Ron Stock Biography

My best friend of forty-five years died not too long ago
and like the fool I used to be I reacted with machismo.
I was building a home on a mesa of wild rabbits and sage,
thinking about my pal I was depressed, angry, in a rage.
...

These friends need our help who are swimming in the water.
The Nile crocodile and the Congo clawless otter.
The American alligator and the Ganges River dolphin.
The Loggerhead sea turtle and the Utah Lake sculpin.
...

of Hurricane Patricia slamming into the little fishing village of La Manzanilla del Mar, Mexico, on October 23,2015, in the late afternoon, early evening light, until darkness
of palm trees that swished and swayed like pulsating jellyfish in the violent turbulence
of water-drenched green leaves pasted in elaborate patterns across colorful adobe walls
of a baby chick, in a nest, in a weak tree, of how it survived 165 mph winds, or not
...

The last week of 1968. In an old white house called The Ghetto West in Kalamazoo. A friend and I are in a basement room of barn wood walls and carpeting green and blue. A groovy space with a universe of stars painted on a flat black ceiling, candles galore, incense burning, and the mellow sounds from a stereo on the edge of a sunken floor.
I'm on my back, eyes closed, on the rim, head propped against a pillow. Mort, my guide, has asked me to swallow a 550-microgram tab of LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide.
Mort reads from The Psychedelic Experience; Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book based upon The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I feel woozy, but I am able to listen. 'O Ron, the time has come for you to seek new levels of reality. Your ego and the Ron game are about to cease. You are about to be set face to face with the clear light. Do not become attached nor afraid.' Sometime later, musical notes become raw vibrant colors that merge and explode into dazzling molecular waves of energy. I sit up, open my eyes. The walls are vibrating, side to side, dancing, up and down, shimmying, to and fro, just before they pulsate into an intense red hot flame and melt away. Faaaaar out! I
think. But I did think. The point is not to think. To let go. To blow out, the flame of thought. To find the clear light. I lie down, relax, try to keep my, Ego Death, in sight. Eyes closed, kaleidoscopic images cascade over a spring of liquid inside my glistening arteries. Red, orange, and yellow psychedelic spinning childhood memories swirl, mingle, fuse with a retinal circus of floating amoebic forms. Darwinian insights carry my mind's eye back down the flow of time until the drumbeat of my heart, beats, with
...

Roger,35, is a tall, blond, thickset, redneck handyman, and as strong as a buffalo. He's dressed in a green-checkered shirt, brown safari hat, tattered jeans. His son, Denny,9, is small, thin-skinned, sweet. He collects stamps, listens to rap, and today wears tan pants, a teal coat, black tennis shoes, a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. It's cool in the Northwest. A mist hangs, below soft gray clouds and narrow bands of pale-blue violet sky. Rolling swells blanket nervous seas. A slight breeze whisks away the tips of dancing waves.
Roger and Denny are in a 15-foot aluminum boat. Roger is fishing for Sockeye Salmon in Puget Sound, near a gentle rip tide racing through a whitewater channel. The outboard motor churns, as Roger points his boat into the flow of the tide, and remains stationary. Next, he stands, steadies the throttle arm with one knee, casts his lure into a small pool, and almost immediately hooks a big, strong, fighting fish. Salmon like to run away from the tug so Roger gives out line. When his prey tires he tries to reel it back in, but before he can, this determined fish pulls his boat into a spinning vortex measuring over 50 feet wide. As the craft circles around just inside the perimeter of the vortex, Roger, Booming Yahoos, holds his pole over his head, while he, the terrified boy, and boat, are pirouetting around and around under his stationary rod and reel. All laughing stops when Roger's line tangles on the propeller blade and snaps. The beast, swims free. The engine sputters, dies.
A loud whine as Denny, dizzy, ashen-faced, slumps to the floor of the boat now spinning around in ever smaller and faster circles. With no oars on board to pull out of the vortex, Roger tilts the engine up, reaches down to untangle his line from the prop with a knife, finishes, lowers the motor, stands again, and pulls on the starting cord. The engine does not turn over. Roger pulls until the engine ignites, but the throttle with the over-sensitive spring is open too far, so while standing, when the motor sparks to life, the boat slings
Roger over a gunnel into the swirling sea. So now boy, in boat, with churning outboard motor jerked aside, and man, in water, are being sucked down into the funneling hole.
...