Meeting (The Zen Man Allan Ellis)

Great catching up with old friends here, slowly in order to savour properly, usually only one every 4 - 5 days.
Last night Alan Ellis, former hippie, wonderful guitarist & drummer, zen man and poet, told us he had seen the Beatles at our Festival Hall in 1964 (?) when he was fourteen, and also the Stones a few years later, TWICE, at the Palais in St. Kilda (Melb.)
Alan introduced me to many great writers & thinkers, dissidents that had not appeared on uni reading lists in my time at least. The Ellis clan on this western side of town are well-known autodidacts from way way back. (Cousins Tony and Barry have their own talents.)
Wonderful to see the old lion again, looking damn well i must say. (The walking-stick for recent onset gout.)
Thanks to John Goodman for his (unexpected) documentation.
A wintry street in coastal Williamstown with sandals and a light southerly blowing off the Tasman.

.... Winter woollen cap, zipper top and three layers beneath all from the suitcases stored in the back shed where cedar pieces kept the silverfish at bay. Passing strange donning the old gear for these meetings with old friends over such a stretch - a paradoxical kind of reverse disguise. Strange too staying in the studio again that Carl has vacated for the term. Seven or eight new families in this stretch of the street (running about two hundred metres), including in one of the houses Milan Maric built a woman with three much-loved poodles and late model Merc garaged.

         Cycling down to Williamstown along the water the big textured sky had one muttering and shaking the head as in years past. A phantasmagoria more narcotic still after the time in Singapore.
         One little story of Al-pal's that has inevitably stuck in memory: During one of the old hippie's deeper ventures into Zen Al had joined a group across in neighbouring Yarraville, where a Vietnamese Master presided at the temple, a woman in this case with little English.  After Alan had declared his intention to join the regular gathering, for introduction to the practice the Master assigned the new devotee the task of cleaning out the toilets. Unfazed an old Zen student such as Al of course, though the attendance did fall away in subsequent weeks.

NB. Five years later, a written piece with the same title published by Pendulum Papers in Australia (Aug 2022)