The Cycle of Learning → Becoming || The Da Vinci Road

At twenty-five years of age I decided I would probably stay single for the rest of my life simply because I had not met any eligible males that interested me beyond the first few conversations.

I mentally categorized the men I knew as “talks about himself,” “talks about movies,” “doesn't talk,” “talks about religion” and “listens to me talk.”

I didn't know exactly what was missing in that list. What would a man be like who did interest me? What would he talk about and why did this seem important?

The answer to these questions eluded me. After returning home from four-ish years of overseas travel, I hitched a ride west with my brother to visit a few friends. One of those friends had written me faithfully while I was overseas. She had heard/read me rant about the general obtuseness of the men I'd thus far encountered and wrote, “I know exactly the kind of man you will fall for.”

When I arrived in New Mexico to visit my friend, I met her brother.

“Check this out,” he told us as we drove to some rural property he had purchased. He showed us the earth-ship foundations to a Navajo hogan he was going to build with straw bales and stucco.

“What's this?” I asked looking at a round metal object on the ground with other round metal joints welded into it at almost-perpendicular angles.

“Oh, I had a friend of mine make that,” he said excitedly, coming over to show us. “The wooden vigas will fit inside these holes and the whole thing will sit on top of the straw bale walls like this, and I then I'll put the roof on. The middle circle will have glass fitted in it and will be like a central skylight.”

Later we stopped by his bookstore to pick up some camping gear and I noticed an odd contraption sitting in a corner. He came back in the room as I knelt down to look closer at it.

“That's a Rife Machine,” he said. “Know what that is?”

“No,” I said. “Did you invent it?”

He shook his head. “No, Royal Rife invented it. I just tried to make one.”

“What is it? What does it do?”

“Uh… it creates bio-interactive resonances on a cellular level. Rife believed that he could destroy bacterial and viral cell walls with resonance.” He winced in my direction, checking to see if I was “with him” or not.

“Resonances… like vibrations?” I said. “Like the vibrations of the opera singer that shatter the wine glass?”

“Yeah. Yeah, like that… but shattering bacteria.” He looked at me in surprise. “Yeah, have you seen that other places in nature?” I shook my head, thinking…

“Uh, I don't know, but you know how certain music or sounds can make you feel chilled out and others can really ‘rattle’ you, even hurt your ears? How does it destroy a certain bacteria without destroying other things—things you don't want to destroy?”

The conversation went on for hours, then days, then months, and covered topics like Bible-study method, education, electro-magnetic fields, music, language, and literature.

The man who was to become “Daddio” continued to write me and call me after I had returned home to Tennessee. We talked for hours about the things I was working on (a book, midwifery, phonetics) and then talked about the things he was working on (methods of water electrolysis, poetry, straw-bale construction).

Soon I realized this man had taken the time to observe me and to allow me to observe him. I could see that it wasn't his “angle” on me; it was real. I found him interesting because he was interested in life and in me. He was on the same road, heading the same direction.

A few months later I flew out to visit him because he wanted to talk about “us” in person. As I came off the plane I saw him waiting with a nervous grin on his bearded face and his first words were, “Hey you, I see you.”

And I knew that he really did. I loved that he was still “becoming” and that because of it, he could see me.