My Mysterious Son by Dick Russell

Author:Dick Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510729018
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

A Quest for Alternatives

Shamanism is a great mental and emotional adventure, one in which the patient as well as the shaman-healer are involved. Through his heroic journey and efforts, the shaman helps his patients transcend their normal, ordinary definition of reality, including the definition of themselves as ill. The shaman shows his patients that they are not emotionally and spiritually alone in their struggles against illness and death.

—Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman1

WITH ATTENDING SCHOOL NO LONGER in the picture for Franklin—at least right now—what else might spark his interest and get him out of the house? Part of Etta’s recent work has involved studying and teaching music therapy, and there turns out to be a possibility of this, not far from where Frank once lived at Aberdeen House. His mother and I visit the Expressive Arts Therapy Center in Watertown, which offers free sessions in both art and music. The director spent the first eighteen years of her life in Cameroon. Patrick, himself a musician (as well as a trained therapist) who is close to Frank’s age, could see him for fifty-minute-long weekly sessions; piano, guitar, drums, and African instruments are all available. We sign him up.

Frank is quickly engaged. When I go to pick him up after his first music session, he greets me enthusiastically and asks that I come in to check out a large African drum. He’s got considerable energy—riding his bicycle around the neighborhood, doing push-ups and sit-ups outside his house. He suggests we might do a hip-hop adult education dancing class together.

Next time, arriving at his house, I see him emerge suddenly from below the deck out back, wearing a maroon corduroy shirt and carrying his guitar. It’s a stunning image, thrilling actually. “Been playing some tunes?” I ask, and he nods happily. In the car, he asks: “Which do you like better, the written word or the psychic word?” That’s a tough question, I say. He goes on to describe how six normal senses exist, but many more psychic ones, and also several Haiku, along with a fair number of “wolf senses.”

Frank suddenly tells me, “My planet is not still the Dog Star.” I know that Sirius, colloquially known as the “Dog Star,” is the brightest star in the night sky. Frank does not elaborate. Then he mentions Eddie (whom he used to sometimes refer to as his father) and the fact that he has a 10 Degree Sagittarius Mid-Heaven in his astrological birth chart, which Frank says can be the cause of some trouble. Could he really be remembering this obscure detail? When I get home, I look up Eddie’s chart. And Frank is right on the money. He must have memorized this years ago.

When I reach Etta to tell her about our “psychic day,” she reveals that she’d spent a long day discussing alcohol and kids at her school—followed by Frank calling to say he’d like to come to Baltimore and have a drink with her.

At music therapy, he

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