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About Dion

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Both of Dion's parents were refugee immigrants to the United States of America. 

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Dion's mother Gerda was born in Vienna Austria. Gerda's parents were Polish Jews who escaped to Vienna from the pogroms of Eastern Europe of the early 20th century. When Gerda was seven years old she and her parents escaped Vienna from the Austrian Nazis before World War Two. Gerda worked as a librarian at the Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley and later worked at the Ministry of the Environment in Jerusalem Israel. Gerda moved back to Berkeley California in 2009. Gerda died in 2022.

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Dion's father Thanasis was born in the village of Stadio in Arcadia Greece. Thanasis escaped Greece after World War Two at the time of the Greek Civil War where more Greek civilians died in the fighting in that war than during The Resistance of the Second World War. Thanasis worked for many years as a professor and department chair of Ancient and Modern Greek Studies at San Francisco State University. Thanasis translated Modern Greek literature into English and he was an essayist and poet of his own works. Thanasis died in 2017.

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Dion is a first generation North American - a Hoosier born in 1955 in Indianapolis Indiana. As a child Dion grew up in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Israel, Spain, Greece, Chicago, then the small town of Delaware Ohio while in kindergarten and first grade in the early 1960’s and then Dion lived in Berkeley in the mid 1960s while in grade school. Then as a teenager starting in the late 1960s Dion lived for three years in rural northwestern Sonoma County attending an alternative communal high school with farm animals and organic farming. Then Dion lived in Berkeley in the early and mid 1970s. Then in 1977 Dion moved to Fresno, living there for 18 years where he was a daytime custodian for Fresno Unified Schools and a shop steward for the SEIU local school janitor's labor union. In Fresno Dion was married to Janet and they raised both their son Josiah and Janet's daughter Laural. Then in 1995 Dion moved to Seattle living there for five years. Then in 2000 Dion moved back to the San Francisco East Bay working for Book People an alternative and small press books distributor in Oakland for two of those years. Then Dion lived in Santa Maria California for a year. Then Dion lived in Arcata Humboldt County for two years. Dion moved back to the San Francisco East Bay in 2007 and then moved to Orinda California in 2009 where he worked as a church caretaker for twelve years. Dion's son Josiah died of cancer in 2012 when Josiah was 30 years old. Then a year later Josiah's widow Erica jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2013 when Erica was 31 years old. 

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Dion has lived outdoors in nature over the years for many months at a time in a small hidden wilderness area on the edge and east of Kensington California living in a dark primordial glen, passage through tunnel like deer trails made almost impassable by thickets of poison oak and stinging nettles there living in a great stillness under a thick canopy of California Bay Laurel trees and sleeping by wild animals upon deep ancient drifts of leaves. Dying to love and connecting in love in delicious solitude there and in many places all his life, Dion has always been alone from human beings even when being with others but still always connected to everyone through the Energy of the Universe.

 

Dion is presently living in Berkeley California from where he bicycles 10 to 75 miles a day to many beautiful places in the greater San Francisco Bay Region. Dion has not owned a car by choice since 1996. Dion has been writing essays and poetry about the human condition, nature and spirituality since he was seven years old. Dion enjoys 12 Step support groups and doing physical labour for others. Dion especially enjoys bicycling, walking and sitting in the stillness of nature and the daily practice of contemplative and ecstatic writing.

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{All Dionysos Maskaleris writings copyright or copyright pending} 

{When with my permission for the public domain to use for free}

 

{The words I write are not just of me}

{They come through me from a place without a name}

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{Who 'i' am is not just of my own making}

{You who touch my life - you continue to create me}

{Your own search for and connection in love flows everywhere and into me}

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