We glimpsed Mount Denali in the distance, the early afternoon sun brilliant across the summit, and decided we needed a better view.Wasilla, a wasteland of malls and franchises, Sarah Palin’s hometown, stood in the way. And then we found ourselves in the wilderness again, the trees white and heavy with frost, Denali appearing, flashing between them. We drove on, certain that the ideal vista was just over the next rise. We continued through the empty landscape, dotted by log cabins and espresso shacks; the snow deepened, the light on Denali’s summit fading, as we passed an overturned truck. No soul in sight; further on, a pair of moose. “We should turn back.”
I was thinking the same. But we didn’t. We drove on. And then it was there, finally, a sudden full view, the mountain and all of the ridges below. We got out and took our pictures. I didn’t know how far we had gone, maybe 30 miles, 40 at most.
“100 miles?”
That’s what the mileage sign read; we had driven a hundred miles, impossibly so, enticed by the dream of a distant mountain towering over the land.
We went to see Low play in Anchorage, Alaska, and hoped for the Northern Lights too. We had never been to The Last Frontier; neither had Low. The flight from New York was long – 14 hours with a change in Seattle – and we were verging on collapse by the 10 pm showtime (2 am our EDT). But the venue was great – an intimate bar, Taproot – and there with only a hundred others in attendance, all of whom were bushy and rough.
“We waited for twenty years!” Someone called out.
Allan Sparhawk gazed back. “Actually it’s been 22.” The band looked tired – or were we projecting? – starting slow with Gentle and other lullaby-like songs from their remarkably listenable 2015 release Ones and Sixes, before gradually picking up with Sparhawk’s characteristic distortion and intensity in No Comprehende and Pissing. The light show was understated – 90’s style mandalas blooming and transforming behind Mimi Parker, making her look like a weary Madonna – as was the sound, lilting in and amongst the non-stop chatter from all corners.
“Yeah, I saw you there, but I was talking with RJ!” His beard puffed out like a cartoon character’s. “I haven’t talked with him in months!”
The only exception to the swirl of drink-inspired banter was a young couple in front of us, she with short blonde hair, he with a blond streaked beard, sitting side by side at a wooden table, gazing into each other’s eyes every 15 seconds, talking quietly and mysteriously, consuming a beer with stoic regularity, not once looking at the stage.
A woman looked at my wife and asked if she was a mail order bride. “There’s a lot of them here!”
I imagined that many of these people had come in from distant logging camps and moose hunts for this magical night, and tried to forgive them their boisterous manner. The PA was louder the second night – although the feedback from some songs seemed at times beyond system’s capacity, enveloped in white noise. Sparhawk, Parker and bassist Steve Garrington were more upright and clear, and so was the crowd, almost twice as large as the night before, drunker, louder, crashing into one another, spinning my chair to and fro as they went back and forth to the bar.
“I’ve got four bands now, man!” A heavy man stroked down at his scraggly greying beard as he yelled out to his friend. “Our shortest song is seven minutes! We got one that goes over 40!”
“It was a family event!” The woman’s eyes were sharp, her hair wild. “What do you want from me?!”
I was more tired this night, so damned tired that I just stared stupidly at the spinning mandalas and let them coax me to sleep. I switched to water and then Coke, and counted the bearded men yell with their dates, while Low played on, their subtlety lost in the tumult, until Sparhawk played his guitar like Hendrix which quieted everyone for a moment.
Sparhawk announced that there would be no encore, just one more song. The band had a flight in four hours.
“Don’t wait another 20 years!” Someone pleaded.
We went out into the cold night, looking into the sky, deep and empty, searching the horizon, seeing nothing but the haze of the city lights, not knowing yet that the only Northern Lights we would see were those in Taproot, both they and Low at the center of the madding crowd.
John C. Lilly’s fantasy-autobiography The Scientist chronicles his life as a scientist, psychedelic explorer and Third Being from the outer reaches of the universe. His scientific work begins with messing around with monkeys brains:
It was found that in male monkeys there were separate systems for erection, for ejaculation and for orgasm. With an electrode in the separate orgasm system, the monkey would stimulate this region and go through a total orgasm without erection and without ejaculation.Given the apparatus by which he could stimulate himself once every three minutes for twenty-four hours a day, the monkey stimulated the site and had orgasms every three minutes for sixteen hours and then slept eight hours and started again the next day. (90)Lilly goes on to mess with his own brain:
John felt that he had not sufficiently explored all the parameters of K. (Ketamine is reputed to facilitate out-of-body experiences.) He decided to do additional experiments on its long-term effects. For a period of three weeks, he gave himself injections every hour of the twenty-four hours. He immersed himself in the inner realities created by K, projecting them onto his outer reality. He became convinced of the intervention in human affairs of the solid-state life forms (computer-based machines) elsewhere in the galaxy. He became convinced that it was necessary for him to the warn the government. (162) Mr. Lilly eventually loses all awareness of who, what and where he is:
I swing from contained to uncontained mind and back to contained mind. I swing from belief in the three Beings to the simulation of the three Beings as a convenient method of thought to free up my thinking. Is belief any truer than experience? (110)
I didn’t know I even had an agent. He was a nice guy, big and bald and told me happily that he thought he could sell my novella, The Female Construction Crews of Myanmar. $3200. I accepted and signed without a thought.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand.” He folded the contract and gave me a check. “Why doesn’t he know who he is?”
The truth was I didn’t remember writing the book; I didn’t remember anything about it. “It’s a reflection on his state of mind.” I scanned the text quickly. “He has the drinking problem too.”
“He does?”
“It’s implied.”
I read a random selection: The roads in Myanmar are slow and narrow, spotted with gaping potholes and long stretches of dirt and gravel. As slow as the traffic slowed, this afforded him time to see the road construction crews, almost entirely of which were made of women.
I scanned ahead, through a long journey down a winding descent and then the character, “I”, boarding a horse cart, and suddenly, in front of his escort, trying to self-fellate. I couldn’t understand how this worked, why this was being published, but was desperate to understand before I had to give it back, just so I might write more of it and sell something I might remember.
Smashed rocks had been loaded into baskets and the women walked past, these baskets on their heads. The men minded the boiling tar in flaming drums, back-breaking work, as the horse cart jostled ahead and we headed on our three-day trip.
My ancestors were granted the ferrying rights across Loch Aw, Scotland in 1488. The (much abridged) document reads:
In the name of god amen… in the 7th year of Innocent, the 6th divine providence, Pope, in the presence of me, the notary public, the good and honest man, Moricius McFedran, handed over a certain letter written on a parchment about the ground as it appeared to be……containing word that it to me be clear to all that, given and to the honour and praise of Almighty God of the Blessed Virgin and all the saints for the safety of our soul and of the souls of all our ancestors and to the successors of the Lord of Lochaw, to have set and demitted to our faithful Dominicus McFedran by force of those present to his male heirs begotten or to be begotten the one mark of land of Sonachan near to the port extending to the river which is called Altbane and the river which is called Altynesperry lying in the Lordship of Lochaw, to be held and possessed all and the whole of the mark land along with the duty of ferrying …understanding that Dominicus and his heirs will carry all infirm, lame, poor and pilgrims without price or charge across the Loch.The cost per year: 10 shillings of silver, two bolls of grain which are called barley and oats, one pound of cheese and a sheep.
George Orwell’s Burmese Days is not a well-crafted tale, nor is it compelling; however it does remain a vivid portrait of Orwell’s own Colonial days in Burma.
Brutally vivid, it serves as a clear reminder of how civilized the English have never been: No natives in this club! It’s by constantly giving way over the small things that we’ve ruined the Empire. The only policy is to treat ’em like the dirt they are.It’s an English tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to be friends, though we all hate each other like poison. Hanging together, we call it. We should all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for that. Booze is the cement of the empire.Most grotesquely compelling of all is Orwell’s portrayal of the English hunt, first shooting birds from trees: Flory took one of the little green corpses to show to Elizabeth. ‘Look at it. Aren’t they lovely things? The most beautiful bird in Asia.’Later, they corner a leopard: The leopard was writhing along on his belly, sobbing as he went. Flory leveled his gun and fired at four yards distance. The leopard jumped like a cushion when one hits it, then rolled over, curled up and lay still. Flory poked the body with his gun-barrel.
The world is full of beauty and wonder. Like everyone else, I seek that out. Which is why I was in Myanmar. And that’s the problem; I’m like everyone else. There are too many people like me, all of us seeking new vistas, putting pins in the map, collecting magic moments.. It’s depressing in the end. Like the phrase implies, “taking pictures”, it’s taking something just so I can present them proudly to you and proclaim, “Look where I was!”“Isn’t this great? I’m special, aren’t I?”When the truth is I’m not. I’m just like everyone else.
A few notes from the margins, semi-blog-worthy, and so put together in this morass:
Liars, Cheaters and Ignoramuses: The Republicans are doomed to go down in history for childish stupidity. While they may not be a species of themselves, they remain a bitter reflection of our world, a breed of astounding ignorance who no longer deserve the laughs.
Silly Old Upper Canada College: The main building at Toronto’s richest and oldest all-boys school, Upper Canada College, is as imposing as ever – wide stone staircase, red brick wings, iconic tower – the halls as long and echoing and the students as privileged.But something has changed. There were females in the building, actual women, not students, but teachers and administrators. And they were in charge. A much better place than yesteryear, without a doubt.
Helvetius Porn: The doctrine of Claude Helvetius is fundamental and clear: as human’s faculties may be reduced to physical sensation, we are motivated solely by the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.
Yes, it’s all about feeling good, finding the sunniest possible spot, drink in hand, and staying in that as long as possible. In other words, there is no freedom of choice between good and evil and no such thing as absolute right.
There was a long hallway and someone screaming. And lots of other things that I can’t say right because, even if it made sense then, it doesn’t now. It was just a dream. And I have to get to work.
Qasiagssaq, men say, was a great liar. One day, when he had been in his kayak, without even a sight of a seal. He noticed a man from his village towing in a big black seal. Qasiagssaq rowed behind the man and stole the seal.
“Qasiagssaq, you have made a catch,” cried his fellow villagers. “Where did you get that tow line?”
“I have had it a long time,” he answered, “but have never used it before today.”
The other man from the village returned. “I got a big black seal today, but it was taken with my tow line.”The next day he was out again in his kayak and said to himself, “What is the use of my being out here, I who never catch anything?” He went to shore and lay his knees across a stone and used another stone to hammer his knee caps.
When he returned to the village, he told the villagers, “An iceberg calved right on top of me so that I barely escaped alive.”
Some time later, Qasiagssaq heard that a couple in another village had lost their child and went to visit. “Today my little daughter, Nipisartangivaq, is doubtless crying at her mother’s side as usual.”
The mourners looked up eagerly. “Ah, how grateful we are to you! Now your little daughter can have all her things.” And they gave him a cooking pot, beads and a great quantity of food. When he returned home, the other villagers asked where he got so many things.
“An umiak started out on a journey, and the people in it were hurried and forgetful.”
Towards evening, a number of kayaks arrived; the people from the other village had brought meat for Qasiagssaq’s daughter. When they learned that Qasiagssaq did not have a daughter, they asked for their cooking pot to be returned.The next evening he returned home and told the villagers he had found a dead whale. They rowed out for it and asked Qasiagssaq where the whale was.
“Over there, beyond that little ness,” he replied.
They rowed there and found nothing and asked again.
“Over there, beyond that little ness,” Qasiagssaq replied.
This happened again and again until the others finally said, ‘Qasiagssaq is only a trouble to us all. Let us kill him.”
And at last they did as they had said, and killed Qasiagssaq.*
*Greenlandic Folk Tale, as collected by Knud Rasmussen
Wasilla, a wasteland of malls and franchises, Sarah Palin’s hometown, stood in the way. 
And then we found ourselves in the wilderness again, the trees white and heavy with frost, Denali appearing, flashing between them. 
We drove on, certain that the ideal vista was just over the next rise. 
We continued through the empty landscape, dotted by log cabins and espresso shacks; the snow deepened, the light on Denali’s summit fading, as we passed an overturned truck. 
No soul in sight; further on, a pair of moose.
“We should turn back.”
I didn’t know how far we had gone, maybe 30 miles, 40 at most.
