Epilogue -Retro-Alaska/Green Bay Journal -1983.

The 9 preceding entries were taken off from one of my sketchbook-journal done some time in 1983 just after I had graduated form the University of Wisconsin and I had taken a trip to do commercial fishing in the Aleutian Chain off the coast of Anchorage Alaska, I was then living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I had thought of sharing the fact how my mind has not changed very much from I it worked before and now; I am almost repeating the same line of thoughts. My sketches have changed over time and perhaps this has allot to do with the fact that i was pretty much stoned most of the time back then. I was a pot smoker for many years while living in the United States, Marijuana was my drug of choice when I was in college; I still graduated with  a cum laude.
I was living hand to mouth and had been divorced then living a life of a student squatting here and there to survive the Wisconsin winter. All the sketches done in the fading brown ink were done in Alaska or on the way to and from Alaska, while the blue ink were later written while I was living back in Terengganu, on the east Coast of Malaysia. I tried to remind myself of the events that had occurred and so you are reading from events that had taken place in four different times and venues including this entry which is done here in Georgetown, Penang. More than ten years ago and little has changed in terms of how my mind functions except in the changes in images and circumstances.
Five years of being a student at the University in Wisconsin had changed my life, i became introspective and started looking into the question of 'Who Am I?' This was awakened in me through have read books by Alan Watts and J. Krishnamurti, Ram Dass and such writers like Herman Hesse, Richard Bach and Fritjof Capra, Carlos Castaneda and Sri Ramana Maharshi, I became a 'seeker' lost in a world of images and forms and not knowing my own true being often living in a limbo of make believe drug induced world. Back then my mind was scattered and unstable to say the least but i held it together believing in the fact that i was in control and i did what i did for a purpose - to self discover myself, to know who I am, the fact that I am not just a victim or time and circumstances.
I was having a time of my life too no two ways about it but at certain costs including be estranged from my wife and son and being most of the time with hardly a dime in my pocket. I made and lost many great friends along the way but i know now that they were there to help me when I needed help the most and today they remain in my memory even as I tell my story in my entries. My professors including the late Mr. Bill Prevetti, Michael Kazar, Elmer Heavens, the late Clarry Nelson Cole ( From Sierra Leone) and Robert Pum to name a few. The University of Wisc. Green Bay administrative figures like the dean of Students Mr. Jerry Olson and  Mrs. Barbarra Goering of the Bursa's office and Mrs. Elizabeth Kudinger of the International Student Office and her secretary Mrs. Sheryl Clark; these were my family while i was a student at UWGB.
I left for Alaska immediately after my graduation as in more than one way most of my relationships were telling me that I had worn out my welcome and it was time to change. Hence when i stumble upon a chance to go to Alaska and do commercial fishing I jumped at it hook ,line and sinker. That is in another journal entry.