The First Three Years - 1973-1976
I was born just before 6:00 AM on Monday, April 30, 1973, at Petaluma Valley Hospital in Sonoma. This makes me a Taurus born in the lunar year of the Ox, so a double-bull. Every 12 years is the lunar year of the Ox, when I consider myself a tripple-bull.
April 30 is the anniversary of the date that Hitler supposedly shot himself. It is also Vietnam Reunification Day, Victory Day, or Liberation Day, when the "Communist" north captured Saigon in the south, technically ending the American conflict in Southeast Asia. I put "Communist" in sarcasm quotes because Communism has never actually existed, being that it is against the greed and self-interest prevalent in a significant percentage of humans' nature.
Of course I don't remember much that happened that in my first few years, and whatever hazy memories I have appear to be still images.
By this time, my parents had already entered what had been the Red Mountain Ranch cult, which was apparently marketed as a commune. The cult's original leader, Alex Horn, had already been ejected, potentially for violence and possibly for sexual misbehavior (records don't seem to exist and reports are conflicting). I found some accusations on the Internet that this may have involved young boys, but I had always heard that it involved female members, and that adult male member Carl (later to become my godfather) had punched him out when he told members to begin digging their own graves. Note that while researching this topic, I found ChatGPT censoring itself, likely due to their risk of lawsuits for defamation or otherwise.
Alex has his own Wikipedia page, and there are other pages that mention the Red Mountain Ranch cult:
Anne Haas, apparently born Anne Burridge but renamed through her second marriage, supposedly left Alex in 1969. She was supposedly involved in the Subud interfaith spiritual movement. There were some interfaith concepts in the cult, but I don't remember Anne having any real knowledge of or expertise in anything except rambling lectures. The cult also supposedly focussed on principles of George Gurdjieff, which interested my father, although he later said that he felt personally more aligned with Zen Buddhism. Gurdjieff also has a Wikipedia page:
Anne became the leader of a derivative cult. This was sometimes referred to as something like the Sonoma Mountain Group due to Anne's ownership of a property on Sonoma Mountain. The adults called it Anne Haas's Group of Friends, or at least I remember seeing something like this on a printed list of the members with their contact information. Members typically just called it the group. The members were called groupers, though some of the adults objected to this term. Many really didn't like it when the kids called it a cult.
If I remember correctly, the membership list had about 100 family names on it, but it could have been twice or half this number. While many families left over the years, very few joined the cult. I remember only one - with a kid named Cass that joined us in seventh grade. I think that family only wanted to send their child to the school, likely without knowing much about the cult.
The following book provides an approachable introduction to Gurdjieff's theories, which I believe have some value, especially regarding observing ones self, which I see as a form of presence or mindfulness:
I think that my birth was around the time that my father started his landscaping business, Gardens West. Apparently, he didn't realize that this company name included his last name until he had answered the phone a few times, "Jay West at Gardens West." At this time, he was apparently also selling life insurance.
My younger brother Adrian arrived in August of 1975.
I have only one very vague memory from this period of my life, and I'm not even certain that it's a real memory. I think I can see my mother getting dressed, wearing dark stockings. In my mind, there is nothing sexual about this memory, so I'm not sure why it stands out. This may have been the night of the tragedy that I'll describe shortly.
It's possible that within the first couple of years after my birth I was in a daycare named Gingerbread House A grouper named Barbara ran the daycare ouf of their house. She was married to Carl, who was one of my godfathers. They were the parents of Andy, who was one of my best friends during childhood. I liked their dog spot, but I remember that it crapped all over their yard, which stunk. I also remember getting dropped off their wearing my favorite shirt.
I don't remember him, but apparently my brother Tim had a beagle named Beatle around this time.