So It Goes

This is my sister. I've given her a bindi/mystical third eye here to represent the many insights and experiences she has accumulated that I never will. In me and my sister, you couldn't ask for two more different human beings - personally, politically, spiritually...you name it.

It's an important philosophical inquiry, at some point, to explore whether or not you can tolerate other people being different from you. It sounds pat, but I assure you that it's a bigger conundrum than any Golden Rule or morality play would have you believe. Carl Jung said that, in this nuclear age, if each of us does not work on tolerating differences and reclaiming his/her projections, the world is indeed headed for thermonuclear disaster.

The thing about my sister & me is that if you take a look at what each of us is all about - our high points and low points, our best attributes and our personal demons - and then add it all together...you'd get our parents (in all their paradoxical glory). It's for that reason that I don't really buy the "me and my sister are polar opposites" theory. We're just different sides of the same coin. We are complimentary, in other words. And besides, we each host our own internal Avalons. We each have our own crosses and psychological freight to bear.

Can one side of a coin tolerate the other? Can it love the other side? These are the questions of our nuclear age.

Big Sur

This is a Chinese supermodel, imposed on a background of my own mental meanderings. She was torn from a calendar given to me a while back. In this calendar - given to me gratis by the proprietor of a pan-Asian supermarket - was a whole slew of Chinese supermodels, each elegantly decked out in silk dresses and slippers, glamming it up in front of various Chinese waterfalls, skyscrapers, Cherry tree orchards, and so on. Every day, I used to look at these supermodels and think "Whatsat gal thinkin' right now?" Then I'd come up with various thoughts. This young lady, by the way, is thinking of Jack Kerouac.

I'll tell you one thing about Jack Kerouac. In his best novel Big Sur, he details his own mind's unraveling, ten years or so after all the excitement and joy of On The Road. Now the poor bastard was penniless, being hailed as the spokesman for a generation that was already on its way out, and, on top of all that, he was deep in his cups. Big Sur is fucking painful. In it, we see the alcoholic Kerouac and the Kerouac drying out, succumbing to the dark forces of paranoia and delerium tremens. At the end of the novel, there's a long poem called "Sea," which is basically an attempt by the author to make sense out of the auditory hallucinations that haunted him in Big Sur. It's pretty painful, too.

Despite the depressing subject matter, though, Big Sur remains my favorite Kerouac novel. I'm sure one of the reasons is that it's like watching one long train wreck, but, no, not really. Actually, I favor this novel because in it, he appears to be giving the big "Eff You" to the pop culture machine that kept trying to eat him. Our boy from Lowell was the real deal, after all. An honest-to-God major American author of notable talent, serious about his craft. And in the end, even though he might've dodged the pop culture bullet, he sure as hell didn't dodge the tawny port. Died on a barstool, basically, living with his mom in Florida. Ouch. Oh well, at least he got to show people what it's like to be the real Jack Kerouac. That's what Big Sur is all about. And it ain't pretty.

But anyway, due to my experience on the psychiatric unit, I've also seen delerium tremens enough times to know that Kerouac wasn't pulling any punches. In case you're not familiar with d.t.'s, it's basically a temporary form of psychosis accompanying alcohol detoxification. Oh yeah, it's also pretty lethal. You can die from d.t.'s if you're not getting adequate medical supervision. I've seen my fair share of grown men with the tremens crapping in hallways while screaming at invisible tormentors.

Once, this twentysomething kid in the throes of d.t.'s was hassling some of the other patients. When I went to try and calm him down, he took a swing at me, then puked on my shoes. While he was drinking, this kid was as sane as you n' me. Take away his booze, though, and some serious demons come out to play. If that alone ain't incentive enough to stay drunk, I don't know what is.

I hate to think of young Jack Kerouac, at university on a football scholarship, becoming a fine American author, then eventually degrading into a poor, forgotten drunk. In his memoirs, Allen Ginsberg says that in those last few years of his life, Kerouac'd get loaded and call Ginsy collect and yell at him for being a total loser. Ginsberg pretty much worshipped Kerouac. Literally. I guess Jack was lucky to have the few friends he had. Like all of us, in that way.

Why am I (and the Chinese supermodel) musing about Big Sur today? Because my copy of it is sitting out, on top of a mountain of books and boxes that I have to move out of this house by the end of this week.

Duende

Last night we built what will likely be our last campfire on this land. I released some homebrews from their cages, and the Missus & I put the baby in a tent a few feet from the fire. We talked well into the night while Eleanor slept the deep neolithic hominid sleep.

I would rather walk across hot coals than move from one house to another. All that packing, hauling, unpacking, and arranging...it works my nerves, gives me The Headache. If a rich, eccentric billionaire Texan showed up on my doorstep and was like, "Boy, I'll pay to have a crew come in and move everything from this house to the next house without you so much as lifting your pinkie finger," I'd be all "Yeah, but what's the catch?" And if he said, "I wanna see you walk across hot coals." I'd say, "Bet," and be all up in them there coals.

No Texan is to be found, though. And so it goes. It one week, we're moving from our beloved little domicile to a strange house up the road, on five acres, in wide open pasture lands and corn crops flanked with loblillie pines.

This is a weird life. Last night I decided, "By God, I'm taking this fire ring with me. I'm hauling every last rock of this ring of stone to our new place." My idea was that since Eleanor was born in a rented house, she won't ever be able to really return to her place of birth. But if we keep the rocks from the fire pit, she'd at least be able to sit by a fire from time to time and know that those rocks came from the same land that she was born on. In the postmodern End Times, a ring of rocks has to substitute for the Motherland.

Forget the pain in the arse that is relocation. I'd walk across hot coals if it would ensure Eleanor a healthy sense of familial/ethnic identity and/or cultural tap root in all this chaos of commercialism and pop identity advertising.

P.R.

IV.

In 2003, I traveled to Puerto Rico. I spent the summer working there and loved it so much that I returned the following summer. In Puerto Rico, I met people with names like "Ruel," "Crow," "Luzmar," "Dona Olga," and "The Spine Man." I spoke Spanglish & chain-smoked back in those days. Hand-rolled, each cigarette tasted like Life itself. In fact, I named a mix tape after my beloved smokes. I called it "Delicious Cigarettes." It had Manuchau and George Harrison on it, amongst others.

The Spine Man was a panhandler with a deformed spine who lumbered up and down the alleyways of Old San Juan. He was the embodiment of destitute Puerto Rico, exploited by the White Man. He'd stand down by the docks and wait for the tourists to come streaming off the cruise ships in search of Hard Rock Cafe and Senor Frog's. When they did, he'd offer his ragged claw, scare the hell out of the Whites, and score a few pesos. He always went shirtless, too. I remember watching the looks of colonial horror dawn on the tourists' faces as the Spine Man held up his end of the Cosmic Bargain.

I've been all over and I really miss Puerto Rico.

We're Just Tubes, Man

She's eight months old today, and seems bent on mastering the material plane of existence. A few nights ago, due to negligence on my part, she swallowed a tiny piece of cardboard - actually, it was part of a boxtop from a little box of Sun*Maid raisins. Anyway, it made its way out the other end the next morning. It was a little piece of yellow cardboard with the word "SUN" written on it. Alan Watts was right: Human beings are just complicated tubes, meant for putting things in one end and letting them out the other.

Fish Shack

11,000 years ago, in the wake of glacial retreat, large blocks of ice were left behind that would eventually melt and become Lake Minnetonka. Before Whitey arrived, Dakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Iowa, and Ojibwe Indians called the shores of Lake Minnetonka home. The Land o’ Lakes was no doubt considered “sacred,” as all tribal peoples seem to intuit that anything that sustains life is sacred.

Now, I didn’t see any Ojibwes when I was there last weekend, but I did see something pretty magical: Up Lake Minnetonka way, every winter, the aquatic world and the terrestrial world become separated by a three foot-thick sheath of frozen lake water. Those who would profit from the protein and nutrient-fish that call the lake home find themselves drilling holes in the ice. Using high-powered gasoline augers, they puncture the lake’s surface and drill right down to the water. They then sink baited monofilament lines into the hole and hope for a prosperous return.

Pre-Whitey Indians no doubt did something like this too. And at some point, somebody had the bright idea to build a temporary shelter around the hole. And eventually, somebody else had the over-the-top idea to outfit that shelter with a t.v., radio, and refrigerator for holding copious amounts of cheap lager. Personally, I could give or take the t.v. and radio. But right about now that refrigerator full of lager sounds like the perfect fuel for catching some serious walleye.

While I was up there, I went for a nice walk on Lake Minnetonka and found an encampment of ice fishermen. Some had cheap little hovels over their fishing holes. Others had elaborate yurts and cabins. Thanks to our Minnesota connections, me and the wife actually got invited inside one of the more modest ice shelters. Inside we found this man in a sweat suit and his eighty-five year old mother, fishing away.

They were really nice and let me take some pictures of their scene. While I was gazing at his hi-tech video screen (it’s not pictured here, but he actually had a live underwater camera for viewing his prey) the man said, “So…you’re from Georgia, eh? I got a sister lives down in Arizona.” And I said, “Oh yeah?” Minnesota all the way.

Not all Minnesotans are ice fisherman. In fact, I conducted a little poll all by myself and discovered that most Minnesotans find the idea boring, silly, or just sort of pointless. After all, as one native put it rather succinctly, “if I need a fish I can just go to the store. I don’t need to spend six hours in a fishy little shack on the middle of a frozen lake in the dead of winter.”

Minnesota Pine Tree

Some Things I Know:

1. Pine trees, antennae, and magic wands are cut from the same archetypal cloth.

2. Pine trees are beautiful.

3. A certain high-level metaphysical truth is concerned with what we commonly call electricity.

4. In the next two weeks, we'll be saying goodbye to the home my wife had our baby in, as well as the home we were married in.

5. In 3 days, Eleanor turns 8 months old!

6. Pound was right. Time passes and pisses on us all. Experience accumulates. You are always your true self at heart...and yet, nothing ever stays the same.

7. I am ready for Spring.

8. Ice fishing looks like it could be fun or excrutiatingly, mind-numbingly boring.

9. Waiting to hear back from writing programs is very much like ice fishing, except that I feel more like the fish.

10. Coffee is a very good thing.