After viewing the post about Hermes Reiter’s memorial,
Calvert Bullock contributed this remembrance of an old friend. (Hermes died in 2007.)
In the early 1970’s I met Hermes at the Center in Myrtle
Beach. We quickly became friends. I think he was in the middle of his 37-day
fast; but he drank so much coffee that I told him that I would call him Twelve
Cups, in honor of the mast Twelve Coats. He also told me that he had always
wanted to “know everything” but knowing Baba took care of that.
In Miami I got to help him with Baba’s photos in a darkroom
that was only available from 9 pm into the wee hours. I am lucky enough to have
a few photos that were not published. Hermes administered the eight-hour
hydrotherapy cleansing bath to several people. He asked me to assist him, so I
did but he got cantankerous and kept asking me to put on “Nights in White
Satin” over and over. I almost got tired of it.
I am not sure when he got the name Hermes, but I remember he
called me Bullock … cart, with a snicker.
We played tennis at different times and he would pause to
have a Camel. In 1975 we started an overland trek to India. In Zurich,
Switzerland, we went in a shop to ask directions about trains or something.
Outside I asked Hermes if he remembered all she said. He said he remembered nothing,
he had only been staring at her beauty. We also went across a field with a sign
in it saying Fallenfluh [where Meher Baba visited and encountered a spiritual
agent in 1934]. We decided to camp in those woods near the cliff.
In France we rode the
train past our destination and had to sleep on benches in a park between so
many condos. If only we spoke French that would have been better. One night in
Rome we finished supper late and were not sure of directions, so I said let’s
ask the cop. So we asked that man even though he had a machine gun on his
shoulder. He was most helpful. When we got to Assisi at midnight we heard a
popular American song. We had two miles to walk to town. We stopped halfway
there and threw our sleeping bags down in a field. The next morning we were
awakened by nuns singing hymns in Italian about 50 yards away. We had slept in
an olive grove near a nunnery. It was a lovely way to wake up! We found Baba’s
cave and saw that many Baba cards had been left there. In the Cathedral of St.
Francis, Hermes also ran into a man that he had met in Myrtle Beach.
In Greece one night
Hermes and I noticed the spotlights on the Parthenon and went to see why.
Crowds were climbing up all those steps. A woman who was rushing down asked us
if we had tickets. We said no; she said, “Have these.” When we got to our free
seats the Moscow Symphony started their concert! Another night in Greece we
could not find lodging so we threw our sleeping bags down in a field, which may
have been a cemetery. Hermes heard noises and said he thought there were horses
in our field. We were too sleepy to care.
Hermes got a ticket
to Cairo, so I went onward and we got a break from each other. I saw him when
he got to Tehran, but I had been there and to Shiraz, so he stayed. He caught
up with me again in Ahmednagar. Hermes had several talks with Adi K. He quoted
Adi about me with “That beard gives him a Jesus like look but too bad about his
consciousness!”
Hermes was a very unique and interesting Atma! I believe he
went to South America to climb Machu Picchu, but when he told me he met a
headhunter who liked his Baba button; I realized Baba sent him there to give a
picture to this headhunter.
Cal Bullock, July 2018
1 comment:
very nice account Cal. I only read this and another Kendra post about Shireen Fenster cause I was having troubling dreams so woke up! Jai Baba! Ellen in SC, BL since 1982.
Post a Comment