Jill or Jack who’s really into helping other people – animals too. OK, plants as well, yes, and the occasional rock while we’re at it. Could be you. Being nerdy-good gets you headed to Nirvana or Heaven, call it whatever, take your pick, it’s the place to be.

You get to be called a Bodhi if you got that bright-light thing going. Being a Bodhi means you’ve turned the light on, and seen it, know what it’s all about. You look for the light – so you can help your chaps with what you know and do. As somebodhi said, if you know how to swim – teach ’til nobodhi drowns.

There’s a lot more than that in the old original, but what we’re getting at here is that if we all aimed at getting the light, we could all be Bodhis. If we make the Bodhi not an exclusive title (like that uptight, “Only one Bodhi Sattva in a life-time,” stuffiness) we can put the light on for all. We got a light most everybodhi can see.

With that in mind, we show here the way to be a Bodhi.

The Ten Ways of Bodhi
Enjoy Big Fun Generosity makes you grin. Tell a joke.
Have a Clean Mind Clear the way for creativity. Draw a circle.
See with Vision Originality radiates from the bod. Skillfully help others.
Shine On Have the vim to shine in the dark. Feel your way.
Be Thick Have perseverance in the face of ignorance. Never give in.
Go Way-Out-There Take wisdom to the event-horizon. Say Ommm.
Go Even Further Beyond the beyond. Say it twice. Beyond the beyond.
Be Solid Have no movement. Choose your exit strategy.
Engage Elegant Wit Exercise your bod power. Breathe in.
Be a Big Bang Exhale a puff of wisdom. Ahhhhhhh.

–Wills (I wrote it) and Waterfall (it was his idea, and he spoke it)
In the original Waterfallian text I had ‘Bodhi’ as ‘Bod’, but Waterfall did not care for that, so in respect for his wishes, I have here revised and used ‘Bodhi’ instead.

The Game of Life: I am Waterfall, a minister of universal life

The Game of Life

I am Waterfall, a minister of universal life, who asks all sentient beings to be at peace, to abandon all animosity – for it’s a beautiful day in the here and now. Here’s what I say: No greater reward can be earned than to be loved and to love in return. Here is your opportunity to play.

The game of life is love and love is why I write, honoring the memories of both Chet Helms and Jerry Garcia – visionaries who saw the path to the light, knowing that it is this path that helps all of us to be free.

Over the last fifty years, Jerry and Chet worked for peace and love as their reason for living: in their doing and their delight. They created a brilliance when darkness hid a culture of repression, they made an art for us all.

Chet and Jerry spent their lives in the peace movement and in the counter-culture: this in contrast to accepting the endless wars and poverty of spirit defined by the cultural norm¬ – they shouted from the rooftops of our lives that we were lovers of peace.

To show this cultural divide, here is a game of life, a list of opposites comparing the ideas of “Culture” and “Counter-culture,” for you to play.

Here are some differences that need to be said between the
Culture and the Counter-culture

They want war. We favor peace
They want one supreme. We’re all equal
They want the Rule of Gold. We go with the Golden Rule

They are presumptuous. We are inquisitive
They are dogmatic. We’re open-minded
They are reactionary. We create

They are religious. We are spiritual
They are xenophobic. We go “Vive la difference.”
They say, “How much?” We say, “How well?”

Can you think of more? Shout it aloud, what do I hear?

I hear they are controlling, we are accepting.

Here’s another, Culture is greedy, the Counter-culture shares.

Culture tells lies, the Counter-culture wants the truth.

Culture has fear, Counter-culture shouts, “Courage!”

Culture rules, “Do this.” Counter-culture says, “Why?”

Think of more. Live the difference. Extra points for wit.

– Waterfall and Wills 26th Oct 2005

Call for entries

Please would all those who have relevant photographs of recent Waterfall events, please send them to dctwills@earthlink.net or post ‘em here if you can. Events that come to mind would include the Street Fair at Peoples Cafe and, especialy, Christmas day, courtesy of the Sheehans, for which we thank them with unbounded grace, So come all ye snap takers, show us your soul.

A note on the texts.

Waterfall was a man of ideas, tuned into a higher plane, his ideas were the stuff of goodness.

But Water’ was often unable to write a sustained, understandable whole. There were many unfinished sentences. He seldom used anything approaching a substantive verb. Water’ would talk a hundred words where one would do, he seldom finished an idea, leaving you hanging waiting for the punch-line, frequently incapable of saying anything approaching something readable, so when I wrote down what he said I’d take brief notes, edit and revise continuously and finish up the line of reasoning with my own conclusions.

As a result the pieces are:
Credited to ‘Waterfall’ if his words were unedited.
Credited to ‘Waterfall and Wills’ if, as was usual, I took notes, used some of his words and created the text.
Credited as ‘Wills and Waterfall’ if the text was mostly mine, but based loosely on Water’s idea.
If the text is credited to ‘Wills’ only, then that is entirely my work.

Over time, eight years in all, as we worked, the cooperation between us began to unravel and we disagreed more and more about our way of working, until eventually, as he realized he was dieing and as his mind began to fail, it became difficult to work together at all.

To begin with, in 2002, he ceded complete editorial control to me, while towards the end of his earthly tenure he began to demand more editorial control, which I fought against with increasing volume. We argued loudly. There would be periods where I refused to write. Plus I did not like his what I considered his tacky drawings and refused to use them unless I redrew ‘em, and he in petty return did not like mine, so the number of drawings diminished. Ah the vagaries of creative work. But it all worth it, because he had such good ideas.