Lovefest and the Gateway: Part 1

It was a thing that happened in late in October, just before Halloween.  But it also wasn't really a warm-up for that masquerade.  It was its own special little something, a separate monster.  A monster that had stomped me into a blacked-out heap last year, vomiting in Jenn's oven and what have you.  So, understandably, I was a bit more reserved this year, more cautious.  NO prolific binge drinking this year.  NO chuggler.  NO crazy frat kids from Arizona.  Check to all the above.  And there was a sigh of relief.  And there was a wicked smile wrapping towards my temples.

It was that Western posse.  That congregation of maturing youth.  What ecclecticism.  What sharp-minded fervor.  Minds with knowledge and wits abound they were, those ragged intellectuals.  Let to roam free in that magic between the sea and the redwood mountains, to challenge the mind with collegiate methodology and physical enduring.  To test and to push, always outward into the wild.  And so the experience laid before me, with Taylor at my side and at his side a sharp blue-eyed, red-headed eighteen-or-so-year-old.  Her conspicuous surname, Monster.  So her inclusion seemed strangely fitting.  And bless that child.  She drank so that even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have gotten drunk.  She drank for two.  Two adults.  And she was slappy before we were on the bus.  Belligerent before we got through the gates.  She fell off a six-foot (why is it so tall?) newspaper stand.  Or at least I think it was a newspaper stand.  The tab of acid I'd had with breakfast  hadn't quite kicked in yet, but then again it was my first time taking acid so what the hell did I know.  I was pretty sure the Vivian Erica (monster) had given us was starting to hit though.  So maybe I was actually more focused and it was definitely a six-foot (why is it so tall?) newspaper stand.  I'm just saying it could just as easily have been a six-foot (why so tall?) mailbox.   The details are mine to fabricate, I guess.

And so it happened that we all got through the gates and paid that bogus nominal fee they instilled that year, Taylor, Erica, Jenn, her friends, and I.  That was when the world as I knew it changed.  The rug wasn't exactly pulled out from under my feet, it wasn't like that.  It was like the rug changed into something that was living and growing and breathing, like a bed of flowers sprouting up and budding at my knees.  Big flowers with big petals, more vibrant and alive than flowers I'd ever seen before.  The rug's matte woven fibers turned to rich topsoil between my toes as they took root.  I felt a strength of the mind that had been, up to that point, void from my perception.  Now that I think about it, it was a completely different medium of perception altogether.  It was something more primal. It was animalistic at times.  Feelings were distorted, amplified, and emotions dominated thoughts, but there was a certain simplicity to it wherein every kind of thought and emotion boiled down to a thing either good or bad.  I seemed to be continuously aware of how I felt from one moment to the next, either happy or sad in varying degrees. Ecstatic.  Morose.  Mystified.  Bitter.  Blown away.

By that time, Monster was in a certain stalwart mindset.  That black-out drunk-chick determination to get what she wanted no matter what.  And the thing she wanted more than anything was to dance on at least one of the twenty something DJ floats surrounding the civic center.  As my hand just so happened to be clamped in hers, I was going to be dragged along for the ride whether I liked it or not.  Now that developing mindset of her's wasn't one of the most convenient things to come about because we immediately got separated from everybody else.  We went to the bathrooms and she dropped her phone in the porta-potty, before proceeding to fish it back out with her bare hand.  The phone was ruined, but she was insistent on saving the SIM card.  A small hiccup.  Monster, killing it in nothing but a black leotard and a blue tutu just put her head down and soldiered on through the throngs of wild and crazies, plastereds and kite-highs; past naked old men with nooses around their dicks,  past young girls in attire all too sexual, past titties with pasties on them, past titties with nothing on them except perky little nips, past Green Man, past people floored on uppers or downers.  Through all this, one thing remained markedly poignant to me.  I was not hallucinating, visually anyways.  Everything looked as it should, just more so; more vivid and more real.   We would get stuck, hitting a literal wall of people - big, tall, sweaty people - and Monster would push through and her hand would tighten in mine as our arms stretched at her incessant pulling.  I never let go.  I just tried to keep that fiery red mane of her's in sight, in part because I was afraid of being alone while this foreign perception crept through my mind and gradually inundated the senses.  But mostly I was afraid of Erica being alone.  And of those implications, those harrowing possibilities.

Right to the very front , through practically everyone.  It felt like everyone.  And in the middle of that everyone  my skin, all my pores it seemed, danced in a smooth coat of hot air, feather-light or lighter.  The coat itself was not tangible.  No hallucination, just the feeling of it draped over my shoulders with its arms hanging empty over my own.  Sunglasses at a slight tilt and a cowboy-red bandana on my head, invisible sportscoat over my shoulders being pulled around to the back of the float by a blank-eyed red-haired fairy right out of high school.  Maybe I felt a little like some Blink-182 cliche, but that's doubtful, I was too busy getting my mind blown.  Hmm, bad choice of words.  I was too busy bathing in the waves of euphoria brought on by the mixture of loud electronic music and LSD.  And Vivian.  And sunlight and dancing.  I didn't want to stop moving.

When Erica drunkenly tried to climb up the back of the float, some Goliath of a security guard pulled her down and told her that she was too inebriated to be so high.  He looked at me, and I looked back at him and shrugged my shoulders, grinning like a damned fool.  His faced looked funny.

Erica's mission status: failure.  I grabbed her hand now and pulled her back around the float, through the crowd once again, and to a patch of bright green, glorious grass towards the middle of the square.  By God's grace we ran into everyone; Taylor, Jenn and her friends.  What joy!  And they had found Swartz, Conor, and Sam Hillard, all in the most awesomely ridiculous attire I had ever seen.  Swatrz was rocking a pink blazer with some hippy button-down underneath, Sam had on a frilly, red pirate blouse on, and Conor, cream of the crop, was holdin' it down in this purple fur vest.  Oh, and did I mention they had all purchased platinum blonde Hannah Montana wigs, so that, more than anything, they looked like a trio of manly, trannie hookers?  Because they did and every time I looked at them, I would have to try and supress laughter, something I was beginning to learn never works on acid.  Minutes later Dillion and D-Pod mozy on by in sparkling silver astronaut onesies, and our little pow-pow turned into another day at 440 Western.  Except we were all on drugs.  While Monster and I were busy loosing ourselves and our minds, Taylor had taken one of his hits of molly.  Dillion and D-Pod were both rolling.  Conor, Swartz, and Sam were shit-silly on acid.  A proper lovefest it was on that sunny, fall afternoon in San Francisco.  Talked turned excitedly to the DJs, notably deadmau5, and the after-party at Ruby Skye.  Then it turned rather delightfully to ribbing Monster for being under twenty-one (and just a few months over eighteen).  This probably wasn't the best idea in retrospect, as she immediately embarked on a new mission: to get a hold of a red-headed, over-twenty-one ID.  And she didn't hesitate to ask anyone; guys, girls, brunettes, blondes, Asians, teenagers, no one was filtered out.  We kept an eye on her with curious intrigue as she stumbled between flower gardens (that Matt and Sam peed in), pleading with everyone lounging in the grass, groups at a time, to just trade their IDs for her shit-covered SIM card.  But to no avail.  And as she kept getting rejected, she started wandering further and further away from the group, until we had to go and drag her back and plop her in the middle of our little circle of buddies, like a little caged, red-headed monster. Erica's mission status: failure.

[stop]

Brian's mission status: accomplished, to infinite and beyond.  Faces turned back towards the stage floats in their distant circle around the square.  And the throbbing, glistening masses of people amassed about them.  They were singular moving beings, yelling banshee screams of ecstacy, barely audible over the monstrous bass chords thumbing through the air.  I felt an animalistic attraction to it.  To the lights and the color.  The pulsing, and the misty sizzling in the background.  The trance.  The magic.  The awe.

And so like pack animals we pounced.  We attacked in a single file, like a sewing needle because, well, how the hell else are you going to attack?  Striking deep to the core we did, and as we broke through each shell of pleasure-faced peacocks, the air heated, and the skin became more alive and I felt my pores open wide and inhale the sweet moment.  Inflated on this palpable energy, the stress on my heels lightened as if on a pillow of air.  It was orgasmic.  And as I turned to Taylor and Jenn, Matt and Conor and Sam, and to Monster, I saw it.  The look of pure joy, all a little different, but each with that little bit of magic in their wide-mouthed grins and wild shouts, like dogs when you get that special spot and the one leg starts runnin'.  And not to forget, they all had those special little somethings in front of their eyes.  That's right; shaded spectacles.  Safety goggles, concealing those windows to our soul, because right then they were wide open.  That's when I realized I must look just like them, and that made me even happier.  I looked up, arms reaching high, fingers tickling the sauna air, and I closed my eyes.  I breathed it in.  It was a raucous orchestra; beautiful, skin-tingling, elevating. It was wild thunder.

Lollipops popped into our hands, and inevitably our mouths, and I hadn't the faintest clue as to where they came from.  Regardless, they were amazing, and my taste-buds came.  I had never experienced a sensation such as that (any of this, really).  It was incredibly satiating, pacifying even.  All tension in life was gone.  Any thought of worry was replaced by an overwhelming urge to dance and move, and stretch outward and spin.  But when I grabbed for Monster, she wasn't there.  She had wandered off amid the storm of passion and emotion.  She was lost at sea, cellphone-less.  Taylor and I looked at each other, exacerbated.  We looked around, standing on tippy-toe, craning our necks.  We had lost our red-haired maiden; aww, sadface.  But quickly enough, anxiety turned to coping to nonchalant-ness to losing ourselves, again, in that crazy euphoria.

And so our lives continued on thusly for a certain time until Conor got word that we were going to meet Dylan and Cameron in the tree grooves.  I honestly couldn't tell you how long that certain time was, really.  I couldn't muster the faintest clue even, because for me, at that moment, all concepts of time had been forgotten.  I just lived now, and the things that happened before, happened before in varying distances according to different scales.  Thinking back, it was like looking at a timeline through a convex (fish-eye) lens.  A convex lens that someone was shaking in their hand.  Perspective was distorted and quickly fading into a locked box somewhere in the basement.  And it didn't really matter.  But at the same time it was all so new and interesting! Hot, damn!  I was intrigued beyond words and by everything.  I loved it.

And like that, we were in the tree grooves.  Dylan was wearing a bright purple button-down buttoned down, and some silly, silly sunshades with no lenses in them.  Cameron took the creepy cake with a beaver-skin vest and Aviator's and the uber-beard that it takes him all of five days to grow.  He looked like someone you would see at a rest-stop in the Midwest somewhere, leaning on the front wheel well of his eighteen-wheeler.  Their friend, (Uncle) Jack, was sporting a national team futbol jersey from Brazil and some black warm-ups with the quick-release buttons going down the side.  Our gang, small because of a few losses (namely, Monster and Dillon), was all giggly and wrestling with bouts of uncontrollable laughing when we met those three.  And they wanted in.  And so we all licked up a little blue tab.  Number two down the hatch, boop.  Conor took the helm, "Grab water bottles! A shitload of 'em!"  Then back into the fray, hydration in hand, safety goggles on, deadmau5 was coming up soon.

Was I ready to take flight?  No, obviously.  I had no idea what the hell was going on.  Luck for me, I'm tall, I have quick, sharp eyes, long arms, and a grip like a vice.  I never broke that single-file people train.  I was right in the middle of it, friends behind me, friends before me.  It was an infinite comfort, and I couldn't help wondering where Monster was as Jenn dragged me deeper and deeper into the hot, heavy contingency of glazed-eyed electronic music fans.  There was a pause as the DJs changed sets, and the music from the other floats and the main stage behind us became distantly audible, and there was a soft ringing in my ears and an eagerness on my face.  I looked around, and then back forward onto our (not so) little corner of the affair.  And there he was.  A figure had appeared high up on the stage behind some DJ equipment.  He was wearing a large round sparkly mouse-head helmet that didn't quite rest on his shoulders.  And then a beat started beating and the stage lit up, and there was a swelling, jumping roar resounding from me and our group and everyone around us. The sun was low on the horizon and we were in the long shadow of the building behind the float.  The wind was blowing across the stage, caressing flags softly from the South.  And then deadmau5 dropped the bass.  It was wild thunder.

Lift-off achieved.  Everything became more so, and I felt the horses pulling hard at the reigns so I re-gripped them in my mind's eye, harder this time, stronger, empoweringly so.  It was a feeling of intangible control, a flexing of the brain's muscle.    I sucked down one of my bottles of water like baby's milk and then I sucked down the other.  Jenn's backpack had like five more water bottles and cliff bars in it.  So not to worry.  And an extra pair of sunglasses.  Safety first, kids.  And for however long it was until sunset, life was a starry-eyed dreamland, a Cirque du Soleil of the senses and mind.  At one point Uncle Jack's pants were ripped off (by Jack) in a fit of dancing ecstacy with Jenn and he rocked the rest of the of the night away in what appeared to be a Brazilian national swim team speedo.  Lovely.  And we all loved it.

The set finally ended, and the sunset was a thing now passed.  The sky turned dark rather quickly, and as we walked dazed through the rental-fence exit corridor, the Monster situation was looming heavier and heavier on our minds.  I mean, so heavy as some something so heavy could possibly loom as cell phones and tall cans were melting in my hands.  Now that the music was gone, my other senses were picking up the slack left by that ominous lack of audible hyper-stimulation.  And everything was hilarious, especially the fact that San Francisco's middle- to late-aged upper-class, seemingly the entire populous of the city's refined and reserved well-to-do-ers were beginning to make their way to the Opera House on the next block west.  In tuxedos and elegant, mostly black dinner dresses, the abject contrast in both age, civility, and attire was downright gut-busting.  I felt a devious grin stretch across my face and soon realized that I couldn't replace it, try as I might.  I looked at Taylor,  at Dylan and Kam and Uncle Jack, at the blonde wig boys, and I found comfort in their mutual idiot grinning.  Jenn was leading the way up Grove Street, and at a little bit faster pace because she was merely drunk and cold, not high and fried with sunglasses still on like the rest of us.

"Is she going to be all right?" an elderly Queen Elizabeth of a lady discreetly inquired of her husband in passing.  She was of course referring to the young, pretty Asian girl walking alone and being not too distantly followed by a group of crazy-grinned, sunglassed trannies.  Because, I mean, we really fit that stereotypical description to a tee.  And we all retorted with a rolling fit of maniacal laughter, which I don't think assuaged any of the Queen's concerns.

Speaking of concerns, the Monster debacle had taken a considerable number of twists and turns.  Taylor had a fair share of missed calls from mutual friends of his and Erica's.  Apparently since her phone had gone sayonara, she had been borrowing strangers phones and drunk calling the only numbers she had memorized (which in this day and age isn't many) trying to get Taylor's number.  That's the story we put together as we called everyone back anyways.  About a block away from Jenn's place, Taylor's phone rang with an anonymous number, and when he picked up, Erica was on the other end and we all sighed that huge sigh of relief that comes from averting a catastrophic disaster.  She was in a car on her way to Jenn's, she just needed the cross streets.  She was close.  So Taylor and I waited outside while everyone else went inside.  The mood was lighter than light.

Paris: Violins and the Female Orgasm

Fuckin' Paris.  Only here would I get on the subway and be greeted by the sound of some mangy troubadour burning away the strings on the violin pressed below his chin.  He's playing feverishly and it's an up-beat little ditty, refreshing and alive in those ancient tunnels below the city.  I can't recall if I was particularly high or not on that day.  But I probably was because the music whining through our car had a strangely arousing nature to it, and in the grandest of ways.  In truth, it wasn't so much arousing as it was a thing dripping with passion.  By his appearance, our old fiddler was not a man of wealth or well-to-do.  There were wrinkles slowly creeping out from his eyes and around his beady nose as though the years might not have treated him so kindly.  His clothes had a worn look to them and his face glistened like that of one who did not find himself under a shower-head or submerged in a bath daily.  It was a look we had by now come to emanate, whether we wanted to or not.  And perhaps for that reason, I felt a certain affinity between him and I, and the richness of his life suddenly beamed through his eyes, burst through that congenial close-lipped smile and his head thrust vigorously back and forth in what little space that was his on that packed metro car.


[time for work]


If one were to judge a man's worth simply by the joy contained on his face and in his ability to sway another's emotion to good, why, then our humble metro musician was the goddamned Monopoly Man, glass monocle, groomed, white mustache and all.  In this regard, he handily outweighed any other in sight.  And yet, so many paid him no heed.  They were lost, fashionably dressed to a Parisian tee.  Designer clothes from some spring or summer collection. They were lost.  Caught up in the worries and stresses of city living.  The job, the family, the abhorrence to this filthy subway commute.  And at this moment, with this beauty and magic ringing clear, caressing my heartstrings, at this moment they were lost.  Their eyes glazed and zoned out on that far-off of the mind held prisoner, and a look on their faces like the bitter taste of lemons.


The woman set across from me wasn't even listening.  Her headphones were in.  Whatever song she was listening to for the hundredth time must've been way better, I guess.  French pop music immediately comes to mind.  That Stromae song.  Marie's French rap.  Thuggish-ruggish never sounded so pretty.  And I giggle to myself and smile even though she's not.  Because it really doesn't matter.  Her life is her's to live, not mine; an embittered, sour one at that, mais c'est la vie.  She could use a little more violin.  I think it would be good for her.  The passion, the skin tingle at the crescendo.  I'm sure if she gave it a moment of sincere intrigue, it would make her wet, and she would shiver and smile and feel the beauty of living.  Like I do, and like my fiddler on the train.  He hits the last note perfectly just before the car doors open at our stop, and he takes a bow.  I adore him.

Barcelona: A Spanish Feast

Hard to believe we were in Nice last night.  Already an entire 24 hours and hundreds of miles away.   Now where should we find ourselves but an empty railway platform in the middle of Spanish nowhere.  Once again, we've missed our train and, as always, it's one of those lines that runs on the hour.  It's getting dark finally, but the summer air still hangs thick and humid, sticking to the skin.  The mountains rising up to the south hide the hustle and eternal light of our fair Barcelona.  We aren't with her now.  We're on the outskirts, surrounded by scattered Euro-suburbs, four Americans at the brink of starvation.

It's a degree of fatigue that leaves you silent, breathing heavy, slow breaths that dim the lights upstairs a little bit with each exhale.  Thoughts drift in and out of present consciousness.  One tries not to think about all the number of Spanish goodies we're going to devour at the very first eatery our eyes should come along when we reach San Cugat.  One tries not to think of the malnurished purgatory we've unwittingly placed ourselves in.  Not so much as a vending machine anywhere throughout the platform. We're void of any and all possible num-nums in our packs.  The Verspegerst bottle is empty.  And my stomach is howling about as loud as the battalions of crickets surrounding us, but still, we have to wait.  Sitting, legs splayed on the platform, leaning back on our bags, we waits.  Long enough so that for a few moments time loses its meaning and I stare blankly out over the wilderness stretching out towards the mountains, the faraway lights of civilization, the stars twinkling in the humid night.  I can almost feel the glazing coming over my eyes as everything shifts out of focus, and the sounds are so amplified in the mind that they all cancel out into an undulating hum that grows louder and louder as the focus fades and the sand falls slower in the hourglass.  For moments I'm there, and for moments I'm not there.  And before you know it, there's light on the track and the train's arrived.  The R7, hourly, to Martorell; our savior, our everything.  There aren't many passengers at that hour and we slink into some seats next to the doors, silent. Hunger pangs sprint laps around my belly, and my pack seems unsparingly heavier.  Grant and Max both have huge bags under their eyes.  We look past each other's blank faces, down the empty aisles and out at the darkness flying by.  Irritability's running high amongst the lot, with agitated asides and pithy sarcasm.  Everybody's too tired to argue, so all we do is sit and mull.  When the train stops at San Cugat de Villes we bolt out of the tiny terminal with unknown energy and all due haste, running heavy-footed with our bags bobbing up and down.  Straight across the parking lot, up a shrubby incline, to find ourselves at a quaint little round-about and there we see it, not a hundred yards away.  A couple is finishing up what looks to be a tremendously satisfying meal at a table outside on the empty street.  The small, hole-in-the-wall tapas is the only place still open, and we each fall into seats at the only other table outside.

Financially, my pockets are turned out.  I'm broke.  Stalled.  There's money on the way, but who knows when it'd be there.  And maybe Max is on the same boat, I'm not sure.  Either way, for me anyways, this late dinner, this feast fast approaching, this ultimate indulgence is inevitably going to be on Grant's dime.  To be paid back of course, just in due-er time.  And for that I am eternally grateful.

[stop]

Because this is the most incredible of meals.  Fried seafood and cheese never tasted so good.  Exquisite decadence at it's finest from some little late-night suburbs Tapas.  It floods parched taste-buds, it inundates the senses.  It's dumbfounding.  And ever time I think back to it with real hesitation and nostalgia, it's just more so.  One of those memories that bosoms over time into the most beautiful thing in the mind.  Here's how it starts.  From the first bite.

Now, many debate upon this first bite, for it does not come about by favorable means to a few particulars in the group (mostly everybody but me).  We orders the special, which is in Spanish, but from what we can make out, it's just a whole bunch of plates of everything from fried calamari to muscles and clams to fried anchovies and etcetera.  Fried mozzarella nuggets.  America eat your heart out.  This is going to be divine. It's going to take ten minutes though.

I believe it was Albert Einstein who, in his early years before the fame and glory, surmised this grand hypothesis as to the characteristics of time and how it reacts to certain pressures and stresses applied, namely a seizing delirious hunger associated with traveling by train for hours on end without a proper meal.  I don't remember the report exactly, but he hypothesized an exponentially separating correlation in which, as the seizing delirious travel hunger became more and more severe, time would slow to a turtle's pace, minutes crawling into infinity.  I submit a proof positive to this hypothesis because dear God, those ten minutes seem like an eternity to me.  Literally.  It's as if I had managed to quantify it, measure out its vastness, and see my feast shimmering far off across that intangible distance.

What hellish ring of Dante's Inferno are we on??  It's intolerable, and yet, unavoidable.  A shriveling feeling, something to be rid of as soon one can.  It's no place for me, and my eyes keep searching for some kind of solace.  Something to loose myself in.  But the streets are empty and cleanly lit by streetlights.  Total monotony, total serenity. It's driving me crazy.  And so as the well-off looking (by comparison) couple saunter off into night, of course I eye them.  I eye them with all the hunger of a leashed moutain lion.  I want to eat, to devour their satisfaction.  The look of contentment on their faces.  And then my eyes fall to their former table.  They had eaten probably no more than three quarters of their special.  It's a veritable treasure trove of unfinished seafood and meat plates.  And I am veritably a pirate ship, buccaneer crazy from this stomach grind.

So with a tip of the hat I'm not wearing, I casually slide the closest plate of unfinished grilled-sausage off their table and onto ours.  Mike laughs.  Grant looks confused, and Max turns a disdainful sour.  I can't cared less, truthfully, as I pop that first slice of sausage (mmmm) into my mouth.  So savory still, so juicy.  Maybe not so hot, but not entirely cold either.  Is it delicious?  God, yes.  Is it satisfying?  I'm drunk off the satisfaction, as my stomach once again greets food.  It is ecstacy.  Somewhere way up in the clouds that night, in Elysium amid gords of Greek wine and chicken legs, Dionysus is looking down on our silly world, smiling at me and saying, "It's good, ain't it."  And it is.

Max doesn't share my enthusiasm for this remarkable turn of events.  "Dude, really?"

I almost choke on the chuckle that squirms out.  "Yeah, man."  And I pop another sausage slice into the ole' chompers, and I take a deep breath and my eyes close and a pure look of pleasure smiles across my face.

"You don't think that's a little rude?"

"Uh, no?" Which means I don't really care, which I don't.  "Is it more rude than not finishing your meal and letting that food go to waste?"  I don't catch on right here, but I think that's what locks us in.  Debate time, bitches.

I'm not sure if Max is taken aback by my retort.  If he is, he hides it well because he comes back quick. I don't even have time to pop another slice in.  "Yeah, dude!  They paid for it.  Who cares what they do with it? It's their's."

"Well they left it, so who care's what I do with it?"

"It's just impolite, man.  Don't you think, Grant?  You serve.  What's your whole take on it?" Max says.

Grant shrugs uneasy, "I don't know... I guess if I saw someone slipping food from a plate, I'd kinda look down at it.  I clear tables with half finished plates all the time."

"Okay."  I can understand that.  It's a matter of etiquette.  An affront to manners.  Personally, I tend to be one who likes to associate with politeness and common courtesy in my everyday living.  True, I guess I would be naturally inclined to look down on someone taking someone else's unfinished food.  And at that moment I come to realize the stark substantial fork in the road between etiquette and morality.  I like to think that my moral compass points pretty true. But like any compass, it's been calculated away from that polarizing magnetic force.  Re-calibrated to point geographically north, not magnetically north.  They're sure as hell close, and depending on where you are, it might not be re-calibrated at all.  And so too are our internal compasses.  I guess when we're all little babes, ripe with minds waited to be impressed upon, we learn to point true.  We're re-calibrated, not by our guises entirely, and with any luck we're pointing the right way and the sun's always setting off over the port-side bow.

And so here we are, caught somewhere between geography and magnetization, seeing a difference in our calibrations.  So I think about it.  The situation.  The predicament we now find ourselves wrestling with.  Each opposition.  The leaving of the food paid for, dishes of half eaten seafood.  The consumption of that food paid for by another.  By this time in the trip, I've developed a certain pedestal upon which to place food on in general, as a means of nourishment and as a means of existence.  It's our most precious commodity.  At this point I think my weight's coming into the range between 140 pounds and 145 pounds.  I'd lost ten pounds since the trip began, since London.   And I greet food - any food, any nourishment now - as a special kind of gold.  An edible trophy I deserve for living, just for making it this far.  It makes you think of the extremes.  You recall hearing the horrors of African starvation.  Children not eating for days.  Mothers and fathers fighting for rice and powdered milk.  You see images of a vulture staring down the curled stick-and-ball figure of a small child in tattered clothes like dead venison.  And when you do, it hurts because we know we can't really do anything about it, or we feel like we just don't have the time because we're so busy with our own lives.  And then I think about how broken I still feel, and just how lucky I am.  To be where I am, to be where I'm from, to have lived this life.  Then I look back to Max, resolute, and decide in my mind and aloud, "But I think I would look down more at those who didn't finish their meals, man."  And that's that.  And another sausage slice.

Max still isn't so sure.  But to hell with that.  I whisk another plate off the neighboring table and in my head, I tell myself I won't let food go to waste if I can help it, and I'll lay down my shield of pride more often, and let people see who I am.  An animal maybe, but an animal of clear conscience.  It's a plate of marinated beef and I pop the pieces of seared flavor into the ole' chompers.  And Mike and Grant try a bite or two of the sausage.  And I grab a plate of half-finished calamari.

When we see our food coming, we discreetly huck the plates back onto their respective table.  They bring the five course meal out, plate by plate and we eat like kings at a midnight jubilee.  Our moods lighten and we laugh and we reminisce.  Irene, or next host, texts Grant her address.  She lives just around the corner.

Eve's Delight in Apples

Already, I'm growing restless.  Listless and agitated.  My braced foot, elevated, is laughing at me, at everything.  My brash stupidity.  My immobility.  This ill-begotten beard tickling my face and neck, only present because of a disinclination to standing long enough to see it off.  I hate sprained ankles.  They bring about a certain laziness.  A laziness and a stressed unfocus from living in this house that seems to have too much of everything and at the same time, nothing.  It takes the wind out of your sails, then brings anxiety as the moth-holes appear so that should the winds ever come again, I fear not going any further.  It's horrible.  I'm rotting.  Handicapped on a hot summer's day.  I'm like still water, waiting for the mosquitoes and parasites to breed and to eat me alive.


To it's credit, I will say this: nothing eases a rueful mind like reading aloud.  And to this, I relegate myself, with a voice and a distant eye to make Steinbeck proud.  The doctor said I should prop my leg.  "Ankle above the heart," he said.  And so I prop my leg a hundred years and hundreds of miles south of John's fair Eden.  In the sweaty city, where the sharp cool summer air of the North is but a dream, a far off wistful memory, and I can't take off enough clothes.


And so it is, that I sit in the sun, shirt-off, leg propped, but not so high as it should be.  And it's not the only thing.  Mine eyes are notably whiter than most days as my dearest John leads the way, weaving like a meandering stream through the Salinas Valley.  Personally, I've always been one for drawing similarities, be they good or bad.  Let's say it's an alertness of others' perspectives, even though it's probably not.  But the words are strong enough, and the comparisons creep up slyly from the back of my mind.


As I read, I can't help but wonder as to the true identity of Steinbeck's Cathy.  His Eve.  That beautiful dark horse that he chased for oh, so much time in his life.  I wonder so because when I close my eyes, and I look back mine stands out blaringly.  Her face is as clear as day, disarmingly beautiful and alight with evil seduction. And as she dips her chin and smiles, her eyes always flare, and they're never faulting.  I have to look away just to save myself.  Come back to reality, you.  Back to the present.  The here and now.


There's a decent breeze, and it fills the ear and the air with a rustling of trees and leaves.  And the birds are singing too.  How lovely.  But still, it can't completely mask that forever hum of the freeway.  The engine accelerations, the car horns.  The low, far off rumble of planes on approach.


"You have to breathe it all in, the beauty of it all, because the beauty gives life.  It gives energy, and it warms the soul.  It can fill the void.  All you have to do is recognize it and appreciate it."


A boy, not a year over nineteen, had told me that as I drove him down through John Steinbeck's green valley of Eden.  Down the 101, the hillsides splashed green and the sun was glaring so mine eyes squinted.  It was that time just before sunset, and a spliff roach simmered out in one of the cubbies on the center console.  The boy had told me his name was Lennon and that he had been raised a sorcerer, and so he talked of my spirits, of existence, of ego, of everything and all of it as we rattled South, from Santa Cruz to LA going 80 mph.  It seems like so long ago now.


I breathe deep.