In the early seventies, when Kung Fu flickered across American televisions, my family and our Berkeley friends spent two weeks each summer at Berkeley Tuolumne Camp—a “rustic getaway” that was really just Yosemite-adjacent squalor with better lighting. We slept in glorified tents, shared public latrines, and dined communally on food that could have been mistaken for field rations. I liked to think of myself as a young Caine, the barefoot monk of Kung Fu, wandering the wilderness in contemplative solitude. Sadly, my Zen aspirations were constantly interrupted by counselors who mistook joy for a group activity.
Every hour they corralled us for something: forced sing-alongs, talent shows, and “athletic contests” such as tug-of-war, which was neither athletic nor a contest so much as an exercise in rope burn. One counselor resembled Bernadette Peters in both hair and chaos. Another, a sun-bleached folk singer in patched jeans and a tunic, looked unsettlingly like a California Jesus. He roamed the camp with his guitar and a homemade theology he called the Divine Point System. Every act earned or lost “Jesus Points”: ten off for littering, fifteen on for picking up trash, thirty off for talking during the talent show. He doled out morality like a camp accountant for God.
I privately dubbed him Berkeley Camp Jesus, and his system wormed its way into my psyche like a pious parasite. Soon I was mentally awarding and deducting points from myself all day long. Back home, I picked a plum from our tree, ate it, and flicked the pit into the neighbor’s yard. Immediately, I heard the voice: “Ten points deducted, you littered.” Then came my rebuttal: “No, you planted future nourishment for your neighbors—plus twenty.” Thus began my lifelong facility for creative moral bookkeeping—a skill that would serve me well in future ethical entanglements.
That same summer, my real education came not from campfire sing-alongs but from a contraband paperback: Herman Raucher’s Summer of ’42. While my peers hiked and swam, I stayed inside my tent reading about Hermie’s torrid affair with a married woman. I’d already seen the movie with Jennifer O’Neill, so my imagination was well supplied. Nature, with all its pines and chirping insects, couldn’t compete with adolescent desire and literary scandal.
When I finished the novel, I didn’t rejoin the living; I began my private religion: Dice Baseball. Armed with two dice, stat sheets, and a Panasonic tape recorder, I simulated entire baseball seasons—162 games of pure obsession. I played both teams, announced every pitch in my best Monte Moore voice, conducted post-game interviews as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and myself, and recorded it all. My church was a canvas tent, my congregation a stack of baseball cards.
One morning, my father—having eaten steak and eggs in the communal mess hall—entered the tent, surveyed my sanctuary, and decided I was going feral. “I didn’t bring you to the wilderness to sit inside all day,” he said. Then, in a gesture that still burns in my soul, he used my Bert ‘Campy’ Campaneris baseball card to floss steak gristle from his teeth. “Get out and play,” he ordered, leaving me spiritually shattered and morally cleansed.
I trudged to the lake in silent protest and asked Master Po, my ever-patient inner guru, why I preferred solitude.
“Solitude, Grasshopper,” he said, “is the forge of your Inner Light.”
“So my father was wrong to kick me out?”
“I did not say that. The Inner Light must be balanced by the Outer Radiance of the world. You cannot discover one without glimpsing the other. Your father was right to deliver what you call a ‘kick in the pants.’ Balance, Grasshopper. Always balance.”
And so I learned the paradox of enlightenment: seek inner peace, but occasionally go outside before your father uses your baseball cards as dental tools.
Cinemorphosis 
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