Demon Box

“It is called, this famine, entropy. Eh? No ringing bells? Ach, you Americans. Very well, some front-brain effort if you please. Entropy is a term from conceptual physics. It is the judgment passed on us by a cruel law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To put it technically, it is ‘the nonavailability of energy in a closed thermodyamic system.’ Eh? Can you encompass this, my little Yankee pinheads? The nonavailability of energy?”

Nobody ventured an answer this time. He smiled around the circle.

“To put it mechanically, it means that your automobile cannot produce its own petroleum. If not fueled from without it runs down and stops. Goes cold. Very like us, yah? Without an external energy supply our bodies, our brains, even our dreams… must eventually run down, stop, and go cold.”

“Hard-nail stuff,” big Behema observed. “Bleak.”

The doctor squinted against the smoke of his habitual cigarette. A non-filter Camel hung from his shaggy Vandyke, always, even as he was on this night—up to his jowls in a tub of hot water with a nude court recorder on his lap. He lifted a puckered hand above the surface as though to wave the smoke away.

“Hard nails? Perhaps. But perhaps this is what is needed to prick the pinhead’s dream, to awaken him, bring him to his senses—here!”

Instead of waving, the hand slapped the black water—crack. The circle of bobbing faces jumped like frogs.

“We are only here, in this moment, this leaky tub. The hot water stops coming in? Our tub cools down and drains to the bottom. Bleak stuff, yah… but is there any way to experience what is left in our barrel without we confront that impending bottom? I think not.”

About a dozen of my friends and family were gathered in the barrel to receive this existential challenge. We’d been driving down the coast to take a break from the heat the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department was putting on our La Honda commune, bound for Frank Dobbs’s ex-father-in-law’s avocado ranch in Santa Barbara. When we passed Monterey I had been reminded that coming up just down the road was the Big Sur Institute of Higher Light, and that Dr. Klaus Woofner was serving another hitch as resident guru. I was the only one on board who had attended one of his seminars, and as we drove I regaled my fellow travelers with recollections of the scene—especially of the mineral baths simmering with open minds and unclad flesh. By the time we reached the turnoff to the Institute, I had talked everybody into swinging in to test the waters.

Everybody except for the driver; somewhat sulky about the senseless stop anyway, Houlihan had elected to stay behind with the bus.

“Chief, I demur. I needs to rest my eyes more than cleanse my soul—the wicked curves ahead, y’unnerstand, not to mention the cliffs. You all go ahead: take some snapshots, make your, as it were, obeisance. I’ll keep a watch on the valuables and in the event little Caleb wakes up. Whup? There he is now.”

At the mention of his name the child’s head had popped up to peer through his crib bars. Betsy started back.

“Nay, Lady Beth, you needn’t miss this holy pilgrimage. Squire Houlihan’ll keep the castle safe and serene. See? The young prince dozes back down already. Whatcha think, Chief? Thirty minutes for howdies and a quick dip, forty-five at the most? Then ride on through the fading fires of sunset.”

He was wishful thinking on all counts. The little boy was not dozing down; he was standing straight up in his crib, big-eyed to see the crew trooping out the bus door to some mysterious Mecca, and it was fading sunset by the time we had finished our hellos at the lodge and headed for the tubs. It was long past midnight before we finally outlasted the regular bathers and could congregate in the main barrel where the king of modern psychiatry was holding court.

This was the way Woofner liked it best—everybody naked in his big bath. He was notorious for it. Students returned from his seminars as though from an old-fashioned lye-soap laundry, bleached clean inside and out. His method of group ablution came to be known as “Woofner’s Brainwash.” The doctor preferred to call it Gestalt Realization. By any name, it reigned as the hottest therapy in the Bay Area for more than ten years, provoking dissertations and articles and books by the score. There are no written records of those legendary late-night launderings, but a number of the daytime seminars were taped and transcribed. One of the most well known sessions was recorded during the weekend of my first visit. It’s a good sample:

Dr. Woofner: Good afternoon. Are you all comfortable? Very good. Enjoy this comfort for a while. It may not last.