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By Kay Ebeling
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A huge rain cloud approached,
threatening to end the day at Holy Man Jam, Boulder Colorado August 1970. I jumped up on the stage shouting, "I'll dance the rain away" and, as I put all the power I could find inside into my moves, the clouds did indeed blow away. The crowd called out, "You
are Sunshine, your name should be Sunshine." I floated off stage and the name just stuck.
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From August 1970 to mid-1976 my name was
"Sunshine," me, the cantankerous old woman who just wrote "MAGA:
Let a large portion of U.S. population die from Covid, it'll get rid of all the
fricking traffic" sounding and looking as grumpy and ill tempered as those words imply. I used to be called Sunshine.
Who was I then? Summer 1970, I had lived
the previous months at the Integral Yoga Institute "ashram" in L.A., a minefield of funny incidents in itself. A year earlier, I had
been in Laguna Beach hanging with a group who "followed" Timothy
Leary, as if he were a holy man.
So that day in Boulder I was probably pretty "spacey" as I'd taken about a
hundred psychedelic "trips" in the previous year, and had moved into the ashram in Burbank in part to straighten myself up.
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| Satchidananda opens Woodstock 1969 |
Yes, there really was a Yoga Ashram in
Burbank, California, in 1970 and I lived there, renting a room I shared with two other
yoginis. Swami Satchidananda had come from New York to open a branch of his,
whatever it was, and rented a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the
Barham onramp to the 101, a huge house with seven or eight bedrooms. The swami put
bunks in most the rooms and for a meager amount you could live there while you
took Yoga classes. We opened to the public Wednesday nights for "chanting" and for group meditation every morning at six
followed by asanas in the furniture free living room.
I did not last long living at the L.A. ashram. I was still in the midst of what was
diagnosed lin 1998 as "PTSD since age five," still reacting to molestation that happened to me at the
hands of Father Horne when I was preschool aged. So, as I did in
everything in my life, I created a sexual scandal at the Burbank IYI, with the guy who
was in charge of course, after which everyone treated me so bad, I just felt more comfortable leaving.
I had nowhere to go, but PTSD
since age five played out in my life with spontaneity and frenzy. I'd grab onto
an idea and jump on it so fast I had no time to realize it was a bad idea. However,
through all these weird years, I had a kind of faith that everything would be
all right, even while everything was not all right, because I was living Faster Than the Speed of Life
Now I was in Boulder arriving by hitched
ride in hiking boots and a backpack, with a body that was Yoga-honed so I danced
lithe like a magical fairy. In my mind, I was the lead character in HAIR! that I always wanted
to be. I jumped around the festival and
floated from group to group and was alone in a crowd full of strangers with
whom I was immediately intimate. I slept in people's homes on their floor, went
days without bathing, and went back to the festival for as long as it lasted. Psychedelic
drugs were being passed around and lots of grass, so I know I was high as a
kite through it all.
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| Photo credit Robert Altman |
At one point, a crowd was gathered at
the stage waiting, I think just before Swami Satchidananda was to speak. A huge
rain cloud approached, threatening to put an end to the day's celebration. I jumped up on the stage and said, "I'll dance the rain away" and then swayed and swiveled and pretended I was Isadora
Duncan- one of my many fantasies that I was the 19th century dancer
reincarnated- and I performed with all the power I could find inside, summoning everything
that was wrong with me and turning it around so I could use it to make
magical things happen.
And as I danced, the rain clouds blew away, everyone
cheered, and as I stepped into outstretched arms off the stage, people said,
"You are Sunshine, you are the Sunshine, you should be called
Sunshine."
And it stuck. Until I saw how bad the name "Sunshine" looked as a newspaper byline.
If you look in the archives of Austin
American Statesman, Daily Texan, and the counter culture weekly that was in
Austin 1974-76, you'll find letters to the editor, and in the Texan guest
editorials, with the byline Sunshine Ebeling. It was when I got my first journalism
job on the Jimmy Carter campaign for President that I realized that name really doesn't work
as a byline in a newspaper, as it took away any credibility I had in what I wrote. So without giving it
much thought, I changed my name again, to Kay though the birth certificate says Kathryn, and all my life I was Kathy, which for some reason makes me nauseous when I hear it.
Now my byline fit on one line in a newspaper column.
WAIT THERE'S MORE
In Boulder I connected with a group of Satchidananda followers and rode with them to Dallas Texas, where they were starting a new IYI ashram in a big house on Lemon Ave. I soon ran the kitchen cooking vegetarian meals and taught Intermediate Hatha. Swamiji came through one time and "initiated" us and gave everyone new Indian names. But when it came time for me, he said, "No, you are Sunshine, I can't change that."
I just went to Google Maps and looked at
University of Colorado Boulder, where the Holy Man Jam took place. It must have
been at Farrand Field, as I remember a long rectangular span of open grassy
space near the music and arts buildings. Today there are dormitories all around
what's now called an athletic field, back then there were more shops and apartments.
Although apparently they still have concerts and festivals on that strip of field.
I lived through so many things that hardly anyone has documented, at least in
places you can find online. I should write more about my experiences, wish I had
a writing partner…
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Links https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2020/05/when-i-hitchhiked-from-la-to-alaska-i.html
and
http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com
*
Cut Paragraph:
If you hiked to the Leary Ranch, you'd pass the laboratory that produced Sunshine LSD deep back in the woods, but that has nothing to do with my name. In Laguna near Leary, we all took a dose of some psychedelic every few days, although the elite among us only took mescaline, because it was organic, LSD was synthetic and chemical.
(Another cut paragraph)
On the ground floor of the mansion in what would be a family room/ den, the floor was laid out for groups of 20 to 30 to eat meals sitting cross legged around beautiful rugs and cloths like we imagine you'd find in India, but very American, as were the celebrities and rising stars who came often to classes and "feasts" at the IYI, bright eyed, shining, bone thin from fasts and extreme diets, cool and connected. When people came to Hollywood to be new cast members of HAIR!, they'd stay at the IYI ashram until they found a real place to live
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