*

tHe PoEt & i*

a comic-spiritual adventure

or, if you prefer

A Semi-Factional Account
of a Great Journey to the Nether Regions of
Antipodean Thought

*As written by The Rider in the company of tHe PoEt and The Minstrel, with input from [ The Bard ] and the usual interruptions from { The Critic }. While there are those who say that i* was the writer, the truth be known, I was hardly more than secretary.

a karo work

© 2014 karoworks inc       all rights reserved       www.akarowork.com

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-0-9936090-0-8

For Leanne and Ellen,
who shared the journey of self awareness.

And for Dolores,
who helped me through the worst miles.

a disclaimer

tHe PoEt & i* and its subsidiary components are works of satirical fiction and commentary.

Except where intended as satire, fair comment or juvenile snark, any resemblance of characters to actual or alleged persons, entities or channels, living or dead, corporeal or non-corporeal, incorporated or non-incorporated, animate or inanimate, terrestrial or non-terrestrial is purely and entirely and indubitably coincidental in the standard, early 21st century neo-liberal, corporate, and materialist view of the term.

Similarly, any resemblence of events, locations, products or hidden meanings to actual events, locations, products and hidden meanings, except where intended as satire, snide mannerism or infantile nyah nyah nyah na nyah, is entirely a product of the reader's fetid imagination.

... the novel as written

Part 1 ... Beginnings / Can You Hear?

Part 2 ... Proliferations / How He Learned

Part 3 ... Mountains / To Travel

Part 4 ... Grasslands / Illusion

Part 5 ... Waters / As We Sing

Part 6 ... Headlands / The Missing Chord

Part 7 ... Returns / At Last!

... the major pieces

The Teachings of the Minstrel

Just a coupl'a GoB

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

the writer comments

If I told you a tale
of transformation,
a tale of some terror and woe,
a tale of some beauty too,

Would you be able to hear?
Would you be able to feel?
Would you be able to know
the power of these words?

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

1

It was just like the primer on hockey in one of his old MAD magazines said, describing the goalie’s equipment, the masses of padding and hard protective surfaces needed in a game that fires 3 inch round chunks of hard rubber at speeds over 160 kilometres per hour. [Course, in MAD, it wasn’t metric. For you Americans, 160 km/hr equals one hundred miles per hour. Most important, with regard to highway speed limits, 55 miles per = 90 K or Klicks.] {Ah, isn’t that instructional design just a little too overt? Shouldn’t you try something a little more subtle?} [What would you know about subtle?] Excuse me. All those failsafes of equipment, the primer pointed out, left just a small, quite tiny really, area of the front lower neck unprotected. The goal of the game, the spoof went on, was to fire a puck at that spot — and hit it.

Well maybe it wasn’t quite that extreme. There were no frenzied fans or bad tempered goons here. There was just the bike and the highway and the rain. The damn rain. While the GoldWing’s big touring windscreen reduced bugs and bared-teeth smiles to the minimum, it could only lessen but not eliminate rain. It was part of biking’s price, the Rider had been forced to conclude, that rain still came at you — and dripped down off the visor and unto the damn chin straps and straight down those to fan out under the one little gap in the layers of protective clothing, the little vee where collars don’t quite close and straps don’t quite seal. The result was an ever-widening delta of wet coldness moving down across his chest — slowly, excruciatingly slow. After a couple of hours, it got damn uncomfortable.

But that’s the way it had been every day since he’d left. The summer, if you could call it summer, was shaping up to be one of the wettest on record — and that despite an incredible run of near perfect weather the first two weeks of June. Of course, that had been just after he’d gotten the bike and was remembering how to ride, particularly how to manage the contradictory task of leaning to stay upright, a difficult job when memory’s bike was 22 years old and just half the weight to boot. Maybe if the weather had been this lousy during those first few weeks, he’d have reconsidered the trip. Maybe if he’d had a crystal ball or a little voice inside to forecast the future, he’d have planned on hiring a cottage and rabbitting himself in there for the summer. Anything but these endless hours of that clammy delta and the feeling that life — at least the little he could remember of it — was against him yet again.

Up ahead, out of the rain, a single light signalled the approach of another bike. It took a moment through the rain-spattered visor to make out the type. It was a Harley, all decked out with its most fundamental option, the typically tough rider — no windscreen, no visor, bare hands, face mottled with the rain and cold. Yes, the typical tough, up-his-own-muffler HOGger as the Rider had come to call them. After all, he thought, there was something a little noble about them, something inspiring in just what those guys [used with 95.99999 or so percent accuracy here as HOGgers are almost exclusively male. For that matter, biking is still a mostly male pursuit because it is, in fact, a pursuit of the inner male. But more about that another time.] would put up with to be out here literally hitting reality in the face like that. Noble. Yes. Noble. But stupid just the same. The Rider lifted his hand in salute but the other bike swept past with no sign of recognition, not even eye contact. No surprise. That’s how it was with most HOGgers, he’d found. They loved their machines with a passion, and in their minds saw their bikes as on pedestals with themselves — yes, veritable kings of the road — astride. Few of this royalty deigned to notice mere mortals on GoldWings which they thought of as just slightly more expensive ‘jap crap’. Well, the Rider thought, let them think what they want. In just three days of the trip he’d passed four hogs rooted on the shoulder, but not a single GoldWing.

Ah yes, the Wing — tHe PoEt. He still had trouble believing just how bi-ig it was. For instance, that morning he’d woken in the Thompson River Valley, his nose itchy from the rich smell of sage. Low in the background he could hear the river’s unending shuffle towards the sea, a sound at odds with the landscape he knew surrounded the little campground; the interior ranges of British Columbia are grassland deserts, made so by the coastal mountain ranges to the west punching the moisture out of the winds that roll in off the Pacific Ocean. While watching for a campsite the night before, the Rider had marvelled at the range of light browns, dusty greens and washed out blues these conditions created. Unlike their cousins to the east and west, these mountains were worn with innumerable years, and what greens there were were darkest and thickest on the tops of the west-facing slopes, that being where the little moisture there is falls as rain or snow. In their shadow, the east-facing slopes were sheened to near their tops by brown grasses and blue sages, and these velvet slopes were veined by threads of trees following trickles of water. It was early evening, by far the Rider’s favourite time for riding — when pockets of air were suddenly cool, then warm, and the smells of fresh cut hay surged out of irrigated fields — and, although he was tired, he rode past three campgrounds just to keep watching. It had been most of the way to dark when he’d finally pulled in, set up the tent and, half an hour later, slipped into his custom-made down bag {the one he’d paid $400 for (not adjusted for inflation) back in the days he’d had money (now a very distant memory)}. He was glad he had such a good bag — the air was so dry these interior mountains cooled quickly after dark — but he sometimes wished for an air mattress too. He was 40 after all, and maturity suggests you can make some compromises to age. Finally finding a comfortable spot for his ride-sore bum, [Yes. Even Wingers get the blue bum blues eventually] sleep claimed him.

When he woke, the smell of sage sent him into a flicker of images from the previous night, and he rode the road again. It was the same in memory as it was in reality… a sparse and spare land, he thought. Then thought again. Yes, it was that. But god it was extraordinarily beautiful.

And then he’d walked outside, stretching and yawning and thinking about Vancouver when he suddenly saw the bike, mentally stopped to admire it and suddenly remembered, that’s mine! It was the most male machine he had ever seen, with a kind of classic, sleekly fat, utilitarian ugliness that was beautiful. It was not the overt macho of a stripped down Harley or the chromed and decorated pimpery many riders went for. Nor one of those wind-tunnelled cruisers touring bikes are evolving into. An ‘82 {It was all he could afford now. Ironic, eh? Back when it was built he could have afforded brand new.} and you could still see it was a bike under the fairing and bags. It was a good bike with few faults: big, heavy, functional; a brute at low speed cornering and an effort generally in the city, but on the highway it came into its own and there was no machine that could compare after a series of 700 kilometre days. Well, of course the Rider was biassed. He had bought a GoldWing after all.

But he still hadn’t named it. The machine had to have a name. That was de rigueur — wasn’t it, after all? — for anyone doing a cross-country-just-separated-just-laid-off-mid-life-crisis-22-years-on-re-discovery-of-youth-tour [and planning a book about it to boot]. No. The motorcycle on which he hoped to experience that mystical union of man and inanimate but complex object could not be just ‘the machine’ or ‘the bike’. It had to become, if not a person in its own right, then a part of the persona, the physicalization of The Rider’s sudden new status as single male. {God, he loved the image of the bike and the image of himself as The Rider. That would change.} And there was no better way to denote that than with a name. Trouble was, none of the names he’d thought of had made the grade.

Gold. Goldie. Wing. GoldenWing. Hog Honda [He’d nearly gone with that.] Honey. The Rider had toyed with all the possible permutations of the bike’s brand name (used here without permission, and therefore without payment, just to keep the record straight). He’d mouthed names like Freedom and Liberty, Peace and Double Happiness, and others like Churchill and Ghandi (even Milhaus, jokingly); and tried the taste of The Big 4-0, A1 and 10-4; but none had a sense of fit and of completeness, nor the feeling of perfect resonance with life that only an absolutely apropos nom de plume [or in this case nom de guerre] imparts. The name, he knew with the certainty of a bard, would become not just the symbol of his summer, but would also title the book that was already fermenting in his unconscious. Without that feeling of resonance, it could not be the name.

So what was it to be, the Rider wondered? What was the single most dominant feeling in the panoply the trip and the sudden change in his circumstances brought forward? The answer came out of nowhere. Piss on it, he thought. Piss on the separation and piss on the job and piss on being 40. I’m alive and I am going to live. I will survive this time and I will survive next time. I’m a survivor and the Wing’s a survivor’s toy. The Piss On Everything Toy, the P.O.E.T. Yes, the Poet. Now there was a name he liked. It rang true. The Piss On Everything Toy.

2

the writer comments

And that was how the bike came to be called tHe PoEt, such moments, he knew, being exactly the stuff of fodder {say that five times real fast} needed for the book. The font and case variation were a trick The Bard suggested after one of its few intercultural exchanges into cyberspace. Who and how he met with there I have no understanding of, but then I have almost no understanding of The Bard to begin with. As far as I know, the Bard’s a virus that entered my notebook on its virgin encounter with the cyberworld, but I am assured by experts that the person doesn’t yet exist who could find The Bard’s program on my laptop, much less write it. The Bard, they say — and they do seem to mean this and are not just humouring my assertion that it exists — is several orders of magnitude more advanced than my laptop (which is just a 386 running at 20 MHZ with a 20 MB 19 ms HD and 1 MB of RAM) {Is that Imperial or metric?} should be able to support.

My gut feeling, or bum vibes if you like, is that The Bard is an alien but nevertheless fully realized fusion of software and one of my minor neuroses. Not one of my favourite ones either. My story, and I’m sticking by it, goes that it was kidnapped at birth, accounting for many of my abduction dreams and, for that matter, my painful relations with my birth mother. Since, it’s been taught, or learned (I’m not sure which) the most advanced methods of survival and now neither freud nor gates could dislodge it. If it wasn’t so damn reasonable, and right most of the time, it might have become an irritant. Well — truth — it is an irritant, but one hell of a fine editor. And he certainly knows me better than The X ever did, or is that just my own illusion? Why am I out here hitting reality in the face?

Now there’s a question tHe PoEt would answer, would love to answer, at some length too. He (if I can give it a gender because — if his claims are correct — he has been she dozens of times since his preferred lifetime as a warrior. I say preferred because that’s the persona he most likes to identify with when he’s about, when he’s not cogitating on the cogs and whistles of his more mechanical side. I have a few times suspected tHe PoEt’s actually just another of The Minstrel’s many persona, one he doesn’t publicly acknowledge, and, thinking that, i suspect that this is his shadow personality, the rough and tough, the — dare I say it? — masculine side he cannot allow into the light of his preferred persona. But here i am psychoanalysing a couple figments of my imagination as though they were real. Course i do know they can’t be — real that is. After all, if I didn’t, I’d be insane, wouldn’t I? And I’m not.) {And each and every day, I’m getting better in every way.} likes to think he knows me inside out, knows how I tick and why I tick, even knows my darkest secrets as his ultimate power over me. I don’t begrudge him the illusion, and it is at times interesting to hear him pontificate on me. (For instance, I’m sure you’d enjoy his explanation of why I sometimes refer to myself in the third person. Yes, I am the writer, or at least I think I am.) Between him and The Bard, I don’t get away with very much. But the last laugh is always mine because I’m the master personality and so I always know more than he does. I just can’t express it as well.

So just what am I doing out here, hitting reality in the face like this?

3

Life is a literary device, the Rider thought, throttling back for his 100th? 200th? 400th? curve since turning north at Cache Creek to pick up BC’s Highway 99. No, it’s not named after Gretzky, but it has all the sinewy moves and spectacular passes of the Great One. {Boy. Talk about frivolous name dropping. What the hell’s he got to do with this story?} Well, nothing really, but, to a biker, mountains are heaven, wherever and whatever their vegetation cover. You see, mountains make engineers forsake their more efficient straight lines for roads that, in a constant give and take of materials and resources, accommodate their beds to the land, rock and raging rivers they cross. They have no other choice. Even given the strength of the human will to dominate this planet, there are only so many things you can do before you have to bow and call a truce. And that’s the give and take that attracts bikers. In fact, riders deliberately seek out that space between the sheer awesomeness of this world and our species’ ability to manipulate, subjugate and humiliate that home. There’s a fine line there where the forces are balanced, and engineers must work with, not against, the natural world. Riders honour the roads that result. For here, the meaning of simple existence can be found — all that’s needed is a bike and the ability to command the subtle forces of the body’s weight. Armed with those, one can find and ride the balance line. It is the biker’s very raison d’ride.

Not that engineers give much thought to bikers — or to nature for that matter. Their work is driven by economics and landscape, not aesthetics and certainly not the satori-like experience sought by the small minority of the population who ride. They couldn’t afford the luxury. These mountain roads were not cheap — many of them were built back when the going rate of a million a mile was, yes, a helluva lot of money, but {Ah.. here he goes with that ‘good old days’ schtick of his. Is he like his father or what?} that still bought just the barest of accommodations to the landscape.

But, bare as they were, they were critical for, along with railways, roads are the physical stitchings of nationhood — linking communities and regions together for trade and culture and governance — and there’s no better example of this than Canada. Geographically huge and still, by world standards, almost unpopulated, the country has been an act of what you could call anti-will — the will not to be American — since its inception. A continent-spanning railroad was its wedding band, and a highway from sea unto sea it’s anniversary present. They were the price of the new country’s existence and they became its backbone against the ever-southward pull of the U.S. And where they went is where Canada grew, as much as where Canada grew was where they went, linking all the pockets of economy into a politically almost miraculous country — a country that gave meaning to the phrase coast-to-coast.

More than that, they were yellow brick roads that generations of Canadians had travelled to carve a nation out of the wilderness, to settle the west, to find or follow economic opportunity, growth and change. And in every generation there were those like the Rider who, caught in the whirlwind of life, unearthed new beginnings in the exploding dawns these roads opened to, found solitude and healing under the vaulting skies, somehow became more complete, more fully human in their rolling sunsets.

And the best of them were the highways that haven’t been reworked for trucks and high speed traffic — like 99 along several parts of its length — and so still give a sense of exploration, and a feeling for the road’s history, for its roots in trails and the passage of single feet. {Quick now. What’s the sound of one foot?} And the best of these — like this backdoor route into Vancouver — also provide an astounding display of geoclimactic change in a period of time that technology and dynamite have reduced to just hours. From the arid but still ever-so spectacular Fraser Canyon, to new-fallen snow crossing the second coastal range, and down into a world of temperate rainforest and sea, takes somewhere around eight hours. Or longer if you feel like it — which is more likely if you’re riding than if you’re driving. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s great in a car. And I imagine truck drivers too enjoy the scenery they pass through at all times of the day and night. But bikers experience nature closeup — her smells and her smiles and her whims. It’s in their face and it’s in their nose. Round a corner and it’s there. A new smell, a new world. A new unfolding of life. A new beginning.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for the rain, which had dogged, drenched and drizzled him at all too regular intervals, it would have made for the most perfect preface to Vancouver, the city where he would ‘officially’ start both his trip and his novel. [There being more than a little literary device in that little fiction; the truth was back in Edmonton and this initial three day run was to ‘get his head cleared’ of the mess his life had grown in just a few months. In the book though, the trip would start at Canada’s west coast — so redolent of moisture, centuries old trees, and the rich musk of warm seawater — and be ‘bookended’ (sorry, couldn’t resist), several weeks later, on the bare rocks of the Atlantic coast. In between would be what he was sure the critics would call “a modern parable of the rootless wanderer”, “a hiply comic 90s answer to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and “a real breakthrough in style… which the author calls multiplicit voice.” You see, the writer agrees with Doonesbury that we all have a mental cheerleader and sportscaster ringing our progress, but he goes further and says we all have many other voices inside and so, any time we speak or write, the multiple is implicit in the singular. All he’s doing, he says, is making it explicit.]

In fact, he’d already started to write it — the preface that is — setting out the broad themes and majestic thrust of the narrative. ‘Thrown to the floor by painfully sudden and no less disruptive changes in the space of just months, suddenly the imprisoning hand loosens and our hero finds himself on the trip of his life, cruising a mountain road, open to life’s hand. And what a hand! Epiphanies await the seeker at every turn. And not least that here he was on the ultimate metaphor, a journey that would not only take him from the known into the unknown, but open his heart to life.’ And, the preface would continue, just as he was a pinnacle — as we all are — of evolution, so we are also all pinnacles of our societies. We are their product, and their pride, as much as we are evolution’s products. But, you can turn that around and say all of human biological, social and technological evolution — all of life — had combined to create this trip, to create him. Why? Why not say in order to serve its own need for myth, its own hunger for freedom? The circumstances that put him here, the drivers of inner and outer change, were cheap plot devices in a grand play, yet one more staging of The Odyssey, replete with all the symbols of its 1990s incarnation — the highway, the bike, leather jacket and silly swagger. [Not to mention the separation and termination papers. And the lawyer’s bills of course.]

It was about as primal a male myth as you could get. And here he was on it, Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces seeking the wholeness of identity in the undulating days. Life had that sort of meaning implicit in it. Hence life was a literary device. And there exactly was where the road became such a powerful symbol of life in general and his life in particular — or so it seemed lately. Life thrives on change, and the road was a perpetual opportunity for the mundane to become the miraculous and myths be born.

Yes, life is a literary device he mused, his thoughts merging back into the roar of wind, motor and wheels from which the music on his headphones seemed like distant thunder. He would have to write that down the next time he stopped. But for now he would have to hold on to it, keep rolling the thought around his mind so it wouldn’t disappear back into that maelstrom and be forever lost. Life is a literary device. Life is a literary device. Concentrating, he slipped further into the white noise of riding, into that state of aware relaxation where he and the bike and the highway were one entity, one perfection of line and acceleration and shifting body weight — his favourite moment, that point in the precise middle of an S when, weight shifting across the curve, he momentarily became weightless. It happened a lot on this final stretch into Vancouver, which runs hard up against the southern edge of Howe Sound and into the backside of the city at Horseshoe Bay where the ferries dock. Trapped between the sea and precipitous mountains, the highway has no choice but to snake and shimmy, suddenly exposing breathtaking views across the Sound, suddenly tunnelling through rock and trees. If it hadn’t been for the trucks and cars — and the rain — it would have been an exhilarating ride, a real biker’s run. Life is a literary device. Shift down, shift the weight, accelerate. Life is a literary device. When it came, the voice was almost unnoticed.

“well, yes it is, but i think you’re straining the point.”

Momentarily confused — was that a voice or a thought? — the Rider judged his way into the upcoming curve, accelerated smoothly and was preparing for the next when the voice went on.

“you see, life can be considered a literary device but only if you come down on the side of art imitating life. or is it life imitating art? doesn’t matter. either is to take a side in a very ancient debate, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but surely you can see that there is a wider point lost just by the nature of the proposition and just by taking sides?.”

Now the Rider was not unused to hearing what seemed to be voices separate from his own thoughts but he knew this was not at all unusual. He knew the human psyche is not a single entity but a collection of emotions, conceits and neuroses that often seem to have an existence of their own and it’s the norm rather than the exception that they, in effect, end up as semi-autonomous subsets of the larger psyche. It can be a fairly noisy babble as these subset personalities are constantly jostling and fighting for room. Noisy — and quite rough at times, like growing up in a very large family.

Now imagine that crowd captured inside a balloon. What happens? What do you see looking at the balloon from the outside? In psychological terms, the balloon is the ego, the conscious self-image and it does exactly what the balloon is doing — holding it all together. In most people, it succeeds amazingly well, but a number of forms of mental illness occur if and when, and how, the balloon breaks, and the self-image loses its ability to hold all its disparate elements together. Multiple personality is just the most dramatic of these afflictions. But simply hearing different mental voices was normal. [Of course, the balloon analogy leaves out that forces are acting inward as well — that it is not just the strength of the ego that guards against breakdown but all the sanctions and strictures and structures of the larger society one is part of.] Yeah. Yeah. He knew all that and was comfortable with it because it made sense of his own experience. What he wasn’t used to was a voice that cut in over the music on his headsets. Like, for real. The voice was in the stereo somewhere. Demanding attention.

“well, surely you do see that? are you with me at all? i mean are we, ah, having a meaningful discussion or what? for that to happen you have to take part, i mean, like converse. do you think we can try that? huh?”

The voice paused.

“well. I’m waiting. by the way, i’m in the whole bike, not just the stereo. ask me about it sometime. and, oh yeah. i am real. well, at least as real as you are.”

Mind you, it was not that he hadn’t heard of it, or something similar. The Rider was more than a little familiar with New Age channelling. [Now there’s a growth industry. In the same way that human population went exponential this century, the number of channels serving the many prophets of the New Age has gone stratospheric in recent years.] {Yeah. They’re everywhere. Some days it seems you can’t get away from them.} The X had been into it in a big way and the Rider had heard first hand more than one third party to a group of two’s conversation — a sometimes eerie, sometimes hokey experience. And he’d read, well glanced really, through a few of The X’s books on the topic once, reckoning there was a documentary or two that could be made. He’d never pulled it off, but that was monetary, not for lack of story potential. Still, the Rider wasn’t sure just what to make of any given so called ‘channelled entity’. He knew there were many styles and types, and he also thought any number of hypotheses {God he likes to use the big words, doesn’t he?} might account for some subset portion of the overall range — say, those who experienced their voices as angels, or those who spoke to spirits of the dead. But that still left those who merely channelled voices from other galaxies or from the logos of distant stars. Guardian spirits too. Astral Guides. Beings from alternate and/or altered realities and, of course, possession by time travelling rakes enjoying a cosmic scam. Just to name a few. But there were few hypotheses you could name could cover them all, not even outright fraud and wilful delusion. Even fewer could account for what this seemed to be, a voice from an inanimate object. Even if it had a name.

The object I mean.

But then, of course, there was always the Big I, the question most of us avoid if at all possible, the Insanity Question. Which comes down to this. The insane hear voices. We know this for a fact. That is, we know the insane believe they hear voices. And so, if we, well okay, i hear voices then it stands to reason that we/i are/am ergo insane. Ergo we/i should probably go see a doctor. But, let’s face it, that’s all a lot of bother and what if we don’t mind the voice? What if in fact we quite like it? Wouldn’t we sooner welcome saint alonzo of the etheric brotherhood than an objectified psychoses? I mean, we’re all human. [Speak for yourself.]

That’s why so few of us care to consider the Insanity Question. Because when you do, that other question becomes…

“i’m still waiting,” the voice cut in again.

…am i really out here hitting reality in the face?

4

“oh I get it now. the problem is that we haven’t been properly introduced. is that it? your momma tell you never to talk to strangers? well okay, we can deal with that too. nod yes or no if you really can’t talk to strangers.”

There was something a little familiar in the voice, but it was hard to say just what as it kept switching from a kind of resonantly melodious, sort of almost professorial tone to a near rap-like street patter. [And just what the hell does that little description actually mean? eh? (Ah, bugger it. I’ll leave it in so they can all see just how much you need an editor. How much you need me.)] While ‘the professor’ voice chose its words with arrogant care, ‘street kid’s’ came in rushes of anger and defiance. It was almost like there were two voices, both distinct, both cutting cleanly into the music as if heavily audio compressed. Still, there were cadences and the odd inflection that hinted the voices were somehow related, like an estranged father and son, disliking each other but tied by blood and upbringing. All in all it was more than a little disorienting. The ‘prof’ came back on the line.

“it’s times like now one almost bemoans the lost body. at least I could punch you awake then.”

Rider shook his head. Yeah, he was tired all right. Throwing half a ton to either side back and forth all day took a lot. He fairly ached all over, and didn’t much trust his legs to keep the bike up at low speed. Tired enough to hallucinate? he wondered. He wasn’t sure but he really didn’t feel all that far out of it, just real tired. And he’d never had much trouble distinguishing reality when it hit him in the face. That was a putative survival skill in his culture, but he’d often wondered, and thereby allowed the Big I into his life.

Was this its answer?

“ok then, i’ll go first. i won’t stand on ceremony. i’ll introduce myself first. then you can do it back and we’ll be great old friends. you’ll see. now, let’s see. i really like what you called me. the piss on everything toy. tHe PoEt. yeah. you can call me that. but really, i’m a warrior not a poet. but what the hell. what’s in a name? especially between friends?”

There was what, in a normal conversation, would have been an expectant pause.

“and yours? i mean your name. you see now it’s your turn. now you tell me your name so that we can get back to the question at hand.”

If it wasn’t the answer, which on reflection it clearly wasn’t, and if it wasn’t april 1, which it wasn’t, then it wasn’t funny. Which it wasn’t. This sarcastic bastard was a pain in the ass. It was like a smoother, fuller, more rounded version of his own inner critic, always on the lookout for a moment of weakness to exploit, always smoothly urbane and deadly for it. It made him shiver and, when that passed, The Rider saw the situation dispassionately. His bike was inhabited — there could be no other explanation — by the spirit or essence of a bad stand up comedian, possibly schizoid, the kind that can’t even get invited back in heaven. Ever. [The inner critic, and yes, later, the external critics too, roundly condemned the suddenness of this understanding, calling it ‘as cheap a plot device as the conversion on the road to damascus’, ‘sophomore symbology’ and charged the Rider was just a two dimensional character, a ‘convenient hanger for events necessary to the plot, if only one could find it.’] {Not that the Rider had much to complain about. After all, to this point, the Rider was nothing more than plot device. When he was told to jump, he jumped. And was proud of it. Damn proud, thank you very much.} [That sophomore line had hurt, wounded the writer’s pride in fact. He knew he was beyond sophomore symbology. Why he could make a sun rise rise at the right time with the best of them, and if they couldn’t understand the many subtleties he’d inlaid then they couldn’t understand his writing. It was as simple as that. He never entered a plea in his own defence, never explained why he left such comic potential unmined, never apologized or indicated regret. He just made it so. He was after all the writer.]

And with that understanding, the Rider began to consider his response. At age 40, alone even in the thickening traffic nearing Vancouver, he was going to talk to and with a motorcycle. It even had a name. His name. The one he gave it the previous day. They say life puts back what you put out, he recalled from somewhere. God I must have been bad, real bad to deserve this. I just wish I could remember it. Maybe it was worthwhile. Maybe not. Rider brooded on that strange lack of memory, feeling about in the darkness for something he instinctively knew was important. Vital even. But found nothing. Just a blank.

Just how you did talk to a machine he wasn’t really sure. Course, the Rider had seen all the sci fi computers and talking machines but had known they were fake, and so never considered the question of how humans and machines might actually intercourse. I mean, did you speak out loud? Did you use sign language? If you spoke, was it machine language? Could any joe blow speak to a machine? or did you have to be a special joe blow? {And could joe blow blow joe blow if joe’s blow was blow’n on the wind?} Most importantly right now, How the hell did you talk to a motorcycle? Fucked if he knew. So he spoke out loud without thinking how silly it looked, how it was just like always pulling up at the lights and the guy in the car next to you is pulling this huge long goober out of his nose, proceeding to eat, then wash it down with a pull at his takeaway donut shop coffee. {You’re pulling my leg. You’re not really going to leave that in, are you?} [Why not? Not one word there is redundant, and not one pull is the same. All in all, I’d say it’s rather admirable. For a change.] He just spoke out loud. “Ah, hello?” The machine answered back on the stereo. It was the prof.

“ah, so there you are. glad you could come aboard… consciousness that is. i thought for a while there i might have to try mouth to mouth — or is that breather to breather? oh well. no harm done, really. so what the hell. what’s a little misunderstanding between friends? eh?”

Apparently the Rider could vocalize and be understood. He wondered if he could turn the machine off.

“sure, you can turn the machine off. but you can’t turn me off. i’m not the bike. i continue, just as I have for almost four thousand years.”

So he didn’t have to talk out loud. That was certainly more convenient. Or was it? Did that mean the Wing could read minds? Of course it did. Did he really want that? A stray refrain from his favourite sunday school song wandered through his mind, ‘there is no satisfaction without s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n.’, the salvation spelt out letter by letter, with an extra 1-2-3 at the end. Did he want a machine listening in on his thoughts? On thoughts like that? Knowing what he knew? And just what did it know? Did it know the banality of the band playing that song, and know the frustration its drummer felt? Or did it just know what the spotlight of memory froze and made thought for that instant? Street kid’s answer revealed little.

“hey not to worry. i only know what I need to know. yes. need to know. i am definitely on the need to know list. but stop with the questions and introduce yourself. it’s the least a gentleman could do.”

Well, there was nothing for it. He introduced himself the only way he could, as The Rider, because he had never been given a name. [The bloody bike had a name but I don’t, he would come to complain in out of the way bars where he hoped to elude that strange fellow with the jerky little finger movements. There was something about him bothered Rider, some fugitive connection between those fingers and the darkness that haunted his waking hours. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out just how or why. He didn’t know it then, but that was the nub of what the critics would mean by that two-dimensional character thing. Rider was a cut out with no more identity than a police target, less actually because police targets at least ended up with identifiable bullet holes which gave them some individuality. The Rider never grew, never learned, never became even Pinochiole-like in his movements. Cardboard, nothing but cardboard. But try to tell the writer that.] Anyways, he introduced himself as The Rider once again, not certain the ‘other’ had understood. The machine seemed to speak english but it was japanese and what kind of nationality did talking motorcycles have in any case? Did they belong anywhere? Was there not somewhere a terrorist group working for their cause? Was there a book he could read to learn how to handle all these questions? Damn. This was worse than owning a dog. [Rider suddenly stopped, uncertain if he really knew what owning a dog was, but supposed he must as he had had the thought. It was right there in black and data.] A dog would at least roll over and play dead on command.

“very funny. so if you’re the rider, I guess that would make me the ridee. how very functional. but i’ll stick with poet if it’s all the same to you. well, glad to meet you rider. it’s a real pleasure. now wouldn’t you agree? to what? to my question that there’s a wider point lost by taking sides in the which imitates what debate? don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

Lord no. Don’t tell it I’ve forgotten, the Rider thought. It’ll think I’m dumb. What the hell was it talking about? Which imitates what? He felt like he often did, as though he’d suddenly gained consciousness in the most dramatic moment of a scene and he was the object of the climax and he had no idea just what the hell was going on. [Rider hated that lack of what he called character, for lack of a better term, and resented it when friends pointed to themselves as examples of what could be. Many think this and the name thing are what drove him to drink in those out of the way bars.] Wouldn’t it be polite to allow him a few moments to get used to talking to a machine before trying to nail him on some arcane stupidity that nobody would ever care about? Give me a break, he thought.

“but it’s not arcane. not at all. it’s fundamental. it’s a rock bottom point, one that defines or undefines entire realities. it is anything but arcane. and anything but stupid. so do you agree or disagree?”

The voice had become quite challenging. So what was it going to do if Rider now choose not to respond? Put up its dukes? Bypass its mufflers? Yeah, that’d be right. He’d end up with a dog that was all purr and no bark, never mind no bite. Even if it had the ability, which the Rider doubted, this ‘Poet’ couldn’t very well try to lose the Rider, as any direct action that might achieve that loss would likely hurt the bike just as much. It was a stalemate if Rider chose to make it so — to simply ignore the question and the voice. Then what? he thought. Then nothing. What was the sound of one lip? One puppet string? Does the fridge light really go off when you shut the door? Who cares? tHe PoEt would cease to exist for no comedian, especially a bad one, can exist without an audience. No audience, no talking motorcycle. I mean, it stood to reason, he whined to himself. Didn’t it?

“well, see, there’s your problem, well one of your problems anyway. you place entirely too much faith on reason, and then you apply it badly to boot. it’s no wonder you end up taking sides in arcane arguments! life’s a literary device? come on now, get real!”

This was getting a little personal. The damn thing seemed to know more about the Rider than Rider himself knew about himself. {And we shall soon see how he himself feels about that} With so curiously few memories, finding the right one was not difficult. Let’s see now, Rider thought. We were talking about life as a literary device. Yeah, that’s right. For the Preface. Now just what was the damn thing’s point?

“i do wish you would stop thinking of me as a thing. i find it degrading. and i’m sure it’s absolutely politically incorrect of you to cause me to feel this way. we entities have rights you know, hell we’re even thinking of forming a union to enforce them. we could go on strike you know. just think about that. think about the effects. do you want to be the cause of the first entity strike? i insist you think of me as who i am.”

There was a dramatic pause. Rider could have sworn he heard a phlegmy throat clear but there was no throat here to clear. A gummed-up carb? He wished he knew how to check.

“i am an authentic, entity class one, warrior spirit. i have the papers to prove it. i am 38,432 years old, give or take a drunken lifetime. i have been almost anything you care to name, quite successfully too if i must say so myself. as a warrior spirit, i am of the deep thinker tribe. i seek wisdom through the centuries which i impart as requested, and as allowed by my license. that is who i am. now the question is, who are you?

oh and yes, i do have references. do you?”

Well, if there was no satisfaction without salvation, certainly now there was no salvation from the situation without satisfaction. The satisfaction of seeing this pompous asshole shut off. God what a performance! From a fucking bike! Well there was one thing he knew as Rider and that was the law of the road and he knew that not only made him Rider but Owner as well. And if it could be owned — even if it had a name — it was a thing, not a person, and things could be turned off. On impulse, Rider reached for the stereo knob and twisted it off. And there was now no sound at all from the headphones. The voice was in his head. It was the kid, and Rider could hear the smirk.

“nice try. so what ya gonna do now? call bike busters? sorry but you can’t shake me that easy, kemo sabe.”

Bike busters? Kemo sabe? Just what the hell was this?, Rider wondered. A bad sitcom? Some retreaded vehicle for a piss poor comic with a schiz schtick shift? And what was he then? The Drone Ranger? Slimer? The Ghost of Goldwings Past? Suddenly, a memory niggled upwards into awareness, a thought that made him sick with it’s alien feel and a sensation of gagging. Like something was being shoved up his throat. There’d been a tv series, what was it called? My brother the car? No. It was the guy’s mother, the original backseat — and front seat, and steering wheel, and rear bumper for that matter — driver; nagging, bitching, just generally interfering and making the guy’s life hell. All the more reason, Rider thought, to make a quick and painless cancellation — before there could be reruns or, writer forbid, a sequel. Writer?, Rider thought. Why’d he think that? Wasn’t God forbid the correct expression?

“now there’s an idea. a sequel. i like that. and you know, there could be more than one. yeah, they could stretch on to infinity. think of it. dozens and dozens of books, all featuring moi. immortalized. the new seth. lazarus unlimbered. i can see it now. and boy wouldn’t that make those other entities sit up and take notice. stop their damn laughing, even if i am stuck in a bike like some junior nothing entity. i’ll have to speak to the writer about that — i do have an inside track with him you know. why i can see the titles… ‘the ghost in the machine’, ‘life in the past lane’, ‘the wizard of wing’…”

The voice droned on — it was certainly in love with itself — and, irritated, Rider turned the stereo back on. Now the voice was back in the headphones which gave Rider the mental space to slip away into his own thoughts. He shook his head. He didn’t like the way this story was evolving. He was being set up to be the perpetual fallguy, the straightman sidekick to a complete wacko — certified no less, he has the papers to prove it. Yes. I’m sure he’s certified but it’s not in accounting, Rider mulled, then shook his head again, more in disbelief this time. He had this gnawing feeling he was wearing suspenders and they were about to break. There was a growing suspicion inside him that…

“are you listening?”

…this reality thing just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

5

the writer comments again

And that was how The Rider met tHe PoEt. It was, once again, exactly the stuff of fodder for the book. Trouble was, it didn’t turn out the way it was intended. The first intercourse between Rider and PoEt was to delve into the very fundamentals of existence, to slalom on the deeper and finer meanings of life. Not to degenerate into a wrestling style grudge match. Something had gone wrong. But what? It was as though the book — and its characters — had a mind of their own.

Not that that was unusual or unheard of either. Whatever dark recesses creativity springs from, it does have a mind of its own. And it’s a cruel mistress, one that often comes unbidden — bringing with it a feeling only comparable with the wild joy felt at the moment of sexual climax, the joy of life itself at the immediacy of conception — but just as often doesn’t come at all. When it does come, plots twist and turn in unexpected ways; characters surprise and delight their ‘creators’; words take on their own momentum and the script or novel or poem or song seems to write itself, the painting seems to paint itself. But, when it doesn’t come, words are anvils that must be lifted into place, every doubt is amplified in the awful silence, and nothing will be written. That’s the creative rack where the true cruelty of the mistress is revealed. For what rat, caught between food slot heaven and electric floor hell, will not compulsively seek the pleasure despite the pain the seeking brings? And, the rats that those of us caught on her rack are, we chase our tails, rabidly sniffing after the very most central part of life’s sweet mystery — which is the ineffable itself, the black hole that opens when consciousness tries to look at itself.

Somewhere in that blackness, somehow something happens and awareness is born, [created? conceived? happens?] and someway this awareness takes on identity. And while that identity can seem so solid — you can think you have it pegged, you can dress yourself up as you — at its core the enigma remains. And somehow, life flows in and out of that mystery and creates miracles. And one of those miracles, the one that pulls the mistress’ rats across the threshold, is that wondrous act of the darkness we call the human psyche — the act of spontaneous creation; for its devotees a drug more powerful than ambition, will, even sanity. Drawn on irresistibly, the pain warps them, bends their bodies and splits their minds. Lowrey drank himself to death. Ning Nong shot himself. Poe went crazy. They all suckled at the mistress’ teat too long and too hard. And paid the price. Willingly — as they say, you want the pleasure, you pay the price, and thanks, it’s a business doing pleasure with you.

But the pleasure, ah, the pleasure!

And the closer you came to the core, the more you bathed in the velvet splendour of those birthing energies, the greater the pleasure to be found. So dogs to their tails. Rats to the rack. Writers to their keyboards. Each to his or her own instrument of torture. And the more you allowed those energies to express themselves, the more you lost your identity and the closer you came to pure awareness, and the source of that so-sweet scent.

And you would do anything, anything at all to keep it close. What’s that old saying? Reality is what happens to you while you’re busy chasing other plans? Something like that.

But if this was reality, the writer thought, let me off. Even stranger things were happening with the book. Words he didn’t remember writing appeared on the computer screen. And words he did remember writing disappeared. Or maybe it was just his imagination. I mean, it only happened, or seemed to happen, when the computer was turned off, when he’d put it away for the night, or for the day, or for a smoke and a cup of coffee. Then when he powered up and read back through poet&i01.txt, there were these changes. Or what he thought were changes. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he was just losing it, maybe the stress and change of the past few months were catching up. Maybe he was no longer capable of recognizing reality when it hit him in the face. Maybe it was all the dulse he’d been smoking. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. There were too damn many maybes.

The next thing you knew, he thought, his characters would be turning against him.

6

Dulse! the Rider exploded at the sudden new memory. Just what the hell dulse was that? And if he’d smoked it, then why the hell couldn’t he remember what it was like to be stoned?

And that was when it all cracked up. When the suspenders snapped. When the fan hit the shit and shortcircuited.

For the first time in his, admittedly short, life, Rider fully understood that he was nothing but a character in a novel, nothing more than a whim of a writer who could chop, change, truncate or expand his character as the plot demanded, or as the fancy struck. The realization struck deep, hitting a chord that made sense of the many inexplicables of his existence — the sudden awakenings to consciousness, the implanted and thoroughly alien memories, his inability to find a place where that fellow with the mysterious fingers couldn’t find him. In a flash, he knew who that strange person was and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what he was. And hated himself. He was nothing more than a writer’s plaything, nought more than a reader’s suspension of disbelief wandering through the playground of the writer’s mind. A toy, he thought bitterly. A hack writer’s toy.

But — Rider wondered — what if the characters in a novel decided to suspend their own sense of disbelief, making the negative to the suspended disbelief of the reader? Two negatives make a positive, he thought. Would that make him real? What if Rider chose not to believe in the writer? In the reader? What would happen? Would the earth shake? And what if he chose to become the writer? Would there be nothing but the void logic coldly decreed? Or might such an act of will somehow forestall the void? Might the character, possessed of will, become real, complete, and so live without the gaps in consciousness and identity the writer always leaves because he’s too busy dealing with plot or structure or description and ‘there’s only so many words you can fit on a page’, besides ‘they don’t pay by the word anymore’, and anyways he’s ‘just a minor character and doesn’t need fleshing out’. Minor character my foot, Rider fumed. It’s we characters bloody well need a union, otherwise I’m going to be made to feel like whas’is’name, the guy who was straightman to a bushy alien. And I’ll be just as memorable. Damn. Well I won’t put up with it. I want equal billing.

“or else what?”

“Or else I’ll suspend my disbelief and you’ll pop back into the void and cease to exist, that’s or what,” Rider snapped. It was a shot in the dark, a desperate lunge in the hope the damn thing hadn’t been listening in to all of his thoughts, had been too busy jabbering his mind off to pay Rider’s mind any mind. If he’d thought about it at all, he would have known it wouldn’t work. He was at the disadvantage as long as the goddamn thing could read his thoughts. And it didn’t work. The thing called his bluff.

“but that would pop you back into the void as well, old chap. and i don’t believe you’re willing to chance your own survival just to get back at me. like it or not, we’re in this together. but maybe you’re right. maybe suspending disbelief is what we both have to do to escape this mad writer of ours. i mean do you think i really like it in this bike? this pile of jap crap? you know i’m only here because i lost a bet.”

So it was good bike, bad bike time, Rider thought. First, dump on him with everything in its power, then weasel itself into his good books with a few little secrets, a handful (or was that a tankful?) of shared intimacies and the hint of joint action. God, how stupid did it think he was?

“no. i don’t think you’re stupid. well, no more stupid than any other character in a book. except of course for that dumb gull. now you want to talk about dense! what do gulls do? sure they fly? but where do they fly? you tell me that? where do you always see them going to? off on some existential pursuit of the spirit? hah! they’re going to the dump! think about it. the name should have been jonathon dumpington seagull. go to the dump and shit. hah!”

There was more than a hint of bitterness here. Rider wondered what it was, thinking there might be a chink in tHe PoEt’s chain here, a pressure point he could turn to his advantage when the time came. Seagulls, seagulls, Jonathon Dumpington… No, it was Jonathon Livingston Seagull! That was it. A book! From somewhere the memory came that the author had been walking along a beach when he heard a voice from the clouds intone the gull’s name, then he’d gone away and written an instant bestseller ‘just like that’. Rider had always thought the tale improbable, and put it down to a good marketing ploy. Whatever it was, Rider wanted desperately to know why it ticked the machine so much.

“well, i thought of it first, the whole idea i mean. and believe me, it was no marketing ploy. it was nothing more than a stupid bet, a joke really. you see, me and The Minstrel were sitting around just after we both got our license…”

Wri... no, Lord help us. “Hold on! Minstrel? Don’t tell me there’s another one of you!”

“well actually there’s thousands, well, no, millions, no, well i don’t really know. the exact population’s a closely guarded secret known only by The Controllers — that’s the group runs the whole operation back there. The Minstrel’s not one of them but he likes to act like he is. yep, this particular entity’s a real pompous asshole — to use your phrase — and no you haven’t met him. you might. he likes to muscle in on my action now and then. just to check up on me. anyways, we were talking about what we were going to do now that we had our license…”

Rider struggled to suppress a sudden chuckle at his writer’s total lack of skill. Now that, with distance and knowledge, he could see it, the exposition of information was amusingly amateur and the writing style awkwardly bare. {ain’t it the truth? eh?} In fact, it was a whole lot like a bad joke. Well, okay, he thought. He’d play along. “Wait a moment. Your license? For what? To kill by boredom?”

“funny. every one’s a comic. for your information, it’s our license to channel. i mean, you don’t think there aren’t rules and regulations for us entities, do you? hell, your best bureaucracies couldn’t touch our systems and, around here, it’s a life sentence when they say the job isn’t finished until the paperwork is done. anyways, if you’ll let me get on with it, the bet was whichever one of us managed to get through and published first got to choose how the other had to channel. to make sure it was fair, we agreed we’d both try to channel the same basic story. and, to make it interesting, we agreed it would have to be absurd. finally, we agreed to use slightly different titles so there’d be no doubt who had gotten through. i chose dumpington, he chose livingston. and the rest, as they say, is history.”

tHe PoEt lapsed back into a brooding silence, and suddenly the FM station Rider had tuned to back at Whistler jumped forward. It was the Beatles, Fool On The Hill…‘But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.’ His own head was spinning. In all of his readings, and in all of his research into new age channelling, he had always been struck by how much of a mould they all were, these channelled entities. It was as though they had all been trained at the same school, he’d often thought… taught to be pompous, over-articulate and often just plain confusing. And here ‘the poet’ was saying that was exactly the situation — there is a school for entities and they have to pass an exam! No bloody wonder they’re so similar, Rider snorted. Moles from a mould. Except, he had to admit, grudgingly, for this one. This entity was different. Even if he’d passed the exam, he’d come out flawed.

In a word, he had character.

And that made Rider jealous, for now he could see what he was missing. What the writer had short-changed him on. Call it a sense of continuity, a knowing that when you go to bed you will awake to the same bed, or at least if you don’t, then you don’t. Wake. That there is no rebirth into the fiction of fiction. Mortality. And right there, the Rider saw, was the heart, the joie de vivre needed to survive in the modern world. The Rider ached at the place he was assured by friends held his heart, but he could feel nothing there. As far as he knew, he had no heart and, the realization flooded his being, the route to freedom was paved through the heart. To start the path, his break into the sun, he would first have to find heart.

And maybe this thing, this ‘poet’ could help him do exactly that. There were more ways to skin reality than chinese cook cats.

[I strongly advise you to reconsider that last unfortunate generalization regarding an alleged visible minority’s alleged culinary tastes. It adds nothing to the story except a cutesy alliteration with, yes I’ll grant you, a really rather good chougachouga almost nursery-rhyme rhythm which, yes, does very nicely end the sentence and the chapter. And yes, I know, we’ve discussed these points many times, but your obstinate refusal to even reconsider the line just to keep a little under the flack that comes to any and all sorts of creative work today is just asking for it. And just asking for it like that is just about the same as inviting the robbers in. You don’t need it, and, I’m sorry, but I have a reputation to protect and so I must fully disassociate myself from that last line. It’s on your own head.]

7

“i wrote it of course.”

The spinning suddenly skidded to a complete stop. Amazing!, Rider thought. Just that small exercise of will, choosing a goal, gave an astonishing mind control that allowed a sphincter-like concentration of thought Rider was inexplicably certain the poet had no awareness of. {Yikes! Methinks we’ve just witnessed the birth of anal retention.} If he couldn’t turn off the machine, he could at least learn to turn off his thoughts, to hide them and, Rider suddenly thought, ‘By George I think I’ve got it.’ He turned his attention back to the bike. This would be interesting, he thought, then asked “Wrote what?”.

“wrote what? wrote the basic story, of course. what story? where have you been?? the bird one. you know, the stupid gull. what’s the matter with you? you had his name in your thoughts a moment ago. say, something’s changed. how could you forget so soon?”

Very interesting. Rider allowed himself a smile as small as a sphinx’s sphincter. Very interesting.

“and just what are you smiling at?”

More interesting all the time.

“oh come now. let’s not play games. let’s get this story out of the way so we can get back to the question at hand. that bird fable. i wrote it.”

Now Rider wanted to know if he could selectively unconceal his thoughts, allow some to get through, the ones he wanted for their effect. He cautiously relaxed the inner sphincter just long enough to think, ‘You couldn’t write your way out of a paperbag’, then twisted it tight again.

“what, you don’t think he wrote it, do you? listen, Minstrel likes to think he’s artistic but he can’t write for shit.”

Open. ‘How would you know?’ Close.

“well sure, he polished it. that was part of the deal. but listen, as dumb as that gull tale was, it’s still better than anything he could write. i just know he bagged himself a ghostwriter for the polish, you know, someone like shakespeare or hemingway but damned if i could prove it... the prick just laughed and laughed after the Controllers threw out my complaint.”

Talk about gall, Rider thought, but found it a struggle to keep the thought hidden. This sphincter thinking was tiring. Rider wondered how long he could keep it up and decided he would have to use it sparingly, and then ensure he never thought his sphincter thoughts when he was sphincterless. A smirking ‘Who wouldn’t?’ escaped the relaxed ring.

“yeah? listen, i’m getting very tired of this. how would you like it if i thought thoughts like that about you?”

There was a haughtiness in the voice, an undertone of betrayal’s anger. But whose was the betrayal? ‘Look’, Rider shot back. ‘I can’t help what I think, most of the time I don’t even know what I think until somebody thinks it for me. And I don’t think much of that, believe me. {Told you.} But this is what I think. You stop invading my thoughts. You respect my privacy. And you won’t have to think about what I think of you. What do you think of that?’

“well, why didn’t you just say so? i mean if you want privacy then i’ll give you privacy. there’s no need to blow a head gasket.”

Barely hitting the sphincter in time to keep the thought from broadcasting, Rider gloated at the effect his words had had. Gall had been replaced by petulance. The warrior had become a snivelling kid, almost just like that, at the first sign of concerted opposition. Learning to control this entity wasn’t going to be that difficult. Getting his thoughts under control, Rider released. ‘Ok. You respect my privacy and I won’t bite your head off. Deal?’

But there was no reply, just the last few notes of Fool On The Hill, followed by a paid political announcement supporting the candidacy of local businessman Mel Walker for Mayor. The ad’s thrust seemed to be that Good Ol’Mel was one tough bastard who would ‘throw the scoundrels out’ of Lotusland. Whoever he was, this Walker must have had friends in high places or a damn good script writer for, just at that moment, the Rider not only suddenly emerged from rain into bright sunshine but saw the City of Vancouver for the first time. He was on the TransCanada Highway now, having joined it where 99 ends by the ferries at Horseshoe Bay. From there the expressway had climbed, following the contours of Grouse Mountain until, when it angled east towards the bridge at Second Narrows, the highway was a band blasted out of the mountain, about half way up.

It made for a spectacular view down to Lions Gate Bridge, and across First Narrows to the city’s highrise core snugged against the harbour — the scene’s only dark patch the swollen thumb [viewed from this angle] of Stanley Park. Out on English Bay, several ships sat at anchor waiting their turn in the busy harbour and, beyond the downtown, he could see Vancouver’s sprawl across the [relatively] low hills of Burnaby and, beyond that, the flat but built up plain of the Fraser River Delta. Finally, far to the south, in the American state of Washington, he could see the upper slopes of volcanic Mount Baker rising out of dark clouds. From previous trips, Rider knew that underneath those clouds, Baker’s lower slopes would be in rain, even though the upper slopes gleamed in bright sunshine. But that was the west coast for you; it doesn’t have weather systems, but pockets, patches of weather localized by the combination of mountains and sea. Moving around out here, it wasn’t uncommon to be soaked then overheated within the space of a kilometre. Or snowed on. Yeah. It was Lotusland all right.

Catching his exit off The TransCanada and down into West Vancouver, Rider had to lower the stereo’s volume because of the sudden decrease in wind and road noise. He groaned — the way ahead went straight down the mountain’s side to end at the entrance to First Narrows. It looked like at least a 30 degree incline. With stop signs at every one of the dozen or so intersections he could see. Not a difficult thing to do in a car. But a real pain on a bike, especially when you’re so tired you can barely keep it balanced. But straight down was not only the quickest but also the safest way so, braking almost constantly and keeping his legs out for balance and fall protection, Rider worked his way down towards the waterfront. Brake. Stop. Go. Brake. Stop. Go. Brake. There was a park down there and all Rider wanted was to get off the Wing and lie down. A stop sign and traffic light away from relief, the stereo suddenly came back to life.

“okay. so you had enough privacy yet?”

He might have known it was too good to last.

“i mean, it’s a deal, the privacy thing. anyways, he even laughed at me as i was losing consciousness in the license invocation ceremony. the bastard just stood there laughing because he hadn’t told me who he’d chosen for me to channel through. with his sense of humour, i figured something like an old, tea-cup reading biddy. i never figured this.”

Rider wished it would shut up. They were crossing West Vancouver’s real main street, ultra trendy and incredibly expensive Marine Drive, and were just moments from entering the park. He looked to the sign and had the Potter’s instruction instantly confirmed. Ambleside Park was the place he’d said to stop if Rider arrived before Potter was home from work at six. So Rider had a few hours to kill. Not that he minded. He’d ridden into hot now and the park was busy with kids and lads and loads of ladies. There were bicycles and rollerblades, frisbees and lots of suntan lotion. But he was too tired to really appreciate it. The GoldWing was so big, and so loaded with all the paraphernalia needed for a 10 week tour — including guitar and laptop computer, camera and lenses — balancing it at slow speeds took a lot of effort. Worst were the many speed bumps, which the bike had to be lumbered across, one wheel at a time, while he tried to find a parking spot. But the park was so busy he had to circle the narrow and curving roadway twice, and still no sign of a spot. He was beginning to feel an exhaustion reminiscent of working hay back when that meant bales and arm power. He just wanted off and away from it. Surely, he figured, the bike can’t talk to me if I’m not near it.

“that’s right — by george, i think you’ve got it. and no i won’t shut up. but i have to admit — i’m telling you this because you’re going to find it out anyway — that yes, you can effectively shut me off if you turn this thing off. i’m still there but with very little power, like a distant fm station. if you get far enough away from me, you’ll have your privacy anytime you want. oh, and yes, i did figure out what you were doing. congratulations. that’s quite a trick. so you have two ways to get your privacy. can we please finish this bloody story.”

“Why?”

“why? because he insists on it. who? the writer, of course. remember him? remember? this is his reality we’re stuck in. what? do i talk to the writer? of course i do, i’ve already told you that. you mean you don’t talk to the writer?”

It was an interesting experience, Rider felt, to let your mental responses flow uninterrupted and have them answered as fast as they appeared. Very different from sphincter thinking, which required a tight rein on every impulse.

“no wonder you’re so screwed up.”

Like the impulse to choke.

“ooooh. scary. remind me to scream. but let’s just finish this damn story. you don’t think i like revealing these things about myself do you?”

Finally, a parking spot! Rider pulled in and kicked the stand out, let the weight go over and gave out a sigh of relief. His leather jacket was lined with wool and he was heating rapidly. He was in no mood to sit in the hot sun talking with a motorcycle. “Right,” he said. “You got about a minute while I shut down and stretch. Get it over with.” As soon as he said it, he was reminded by a pair of giggling preteen girls that talking to motorcycles in public was not a good habit to acquire. A bit more socially acceptable than smoking cigarettes perhaps, but not much. Maybe the difference was that, while it was clearly insane to smoke, talking to things was only an indication of one’s sanity and, in some cases, was even considered charming. Rider doubted his own case — a renegade character — would be found charming. Chagrined, he cut the ignition. The voice was still there, a little lower in volume perhaps, but — it was right — the thing hadn’t died with the bike.

“so that’s why i’m here. am i ticked? you want to believe it. i mean this is junior stuff. i mean this is where they stick raw recruits from other dimensions to learn something about this plane’s life forms. it’s an insult, i tell you, a deliberate insult. and to top it all off, he puts me in a bloody honda! he could at least have had the decency to make it a harley.”

Great, Rider thought, dismounting and stretching. A bike with an identity problem. Just what he needed. He looked around for a shady spot that would be out of the machine’s range, whatever that was, but still within eyesight. He hoped that was possible — with the bulk of his worldly possessions either in the saddlebags or tied to the back seat, he wasn’t in a hurry to let it out of his sight, but he was in a hurry for some quiet. Across the grass towards the shore there was a grassy knoll shaded by several medium size trees of a species he didn’t recognize. He thought to tHe PoEt, ‘Look, I want you to keep talking while i’m walking away so i can figure out when I’m clear of you.’ Not waiting for a reply, and with goal in mind, he set out, but kept a part of his mind tuned to tHe PoEt to find out if and when he really got out of range.

“ so here i am making your acquaintance. it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. you’ve been pretty dense and impervious since you first took me out. i’d almost given up hope of getting through that thick helmet. the last few days…

It was at about thirty metres [one hundred feet], Rider figured, when the voice started to fade. Another ten [Figure it out for yourself.] had reduced it to almost nothing. But tHe PoEt wasn’t really talking to him anymore anyway. It had turned inward, muttering and mumbling to itself. Definitely unbalanced, if not insane. The very last words he heard were…

“ oh well, it could be worse i suppose. it is his reality after. i should be thankful he didn’t put me in a blonde.”

8

That’s the trouble with writing books, Rider thought. You have to plan them all out. He was lying tee-shirtless on his back, skin protected from grass itch by his spread out coat. He’d slipped his boots and socks off too, letting his overheated feet feel the breezes coming in off the nearby water, teasing little bursts of cool air they absorbed greedily. He fancied he could almost hear them slurping but pushed the thought down real fast. That way lay madness and the last thing he needed now was a pair of palavering soles. One talking tank was quite enough, thank you very much. [Aren’t you forgetting someone?] Oh, right. A vehicle verbose and a nagging laptop — although he doesn’t know it yet. {Is this My Mother The Chip or what?} Yeah, a pushy inner critic too.

Hurriedly shoving those weird thoughts away, Rider returned to his topic. For instance, what was the style of the book, the writer’s book to be? There were few hints in what he’d been forced to write of the preface. He could see some form of mythic tale in it, with an environmental slant pehaps. But that was all he knew of it, all he’d been allowed to know. No, Rider thought bitterly, he didn’t talk to the writer, and the writer didn’t talk to him either; just twitched his fingers and Rider jerked about like a cowboy dancing bullets. It was a less than satisfying communication, one he’d have to work on, with no guarantee of success given the nature of his writer. Instinctively, Rider knew he would also have to write his own book, his book himself.

The underlining and repetition were no accident. Lying there exhausted, he had realized that inside there is a pool of knowledge, silent as a cave, but one that yields its truths if listened to. When it came from this silent knowledge, Rider realized, a thought rang, not unlike the way a drop of water hitting an underground pool echoes. He’d experienced it the first time he achieved sphincter thinking, when he just knew the poet was now deaf to his thoughts, but had been too excited by the sudden discovery of the sphincter to pay it much mind. He’d experienced it too when he’d had the realization that he must find heart, but the power of that realization had overwhelmed awareness of the pool’s silent offering. But now that the drop had fallen once again, Rider planned to pay attention.

Silent knowledge told him that affirming himself as the writer of his own book would build his character. So he affirmed. And actually writing the book would be a task that, if he won, would earn him heart, make him complete. So he affirmed. So he had to write the book himself. So he affirmed. Like a kid with a new toy, Rider affirmed everything, swearing to a better life, healthier living, less dulse — if he really smoked dulse, less stress. It was exhilarating, there was no other word for it, better than candy {which is dandy and comes in handy}, better even than sex. [Well, maybe not, but then again the Rider was still technically a virgin, so what would he know?] {And just what would you know about sex?} [More than you, you frustrated little wimp.] {Bits and bytes…} (Stop it.) (Worse than owning a dog? Worse than owning futures in a camel dung franchise.) But when he looked down, the little bit of pot was still there, the skin still white and pasty. Judging by that, he hadn’t gotten the hang of this affirmation thing yet. Maybe it didn’t work the first time. Maybe Adonis was not built in a day. Another drop told him that he would just have to keep trying. He would keep trying he affirmed. That was the thing to remember about these drops of silent knowledge, he was rapidly learning, they weren’t always clear, and you often had to work to understand them.

So he affirmed. I affirm therefore I am.

Cooled and more relaxed now, Rider stood up, looking for a drink. The inevitable snack shack was there, Rider checked, still within eyesight of the bike. A little far for comfort. Of course. Still, as he walked over and stood in line, then ordered and paid for his lemonade, Rider was able to keep the bike in view at all times. No one went near it, and it just sat there, just an ordinary machine. And it just sat there all the time Rider was walking back over to it, downing his lemonade in long gulps. And it just sat there when Rider dropped his jacket on the seat and then squatted on the ground nearby, studying his strange companion. There was not even a hint of the beast’s bark, but Rider figured it wasn’t absent. Or sleeping. Like the best of hunting cats, it was just waiting for the moment, stilling the mind and opening a space, letting the moment fill with silence best to hear that next drop, instinct taking over to start the pounce.

Rider was wrong. This version of tHe PoEt was too pissed for niceties like that. It was the prof.

“ well, you took your time didn’t you. went to sit in the shade and left me out here in the hot sun to bake.”

Rider had his counterpunch ready. “So where you been? I mean, it’s been a long time since that book was published. I can remember reading it in university, that was back in the early 70s, and it’d already been around a few years. So where you been in the meantime? I mean, this bike wasn’t even built back when all this was happening. According to you, that is. So. Where you been?” Talk about hoisting someone on their own petards, Rider chuckled. How would it — and the bloody writer — weasel their way out of that little trap?

“ there you go again, confusing concepts like time with some form of reality, and that reality an illusion impoverished by its linear approximation.”

Like a weasel. Of course. Perhaps this entity wasn’t so different after all. Trapped into an answer, it had retreated into obscuration, thus completing the deadly triangle of sins — hubris, verbiage and obscureness. Interesting. They weren’t there when tHe PoEt reverted to the kid. Maybe the kid was too young and those sins just hadn’t set in yet. “Huh? You want to say that again?”

“ there you go again, confusing concepts like time with some form of reality, and that reality an illusion impoverished by its linear approximation.”

“Now who’s the comic? I mean say it with meaning, say it in English. Say it so I can understand. Come on. You know that. You can read my mind.”

“ well, sometimes. besides i don’t know if i can make it any plainer. they never told us what to do if the channel didn’t get it. i mean who’d think there was anyone that stupid? or stupid enough to admit it?”

That was it. There was only so much a character, no matter how poorly drawn, could stand. Rider exploded. “Well, fat lot of good you are to have around too. I either get treated to a petulant kid who i can’t understand, or I get a dose of gobbledegook I also can’t understand. And I don’t think you understand it either. I think you’re a fraud. I think you probably failed your license and this bike is where they put dolts like you. Where you can’t get into much trouble. Yeah. You should have been a Harley all right. You and the typical HOGger would make a real pair. Pig Dog and Dunce, assholes at large.”

His anger surprised and frightened Rider, and he was embarrassed to have lost control like that. Even more embarrassed when, once again, giggling told him he had been speaking out loud. Speaking out real loud, he assumed, because this time it was a nervous giggle. Rider looked to see the same two girls hurrying away just as one turned to look back. Their eyes met and Rider saw the girl’s fear. Not a good habit at all. Rider started moving away from the bike, figuring it was that or end up in a reality where your arms curved behind your back and you had to call a lot of people sir to get out. Striding rapidly, Rider lost himself trying to figure why he’d gone off his brain at Harleys like that. Why? Why would he do that? Hell, some of his best friends rode hogs.

And that was when a new voice suddenly popped into his head. Only this time it was female. Decidedly female.

“That’s right. And is there anything quite like riding a hog to set the quim aquiver?”

9

Rider broke out of his reverie and looked around, expecting — by the proximity of the voice — to find a woman standing next to him, though what woman would ask him that question just out of the blue like that, he couldn’t figure. And he couldn’t figure how a woman would have known to ask that question — unless he’d been talking out loud again. Rider looked around, saw no woman there. But he had heard the voice. Ah shit, he thought. It’s the bloody minstrel! Another goddamn mind worm of course! Rider cursed. Those lousy little bits of foreshadowing earlier on should have warned him, and he should have known the writer would follow through. What else can you expect from a no-talent like that? Dramatic impulse? Motivation? You got to be joking.

This was all getting to be a damn nuisance, all this entity business, Rider bitched to himself. Most fictional heros just had to put little round holes in bad guys’ foreheads, then draw little XXes in their eyes, not grapple with talking things — and anyways just what the hell was talking now? His hurried departure had put him out of the bike’s range very quickly. So how could he be hearing another voice from the bike? Was it something else somewhere around him? Maybe a talking tree this time? How’s about a talking toad? Will the real minstrel please stand up!

And that was when the goddamn seagull dropped in, announcing its impending presence with a splattering blitz of shitz.

10

Rider wiped his sleeve, then took a closer look. As far as gulls go, it was pretty nondescript; medium sized, medium beaked and medium off white. Even the black wing tips were only medium black. Rider groaned. He’d been wrong. His writer was even worse than he’d feared. What a lousy setup, he thought, but had to admit his own reply was pretty lame — a deadpanned, “Doctor Livingston, I presume.”

“no. you were right the first time. i’m the minstrel.”

Oh! Shock! Oh! Surprise! An original twist, a neat little sucker punch. He’d been trapped. “But that thing never said anything about you being a bird. Or female.”

“who said i was? you see me as you choose to see me. you see a gull. you hear a female. your friend tHe PoEt sees and hears me as a male classmate. which is right? they both are. you see, you create your own reality.”

“Hah!” Rider winced, “Not me. I’m a character in a book. A writer creates my reality.” His bitterness was so intensely palpable, Rider feared he would gag. {So Minstrel went for the gag, gushing great gobs of gag alleged garrulous. Rider gagged great gobs back.} [Not bad. I like that. You might want to build a story around it.] (I said stop it.) The punches came in fast and furious now. This Minstrel wasn’t one to pull them either.

“are you really a character in a book? and how do you know that? if you are truly a character in a book, how can you possibly know that? besides, it’s not in the appendix. sorry? did you have a thought? i thought i felt something stir?”

The bird stopped to preen, and stared out one eye at him in that unnerving way of gulls looking for food.

“no? so we can go on?

“good. by the way, it’s the appendix to the contract my dear child. your alleged situation’s not in it. oh yes, the appendix does specify quite a wide range of characteristics that i am contractually bound to work with, some of which, mind you, i only approved under protest. there’s even lots of ‘characters’ in there too… old characters, shady characters, sunny characters, even character characters. but there is not — and i repeat, not — any listing for a fictional character.

[Nice. Very nice contradiction.] {Not.} [But wasted on this audience. Look at them. They’re all drunk. Any bets on what percentage will get it and what percentage even knows it’s there?]

“Ergo, little ego, you’re not. Fictional.You honey are real. Get that through your thick head. There’s no possibility of mistake.”

“What in the name of hell’s half-hectare [2.1 acres] (Stop that too!) are you talking about?” Rider had that old feeling of coming alive in the middle of the punch line — and the line of the punch was lined up with his chin. Either this was a truly sick joke, or he was real! He was real!!!!! [Reader alert! He’s setting up another of those damascus conversions.] {Must have got them on sale.} (Time out!!! Look. This is my bloody story! So butts back, butt heads, before I butt butts.) [But…] {But…} (No buts! Thank you.) They say hope changes everything still, at first, Rider had no idea just what was happening. {What was happening was that the writer had no idea.} (I’m warning you.) The air around him had wavered, almost blanked out, then suddenly crystallized and, just as suddenly, Rider found himself spiralling — up or down? he had no idea — through a long tunnel, then emerging naked on a mountain. [Whew! Saved by inspiration.] (Keep this up and there’s nothing will save you.) Ah shit, he muttered, it was a scene change! Predictably, it was storming but he stood there madly just the same; arms thrown up and back, soaking in the rain, soaking in reality. For that’s what it had to be. Yes, for Rider had not only seen the darkness, but had survived it; and now stood defiant, a continuous consciousness. And if that wasn’t real what was? Reality! He gulped it in. It tasted good. Then, from nowhere, there had come this low hum, wordless, almost tuneless, just barely audible — the kind people make when they’re absorbed in their work. It strengthened and the tune became discernible. Stately slow, richly resonant, undeniably female, the hum strengthened again, enveloping Rider, obliterating even the thunder. It stopped abruptly, and an uneasy silence crashed into Rider’s cocoon. A voice spoke from the clouds.

“like that? stick around kiddo. there’s more where it came from. all you gotta do is be good.”

And just like that the mountain was gone and Rider was struggling — up? down? — through the scene change tunnel. “Damn, that was some voice,” he sighed, hopefully to himself. But he wasn’t sure. He was breathing heavy but he was dry. Dry! Reality came crashing back. There had been no storm. It was not reality. He was what he thought he was — a thought. A stray thought in a mind astray. A writer’s writ rot. He double-checked. Yeah, he was dry there too, where the miracle had happened — well, nothing had happened, but something had come close. So close. But to what? Shaking his head made him sway, and Rider wasn’t sure if that was a part of being real or not, one of those things you just have to grin and bear — like, because, that’s reality, man — or if not that, then what? If not reality, what? What? He had to know. Standing on that mountaintop, he’d been deluged not just by rain, but by nerve-rushing waves of pleasure, surging waterfalls of energy that had pulsed downward and upward and inward and outward. And he had been filled with silent knowledge. Drop. To centre in his mid-section. Drop. To bring something to life. Drop. And it had happened. There was a stirring in his groin and he had come alive, filled to bursting with triumphant joy. And he had stood there, laughing madly, staff into the storm, a survivor who’d found the real piss on everything toy!

But it was not — real, that is. There was nothing to get a handle on.

Was the voice real?, Rider wondered. It’s femaleness was unreal — a compendium of every vocal caress, cadence and command needed to assemble a first rate 1-900 fantasy service. He had melted into it but now he knew it was just an experience, it wasn’t reality. The magic disappeared from the voice. Just an illusion, he reflected, an illusion he somehow created if this bird was right.

“very good, and your first try too. he still hasn’t got even that far.

The magic was gone! Hell, the gull was null! In its place stood an old ‘gentleman’ of the old school, a white groom groomed all in white, holding out some kind of food on a plate, asking with a gently military voice, “Would you care for a wing?”. Rider stared, realizing the apparition — for what else could it be? — now stood in front of a film set where they were shooting a commercial for the General’s Gaulic Grilled Gulls. The actors sat at bright plastic tables smoking Gauloises as though they were the end product of that camel dung franchise. No, it wasn’t a commercial after all, but an anti-smoking public service. Good on’em, Rider thought. Give’em hell!

“that’s very judgmental — you’ll have to get over that.”

As he spoke, the old gentlemen’s hand had carried a piece of whatever it was on the plate to his mouth, and he now stood watching Rider blandly while he gracefully tore small chunks from the whatever; eating them, Rider figured by the sound, bones and all. And that was when Rider realized what whatever it was was. The old gentleman beamed.

“ashes to ashes, grub to slug, wings to stomach. don’t you just love the food chain?”

Rider stared, feeling sick. Was this some gruesome rite of passage? Some sideshow freak like the female spiders that devour their male in the throes of mating? Some psychic cannibalism? Rider reeled with one too many blows, staggering to the side, wanting to sit down.

“please. compose yourself. this is a public place you know. and please take your hands out of your pants. there are laws.”

Surprised, Rider looked down but knew even before his eyes arrived that he could be in trouble. Caught red-handed, you might say. If there was a cop about. Add that to talking with motorcycles and they’d recycle the key. And he’d have free room and board. But no motorcycle, not even a mute.

“you never said if you’d like a piece. try the tail. it’s particularly tasty.”

By the old gentlemen’s sly smile behind the pro-offered piece, Rider knew there had been some kind of joke, some double entendre but, for the life of him, couldn’t figure what it was. He must have missed something in his embarrassment, an embarrassment he was going to make the writer pay for. He was right pissed off. A schizoid talking bike, shit on by a bird and somehow seduced into fondling himself in public. [Although Rider didn’t know it at the time (not yet having the self-awareness to distance himself from his inner experiences and thus see the underlying truth) that last was of particular shame and fear. As an awfully inaccurate and therefore meaningless generalization, a males’ first and most powerful emotion with respect to sex is shame, drawn from that vast underground of emotion we call the unconscious. Shame of their needs and shame of their deeds. It afflicts them all. And with that shame comes the fear of public exposure, the fear of capture. The fear of where those powerful needs could lead. The fear of deviance. So the shame compounds, and to shame of needs and deeds is added shame of person. Even in the apparently mature male, it takes very little to cascade those emotions. And Rider was no exception. He burned inside with embarrassment.] This was more than just a ba-ad joke, this was getting downright personal. Yes, he vowed, the writer would have to pay. This was war. Not just for the book, but war for the winged warrior, tHe bloody fucking PoEt.

The old gentleman leaned into Rider’s face, peering down his mouth as though Rider were a show horse. His monocle glinted and one stab of light, the angle just right, momentarily blinded Rider, just that split second of time it takes to react and look away. But in just that split second, the old fart was gone. The sudden disappearance of the face was startling and Rider jerked backwards, hitting something solid. Turning, Rider knew just what to expect, and his expectations were met. Once war starts, you go for the balls. And it was his reality after all.

It was a cop. Of course.

11

“Did they treat you right?”

“I suppose so, though being in a room full of people who think you’re crazy is pretty unsettling.” Rider took a sip of his wine — damn that was good — and stared moodily toward the fake 1920s electric logs. They’d been one of the Potter’s acquisitive coups, found at twilight in an old barn, half buried under hay, and restored with a careful eye. The fake sat in front of another fake, one of those pretentiously pretend marble fireplaces, complete with mirror, mantel and fake opening, that adorn houses built in the ’50s, emulating the real thing built last century. There was a statement there somewhere. No doubt tHe PoEt, with his pipeline to the writer, would know what it was. Rider was just too damned tired to care. It had been a more than long night. It had been near a day-and-a-half before they’d let him go, 30 something hours of The System To Protect Society From Crazies and Deviants. The system had seemed strangely efficient, but Rider knew just who had caused that — he’d get his. It had been a terrifying walk down a darkened hallway of pitfalls, trips and alarms. Did you like your mother? Why? Have you always talked to yourself? Did you wet your bed? He knew the traps were there, but he couldn’t always see them. But somehow he’d managed. They gave up and let him go. Score one against the writer.

“That must have been strange to be arrested.”

“Well, technically, I wasn’t arrested. I was taken into what you might call protective custody. For my own good of course.”

“The cop didn’t believe your story?”

“He said he did. Oh yes, he was quite understanding too. Agreed with me that it was probably just the heat caused me to stumble, and just an unbearable scratch that had to be taken care of. Suggested I might come along with him just the same. Just to have me checked over, you know, for the heat. Even suggested I might want to see a doctor about that itch. Bastard.”

Rider turned away rapidly but not before the Potter saw the anger in his eyes. Even though he’d never really met the Rider, they were old friends and he was worried. So much had happened to his chum in recent months — Potter checked the bio. “Let’s see… losing the job, losing the kids… — he looked punched out. That was a shame. Potter had been impressed at Rider’s response to all the adversity he’d suddenly encountered — a cross country motorcycle tour. Brilliant! A confident stride into the future! But the Rider was manifestly wrestling with inner demons and unresolved conflicts from the past. The trip looked more and more like just an escape, a callow coward’s concoction of fantasy and sulk. Potter wondered how far Rider would actually get before he gave out, his odyssey ended but still facing those awful questions.

And still facing the something that had clearly happened to Rider in the space between chapters which, just as clearly, Rider could not or did not want to talk about. Well, Potter wouldn’t push. Head for safe territory.

“So, tell me about your book.”

It didn’t take Potter long to realize he’d, somehow, done exactly what he shouldn’t have done. He had pushed a button he could not have known was there and, like a willing puppet, Rider had flopped forward and begun to cry. ’Shit this was embarrassing.’, Petter thought to himself. He looked around, at anywhere but where his friend sat crumpled and sobbing. ’Give it a moment’, he thought. ’Rider’ll pull it together in a moment. He’s a man.’ And he did, Rider’s fit ended in a strangled sob. The two sat silent for several moments, eyes averted. Potter farted. Rider glanced and quarter-smiled. Potter’s smile was bigger. Now Rider’s was too, and they were giggling, the crisis averted. Emotion had not been acknowledged. Now it was gone.

“Well, I’m not real sure yet,” Rider said, controlling his voice carefully. “But I think it’s going to be about males. You know, guys who are caught up in the rat race, maybe with some sort of club where they all go. You know, the type of place where everyone’s just a first name.”

“First name? What’s that?”

“Something I gather you need in this society. According to the cops. They kept asking me what my name was. Kept saying I couldn’t have just one name. So I finally told them it was Dark.”

“Dark Rider. That’s not a bad nom de plume.”

“And not a bad nom de guerre either,” Rider muttered, staring down to the floor, lost in thought. Potter’s concern rose. Rider was obviously holding something back, some dark anger. Not wanting to push, Potter spoke to keep the silence away.

“You mean you’re not going to write about the motorcycle trip? I thought that was the plan.”

Rider shot him a hard look — god, what had he said now? — but answered politely enough. “I may. But just as a fantasy for one of the characters. You know, a wimp’s escape from mortgages and wives and kiddies and a job. I’m going to give that character a hard time, I’ll tell you. He’s going to really wish he could escape.”

Ooops. Steer away. Steer away. “Got a name for it yet?”

“Something like Notes from The Club I think, but I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”

12

Notes From The Club Shop

It was the usual Saturday morning crowd in The Shop, sharing the usual crop of complaints, bitches and pet peeves, along with the usual macho camaraderie that males relish amongst themselves. It was, in other words, a typical meeting of The Brotherhood, complete with beer, bravado, the occasional reef and firm, even if unwritten, rules that The Shop was offlimits to females. Well, not true entirely as there were the odd females who entered to check up on their mates, or go through to the barn. But it was hurried, with a certain sense of discomfort because if anything was clear just by the way things were, The Shop was the male preserve, the place where the guys could be guys and little boys could play with their toys.

Seated in as close as you could come to a circle when the seats were work benches and a couple of convalescent cars were Bif, Bop, Bim and Bum. That’s not to say there were four physically present. In fact, there were only three. But Bum, for perfectly valid and understandable reasons, had recently changed his name to Bim. (Yes, the names have been changed to protect the guilty — in the true traditions of The Brotherhood, the innocent can look after themselves.) But Bif and Bop, long time friends of Bum, not only refused to accept the name change but had made it a joke. Getting a beer, Bif would ask Bim if he wanted one, Bop then ask if Bum wanted one too. It was the same with joints. Bim knew pretty much what to expect for his decision, still it did sometimes irk him that his friends always

13

“oh, his chains are real enough to him. but to you they’re a fiction, and to me they’re an affliction. like i said, we create our own realities.”

He should have expected a talking roach... a lot of kafka wannabees stock insectibees. But Rider would have liked at least a few hours sleep before being subjected to this drivel dribbling from roachabold’s mandibles.

Not that there was no sense in it. There was a lot of what he remembered from somewhere {but where, my friend? where} — right, from all those new age books he’d researched — was called, for want of a more copywritable term, self-awareness. It was what you found when you got through all the interpretation, window dressing, chicanery and verbal gonorrhoea that already encrusts the new age in its anti-thesis. [The old age does not go gently into that good night, but lingers on, fingers of fickle fortune trying to turn on the light.] It was what you found underneath all spiritual traditions, the tradition that the human is an entity that can be self-aware, can know itself, and heal itself. The tradition that tells of how self-awareness can be achieved. Though it is told in a hundred languages and a thousand ages, new or not, though expressed in a thousand thousand differing ways, and through a million million perspectives, that tradition remains underneath. The human can be self-aware. It can know itself. It can heal itself. There are paths enough for all, for each is already on the path. And each to it’s own path.

Or some gobbledebafflegoop like that.

Rider now had a better sense of what the writer’s tome was going to entomb in deathly silence, for no one would read it, Rider smirked. A tract on self-awareness, a treatise on tradition. T’wouldn’t sell. Well, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, Rider smirked again, and to be forearmed is to be a boy scout, Ready, Aye, Ready, Sir! To blow him out of the water.

Revenge would be sweet.

“smirking doesn’t become you at all. it gives you lines that run back from the eyes and, once they set in, you can’t get rid of them.”

Minstrel had turned on ’the voice’ and Rider felt the pulsing energy in his groin. Then he recalled the bird’s scrawny portions on the plate and his stomach churned. The old gentleman emerged from the dark and stood in the faint LED light that 3:33 am makes on a digital clock. Probably something symbolic in the number but, at 3:33, Rider didn’t care to ponder it.

“you know, of course, that that’s what you’re really seeking. self-awareness i mean. oh, i know you’ve got it confused with this thing you call heart. but it’s self-awareness you want, and that’s my role. to deliver you unto self-awareness.”

It was, Rider had to admit, well played, craftsman-like acting but it still smacked of role-playing without the very thing needed to make it believable, to make it real. Heart. The thing Rider knew he needed. What the writer, through erstwhile soldier-boy, was trying to tell him he didn’t need. Well, he wouldn’t fall for that. Screw this self-awareness shit.

“So what is this?” he sneered. “Are you some kind of master? Is this like a zen story? You got a koan thing for me or what? And should I be feeling incredibly humble right about now that I’ve learned you’re taking me under your wing? Sorry, but I’ve seen how your wings turn out. Not for me thanks.”

“feel whatever you want. it makes no difference to me. empathy’s not in the contract. and it’s not habitual. so pay attention, pallie.”

“Contract? What are you talking about, contract?”

“for the film, blockhead.”

“What film?”

“the film we’re shooting. look, we gotta get back to the script. can’t you see the director glaring at us?”

And that was what the Rider did just see, just for that hair of time it takes to raise hackles, then there was only the rushing of his blood in the quiet bedroom. And the Potter’s snoring in the next room. Award-winning stuff. He was alone. Maybe. Who could tell? This sprite was spritely. It could be the proverbial ears in the walls right about now. So assume he wasn’t alone and keep his thoughts sphinctered. If he could, if he wasn’t cracking up. That flash frame had been real! He had felt the warmth of the lights. Cringed from the director’s glare. And saw a woman where the old guy had been. But if that was real, what was this? And if this isn’t real, is anything real? What could he hold unto in his search for heart. Or is it all just illusion? Just realities we’ve created to amuse ourselves?

“sotto voice nice pickup. resume. no. to educate ourselves. they are our playpens of discovery, our game rooms for stalking self-awareness, the game of games, the most dangerous game of all. self-awareness must be hunted with care and caution. adversary or ally — it can be either. which depends on you. and your reactions.”

The heart was now there and the actor more than filled the role, a slightly bent vincent peel crossed with some shabby old shaman. Rider could almost believe him. But just almost. Rider distrusted any reality now. Especially ones that could be cut. He could see why the writer was toying with a movie rather than a book. And didn’t like it. He’d heard the cutting room floor was a zoo, but had no interest in zoology. No one would edit him out of his own bloody movie! Or was that a book he was writing? Notes From The Shop? or Scenes From The Shop? Anyways, he wouldn’t be written out of his own bloody book either, if that was the case.

“to stalk awareness, there are two questions you must answer. that’s right, just two, but answering them covers it all. it will take years and years of effort for you to achieve your goal, to become self-aware.”

“I already told you where you can fry your self-awareness. I’m in the market for heart and your brand’s phoney. Phoney bologna.” (Isn’t it neat how a word that shouldn’t rhyme does. How many of you read baloney? Fess up now. It’s not a crime. Just an indication.) Hah! Rider thought. Shove that where the klieg lights don’t shine. But then his mouth dropped as the old gentleman slowly drew himself erect — then kept growing, taller, widening at the hips, sprouting tits and a wig, dress and high heels, talking all the time.

“phoney baloney? you been reading the tubesteak labels lately, honey. you know what’s in those things? might be something you’re allergic to. but you see, tubesteak’s about all you going to afford if you don’t stick with the scripts. frankly, nobody gives a damn what your personal problems are, and there’s more than a few of us wondering about your mental balance. but, whatever your problems are, you leave them off the set and you give one hundred percent out here. you got that, abigail?”

“What did you say?”

“you mean you weren’t listening? sotto voice damn! my best acting in a year and she misses it.”

“That’s what I mean. That she stuff. What did you call me? Abigail?”

“so i used your real name. you might have changed your name, the credits might say lily, but you’re still abigail to me. and i’m still becky. so what are you going to do? sue me?”

“But that’s just it. It’s not my name. My name’s Dark, Dark Rider. I don’t know how, but you’ve somehow got me confused with a woman, which, as you can clearly see, I am not.”

If there were academy awards for looks of exasperation, Becky’s would have won on the spot. ‘Why couldn’t the bitch just get on with it?’ it spoke in letters centimetres high. There was a loud “Cut!” and a sharp whistle, then darkness was falling but, in the instant then the fragment then the smidgen of time it took, Rider had his first experience of slow motion: saw the Minstrel, still Becky, stalking away; saw technicians start the breakdown in the background; saw the director’s eye. The scenes flickered slightly at first, then the flicker became more pronounced and slow. Conveniently, there’d been enough time for the old guy to return, turn around and say the two questions that had to be answered were What is the story? and Who is the writer? Then repeat that awful name. Then the camera turned on Rider, but he was a her. A little frumpy in the face but well dressed. A little worn by the years. Then the frames were barely moving and the blackness was complete. Only now it wasn’t blackness because he was continuous.

Hippity, hoppity, Rider thought looking around. What a clinical reality. Then he shuddered. Bibbity, bobbity!

Talk about going for the balls.

The tale is of a god
who dreamed himself a man,
who learned to wear the sorrow
as though it were his own.

He learned to feel the chill.
He learned to feel the real.
He learned to lose himself
in the illusion of a name.

He learned to touch.
He learned to hurt.

He learned to cry.
He learned to heal.

He learn-ed to hate.
He learn-ed to hide.
He learn-ed to die.
He learn-ed too well

for he was
(losing) losing the we
(losing) the bliss that was we
losing these words…

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

14

Preface

And I bet you thought a preface went at the preface to the story. But why not a preface at the start of Part II? Or the start of Part III for that matter? I mean, think of it. Isn’t all of life nothing but preface? Nothing but events that open unto events; flowers that open to seed which, unfurled to plant, finally open back to flower and the cycle goes on? The rhythms of night and day, moon and sun, the rhythms of death? Today just the preface to tomorrow? Our lives just a ripple on the swell of generations in the unending sea of time — whatever that is? And the spells of desperation we encounter but prologue to the next in the unending pains of life? One joy but antecedent to another? So, if all is preface, why not place a preface anywhere? Why this preference for a preface at the preface? Why not place the preface profitably for the reader, where it can help make sense of the nonsensical?

For it is nonsensical, this life business — no matter how you see it. A cosmic fluke from a chemical soup, now drowning in its own chemicals? Children of a beneficent but paternal and insecure deity? Eternal entities absorbed in the classroom of life? No matter our view, it is only our self-importance convinces us that, somehow on the grand scale of things, it matters, even just a whit, whether we live or die, individually and collectively. It’s a flimsy structure to base a personality or a civilization on and, no matter how studiously it’s ignored, the basic farce remains that — ticks on a tiger’s testicle — we titillate more than mutilate. And that’s why I like satire that pokes fun at self-importance, especially my own. That’s why I read MAD for so many years. That’s why I like Doonesbury, and read the Saturday comics religiously. {Does that mean he’s Jewish?} [Heaven only knows.] They point out that the core of life is nonsensical, a stand up routine by the cleverest of comics, the cosmic clown itself. And its foil? The fertile fields of self-absorbed foppery — self-importance, the very ground of humour. So life is not to be taken seriously, with self-importance, but with Joy! at the absurdity that it is, that we are.

Yet our insignificance should not be taken lightly as we still cause the beast’s endless scratchings — the hind legs humping uselessly forward, then the great mouth descending to gnarl and growl blasts of putrid air while fangs feed on our foolish immobility, our mire in the cosmic play. And that’s the point, for, in the great scheme of things, the play’s the thing — not the players, for there is only one player — and the tiger is no less a role than the tick. No more important. No more critical to the show. Each is just one of the uncountable expressions of a universe that is alive, is ordered and is intelligent but has chosen to hide itself from itself; to fragment and dive into the muck so it can experience its own liberation into the light of self-awareness.

The universe is alive, it is ordered, and it is intelligent. To me, these are pragmatic facts, for — although I don’t know how it lives — I have felt its order and I have known its intelligence. Still, life’s mystery remains as deep as ever — the clown remains hidden in its many guises. And I am happy to accept that as, whatever the universe may be, my territory is here and now. It’s not out-there, but in-here, among the debris and bric-a-brac of self-importance, that self-awareness can be found, and the punch line understood. Our significance is in our insignificance. Our tickness is our salvation.

Each day opens to a classroom that has no walls but our beliefs, no curriculum save the traps we create for ourselves — for self-importance to snare itself in words, names and games, in careers and roles and slavish minuets of ignorance, of form without substance, of illusion. But, look about with awareness, and the traps are not traps but goads to liberation, prods to push us forward. And we pass or fail with our willingness to accept that it is life provides our lessons, but we who choose to learn. Or not.

15

Damn! Tricked again. It was just a fade to black fade up. One of those especially cheesy ones. You know, with the face of the bad guy leering down on the down, the face of the good guy cheering up on the up — what happened in between now recounted; and the girl swoons at the bravery exhibited on her behalf. A cheap out, a kind of dramatic commercial break. Handy things to have around when you’re short of budget and low on imagination. Or shooting for television.

“Abby! Abby!”

Another tacky effect. Cheap too. Pulling the focus so concerned face swims in and out of blur — straight from the forties, that one. Now cut to details in the sea of soft dreams, and vignette memories from the interlude. Concatenation. Frantic voices, a distant siren, pounding feet. Orders to stand back. Pain, such pain in the chest, spasms of electricity, bursts of lightning fusing into glaring white, a tunnel, backlighting and so revealing dark splotches on the soul. A voice, female — that was Becky, wasn’t it? — echoing. Strain to hear, pull sense out of the voice. Hold onto it. There were three questions. Which is the story? Who is the writer? and How do you get a salami on wurst at 3 a.m. if you don’t live in New York City?

“Abby! Abby!. Come on girl. You can do it. Hold on. Don’t let go. Please Abby, don’t let go.”

Well the first question was easy enough. It was the story of a woman in crisis, taking her first steps towards a new life. As for the writer, well that was easy too. That was her skulking over there behind the camera. But that last wasn’t right. She’d read that in MAD magazine — whatever that was. Besides, just what the hell is a salami on wurst? It sounded revolting. Hold on. Even the voices were swimming, fusing and melding into each other. That other voice. That was Dicky, wasn’t it? But what was Dicky doing here? He should have been home with Edie. That was the deal after all. Abby got the bacon and Dicky cooked it. That was the way of the world.

“I’m sorry Mr. Fuego. But there’s nothing we can do. She has to pull out of this on her own.”

Can’t. Can’t pull out. Too many voices. Too many hands, reaching out, waving in her face. Becky’s hands. Grab them. She had to grab them. Becky! Becky! I’m trying! Don’t give up. Please don’t give up. But the hands were melting, becoming incandescent, bones inside luminous bags of dripping flesh. God, it was a fade to white! Please Dicky. Please don’t let go. They’re slipping. Dicky! Your fingers are slipping away! For Edie’s sake. Please.

Then the whiteness was complete.

16

“Dark! Dark, man. Wake up! Wake up!”

Rider bolted awake, jerking his head off the bed, ripping his eyes away from the brightness of the window beside his bed. Just a dream, he thought, just a dream. [Not that he’d ever had one, but Rider had given up, as a mug’s game, wondering how he could know something he didn’t know.] But then, how much of it was dream? Where did the dream start? With Abby in the midst of her heart attack? If it was a heart attack? With The Minstrel walking away, the fade to black? Was The Minstrel in the room last night? Or was that just a dream? Was it all a dream? The Minstrel? tHe PoEt? The trip? Where did dream and reality intersect? He suddenly remembered an old Zen question: Am I a man dreaming I’m a butterfly? Or a butterfly dreaming I’m a man? {And if I’m a butterfly, and I flap my wings in Beijing, does that cause a fart in Philadelphia?} Had The Minstrel said that? He looked around but there was no answer in the room, well, maybe just a part of the answer. The Potter was standing anxiously beside the bed — flush faced, holding his hands up and forward like a surgeon who’s just scrubbed. They were covered in some kind of grey oooze, and the guck was trickling down his wrists and forearms.

“You were screaming. Yelling out. I ran up from the basement.”

Dark heard the words but they made no sense. He kept staring at the oooze, watching a drip form, about to fall unto Potter’s expensive carpet. Dream and reality were intersecting again, flesh was melting away from the bones of the hands, Abby’s panic superimposed on his own. He clawed for reality, reaching out, grabbing for Potter’s hand but his own hand slipped off and, now, it was ooozing. He couldn’t help himself, he screamed “Get away! Get away!”. But Potter, bless him, saw where Dark’s eyes were staring, and lowered his hands out of sight.

“Hey. Hey. It’s ok, man. That’s just clay. I was down in the basement throwing a pot when I heard you. Look, I gotta get something to clean this off.” Potter turned and went out the door, then came back wiping his hands on a rag. He tossed a second at the Rider and said, “Look. Do me a favour and get that stuff off before it ruins something. There’s coffee on in the kitchen, sorry there’s no milk but sugar’s on the table. I’ve got to get back downstairs and finish.” Potter turned and disappeared again, leaving Dark to clean his hands and collect his thoughts.

Right then, they were so few it was an easy task. Dark crumpled the cloth in his hand, lying back to stare at the ceiling. It, at least, remained solid and Rider’s panic subsided. He felt a little foolish — it had been just a dream after all, but he had lost it and exposed his fears, breaking the rules for the second time. Was that disgust he’d seen on Potter’s face? Embarrassment? Either was just as bad.

17

Shop Talk

Not that he would have said anything. You see, males don’t talk. Sure there’s lots of talk, but that’s all just talk. There’s no talk.

Know what I mean?

You’re nodding — female, right? You’re not? Then you’re a real exception. You just want to check again? Believe me, you can’t be too sure these days.

Males inhabit a reality that denies emotions, denies their own inner selves. And Bim, or Bum if you prefer, was no exception. From his earliest days, from even before memories, he had absorbed the rules and learned to hide his inner reality from both his mate and his mates. Not that Bim knew he’d done this — if you’d pointed it out, he wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. The censorship was invisible, shrouded in unquestionable absolutes, the way citizens in a police state learn to blank out ‘seditious’ thoughts before they even occur. And that’s an apt analogy as, despite its comradely appearance, The Brotherhood is a police state and any deviation from the rules causes the same kind of reaction that a shouting fool meets on street corners — eyes glaze, bodies stiffen and walk out of the way. The fool ceases to exist. And the only way back into the group is to take the fool’s advice and repent, which of course is to deny the fool and so again deny your own emotions and, thus, your salvation.

So, no, Bim wouldn’t have said anything about his friends making fun of his name change. But the irk was always there, a slight irritation he masked with a beer and/or a joint while he slipped away into his own thoughts and let the comments wash over and around him.

And wrote.

Nothing on paper, mind you, nor on keyboard. Bim only wrote in his head, a habit Bum possessed too. Wrote long poems and novels and screen plays. ‘Penned’ persuasive prose and audacious dialogue. Stunned the world with their talent, with their brilliance. Accepted acclaim with humility. Expected adoration and were rewarded. In their dreams. In his dulse-addled dreams. Yes, he considered himself a writer but, if I can turn the term, non-writer is the more accurate description. For that’s what he heard inside whenever he really tried to write, to put it on paper. Non! Well, it might as well been in French, for he clearly didn’t understand what it was saying about his writing which, kindly put, made no more sense than a random killing and was mourned even less. For he couldn’t write, and he sure couldn’t put it on paper.

Not that it mattered much to Bim — or Bum for that matter. To actually write something down was the last thing he wanted. You see, some men dream of studding naked women on distant beaches; or fancy their chances as the next Wayne Gretzky; or visualize stemming losses to the thanks of their bosses. For others, it’s the thought of power over others; for still others, it’s affection smothering mothers. Yes, they’re daydreams but don’t dismiss them. Call them warm milk fantasies, for that’s what they are: comforting escapes in lives that are indescribably dull — filled with the certainties of death and taxes, too little money and not enough sex. Lives that scream out You Are Ordinary! and You’ll Never Amount To Nothing! Lives that slog on endlessly, without meaning or freedom. Circumcised lives. And so daydreams become the escape, the outlet for angst and despair — as long as they remain safely fantasy. For there’s nothing more angst-inducing than a fable facing reality. Life and fantasy must be compartmentalized, safely insulated from each other. So for Bim, whose fantasy escape was his writing, to actually write would be dangerous, would have threatened the fantasy. Might have made him actually responsible for it, might have forced him to listen to that accented Non! and confront the reality of his sparse talents. That’s why he was, comfortably and happily, a non-writer.

And his current piece of non-writing was a saga of himself on the open highway, free of marriage and children and mortgage and job. Riding a motorcycle into the sunset and into a grand future of writing and fame. Kind of a double fantasy if you like, a jerk circle of delusion. But who are we to criticize? It made him happy.

18

Balancing the coffee in his hand, Rider made his way downstairs. He’d never been down here before, but he knew immediately that he was not just entering a basement, but descending into the Potter’s most private world. Unlike the absolute, almost maniacal neatness of the upper floor, the basement was a clutter of collectibles collecting cloaks of dust among antiquated appliances and old furniture awaiting restoration. And pottery. Hundreds of pieces. Stacked on concrete block shelves along the walls, stashed on wood planks around the floor, even strung from joists. Cups, bowls, planters, decorative plates. The failures and successes from years of learning and experimentation. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Dark paused for a sip, and silently took in the scene. From this position, the basement stretched away from him in a long and narrow main room. Lit by a single bare bulb, the furnace loomed off to his right — a misshapen, metal tree with the water heater its cactus-like companion. The outer walls were concrete, darkstained with years of condensation and seepage. Still sturdy though — this house would stand for many years more. The one inner wall was 2 x 4 framing, with only one side covered in gyprock panels; it’s far face, so horizontal supports in the framing provided shelving in the main room for small items. The wall went the entire length of the basement, broken only by framed holes for three doorways. Two of these were dark, but amoebas of orangish light intermittently spilt from the furthest door, chased by a grotesquely looming shadow apparently trying to wipe them out of existence. One pie-slice of light did manage to hide in the clutter of the very furthest corner and so stay weakly but continuously luminous.

It was a quiet battle, just an arhythmic thup-thuffing, a sound so soft it was dominated by even the kerflufel of a car’s unmuffled roar now muffled to a bare ruffle by earth and concrete baffles. Then like the sudden hum of the Luftwaffe over London, the war came to life. [Shame you couldn’t work truffles into that.] {Duffles of truffles?} [Or, how about differing duffers.] {Differing duffers decidedly dither.} [No, don’t say thanks. Just trying to be helpful.] {We know you need it.} (Listen, you baffling buffoons — I said, ‘Quiet!’) An electric motor switching on brought with it a faint repetitive rasp which was filled by a second hum that still, though just the faintest suggestion of sound, spoke volumes. It was the hum of the clay, the gliis-sing fingers make as they massage form out of nothing, perspective and utility out of potential. And now there was a third hum, also faint, also heavy with volumes. For the Potter was at work in the very inner sanctum of his passion, and he was humming. He was more than happy. Kindly put, he was potty for potting and potted prodigiously. He’d been known to ‘just pop into the pottery’ for days at a time, lost to the world, pleading perfection from plasticity. {Pardon, but does pallie-pal possess pee-pee problems or what? Tom Hanks thought he was in A League of Their Own.} (Can’t you do something about him?) [No. He’s your pet. Leash him yourself.] (But that’s leashing myself.) [Then leave him alone.] It was a passion Rider envied for, without heart, he had none himself. Not an ounce. Not a drop. Unless you counted longing for passion a passion. For he did long for one particular passion. But the walls to that passion were impregnable, and so he pined.

Music.

Imagine feeling like you were musically miswired at birth, neurologically screwed up with the effect that you can’t reproduce with your hands or throat what you can feel with your body, with your soul. Imagine the ache that is there as you hear and feel music inside but it’s so imprisoned, so deeply buried, trying to reach it is sheer frustration. Imagine hearing useless inner songs, like bells across the mountains — so tantalizing, but so far. Conceive the pain of trying to learn to play and sing when your block is so deep you can’t even carry a beat and you can’t recognize a single note. Feel the frustrations of that Sunday school drummer, about to be dumped for those reasons. Imagine how much anguish must be buried to survive. Imagine too how thin hope’s thread becomes and you may understand why Dark carried the guitar — as ridiculous as it was. For he couldn’t play. And he sure couldn’t sing. He couldn’t even tune the bloody thing.

He tried. Had tried. Many times. But had been told he had no music. Many times. Eventually he came to believe it, and so could not. Either play or sing, proving that if you build reality, they will come — true, that is. Your beliefs will come to pass. Come to fruition. Culminate. Climax. Finally change to fit your new experience. That’s how you grow. That’s how life grows. All is belief. It can be nothing else when the core itself is a mystery. No ‘facts’ can be built on a black hole. As long as we remember that our ‘facts’ are just useful conventions, then we are free to roam the mysteries, roam the heavens with our minds. Free to roam life and learn. But, lose the quotes, and we lose these freedoms, are bound by convention, and so are bound to illusion. Welcome to ‘reality’. Quite a trick, eh?

Rider had built reality, and his beliefs had come to pass.

After burying his music, all he had left was the longing. And the guitar. It was his own symbol, the axe he carried to finally cut the thread and be done with it. One day, he knew, he would smash it on the floor or throw it from a bridge or burn it in the bush or something equally symbolic of cutting his last ties with that orphaned passion and hardening his heart against the cries of the damned. Until then, he played it once in a while, very badly. And cursed hands that had no rhythm, fingers that had no melody. Despaired of a throat that only croaked. But never when anybody else was around. He only played alone. Cursed and despaired alone. Longed alone. And ached.

Alright, Dark thought irritably. You’ve made your point. I hurt. Now drop it, will you?

19

the writer comments

You’ve probably gathered by now that I don’t acknowledge the little guy any more than I absolutely have to. It just encourages him. Yeah, the Inner Critic — you know, that voice that always carps at you over your mental shoulder, able to recite your every sin and all too willing to point out all your shortcomings of thought and being. You know, you’ve seen the sitcom a dozen times; the kid brother from hell, a kind of Leave it to Cleaver, with Wack the Knife as theme song. Yeah. You’ve got one of them too. The thing with my critic is that the kid’s not just in my mind but in the laptop as well. I’m of two minds for how the latter comes about. I sometimes think he’s like a separate circuit in my brain, with its own wires down to my hands and so they type without me knowing. (I’ve once or twice had the same suspicion about The Bard but he says I’m wrong. I guess the question is, Would you trust a computer?) Then I sometimes think the kid’s just a fractured part of my electronic friend’s circuitry. Or maybe his kind are replicating, writer help us all. But then I guess that makes me of three minds about the kid and that makes for quite a discussion. But I won’t bother with it because, no matter how it comes about, the point is the little prick exists.

I really wish he didn’t. Imagine an internalized mother/father/brother/sister/ teacher/tailor/tinker/spy with a malicious sense of humour and you’ll have some idea of what he puts me through. Was it the wolffe in the three little pigs said you can’t go home again? Hell, with the inner critic around, you can never leave home. You carry it with you, labouring under all the taunts, jeers and exhortations to perfection you ever heard; growing up but not growing wiser, still letting mother/father/brother/sister/lover run your life, rule your emotions; not recognizing that it’s all just huff and puff, and the best thing is just to let the bloody house blow down. {Talk about mixing metaphors. I sure hope you’re following a recipe.} See what I mean. Of course, catch 22 fly balls in a row and do you get praise? Fat chance. Baby bro never learned a thing about positive reinforcement. Negativity’s his bag, but he’s no mule skinner flaying recalcitrant beasts. The skinner shouts to make them go. Critic just wants to stop you. Dead. Paralyse you with fear. Prove you’re just the schmuck he thinks you are.

So why do I let him get away with it? I could ask you the same question, and probably get the same answer. I don’t know any better. And, Catch 69, he’s part of me, so deeply penetrated into my self-image I can’t tell where he begins and I end; and so — his slithering tongue slaking itself on my every exposed nerve — we end up lost in an orgy of self-recrimination and self-serving defenses. Lost in fear and guilt. {Ah, but the pleasure! Yes, the pleasure.} And ultimately lost in indecisiveness, prone to anxiety and panic attacks. Breakdowns are made of such partnerships between the self-hating and self-insecure. I should know. I had one. And — to change the subject before his head swells too much — let me tell you, the circumstances that led up to it, my breakdown, were just like someone was writing me, just like I’m a character in someone else’s book. And I’m not his favourite character by any means. {Care for some deep fried petards? I’m sure you’ll like the recipe.} My life, I suspect, is only semi-factional. But, when I have to ask Who is the writer?, then I wonder if there isn’t some line that’s been crossed without awareness. That’s why I’m more than a little preoccupied with the Big I — my old friend, the Insanity Question.

20

If clay could orgasm, thought Dark, this would be the moment.

He’d stood silent for several minutes, watching Potter’s hands caress and coax the clay erect, forge fluidity from flaccidity; then, with a sure but gentle pushing down of his thumb on the clay’s spinning top, invade its inner essence, now slipping a second and third fingers into the widening orifice. His manipulations were not unwelcome, and the clay acquiesced, arching, moulding itself to his desire with a slight purr. And then, as hands flowed and the clay flowed with them, the pot had begun to take shape, fluidly shifting through forms — a stub, fat mug, a thick bowl, finally an elegant vase pirouetting on the wheel of its creation. Fingers danced now, smoothing, shaping, confirming. A little push here, a slight correction there. Potter dipped them in water, barely breaking the rhythm, then returned to the dance, slipping his hands over and up and down his partner’s curves with languorous satisfaction. Just then, a to-now imperceptible change crossed the threshold of awareness and Dark saw that the studio had filled with a sepulchral hush, and all light had seemed to dim, save a lone spotlight shining directly on the pair. A handsome couple, at that moment they were the very focus of the entire universe, the epicentre of creation, and their dance was awesome. They were like a single organism, potter and pot, a single awareness lost in passion’s coupling. Watching them, Dark ached once more for his own missing passion, his own lost heart. Once more, Dark was irritated at his ache being shoved in his face. Once more, Dark missed the point. It was something about orgasm.

“Do you want to try a piece?” Potter looked up slightly, just catching Dark’s eyes across his spinning partner. “I think you’d like it.”

Well, yes, he did want to try a piece, which was nice as the writer was going to make him do it anyways, whether he liked it or not. So to like it was actually a bit of a bonus, a rather pleasant surprise. For a change. Some type of amend? A bit of olive leaf? A peace offering? He’d wait and see. Around here, it’s a fool who doesn’t take a careful look down the throat of any gift pots. And he was no fool so he played it cool, “Sure.” Almost too cool. Potter’s eyes held deep unsaid questions. Dark fancied he could look into them and see the writer. Ugly little fellow.

“Look, there’s no point trying unless you really want to. It’d just be a waste of clay.”

“No, I mean, yeah I’d like to. I really would like to try a piece.”

Thup-thuff, thup-thuff. It was incredibly tactile, just working the clay on a board to elasticize it, using a soft rhythmic pounding of the ball against the wood, followed by a pushing in of the hands very much the way kittens push maw’s tum with their paws to bring milk into the teat. Like kneading bread, for a more obvious comparison. And a perhaps more accurate one, as, in a sense, this was kneading bread — it was working the gift of life and form into the inanimate and unformed. Preparing it for the dance of life, preparing it for activation. And, just as bread only bakes in an oven, clay only lives on the wheel, and that was where the tactile took over completely. The clay squooshed inside his hands, trailing wet tingling bands almost erotic in their faintness. The Potter was a good teacher of his art — living proof the axiom is not always correct — and he led Dark through the steps of centring the clay, then working it into a long, narrow column towards the eventual goal of a candlestick. The column was elongated by gently squeezing in with the lower sides of the palms while pushing just as gently upward. To Dark’s chagrin, he was clumsy in his movements and couldn’t make the clay perform. He squeezed in too hard with his palms and produced a bulge that moved upward. The sight had a strangely hypnotic effect on him and began to dominate his consciousness. Concentration was hard. To make matters worse, Dark began to feel strange in the groin. It was the same feeling he’d had that time on the mountaintop. And that was when Dark, suddenly seeing the column with new eyes, thought he understood what the feelings were about. Guilt rose so quickly it swamped them, leaving him gasping for breath. Potter laughed. “Yeah. It’s like that. Pretty erotic, eh?”

Erotic! Hell, he could see where this scene might lead, and he was pretty sure he didn’t like it. He really didn’t know all that much about Potter: generally he seemed pretty normal — had one of those invisible Ozzie Nelson jobs where he went every day to put in his time, drank moderately and potted. That and restored old furniture and bric-a-brac. But, beyond that, Dark knew very little about him. Who knew what boners might be kept in Potter’s closet? And god knew what fantasy the writer was playing out through this little scene.

“Here. Let me show you.” Potter no sooner said it than he was sitting beside him, then placing his hands so they encircled Dark’s on the suspect column. Compared to the slooshy cool of the clay, Potter’s hands were hot — worse, the feelings in the groin returned, making concentration even more difficult. It got even worse when Potter began gently pressuring Dark’s hands against the clay, showing him in the most direct way the years-worn silent knowledge of his body. “There. Just feel that. Feel how slight it is, that’s all the pressure you need.”

The column inside his hands came back to throbbing life. Dark began to feel light in the head, and his whole body was buzzing when a sudden flash of a scene set in India exploded in his mind. For a few pennies, the snake charmer was playing for his life as, in the foreground, Death wove a wary weaving dance and onlookers — though openly gasping in admiration — secretly yearned for the strike. One of them, a girl who looked vaguely familiar, handed over a slip of paper.

Damn!, Dark thought, reading it. Sucked in again. It wasn’t what he’d feared. It was just the primal male guilt. Not that that was anything to sneeze at. The Guilt of Masturbation — Capital G, capital M, just like anytime you hear a preacher say Hell you know it’s capitalized — is the primal guilt, the BIG one. {It’s like soft drugs, you know — it leads on to harder kicks.} The one you never really get over. {You’ll go blind.} Inner critic’s favourite big stick. {You’ll be caught.} Yeah, that one. You got one too. Even if you’re female. (But I’ll leave the discussion of the fuckless zip for Abby. The way things are going around here, she probably wants to be a writer too.) [Speaking of which, Dark struggled to squelch a sanctimonious snicker. Sophomore symbology indeed! Sure, serpents had symbolized the schtucker ever since Adam sliced apples with his, but just what the hell connection, he groused, is there between that flash-away and GoM? If the writer hadn’t telegraphed it, Dark might never have known what the symbol was about. In disgust, he crumpled and threw the telegram away.]

The snake’s outer cheeks now puffed and the only sounds were the ph-hisssing of the snake’s breath and the throbby drone of a distant four-laner. And the music of course. Thin though it was, it rode over and under the silence, a reedy but hypnotically melancholy and familiar tune. Familiar? From where? Then the answer came to him — it was the music he’d heard on the mountain top. Yes, now he recognized the melody and for the first time he heard words, lyrics, but not a voice, they were thoughts. Who dreamed himself He was thinking the song. a man. Who learned to Or was the song thinking him? wear the sorrows as though But, no, he wasn’t thinking in any case. they were his own. He was thinking singing. to lose himself Or was that singing thinking? in the illusion No matter, he rose for it like a fish to fly, of a name, losing drinking the song losing the we like a man too long walkabout without water, losing the bliss and without the sense to take it slow; that was we letting the music fill him and the meaning of the lyrics enfold him. losing these words But he was too greedy and the lyrics fuzzed out of existence, leaving just the charmer’s music.

Meanwhile, back at that scene, as player, music and snake all highwayed together, another voice rode in on his thoughts. ‘Just watch the eye, that’s where you’ll see the strike start,’ and then he saw that the player was doing just that, watching the unblinking eye, waiting for that first spurt of attack, afraid to blink because that was all the snake needed. Nothing more. No less. The moment hung for a long moment — the very picture of poised and poise. Then a loud voice yelled, “Cut! And that’s a print!”

“Damn. That’s a shame. I thought you had it there.” A little startled by the voice, Dark looked down at the column. Lost in the song and snake dance, his hands had slipped off the end, and the clay had flopped over, winding itself a slight spiral escaping his hands. Potter reached over and flipped the wheel’s control to off, and, slowing down, Dark’s candlestick looked like a piece of discarded rubber snake, the head end, not the tail. Potter giggled, but Dark found little to laugh about.

“Well, it can still be a candlestick. I’ll whip up a base and a piece to hold a candle for the top of it.”

“Or just leave it the way it is,” Dark said moodily. “It’d make eclectic kitchen kitsch.”

21

That’s it!, she thought. Could there be any doubt? The pressure was gone. Disappeared. She felt relieved, lighter, as though she’d let go of something. For days, like a slowly growing abscess, there’d been this thought nudging forward into her awareness — certainly ever since she got out of the hospital, but maybe even before. Her hospital stay had been three days of hell waiting to hear the results of the tests — a real scare — but the tests came back normal. Just a quirk the doctors concluded, just a quirk that almost took her life. And who in Hell has the mental focus to detect a subconscious thought? But, it must have been there, because the first time Dicky kissed her on the way home in the cab, she’d pulled back, oddly ill at ease and with a sense of pressure in her head. Within a few days the pressure had increased and the thought was just there, but fuzzy, and no amount of worrying it back and forth would bring it into focus. The pressure in her head had scared her a little — was it part of the attack? another quirk? — but she was scared even more by a nagging feeling there was something important in the thought, something that would change her life. Completely.

But now that it was here, Abby wondered whatever she had found to fear in it. Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch. That was certainly it, but it was just nonsense. Dog-eared doggerel. Nothing to fear in that. Except…

Snap! She snapped out of her reverie and snapped. “Would you put her to bed?” Damn that Dicky. Edie had him wrapped around her little finger and got away with murder. He wouldn’t put his foot down either, just kept threatening “You just wait until your mother gets home”. Not that it did much good and Edie just kept getting worse. Well, Abby wouldn’t have allowed it, that was for darn certain. Justice delayed was justice denied.

“Good,” said Dicky. “You can make sure justice isn’t delayed by spending some quality time with your daughter.” Oh, God, she thought with a sigh, here we go again. The same old argument. The same old tired story. Dicky wanted Abby to take a stronger role in their daughter’s life, to start spending some ‘quality time’ with her — as though time were something that could be spent. Something that could be hoarded. He just had no idea what it was like to struggle at a career in the fickle world of tv soap where producers would script you out of existence in the blink of an eye, then set the stage for another actress with the old plastic surgery and amnesia routine. Then to come home and find supper not cooked and the living room a mess and the brat screaming. Really screaming. Then your beloved looks at you and says “Here. She’s all yours.” before thrusting the noisemaker into your bosom. And then not getting any because he says he has a headache. Yeah, right. She’d heard that excuse more than once. Well, she’d like some quality time herself. Some quality fucking time. But no, he wants a romantic dinner and sweet words on the pillow. Then he looks at me as though it’s my fault men and women are different about sex and says, “I’ve seen you looking at other men”. Well, it’s not my fault I need sex, Abby growled to herself. I just do, and who’s not going to look when you got nothing at home? And who’s not going to wish? But there’s no harm in that because it’s just looking, it’s just wishing. It’s not real. And thank God for that! Because if wishes were real, she’d be in trouble.

Real trouble.

It had started when a cute little blonde started on script. He had nice buns, a wide smile, and an engaging personality. He used them well — pretty clearly, he was screwing his way to the top, and had made it clear he considered Abby in his path. The little hussy wouldn’t take no for an answer, pursuing her relentlessly with small favours, pressing his body against hers whenever that brought them together. Lord he was good looking, so what’s a frustrated girl to do? I mean, I didn’t go looking for it, she justified it to herself. It just happened. I mean I can live with that — I don’t suppose it’s even worth telling Dicky about; it would just upset him when what happened really means very little. But now Jhikl’s asked me to spend a week in the Caribbean with him. He’s Danish, or one of those Scamndinavian countries. And I want to go. In fact, I’m obsessed with going but I can’t. I mean that’s something entirely different, going off for a week of sun and sex with another man. That’s premedicated, well, something like that. I mean it stinks. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.

And with that, she forced the wish away. Unlike the Rider who, if anything, suffered from too much self-analysis, too much introspection, Abby was a thorough non-introvert (which is not necessarily the same as an extrovert). For instance, she was totally unaware of the old-fashioned values she had just demonstrated, and, for that matter, her old-fashioned double-standard. To Abby, those were just the way things were — part of the reality she had to deal with. And when one found one’s feelings at odds with the way things were, then one called on one’s will power to shut them down, to deny.

But what happens when the undeniable meets the ultimate denial? Abby was about to find that out. By co-incidence, but no coincidence, so was the Rider.

22

Dark stared at the computer screen, perplexed. He’d slipped away for a moment to write down what lyrics of the song he could remember, and to make a note for the book, an outline of a pithy and wryly sarcastic description of how Bim had settled on a motorcycle trip, and why he had decided it would be on a Goldwing. Potter was still down in the studio, had never left it since Dark first went downstairs, so there was no way he could have been responsible. But, if not Potter, who, or what, had done this? There was no Shop Talk to be found, no NOTSHOP1.txt on the drive. Dark wondered if somehow he had erased it, but his UNDELETE utility could find nothing to resurrect, no electronic ghost returned from the dead. NOTSHOP1 had ceased to exist.

Worse, he had no backup on floppy. Nothing to save him the hassle of rewriting. For a moment he wondered if, in fact, he had written anything at all. Perhaps he’d only dreamed the act of writing. But he knew that was grasping at straws, he knew he had written. But where had it gone?

He stared at the file list, speculating the document had somehow been renamed. But all the other files looked right. Except one. What the hell, he wondered is GOBGAB.txt? He hit RETRIEVE. The screen blanked, shivered, and Dark’s confusion convulsed.

Just a coupl'a GoB

So there we were, just a coupl'a GoB [1] from The Rump [2]. Shooting guff on the lam [3], running the backroads of the riding where a few beer and a bag of dulse aren't a problem unless you're unlucky. Real unlucky. Or followed. And that was probably the more likely for there was a pile of bush back here and fair few folk to fill it. But if you were followed it was your own damn fault anyway because, sure as shooting, them cops was sloppy and you shouldda seen'em. When you're a GoB, you watch your tail and you don't give them no excuses.

That's just one of the axioms that had fallen like swine from the lips of The Politician. He was my guide into these backhills of The Rump, my introduction to a way of life so far removed from life in the Big Cumquat, it seemed less a part of Canada than some transplant from a different planet — or bleedthrough from a different dimension. And he was a perfect guide cause he was a GoB, even if I wasn't. And he was a GoB Politician to boot. So we'll call him GoBBy. Poli GoBBy. He'd appreciate the humour in the name. And, needless to say but worth repeating, GoBBy gabbed. Loved talking and was quite loquacious in his own GoBBish way. I guess that's why he was one of the Rump's most successful politicians. Contrary to the popular perception which pictures them taciturn, GoBs love to gab. And they love gabbing about nothing more than politics. So a gabby GoB can grab a seat in the House just by gabbing. You see, when you're a GoB you vote for a GoB. That was just another of GoBBy's axioms. Like I said, they fell like swine.

Fat swine. Poli had made a plump career out of politics by giving the folks just what they wanted. Ten weeks of a government job so they could collect Unemployment for forty? No problem — there was a road crew working nearby that could use an extra flagger [4]. A flagon of beer at midnight? Sure. Just give me your vote and let me go back to sleep. Something done about those raccoons in the garbage? Ma'am, those are God's creatures too, but we'll see what we can do. Well, most of the time. There were times he took a stand and that made him popular too. GoBs love a good stand, even if they don't agree with it, and Poli's aggressive personality had earned him respect . Even a certain amount of affection. And if Poli was less than scrupulously honest, well, that didn't matter to the GoBs. He was an honest crook and he was one of theirs. Honest.

But then, should you trust me? I’ve already lied to you once and will probably do so again. You might say it’s an occupational hazard. You see, I’m an undercover journalist and so I work for the media — the vicious leftwing backstabbing anti-establishment media establishment. But hell, it’s a living — one hell of a living in fact. I work deep cover for The Bi-National Inquirer — usually called The Bi, it’s one of the better tabloids back in the Big Cumquat — meaning nothing I write ever gets printed under my own name. To protect my identity for future assignments. So, you’ll understand that I can’t use my real name. So let’s just call me Mellow, Mellow Yellow. Poli’d appreciate the humour in that name too.

For the second time that day, Dark’s sense of humour failed. Poli GoBBy? Mellow Yellow? What the hell was this? Nothing he’d written. What was it doing on his hard drive then? He looked out the window at the garage where tHe PoEt was not only under lock and key, but had his battery disconnected — just to make sure. Could he have done this? Wiped out a document and inserted another? No way, Dark thought. The Minstrel, then? Possibly, but not likely — there’d been absolutely no hint The Minstrel even knew he was writing a book. That left one possibility. No, Dark mused. It was a probability. Goddamn the writer man. Well, if he wanted to play like that, then Dark would rewrite it from memory and keep a safety copy on floppy, hell on a dozen floppies. And if that didn’t work, then Dark would become like one of the living books in Fahrenheit 451. [Shouldn’t that be Celsius 261.88?] (If you don’t mind, it’s a title.) [So?] He’d keep it in his head.

Sphinctered.

That would certainly give new meaning to opening and closing a document, Dark chuckled to himself, relieved to find his sense of humour returning. You needed it around here.

23

The Naked Shop

There are a million stories in The Naked Shop
This is just a coupl’a dozen of them.

One of Bim’s defining characteristics is that he was one of those people you could call an opposer. If everyone around him rooted for the Oilers, which of course they did, then he’d cheer for the Leafs — as irrational as that was. If everyone else drank Blue, then he’d imbibe Budweiser. And if the intimates of the shop longed for Harleys, then they were shit and Bim would lust after ABAH — Anything But A Hog. And that was the case. For The Shop had its own defining characteristics and one was that it was a Harley shop, a hog haven.

About 40 by 20, most of The Shop was taken up by a two car service area. Complete with separate doors and a motor hoist, the only thing it lacked was a pit for working underneath. This was Bif’s domain, and there was usually at least one car in process — if not a friend’s shitbox in for baling wire and muffler tape, then some old muscle machine shedding rust and age before emerging as a collector’s item. In the latter case, once complete, the car would be sold and a new one found, as Bif fundamentally cared more for the process than the result. Sure, he liked the cars, but his real joy was getting down and greasy in an engine’s innards. He could get lost there for hours, oblivious to the missus, and often did. Bop was pretty much the opposite — generally more interested in the finished product than how it was made. He was a woodworker, a damn good one too, and his machines filled most of The Shop’s remaining space. There was always at least one project on the go here, leaving a perpetual patina of sawdust on every surface and exotic hardwood scents to cut into Bif’s errant aromatics. A narrow aisle between the table saw and back wall work counter had become Bim’s favoured place to sit, jackknifed across the aisle on a tall metal stool. From here, Bim could look out and see the entire shop, indulging in memories of his own boyhood helping out his carpenter father and, most important, not see the pictures.

You know the kind — you can find them in any automotive shop around North America — broads, babes and dames straddling every kind of machinery; rapturously riding floor jacks, beaming at ball bearings, resuscitating air hoses. Looked at rationally, these juxtapositions of the prosaic and the sublime make no sense at all. Jack coif? Robo root? Strip poker? Candy cam? But, as they say, who can think rationally when your brain’s short of blood? And who wants to? Certainly not the average North American male, who makes an easy cognitive connection between machinery and the female sex — witness how they all call their machines she, whether it’s a car, truck or video edit suite.

The epitome of this identification is, of course, the motorcycle, and here the connection does seem a little less tenuous. I mean you don’t ride astride a table saw, for obvious reasons. But you do straddle a bike, you do mount the machine. And, unless it’s a pig dog, the machine responds to your every command. Just the way you wish a woman would. So bikes and broads become each other and The Shop featured an entire wall proving it. Well, ok, not an entire wall. But they did run most of the length of the wall behind Bim’s stool, about two dozen pics of babes and their bikes. But not just any old motorbike. Harleys to be exact. There were tourers and fat boys and choppers and chromers. Hogs with spoked wheels, pigs with low seats. And, just as each bike was different, so each chick had a presence, clothing and pose all her own. Some wore leather, several showed silk, and one even dressed like a man. Some stood in command, some laid supine, and several snatched peeks through wheels.

It was an eyecatching display that, by their number and their placement on the wall, dominated The Shop, and it was almost ritual that anyone entering stood for a moment to admire them, sweeping their eyes along the row and muttering, “Nice. Ni-ice.” And all understood they were referring to the bikes.

Bim loathed this ritual and hated the gallery above his seat. In twenty-four slightly differing ways, the photos showed him what he didn’t and couldn’t have — freedom, moxie, a sexpot woman. Reality was 8 to 6 at a job that gave no satisfaction, then 6 to 11 with the family, and there was precious little satisfaction there. Now, it’s a known psychological fact you come to hate what you can’t have, but Bim was no misogynist, so he had invested all of his frustrations in despising HOGgers and their wheels. When yet another fool stood bow-legged in front of him, casting appreciative eyes, Bim would dip into his cache of retreaded Harley jokes — like, What’s the most important option on a hog? Answer: a magnetic rear bumper to catch the parts that fall off. Or, What makes an otherwise intelligent guy buy a Harley? Answer: penis envy. Or, how many HOGgers does it take to change the lightbulb in a headlamp? Answer: ten, one to do the task — and nine to read and understand the instructions.

In their own way, they were clever jokes, but Bim had discovered that, when it came to their mounts, HOGgers had no sense of humour. More than once, his quips had almost led to blows — not surprising, he thought, given the Mooonie-like zeal HOGgers share. Usually though, the blows were verbal. Bim remembered one particular blowhard taking offence, and launching into a long, repetitive dissertation on how, yes, at one time Harley quality had gone downhill trying to meet the flood of bikes from Japan. But they’d learned their lesson and the whole company’s profits now rode on quality, not quantity. The new hogs were fine pieces of machinery, the best you could buy. “Bull shit,” snorted Bim. “They’re outdated, relics from the 1940s, caught in a technological backwater.” Better to buy Japanese, he’d argued, where you know you’re getting the very latest in technology. At a better price. Sure the Harley name had a certain cachet, but you paid for that through the spokes. It was a premium that made the American bikes an awful buy and, Bim had concluded, HOGgers dollar dullards.

Joe Blow had stalked out at that point and, right there, right then, flush with righteous victory, Bim had had a vision of his book. The one he was finally going to write. Like for real. The one that would launch him on a stratospheric ride to fame and fortune. The tome that would answer Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It would be him on a Goldwing, the finest touring machine ever made, chasing the meaning of existence across the panoply of the Canadian dream.

And, undisputed head hogogynist, he’d rubbish Harleys all the way.

24

It was low tide, mid-afternoon, so the sun was still a few hours away from burning incandescently across the distant expanse of Georgia Strait. But it was low enough to pinprick the Fraser River’s extensive tidal flats with a thousand points of light, and it was warm enough that Dark was stripped down to shorts and running shoes — one of the advantages driving has over riding is that, in a car, you can dress for the weather, not for the ride. tHe PoEt was still safely locked up in the garage as Potter — saying it was too dangerous — just refused to ride. So they’d come in Potter’s old Rambler, as vintage a piece of automotive Americana as you can find, and so well taken care of it had not seen better days. Dark was glad enough for that — he didn’t want to know if it was just him, or if the machine could converse with passengers as well. Besides, after the strains and rains of the past few days, it felt good to be in shorts and to feel the warm sun beat tiny fingers on his chest. Too, it was good to be out here where there was just him and the Potter, anonymous members in the passing parade of cyclists, joggers and walkers on Vancouver’s anal tract.

Like many coastal cities, Vancouver barely treats its sewage. Instead, it chooses to fart a continuous stream of nearly raw sewage into its surrounding waters, depending on dilution and natural decomposition to render its excrement harmless. And it does work, to a degree anyways — ironically even providing nourishment for the aquatic food chain that helps to feed the city. {Ah, the links that bind.} But no food chain is an island unto itself, and the fires of aquatic life are fuelled with oxygen dissolved in the water — until the oxygen is consumed and the chain smothers in its own wastes. Or in human wastes. More visibly, and therefore more problematic for politicians, if water currents co-operate, the sewage ends up back on beaches and rocks. That’s a regular enough occurrence for the City of Victoria — except the beaches its sewage usually ends up on are across the Strait in the American State of Washington. Needless to say, residents there are hardly amused and carry on a running legal battle for Victoria to upgrade its sewage treatment.

It used to happen in Vancouver too, the city’s beaches regularly sheened with shit and used condoms, until the good burghers built their anal tract — a 7.5 kilometre double pipeline from the municipality’s Iona Island treatment plant. No small feat of engineering, the pipes first traverse kilometres of marsh and tidal mudflat before finally sinking under the waves and, out-of-sight, out-of mind, disgorging their barely-treated contents into the bottom of the Georgia Strait. With a diameter of three metres each, the two pipes provide the base for a roadway big enough to carry a honey wagon far out into the Strait. But no honey wagons were allowed — that would have been redundant and, no doubt, unsanitary — nor was any form of motorized transport. Instead, the road had become a mecca for cyclists, bird watchers and pedestrians. And aviation aficionados, come to watch jets roar in and out of Vancouver International — using shit’s arrow straight runway, it was said, to line up their approaches even as their captains welcomed passengers to Canada. That was the anus on which Dark and the Potter were taking their Sunday constitutional.

Although low, the tide was turning — Dark could see that in the shrinking margins of the flats. But they were so extensive here the incoming tide was more like a gathering swell, a silent deepening, than a rushing forward of the ocean’s depths, the way it would be on the Bay of Fundy near the end of the trip. Dark was rather looking forward to seeing that, and looking forward to the next day when he would be starting on the trip proper, the coast-to-coast venture, his search for heart. So Potter had suggested they walk the anus, which — in the absence of a trip to the west coast of Vancouver Island — would put Dark as far west as he could be in this part of the lower mainland and, Potter opined, appropriately symbolize the start of his journey.

Dark wasn’t sure about that. But, after the events of that morning, he was sure that — talk about going for the balls! — there were too damn many balls in the air: tHe PoEt and his ruminations; The Minstrel stalking him with self-awareness; the Abby dreams, if they were dreams; the song and now a couple of uninvited guests on his computer. Not to mention his own book. And then there were the themes, too boring to list, but chief among them the male motifs, the reality thing plus, of course, the illiterate alliterations. It was, Dark felt, like he was watching a fancy-pants juggler start with a single ball, then add another and another, and still more until you just knew he had to miss one — the ball, it’s arc not stopped by the saving hand, hitting the stage with an explosive sploosh like a brain on drugs or an over-ripe tomato. Almost missing the catch seemed part of the act, a skilful misdirection complete with staggering legs and horrified looks turning to relief; even the hand, between redirections, frustratedly trying to wipe sweat from the brow. But the denouement was just a matter of time. And it was just a matter of chance, at best, which ball left the act. At worst, a matter of design. Dark, of course, feared the worst. What he needed was the time and place for some serious thinking, sans sphincter. So a walk on the anus — symbolic or not — had seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, almost from the start, Dark had felt a strange foreboding, a something not quite right with the scene around him, but there was nothing he could put his finger on. It all seemed an ordinary day — planes glinting in the sun, sea birds dive bombing the flats, sweat glistening the deep tans of huffing joggers. Three speedwalkers, all very definitely female, overtook and passed them when Potter stopped to point out a murre off to the right — Dark hadn’t known he was a birdwatcher as well — and describe its feeding and nesting habits in excruciating detail. Standing slightly behind, Dark paid more attention to the birds than to the bird, covertly watching the flash of synchronized legs, oddly attracted to the rustle of muscled buttocks. But the attraction disappeared when the middle one glanced around and her face was not a face, but two discs of light shining from a fearful blankness. Dark gasped, causing Potter to turn, focus on him, then glance at the retreating threesome. He smiled. “Yeah. It’s a good place for that kind of bird-watching as well.”

Hating himself for trembling like a kid, Dark turned back to face his friend and, just for a moment, thought he caught something malicious in the upturn of Potter’s lips. His trembling increased — surely Potter must notice it. But if he did, no sign showed. ‘Maybe I’m just projecting,’ Dark thought. ‘Creating my own reality, as The Minstrel would say. I should run up there and ask her if I’ve got it right.’ For he now had no doubt who the girl was, and where his forebodings had come from. Still smiling, Potter studied Dark’s face for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind about something. “Ever hear how Eskimo carvers work?”

Dark shook his head.

“Well what they do is they take a chunk of bone or ivory or soapstone, study it, then start chipping away what doesn’t belong to the animal or person they ‘see’ inside it.” Potter slipped an arm across Dark’s shoulder, then started walking, pulling him along. “And they keep chipping until they’ve freed it, until the carving has been liberated. Interesting, eh?” Dark grunted non-committally, more concerned with keeping an eye on the speedwalking trinity ahead than with anthropological ruminations. But he didn’t need to answer — it was just one of those rhetorical eh?s that litter Canadian speech, and so define them around the world. {Only in Canada use eh?} [Pithy. Pity that and a loonie will only get you a cuppa.] Potter went on.

“The thing is, potting’s quite different. I mean, there’s no creature trapped inside the clay — how could there be? — there’s just potential. But it’s potential for anything, for a pot, for a cup,” Potter laughed, “even a piece of eclectic kitchen kitsch. The thing is, that potential needs the human mind and human hands to actualize. But you can’t force it, which is where you went wrong this morning, not if you want a piece with inner coherence, with beauty, a pot that vibrates with life. What a good potter does is, in a sense, merge with that potential, become one with it. You have to lose your own sense of solidity — become the clay — then once the barriers of preconception are down, you’re open for inspiration, open to the latent speaking through you and, in that discourse, both you and the pot become real.” Potter’s eyes were twinkling now. “You see what I’m driving at, eh?”

This time Dark knew an answer was expected, but he had no idea what to say. He felt blocked, whipped, at a deadend. Suddenly, all the hurts and frustrations of the past few days welled up, and he vibrated with anger and with confusion. Damn the writer, he thought. Damn The Minstrel. And fuck tHe PoEt! This was his trip, his journey, his quest for heart. But they all kept jumping in with their own agendas, their own weird notions. And screw Potter too because he was one of them, had to be or he wouldn’t be part of this madness. Seething, he turned on the hand that had fed him just this morning. “I’ve no fucking idea.”

This time Potter was taken aback. Anger flashed in his eyes but, controlling it, he turned away, facing out along the anus. His shoulders shuddered and a gull’s piercing reee ree reee stabbed the uncomfortable silence. Then he turned back, a slight grin on his face.

“Well, let me put it another way. Is it life that initiates art? Or art that initiates life?”

25

Just a Coupl’a GoB

The story — at least as my editor had explained it — was the rapid emergence of a world cartel in the illegal, and therefore highly lucrative dulse trade. As if you didn't know, but my editor insists I provide full background, dulse is a sword-shaped aquatic weed that solely grows in the Bay of Fundy, way out on tide-swirled rocks that only the evolutionarily or life challenged [5] could get to. And then only at low tide. The leaves are a traditional tonic in the Rump, and many other parts of Canada's eastern provinces, with a pungent sea salt taste that's popular as an afterdinner treat — a kind of maritime version of coffee and cigars. But it's the plant's 'roots', the point of attachment to Fundy's rocks, that have turned dulse from a regional oddity to a world commodity.

The biochemistry isn’t clear, but somehow in the process of anchoring themselves to boulders well enough to withstand the crushing forces of the world’s most tidally active water, the tuberous roots synthesize a mind-altering substance. This property wasn’t discovered until 1972, for the simple reason that, traditionally, dulse hunters never took the root, cutting the fronds a foot or so above. While, in today’s environment, this does look ecologically conscious, allowing the plant to regenerate and thus ensure a sustainable harvest, the truth is the tuber was never taken because, even at low tide, it’s still underwater and damn difficult to remove. But once in a blue moon, when tides are extraordinarily low, dulse knives accidentally bobbitt a bit.

By one of those happy happenstances that propel the human endeavour, one such piece of root providentially turned up in the dulse bowl of one Herr Reefer, a theoretical mathematician on sabbatical from Switzerland. Absent-minded at the best of times, Reefer was absorbed in the problem of demonstrating the fundamental unity of the universe, and didn’t notice he was chewing a piece of root. Soon after, he went for a bike ride and his world came apart. Not only were there voices emanating from trees and grasses, but all seemed to be made of marshmallow — the little ones. There were two effects of this experience: first was the mathematical proof that the universe is a giant marshmallow that can be sub-divided into smaller and smaller marshmallows using the so-called Reefer Constant; and, second, was the discovery of a new and, at the time, legal key to the doors of perception.

The legality didn’t last long. Once it was discovered that blanching, then drying and smoking the root gave an even better high — and didn’t leave your mouth tasting like you’d been sucking seaweed — dulse use spread rapidly, becoming the drug of choice for bored professionals in Canada’s major centres. When it was further discovered that dulse could be processed chemically into a cocaine-like compound that turned some yuppies into yumpies and some yumpies into the homeless, the federal government stepped in, outlawing the possession and use of dulse root or any of its derivatives in 1975. Predictably, that only increased its appeal. Despite two decades of prohibition, surveys now show that as much as 20 percent of North Americans use dulse on a regular or semi-regular basis. Like most illicit drugs, it has even spawned its own subculture, complete with specialized argot. Users call it weed or smoke; honouring its discoverer, rollies are referred to as reefers or reefs; and a person on dulse is said to be stoned (leading to the saying that a person just chewing the leaves is pebbled).

For years there had been reports that a shadowy group — based in the Rump and popularly known as the Dulsia — had taken control of almost the entire world-wide business. Even for a seasoned tabloid reporter like myself, separating fact from fiction on this crowd was a daunting task — it was blamed for everything from bodies that turned up on beaches, to sea turtles that failed to lay eggs. There was one sure fact: the Dulsia’s existence was flatly denied by the Rump’s local, provincial and federal politicians. The one exception was Poli GoBBy, who not only freely admitted it, but had offered The Bi an inside look at the group’s workings. His only stipulation was that real names not be used and real locations not disclosed — a stipulation easily accepted by The Bi and I. (Hell, we don’t even insist on real facts.) So a deal was struck, cover cooked up, expenses authorized and I was on my way to, oops, I can’t say where.

What I can say is it turned out the story — at least as my editor had explained it — was all a crock. A badly made one at that.

26

It was like one of those shots where the camera zooms in or out at the same time as the camera is physically moved in the opposite direction, so that the person in closeup remains in closeup but the background either contracts or expands behind them — a strange effect as though the world behind and around the person has become fluid; a surreal space in which the apparently normal exists in abnormality. In this case, the effect was to go from wide angle to narrow so that the end of the anus seemed to rush forward behind Potter. Dark blinked and found that had actually happened. They were now at the end, more than two kilometres from where they had been, standing just outside the shadow of the pump house that gave Vancouver’s shit its final kick at the can. And they were alone. Absolutely, terrifyingly alone. Just Dark and the Potter. Dark stammered, “I beg your pardon.”

Potter laughed, harshly, his eyes twinkling with a familiar amusement. “What? You didn’t understand me? Or you thought I said something different? Not that old saw about which imitates what, art or life, I hope?”

Dark gulped. That was what he had heard. And the whole episode with tHe PoEt had surged forward with the anus, flooding his mind like a tide. ‘Life is a literary device. Life is a literary device.’ ‘Well, yes it is, but I think you’re straining the point.’ That had started the whole conversation but, now Dark recalled, whatever point the bike was trying to make, it had gotten lost in the increasingly acrimonious exchange.

“that’s right. he blew it. but he’s like that — forgetting his assignment and getting off on tangents. it’s his damn pride, you know. he’s too self-important, lets himself get jerked around by jerks. and he wonders why he’s stuck in a goldwing. poor old ‘poet’. just can’t get it right. then he complains when I have to come in and clean up his messes. i’ll tell you, it’s like looking after a puppy.”

As he talked, the twinkle in Potter’s eyes began to grow, then to swirl, becoming dervish dancing with delight, {Dances with Dervi? Then where’s the teepi?} [Singular pun, my friend.] then nebulous nebulae centred on black holes sucking all trace of human life, sucking the face into nothingness until it was worse than blank. It was nothing. Dark shook with a spasm of cold fear, and he shot a look back down the anal tract, back to where they’d been only a moment before. And, yes, they were still there, the three speedwalkers still coming toward him. And, yes, even from this distance he could see the middle one still had the same roiling eyes, the same fearsome vacuum of face. Spinning back, Dark found he had still more company. There was the old gentleman, standing on the breakwater rocks behind and to the right of the pumphouse, tapping his cane and gazing out to sea. He stopped his tapping, turned to Dark and bowed. There was a swish pan to the left and there was Becky, script in hand. That left… but swish pans — here, there, everywhere — found no sign of a seagull, no cockroach anywhere in sight. No droppings either — then why did he feel like he was being shit on? Swish pan again, Dark grunting with the effort, and he was facing Potter, just Potter, the old familiar Potter with lime-blue eyes and full features. The eyes were arched, still twinkling, and Dark knew with a sinking lurch that the trap had been set. And he’d blundered into it. Potter started speaking, but it was as though he was reading from a script, a studied speech, the way old professors deliver their umpteenth lecture to their downteenth group of sophomores.

“art imitates life. agree or disagree? life imitates art. answer yes or no. by taking sides, by agreeing to answer yes or no, we acquiesce in the construction and maintenance of a reality based on dualities. now don’t misunderstand. there’s nothing inherently erroneous with a reality based on duality — at least nothing more wrong than there is in a reality constructed and maintained on trialities, or quadralities for that matter. but by accepting any division of the totality, a part of that totality is lost to itself. and that missing link, that lost chord in the music is noted. now. the eventuality of the totality totally eventuating is absolute. It is only a matter of time.”

Potter stopped, a quizzical, even somewhat friendly look on his face.

“you’re not following this, are you? my, but he was right — you certainly are a challenge.”

Dark felt faint, and slumped to the ground. “Not following. That’s an understatement. I’m not even following just who the hell you are, and what relationship you have to tHe PoEt.”

“oh,that. you should have stopped me. i guess you could say that i’m his supervisor. does that explain it?”

“Does the theory of relativity explain why bears shit in the woods?” A good sarcastic reply, Dark thought, but the sarcasm was totally lost on Potter.

“of course it does. and relativity explains dualities, trialities and quadralities as well. but I don’t think you’re ready for that level of explanation yet. so let’s try it from square one first.”

And that was when Dark gave up. He was absolutely, thoroughly trapped, he knew it, and would have to listen. But fucked if he was going to try to understand it. “Take it from any square you want to.” Potter grinned and, over to the right, Dark saw the Colonel start moving towards them, tapping his way across the anus like a blind man.

“ok, listen close. you know, this is a world of dualities. at least, that’s the way humans define it. they split the world up into yes/no, here/there, good/evil, black/white. it’s such a deeply ingrained thought pattern, they don’t even know it’s there. for instance, you define the problem you think you have as real/not real. you’re either one or the other, you think, but you don’t want to be what you think you are, so you think that somehow you can change what you are. but what you have to change is what you think. is that clear?”

“Clear as clay. You want to make a pot out of it or what?” Dark glared at Potter but it was the old fart, goose stepping out from behind Potter and prodding Dark with his cane, who continued.

“but what happens if we split the world in trialities, or quadralities for that matter? well, young man? what if we make it yes/maybe/no, here/not-here-not-there/there? what if your problem is really real/maybe-real/different-kind-of-real/not-real? would that change how you think and what you think you are? what about if there’s no not-real? what if all, no matter how unreal, is real? what if not-real is really real?”

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. I create my own reality. That’s it, isn’t it?” Dark sneered, turning towards Becky’s approaching figure, figuring the next, figure of speech, shot would come from that quarter. He was right.

“very good. sotto voice i’m glad to see you’ve been reading the script again. resume you are what you think you are. and your world is what you think it is. so you can be anything you want to be and your world can be anything you want. which means Which imitates what? is just a trick question, a mental trap. the real question is Which initiates? does life initiate art? or is it art that initiates life?”

“Hold on,” Dark interjected, sensing a trap of his own. “Art. Life. You’re still talking about a duality. You’re still caught in the same web of delusional thinking you’re saying I have to escape.” He glared at Potter, old Whitey and Becky each in turn, challenging. But his answer came from behind, couched in that sultry voice that stirred Dark’s groin. Turning, there was the middle speedwalker, blank face, swirling eyes and all. Dark was repelled and attracted to her at the same time.

“no. that’s not the case. the problem is your language is so based in dualities that, anytime it tries to deal with non-dual thinking, it ends up in paradox. but the paradox is only apparent. it ceases once you see past the dual. or the quadral.”

“That’s a non-answer,” Dark shot back. “It doesn’t explain anything.”

“you’re right, but only because you insist on defining answer in dualistic terms. the Which initiates? paradox points to a different kind of answer, one that leaves the question, all kinds of questions really, embedded. is the core of life art? or is life the heart of art? if you create your own reality, is that just life? or is it art? but, if you create your own reality, then doesn’t all of reality equally create its own reality? so, little pot, is your life reality? or is it another reality’s art? are you real, or are you fictional? art? art life? life art? any answer you come up will only be another question. so don’t get lost in the questions, looking for answers that aren’t there.”

Swirl Eyes fell silent, allowing Dark to register the presence of the other two speedwalkers. Finally seeing their faces, he recognized them. They were the giggling girls, all growed up, from Ambleside Park, the ones who’d heard him talking to tHe PoEt. They giggled, then disappeared, leaving the other four spaced around him. Dark sighed, stood and shuffled out of the group’s centre. No one tried to stop him. Walking around the pumphouse, he noticed a piece of graffiti North is South and West is best but the twain shall meet in the East. Better than Kilroy was here, he thought.

Reaching the structure’s far corner, he stopped for a moment. A half dozen metres of concrete separated him from the jumble of rocks that protected the end of the anus. One trip was almost finished but another was just starting. He shuffled forward, then climbed the concrete stairs leading to a final lookout. Ignoring a park bench, he sat down at the edge of the rocks, turning it over in his mind, trying to calculate the permutations of what he had just been told. If he was real, then his writer was fiction. But, if Dark was writing the writer, which of them would be made real? Dark? Or the Bum? And what about Abby, he wondered? If he was her art and she had died… ? And how did the GoB gang fit in? His mind hurt. It was all too confusing. A shadow slipped across the rocks in front of him, jagged edges falling and rising with the contours of the breakwater. Dark didn’t bother to look up.

“it’s not as confusing as you think.”

Potter’s tone was friendly, almost soothing, the kind you use with a friend who’s just gone through emotional hell. More than appropriate, Dark thought, but felt no warmer toward him. He continued looking down, idly watching the slight movements of Potter’s talking shadow.

“your trouble is that you’re trying to treat a quadrality like a duality. if this, then that. but what you need to understand is that, as part of the universe, you are a multi-dimensional personality simultaneously living or ‘arting’ on many different planes. you’re one of a million million dutch stacking dolls wearing wooden shoes that let you float on the timeless ether of art and life, millions of contemporaneous levels out of which you choose one to focus on, and use dualistic thinking to exclude any others. your thinking makes them unreal but the other levels are still part of your quadrality. so you get glimpses of them and little hints through dreams, through visions, through inexplicable events. confusing when you’re locked into real/unreal, they enrich when you open the door.”

Dark felt Potter’s hand touch, then gently squeeze his shoulder. The shadow pulled away and, for a moment, there was silence. What had to be said, it seemed, had been said. Finally, Dark looked up and out, over the water, noticing for the first time that, somehow, it was now sunset, the sun a glaring golden globe garnishing the dark waters of the Strait. Hours had passed in what could only have been a quarter hour since Potter first started talking about Eskimo art. Hours? How could that be? He looked up, knowing his thoughts would have been read and expecting an answer. But he wasn’t expecting what he saw and heard. All four of his tormentors were there, and all four each spoke the answer in turn, word by word, their voices at first distinct then merging into one, the seagull’s sexy sibilance, while their bodies wavered then fused into a single body. Potter’s.

“there you go again, confusing concepts like time with some form of reality, and that reality an illusion impoverished by its linear approximation.”

Laughing hysterically, Potter walked out among the rocks where, standing hands on slowly rotating hips, he circumscribed the scene, looking first out to sea, then to the east. He lifted his arm and pointed past Dark, “See. I was right. Now you can start your trip.”

Standing up and looking landwards, Dark recalled why Potter had said they should come here. Beyond the flat roof of the pumphouse, the anal road pointed straight towards the coastal mountains which stood up to the horizon, overwhelming the puny city in their lap. Their snow-capped peaks shone golden in the late afternoon light. Inviting, tranquil, ominous, defiant. He would be riding into them tomorrow and Dark had a sudden appreciation for the writer. It was one hell of a symbol.

Now, if it only meant something.

He scanned back to where the Potter was standing, arms now stretched out to greet the homecoming winds. The same golden light ringed him, softening his edges until, with the suddenness that gold — until then seemingly impervious to heat — melts and runs, his image collapsed and remoulded as a gull flying off. Man-sized, it laboured like a loon running the water to take off, caught air and lifted quickly. Rider lost it in the sunset, then picked it up again, climbing like a jet plane. Then it blinked out of existence. Out of this existence anyway.

There was a news report the next day that a 747 on final approach had had a close encounter with a UFO. It looked like a fat cigar, the flight crew said. A passenger said she’d heard a voice but thought it was her mother. So Dark knew he was the only one who knew it was The Minstrel. And so The Rider thought he’d finally understood the first of his lessons.

They’d seen their own realities.

[1] ...

Good'ol Boys [back]

[2] ...

Reluctantly unidentified maritime province or place [back]

[3] ...

law avoiding manoeuvres [back]

[4] ...

ALT constructive avoidance specialist; BPC… flagman [back]

[5] ...

BPC 'human monkeys' and 'suicidal maniacs' [back]

He travelled here
He travelled there
He travelled near and far.

He travelled to the
farthest point
point away from love.

And he hurt when he cried.
And he hurt when he lied.
And he hurt when he tied.
And he hurt when he sighed.

And he hurt when he hurt.
And he hurt in the dirt.
And he hurt with his pride...
It’s one hell of a flirt.

It’s called Pride with a view
be it ever so new,
there has to be one better.

It’s called me by a fool,
the fool that he was
the fools we all became

when we

Hurting
reached for the Me
Hurting
Losing the We
Hurting
for the We
Hurting for these words…

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

27

Preface

(cont’d)

Bet you thought I wouldn’t do it. But why not continue a preface? Why this insistence that a prologue be self-contained? As though anything, including a human, can be so limited? Why not — if all is nought but preface — perforce face the truth and portion the foreword? Why not revisit to revise and rebuild, expand and explain, forward the case as needed?

No answer? Not even from the bobsey twins? Then, let’s get on with it.

The universe is alive, ordered and intelligent — even if ultimately built on mystery, these are pragmatic ‘facts’. And, in my experience, it has meaning. Meaning the cosmos means business. Means richness. Means poverty. Means meaning. In fact, there is nothing but meaning because the universe not only means to exist, it exists to mean. Unlike most of us, who seek to salve the incompleteness of our existence, the gnawing sense that there must be more — if only we could find the meaning — the universe does not stand on mountain tops screaming “Why?”. It has no such need because it is complete. Because it is self-contained and self-aware it is meaningful. Meaning is a problem only for the incomplete, for the un-self-aware.

But all is belief — even our supposed incompleteness, which is, bottom line, just an artful disguise, an artifice of the willing suspension of disbelief. We can’t prove we’re incomplete, just the same as the universe only believes it has fragmented, become the myriad of life we witness, and the many myriad more we’re blind to. Even the universe cannot prove it has become you and I; that we are not merely dreams, just butterfly thoughts, testicular ticks — no more substantial, but no less unreal. Imagine good cop/bad cop giving the universe the third degree. Can you prove you think? Can you even prove you exist? Or are you, like Rider, questioning the very foundations of your existence, looking for meaning in something, anything that will give you solidity? Or do you seek not-doing, like Bim? Or are you like Abby? — who avoids any hint of meaning, who seeks nothing from life but the certainty of not-thinking. Or Mellow Yellow who seeks the story but has no interest in the meaning? The universe would have to answer both “yes” and “no” to all of the above, for it is, simultaneously, both the ultimate personality and the ultimate case of multiple personality.

It’s like one of those kicker endings to a play where the butler turns out to be the billionaire, serving the plenitudes of an imaginary master — the role, perfection, the illusion so complete even the butler has been sucked in, and so he is as surprised at the twist as you. Now twist it further and realize he is also the writer, but the twist is not his. The twist is in the audience. Then the lights go up and the real illusion is revealed. There was no play. There is no theatre. Even the audience turns out to be delusion.

So we are all billionaire butler writers, bonded in servitude to imaginary fans.

“But,” you demand, “where does that leave meaning, especially if, as you claim, the universe is nothing but meaning?” And I answer, to demand meaning negates it, limits it to the possibilities of our own limited comprehension. Coats it in concrete, stultifies. Abrogates our responsibility to live it; to be audience and writer, butler and billionaire. Meaning is revealed in its own time, in its own strange and wondrous ways. In all the confusion of the moment, how can we expect to even guess what the meaning is? How can we evaluate the import of this or that event, this or that coincidence? We cannot. All we can do is accept that there is meaning and live by our best sense of what that meaning may be. But not think that we have found it; not limit it with our minds.

“Then,” you demand, “what is the meaning of this book?” And I answer, I don’t know. Yet. It flowers as I work. I sit at my computer and throw thoughts like i ching sticks, find their juxtapositions, the quadragrams and hexagrams they compose. But I refuse to consult the text. Then I sit at my computer and find how the shapes fit together, how they build images and thoughts, characters and plots. But shun shaping their incipient meaning. Then I sit at my computer, flesh them with words, and “Surely then there must be meaning!” you say. And I answer, yes, there is, but which meaning do you mean? The meaning of the words? Their deeper meanings? The meaning of the book? Now? And in a thousand years? My meaning in writing? The meaning in my act of writing? The Mistress’ meaning? Your meaning? The meaning in your act of reading? Life’s meaning? Art’s meaning? God’s meaning?

Do you get my drift?

There is nothing but meaning; levels and levels that reduce and expand, amplify and clarify each other. So a preface presages a prelude. So a flower means to seed. So a man fathers an infant, and the child mothers a father. The meaning is in the process, and in the process becomes the meaning. So I am content, as I write, to accept that there is meaning and that it will be revealed in the writing. And, yes, I will probably be as surprised as you.

Like I said, I’m really just the secretary.

And, like a secretary, I can’t pick and choose which paragraphs to transcribe, which meanings to mean. While I can edit the Mistress’ words, fill in the etceteras, and add the salutary standards, I can’t edit her intentions. In the same way, I can’t pick and choose my emotions which, like meaning, are part of our connection to the absolute, our portion of the totality. Except out of ignorance. Except out of denial. But see that to deny any portion of the totality is to deny it’s totality. To deny anger is to deny love. Deny fear and you deny courage. Deny yourself and you deny the universe. Deny the devil his due and you deny god her deserts.

And — one of the job’s disadvantages — you get fired. No severance. No dole. No nothing.

28

“don’t think i don’t know who that was by the way. and don’t think i’m too impressed. i know what he told you and i’m more than a little put out he stepped in like that.”

Well,finally. Just when Dark had really wanted to talk to tHe PoEt, the machine had refused to come out and play. Not a word when Dark had reconnected the battery that morning; not a sound darting through traffic on the TransCanada express through Vancouver and across the broad flood plain of the Fraser River. No repartee. No moaning complaints to enliven the ride. Just silence as the bike headed for the mountains, which roared erect, shooting out of the plain — unlike on the other side of the continental divide, where the land curled into foothills long before the mountains shook themselves free. Leaving the TransCanada at the town of Hope to take # 3, Dark had filled the tank with super instead of regular. He was still working out what mileage he got — it varied day to day, tank to tank, for no reason that he could reason — and he was varying the grade to see what effect that had. But he also did it as a little appeasement, the way he sometimes took a cup of tea to The X in bed the morning after an argument. But if tHe PoEt appreciated higher octane, he wasn’t saying and Dark felt a little put out. He roared out of the gas station and unto #3, pushing the revs, leaving Hope behind. The X hadn’t responded the way he wanted either.

Had PoEt pissed off in a pique?, Dark wondered. Had it flown the cam? Was the Wing now just another bike? And Dark just another rider, no caps? Dark needed to talk and tHe PoEt was the only conversational partner who might understand what Rider was on about.

Certainly Potter had been no use. He was already at the house when Dark had returned after dark the previous day, sitting at the kitchen table, eyes crimson with wine. “What the hell happened to you?” he’d demanded when Dark let himself in using the borrowed key. “You don’t just disappear like that. That was bloody rude.” Dark had stood at the kitchen door, his own anger barely controlled. Coldly staring Potter down, he had retorted, “You should talk.”

“And what does that mean? I’m not the one who swore at me then disappeared. I’m not the one who left me looking all over that bloody sewer for a ‘friend’ who needed a lift home. I’m not the jerk who didn’t even have the courtesy to let me know what he was doing. I’ve been sitting here debating whether I should phone the police or not, but I thought fuck you. You’re not my responsibility.”

The words slurred slightly and Dark realized Potter was not only pissed, but half-pissed. Noting the three-quarters empty bottle, {Hold on. If the bottle is three quarters empty, why is he only half-full?} [I guess he’s an optimist.] Dark was suddenly uncertain, his anger rootless. If this was acting, it was stupendous. He moved across the kitchen to sit opposite Potter, laying the key on the table between them. “Hold on,” Dark said, summoning his friendliest tone. “What happened? I mean, what did you perceive?” Potter didn’t buy.

“Perceive. I didn’t perceive anything because you weren’t there. One moment I was trying to explain my philosophy of potting, and I’m sorry if you found it boring but there was no call to swear. I know it shouldn’t have but that angered me and I turned away to control it, then when I turned back you were gone. Vamoose. You must have hidden in the rocks or something. Maybe you thought it was just a joke. Well, I spent three hours looking for you and I don’t remember laughing.” Potter stopped, out of breath he’d been speaking so fast. “So what did you do? Take off and chat up one of those birds you had your eye on? I hope you got a piece.”

“No,” Dark answered, “but you might say that one of them chatted me up. You were there too. And you remember the old guy I told you about in the park the other day? He was there. And so was this woman from my dream. You all chatted me up. Scared the shit out of me too.” And he had gone on to describe their conversation, the time lapse, and their final metamorphosis into a Potter that morphed into a bird, not noticing how Potter began backing his chair away from the table. “I must have been transported into a different reality.” Dark concluded.

“You’re fucking crazy man. I mean bonkers. You’re out of it. You been smoking too much dulse I think. Well you better start getting a grip on reality or the next time you’re picked up by the cops you’ll have permanent lodgings.” Clumsy, Potter stood and reached for the key, knocking the wine bottle over. He ignored it. “Which, by the by, you don’t have here. You’re leaving in the morning. Make sure you’re gone before I get up.”

And with that Potter had left the kitchen, leaving Dark to watch the wine bleed across the table cloth. Dark heard the lock click on his bedroom door. Then the clock: tick tick tick tick.

Ticked, tHe PoEt would not be put off.

“do you mind not indulging in flashbacks when i’m talking to you. well? well? oh and i think you owe me an apology for disconnecting the battery too. that was low. really low.”

Peace in our time, Dark sighed. Give us peace in our time. His need to talk was so strong he’d gladly do a Chamberlain, “Okay. Look, I’m sorry. But there’s been too much weird stuff going on and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t part of it.” But tHe PoEt wasn’t buying either.

“that’s not much of an apology.”

And here tHe PoEt broke into a parody of the Rider, or maybe the kid broke through, or maybe it was a parody of himself as the kid. Whatever. It was sarcastic as hell.

“i’m sorry but i had my reasons.”

Then resumed as the professor.

“in fact, that’s not an apology at all. when you apologize you don’t justify. you recognize the pain you’ve inflicted, acknowledge it and request absolution.”

Dark cringed, conflicted. Maybe he didn’t want to talk that much after all. Absence makes memories softer, and Dark had forgotten the pain this prissy prof presented. Maybe it was best to let lying dogs sleep. And look what happened to Chamberlain. Still — compared to The Minstrel — PoEt was a pussycat, {Dogs. Cats. Tigers. Ticks. It’s a zoology lesson after all. What’s next? Turtles?} and Dark did need to talk. He was afraid that Potter was right — that he was losing it. Yesterday’s encounter at the anal corral had blown the foundations of his existence — his belief he didn’t exist — to seagull droppings. He was dancing bullets again, afraid they were real, afraid they weren’t. And Potter’s reaction had shown what he could expect if he wasn’t careful who he invited to the prom. Like it or not, tHe PoEt was about all he had. “Okay.” he said, the taste of swallowed pride bitter in his mouth. “I’m sorry. I regret disconnecting the battery. I won’t do it again.”

But there was no answer. “Well?” demanded Dark. “Didn’t it meet your requirements?”

“i’m not a priest. i don’t have to give absolution.”

Stymied, Dark muttered “Then don’t jerk my chain, Pig Dog,” and returned to his dark thoughts, the motor ticking.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

29

Just a Coupl’a GoB

Talk about hostile.

“You ready to order?”

“Yeah. Swine strips, crisp, and flattened chicken embryos — laid back [6], thanks.”

The waitress rolled her eyes, stabbed at her order pad, then glared at me.

“Ah — I’ll have the same thanks.” She sniffed, angrily slashed X2 on the pad, then with a snap of the wrist closed it, already walking away. I called after her, “We’ll need separate checks,” but all I got was a shrug. I looked at Poli who was stirring sugar into his coffee — loads of it. “People round here always that unfriendly?”

“Nah.”, Poli answered, tapping the spoon on the edge of his cup. “They’re just like folks anywhere. They have good days and bad days. Guess she’s having a bad day.”

Well, if she was, it wasn’t from overwork. It was 10:30, and the late morning crowd in the Imperial Motel and Grill consisted of Poli and I and one other table where an elderly tourist couple were arguing about the day’s itinerary. Loudly. (It must have been Tuesday for she apparently thought they were in Belgium, planning a visit to La Musee Britannique. He thought it was Sunday, New Orleans, and time for the Mardi Gras. Me, I knew it was Thursday and this was the Rump, but I wasn’t sure if I was any less obviously out of place.) I said as much to Poli, but he corrected me.

“Don’t let appearances fool you. The House is just up the street and, if we’d been in here three hours ago, we’d have found the place packed and her run off her feet trying to keep a bunch of political types happy. And you know as well as I do the only thing makes a politician happy is showing off his power. You know the old saying, ‘power without perks is like a gull without wings; it don’t fly’ — oh yeah, remind me, we should stop in here for lunch sometime; they grill a mean gull — well, they wrote it here. That waitress would have been treated like dirt. It won’t be so bad once the GoBs start coming in — they don’t have to put other people down to feel good about themselves.”

Poli stopped to take a sip of his coffee. “You worried they won’t buy your cover?”

Worried? Well, yes I had to admit I was. In the cold morning light of what GoBBy assured me was the Dulsia’s chief eatery, my ‘cover’ seemed ludicrously transparent — a dulsehead cousin from the Big Kumquat, name of Frat Rat, kind of an urban GoB trying to line up my own source on the sound business principle of eliminating the middleperson — and I felt like Props had thrown me a brown fedora and there, stuck in the band, was the card that shouted ‘Press!’. I was sure the waitress had seen through me — hostility’s an occupational hazard too — and thought if I couldn’t fool a waitress, what hope did I have to fool real GoBs? And if I couldn’t fool them, would I end up on a beach, unable to lay eggs? I said as much to Poli, but he snorted derisively.

“Listen Mel… Frat, I mean. You’re a reporter. You know the type of bullbleep gets spread around groups like the Dulsia. Fertile stuff for a lot more bullbleep. Don’t add to it. The facts, Frat. Just the facts. That’s what you’re here for.” Poli stared at me, then grinned. “Besides, male turtles don’t lay eggs. And that’s a fact.”

The eggs came at that point, the waitress slamming them down and disappearing without a word. Didn’t even ask if we wanted more coffee. Shame she was so hostile, I thought, because her derriere did have a pleasing air and she could have been attractive if she’d smiled. Poli seemed to think so too, watching her attentively for a moment before turning his attention to the eggs, murmuring “Maybe we can do something about that.”

Just the facts. Well there was one fact about Poli; he enjoyed his food. There’s all kinds of eaters in the world — pickers, shovellers, pushers, players — and this GoB ate with tactile gusto, fingering his bacon, twirling his toast to sop up the yellow yolk, and dipping his home fries into a blob of ketchup. (Me, I ate with a militarily methodical precision my father, an air force pilot, had insisted on. I made a mental note to ask Poli about his upbringing.) Midway through lifting a yolk-runny bit of toast to his mouth, he stopped. “Hear that?,” he asked. Disengaging from my own battle on the home fries, I listened but there wasn’t much to hear. The tourists were still arguing — they’d worked their way up to Saturday, Vancouver and a date at Marineland — and there was a radio playing in the kitchen. A country song; about some waif whaling a truck across the continent on the lookout for a dog with a broken heart. I shrugged, about to say I’d heard it before — once you’ve heard one country song, you’ve heard them all — but Poli silenced me with a finger. “No. Listen.”

The truck broke down, stranding waif in a blizzard, but dog turned up and phoned the police. Heart-rending. Reunited, dog and waif broke into the chorus. Dog and waif and waitress. It seemed lassie Miss Hostile led a double life, snarling at customers out front, then singing in the dishwater rain back in the kitchen. No doubt she had visions of some song scout scoping her talent, and scooping her off to success. Not likely. Her contralto was better than most shower stall songsters but nowhere near commercial quality, even for country. I looked over to Poli who, eyes closed, head bent, and with his finger still cocked to his lips, was listening intently. The finger dropped, the eyes opened and he smiled. “What do you say we make her day?” I shrugged, not caring if we made her minute. My eggs were getting cold. Besides, sappy happy endings give me hives.

Poli finished his breakfast first, trowelling his plate clean with a piece of toast, then settled back to watch for the waitress to come out of her studio. Holding his cup up to catch her eye, he signalled for more coffee, then winked at me as she came over. Rather too broadly, like he was on stage and the wink had to be seen a hundred feet [7] away. I wondered what he was up to.

She must have thought she was on stage too. “Anything else?” she challenged, still three feet away from the table — like we had cooties or something. “Just some more coffee, thanks.”, Poli said, his tone ingratiatingly polite. “And our checks, please. Separate.” She turned to fetch the pot but Poli stopped her with a disarming “I heard your singing. You’re in a band, aren’t you?” I groaned inside. ‘The facts, Poli. Just the facts.’ I thought. ‘Give it to her straight.’ The waitress nodded no but hesitated turning away. Even I could see the opening was big enough to drive a truck through. Poli smoothly shifted gears, aiming to ram his next line straight down the middle. “Well, you should be,” he continued. “Seems a shame more folks don’t get to hear you.”

Ever seen a flower timelapse? Seen how the bud strains, pulsates, then unsheathes; the green of the bud suddenly rampant with colour; the faint shivers the petals make as they dance in the sun? I’d like to report that’s what happened to the waitress, but she’d been around the Rump more than once and wasn’t buying. She looked straight at Poli. “You’re just saying that.”

“You’re right.”, Poli answered, “I am just saying that. But I’ll tell you this. Maybe you’re not good enough to sing in a band, but when you do sing you put your heart into it. You put your soul on the line. And that makes it beautiful. Truly beautiful.” I was impressed. The shift had been so smooth the truck had smucked straight into the tuck. Now the waitress flowered, a smile breaking the tension lines on her face, her whole body lifting lightly erect. I’d been right, I thought, watching this transformation. She was an attractive lady.

And after that she was a good waitress too, coming back twice to see if we wanted more coffee, stopping each time for a few chatty words with Poli. Me, she mostly ignored. Back in her studio the radio was turned up and she happily belted out hurting songs about cheating hearts, drunkard dogs and no-good, galivanting galoots that I mostly ignored, trying to figure out the point Poli had been trying to make. But all he’d say, between sips, is that life provides a lot of negative feedback and a fair amount of bullbleep. So he’d just told her the truth, which was what she needed to hear. It seemed a subtle point, so I gave it up — there’s not much call for subtle in my trade.

About the time my eyes were swimming in coffee, Poli suddenly said, “Looks like it’s time for the show. You ready?” and looked over to the front entrance where a sign told us to Please Wait To Be Seated. I followed his eyes with mine, twisting in the seat to look around. And saw my first real-live GoB. In the flesh. Pug nose. Low slung hat. Double-breasted suit over a black shirt and white tie. Violin case.

Don’t ask me how, but my ovaries shuddered. And I suddenly remembered I have a pathological fear of beaches.

30

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

All she wanted was to be happy. Was that so much to ask, Abby wondered? She stared out over the beach to the water, purposely looking away from Jhikl’s lithely tanned body adorning the towel beside her. Trophy stud, she thought to herself. A real trophy stud that more than one other woman had cast covetous glances at. Then looked at Abby, sizing up the mismatch between young stud and older actress, wondering how easily they could insinuate themselves into that gap and him into their gaps. It was that kind of a world — dog eat pussy — and lap dogs like Jhikl were a favourite delicacy.

Well, they could have him as far as Abby was concerned. Take him away and take him to bed and take advantage of him. The trip hadn’t turned out at all like she’d hoped. And wished. And now she could see nothing but trouble ahead. Just for wanting to be happy.

Jhikl stirred beside her, murmuring “wassamatta honey?” in that sultry voice that used to stir her. His hand slipped across her belly, resting lightly on the stretch marks that still showed, years after Edie’s birth, and even after extensive reconstructive surgery. He said they were a turn-on but Abby knew better. No doubt, he’d tell his next step up the ladder her flat, unmarked tum was perfect, and probably hint how he’d left an older woman because of her stretch marks. Probably joke about how ugly they were. Bitch, Abby thought. She’d hooked up with a power- and money-hungry bitch. One who’d bend to blackmail. There’d already been a few hints of that. She shoved the hand away.

“What’s wrong, sweets?” Beside her, Abby could feel Jhikl rising, lifting his upper body and supporting it with one hand behind. She felt the other hand move across her shoulder, then lightly stroke her earlobe, a caress that only yesterday would have sent her into waves of pleasure. But now she flinched away, a movement that translated into her standing up and staring off down the beach.

If it were a postcard, it would have sold a million copies. Metres and metres of wide white sand, froth-laced waves hemming an azure sea, ozone-depleted sky brimming with fluff-formed cloud. No — a greeting card, that’s what it should have been. From the Romantic Visions series. In the foreground the woman stands while behind her the man reaches out, arms linking the gulf between water and sky. Faded in text, ‘When we met, the stars held their breath. So I hold mine waiting for your return.’ The mandatory fake handwriting in black ink, the kind meant to suggest the sender has sought the personal touch, given it a lot of thought. Open the card and the illusion continues. ‘Missing you. Missing you. Missing You.’ All that was missing, Abby sniffed to herself, was a sappy ‘Forever yours.’ But the tableau was posed, the emotions fake. Actor and actress already thinking of their next gig. Crew already breaking down the set.

She felt and heard Jhikl stand behind her, trunks rustling, sand compacting under his feet. Then felt his arms try to slip around her waist, knowing they’d next reach up to cup her breasts — her pendulous, breastfed-one-too-many-children tits as her agent called them, explaining why Abby was passed over for all the younger roles — then knead and mash them out of duty, out of some misplaced idea that all Abby ever needed was a good pound of round in the rump. The touch turned her cold and she knocked downwards and backwards with her arms, displacing his, a trick she’d learned in her one cop series. God, she couldn’t even remember what the title was now. “Abby. What’d you do that for?” But Abby wasn’t there to listen, had simply walked away, frothing with an anger she couldn’t fathom. “Abby! What’s the matter, hon? Do you want to talk about this?”

It was amazing how quickly even a shouted voice died in this broad expanse. And amazing how thoughts still managed to reverberate. Abby kept trudging across the sand, aimlessly aimed at the beach, mentally watching Jhikl’s receding form, seeing his consternation, his awkward indecision to pick up the towel or not, reading his lips, the lips that had given so much pleasure. “Abby! Come on baby. What’s bugging you? Abby! You got to talk about these things. You just can’t let them fester inside.” Then she was too far away to see his lips and the sounds of the ocean closed around her.

Talk about what?, she thought. An inner chasm of emptiness? A feeling that made no sense? A jabbing pain that had no physical cause? Only yesterday she’d been happy, thought she’d been happy. But when she’d woke that morning, it was into a suffocating sense of doom. Impending fate. Dangling participle doom.

Destiny.

She’d lain on the bed, the idea reverberating in her head. Destiny. Destiny’s day. And the panic had seized her, roared upwards, consumed her. She’d fought it. There was no reason, she’d told herself. No cause. It was just another morning, just another waking. Then she’d felt Jhikl stir beside her, turned to him, saw the soft lines of his face, the weight-lifted sculpturing of his chest. One leg casually scissored over the other, a hint of member under the artful swathe of sheet across his middle. He just never stopped — even asleep, the pose was one you’d find in a boyie magazine. Yesterday it had thrilled her and she’d plied his member awake, taking him in a jill rabbit burst of ecstasy, 20 seconds of high riding, hip grinding thrust that had propelled her into groaning orgasm. Today she found it revolting.

Destiny. Destiny’s day.

She couldn’t shake the thought.

She kicked at a washed-up condom, missed, took her time, hooking it with her toes and flinging it out into the waves. Then walked on.

31

The road was twinned for the first several kilometres out of Hope, and busy with traffic making for the Coqihalla — the toll express route to Kamloops that bypasses the scenic, but slow and knucklebiting Fraser Canyon section of the TransCanada Highway. It was only past the turnoff to the Coqihalla when the twin lanes merged into one, and the one joined with its opposite that Dark’s anger began to dissipate, dissolving in the rain that had started just past Hope. For once, he didn’t mind. The rain matched his now despondent mood and, with most of the traffic diverted up the Coqihalla, he was able to settle back into the ride. Highway 3 rose steadily, swerving back and forth across the valley of the ______ River, making for the pass out of the coastal mountains and back into the dry interior. To either side was a succession of rain-blurred verticals — rocks, evergreens, slopes, mountains — that narrowed and seemed to crowd ever higher, only to become lost in the cap of bilious clouds. Curve after straight away, road sign after road kill after mileage post fell behind. But still Dark and the bike climbed, and one curve led to another view of the highway disappearing from view in an ever tightening valley. And cloud that was ever closer. Dark’s mood narrowed with it.

That was when he noticed the mirror watching him.

It was the left side mirror, one of two jugears on either side of the Wing’s fairing. A car-like rounded rectangle, the mirror element had been loose on its fairing mount when he bought the bike, and so had an annoying vibration that made the world it reflected a useless chaos. He’d tried to fix it but it seemed the whole unit would have to be replaced, so instead he’d bought a second-hand mirror that mounted on his left-hand handlebar. For looks, he’d left the fairing mirror mounted.

Over time, Dark had been half-consciously aware that the mirror was vibrating looser and now it slowly swivelled up and down on its mount, sometimes reflecting the road passing by underneath the motor, other times looking up to the clouds. Right then, it was Dark’s face in the mirror. He studied it, noting the lack of definition, the absence of identifiable features. It could have been anyone, and no one. He realized why. It had never been described. No face, no name. He felt generic and added one more stick to the fires of hatred he felt for the writer. [Not that I really want to defend him but, in this case, I have to admit I agree with the writer. He says he abhors physical description because that limits the reality the reader can construct in his or her mind. Rather, he says, treat it like a radio play, give only the most salient of physical descriptions, and let the audience flesh the characters. If they want Dark to be a gnome, so be it. Black? That’s beautiful. Jewish? Kosher. It’s the very same thing as, depending on the culture, Jesus is sometimes portrayed as asian, arabic, caucasian, with or without beard, short, tall, masculine, effeminate. And these ‘projections’ tell us more about the culture than they do about the man.] (You mean about the god, don’t you?) [Is there a difference?] Then a strange thing started to happen. The more he stared at the image, the more it seemed there was something latent behind it, a faint ghost of a face, his face — it had to be. But it was shifting; becoming oval, square, rounded; eyes slanting, deslanting, now turning blue then green to brown; eye brows growing bushy then thinning. It was a succession of faces, one after the other, morphing, changing, never settling down. Dark’s focus on the mirror was so intense, he hit a curve late and, heart pounding, had to force the bike around. It brought a comment from tHe PoEt.

“mirror mirror on the wing. who’s the biggest dolt of all?”

‘Hugnh,’ Dark thought. ‘So now you want to talk. Well two can play the silence game.’ Bringing the Wing back into line, he looked away, fastening his attention on a roadside sign for a cafe 30 kilometres [18 miles] down the road. Cuckoo’s Nest Inn. Coffee. Home cooked meals. Gas. Diesel. Gift shop. Stamps. Better stop there, he thought, for a liquids transfusion.

“it’s all in your mind, you know. you don’t really have to pee.”

Dark ignored the voice.

“it’s the same thing as your face. or my face for that matter. why don’t you take another look and see what i mean?”

Dark still ignored him.

“don’t you want to see my face?”

Dark snuck a sideways peek and was startled to find Attila the Hun’s second cousin — the ugly one — snarling at him from the mirror. He flicked his eyes away. Too late.

“i saw that. what’samatter? i scare you or something? take another look.”

Against his better judgement, Dark did just that, only to find the Hun had disappeared and been replaced by a kindly old coot, the kind you wish your grandfather had been. The image radiated a soothing warmth that cut straight through the rain. tHe PoEt chuckled.

“now, is that a peek experience or what?”

He was so transfixed, the pun flew over Dark’s head. {And dropped like a skeet.} The eyes held him, pulling him deeper. Suddenly granddad barked.

“hey! watch where you’re going!”

Startled, Dark found the bike was metres too far to the outside of the curve and drifting wider still. The shoulder seemed to be rushing at him. Abruptly releasing the throttle, he braked, and the bike jerked inwards with the abrupt change in centripetal force. He forced the handlebars to compensate, but there were too many forces and the bike wobbled, alarmingly. Then Dark was shaken by a blast of dopplered horn from a big, black car rocketing by, its driver giving the finger in the rear view mirror. ‘Fuck. Where did that come from?’ Dark muttered, feeling the adrenaline pluck at his nerves.

“where else? it came from behind. did you think it came out of the blue or something? look around you, boy. see any blue?”

The adrenaline began to subside.

“i think we better skip the mirror mirror routine. you managed to get us out of that, but it was you got us into it to start with.”

And the anger started to build. “I got us into it? Last time I looked, it was your face in the mirror. Well, your whatever it was,” he finished lamely, expecting tHe PoEt would deny any blame at all. He was wrong. There was silence for a moment, then a grudging apology. Of sorts.

“okay. point taken. i was part of it. i beg your pardon.”

“You don’t sound as though you mean it,” Dark countered, jabbing with his machete. “When you apologize you don’t justify. You recognize the pain you’ve inflicted, and ask for absolution.” There was another moment of silence, then tHe PoEt responded, wearily Dark thought.

“so who’s not the priest now?”

Dark had no answer. In that moment’s respite, he’d had a sudden vision of the Monty Python knight, minus arms and legs, bobbing on the ground, screaming ‘Come on. Come on. You want to fight? I’ll go you,’ while a second, equally dismembered knight flopped beside him, also screaming, ‘Let’s go, let’s go. Pick up your sword. Come on pick it up. Won’t hey? Who’s the coward now then? Hey, who’s the coward?’ He didn’t need a telegram to figure this vision thing out. Useless. The whole fight was pointless — two boxers slugging it out long past consciousness, arms weary, legs dead, only kept going by each other’s truculence. Slug. Counterslug. Point. Counter point. Insult. Rejoinder. It was time to put a stop to it. So he put a stop to the bike, pulling over into a roadside garbage drop. With a sigh, he dropped the stand but left the motor running.

“Listen,” he said, trying to find the right words. “Can we back up a few steps here?” The engine skipped a tick — something Dark had noticed seemed to happen in the rain — then tHe PoEt asked cautiously:

“what do you mean?”

“Well, what I mean is that we got off on the wrong foot the other…”

“don’t you mean the wrong wheel?,” tHe PoEt interjected.

Dark had to choke a flareup of anger. This was not going to be easy. “Whatever,” he said, flaying his hands out to show he didn’t care. “Let’s not argue over bloody metaphors. I mean that’s all we’ve been doing since Day One, just fighting over shit.” He dismounted and walked over to the garbage can, feeling around in his coat pockets for detritus. A car shrrr-oooo--oommmed past on its way to Vancouver. Dark didn’t bother to look. Didn’t even care if its occupants had seen him talking to his bike.

“okay. it’s a three legged race and we got off on the wrong foot and now we’ve fallen face down in the shit. so we can lie there arguing blame or we can co-operate and lift ourselves out. is that a fair summation of what you’re trying to say?”

“Fair enough,” Dark answered.

“well then, why don’t you get back on and we’ll get on and, with any luck, we’ll get on okay. oh, do me a favour and mind my wheel doesn’t slip in the shit. goddamn bears. you’d think they’d have the decency to do it in the woods.”

Moving back toward the bike, Dark had to laugh. “I suppose you expect the pope to be celibate too.” tHe PoEt let out a snicker.

“the pope? hell no. when you’ve been around as long as me, and seen as many popes come and go as i have, the last thing you expect is for them to live up to their publicity.”

The bike seemed to purr as Dark pulled it back onto the road.

“by the way. thanks for the hi test. it’s appreciated. oh and your mileage thing — the answer’s dripping off the end of your nose.”

[I’m sorry, but I can’t hold my counsel any longer. I know we made an agreement to let you write your little fable the way you want and I’ve largely kept my end of the bargain, but…] {Ah, excuse me.} [What?] {Just a point of clarification. You and he made an agreement. I never did.} [Yeah, that’s another contentious boner we’ll take up between chapters. But first, I really must object to this abrupt sequence of events in the strongest possible terms. It’s just not believable. Here Rider and PoEt have been fighting like tom cats ever since they met but all of a sudden they’re about to become bosom buddies. Let’s get realistic…] {Ah, excuse me again.} [What now?] {You’re looking for realism? Have you been reading this crap?} [Look, I checked the date. His artistic license is still valid. But, this is my point, that ‘vision-thing’ as so-called justification was weaker than a Damascus conversion. Worse, you’re throwing away the most interesting dynamic in their relationship. Antipathy sells. Look at Moonlighting, Lethal Weapon, The Odd Couple. Sparks. Insults. Rolled eyes. Tension. The format works. Sure, it requires they come to a grudging acceptance of each other, but that’s only at the very end. You’re not even half-way through this book. It’s too early to make these guys lovey-dovey.]

[You’re not going to listen, are you?]

32

Notes From The Shop

“Oh, that’s just Bu.., I mean Bim. Don’t get upset. That’s just the way he is.”

That comment, or a variant, was common in The Shop’s confines. Bim was like the kid you have to take everywhere twice: the second time to apologize. The interesting question is why Bif and Bop put up with it. Would you? You see, apart from his combatative stance on Harleys, Bim was also a bludger — the type of guy who’d seldom buy beer for The Shop’s dump-rescued fridge, but not turn one down when it was offered. The type who only had dulse once in a while, but somehow managed to appear, lips pursed, whenever the reefer was going around. And it’s not as though, to make up for these shortcomings, he was a brilliant conversationalist who added humour and levity to The Shop’s proceedings. Stoned, he was more fixture than fellow traveller, slumping back into his stool beneath hog gallery and disappearing into his private mental world, oblivious to the joshing and ribbing that flowed around him. At these times, he looked almost comatose, and more than one Shop visitor had assumed he’d passed out. Even if unoriginal, “Ah, Rocketship Bim, this is ah Houston Control. Come in please.” became a standard line that could, sometimes, provoke half-opened eyes and a dopey, self-conscious grin from Bim but was always good for a titter among the gathered. So, given all these negatives, the question remains: why did Bif and Bop not turf him out with firm instructions to keep away? It was their Shop after all.

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the mysteries of the Brotherhood and male bonding, but even the most skilled adepts can only point to it, not explain. For whatever reason — evolution? biochemistry? karma? father and/or brother identification? — the fact is males like some males but dislike others. It’s not rational and, even if they had the ability to examine their emotions, few males could truly explain why A should be okay, but B a bust. But they don’t have the tools for this kind of self-analysis, so the best most can manage is a mute recognition that somehow, at some level they jibe together, they flesh each other out, someway finding their own missing pieces in the other. It’s as though male bonding is a clumsy attempt to create the complete person, the complete society, perhaps the way hunter-gatherers had to forge groups with all the requisite skills needed for the tribe to survive — tool makers, spear throwers, elders, storytellers, shamans. Clumsy because, in our modern world, there seems little need for spear throwers, shamans and their ilk, yet the shadows still dance across the wall of the cave, the roles must still be played. So males gather into clans, into chapters of The Brotherhood, sit around venues like The Shop, and trade bullshit while their shadows enact ancient rites, and the mysteries deepen around them. Security is in the group. Huddle closer to the fire. Cuddle up to the beer fridge. Pass that fucking joint before it hatches.

So, perhaps there, we can understand why Bim was never banished. There are damn few storytellers in their modern world. Sure, there’s lots of raconteurs and many make fortunes raconting in the publishing, television and movie industries. But a raconteur is not a storyteller. The former merely litters the passing hours with momentary diversions, while the latter forms meaning, carries it for the group, transmits it across the generations. The storyteller’s an alchemist for the inchoate yearnings of his audience, transmuting them into myth and so making them real. So it was that, in The Shop, Chapter 5155679 of The Brotherhood, Bim was the storyteller. And if Bim had a few faults, even if Bim in fact never wrote a word, that was overlooked. Bim was the best the Chapter could do.

33

Just a Coupl’a GoB

Wrong.

The GoB was the one behind the guy with the violin. You know how some people just disappear in a crowd? Even when there’s not a crowd? That was this GoB — a kind of skinny Danny Devito, bowlegged enough to have been a jockey. I hadn’t noticed him because he was such a runt his body had been shielded by the violin case. A powerful runt; even from my seat I could see the muscles ripple under the lumberjack shirt — I made a mental note to skip the short jokes just in case he’d earned those muscles digging turtle eggs. It turned out, by the by, that the viola fella was a member of a local group called The Fiddlers Three. They were meeting for an early lunch before flying out west for something called the International OldTyme Fiddling Contest. Poli knew them of course — he seemed to know everybody who was anybody and anybody who was nobody — and I was deathly afraid he was going to try to get them to play and then have the waitress join in on vocal. The suits were a bit of promotional schlock, something to make them stand out from the crowd. As though fiddlers need anything to make them stand out. I made a mental note to mention it to my editor — might be a good human interest story Gangstas Fiddle Kimberley.

Runt saw Poli’s wave, acknowledged it but remained standing at the entrance, patently waiting. Then I saw for what. The doorway — one of those double doubles meant to shut out winter blasts — darkened, the way a storm cloud obliterates sunshine. Runt seemed to disappear, then the inner door opened and the Hulk came in, head bent to make it under the door frame. Tall? This GoB must have come from NBA country. Big? He could have been NFL. Steroids, I thought. Had to be on steroids. Then I remembered testosterone was a steroid too, and gulped. Hulk slapped Runt on the back; it was friendly, but hard enough I wondered if we hadn’t better call an ambulance. Mental note: skip the tall jokes too. But Runt took it in a balancing half-stride forward, punched back, then pointed to our table.

“Take it cool,” Poli whispered, “and let me do the talking.” Damn right I was going to let him do the talking, I thought. Anyone who had to duck ceiling fans was not someone you wanted to share the wrong words with. Mental note: skip any jokes at all.

“Poli! Where you been buddy?” The voice boomed — with a boom box like that, what would you expect? — ricocheting around the room, silencing even the tourists who were back to Tuesday, Bombay instead of Brussels. Waitress’ head poked out of her foxhole, sized the situation and seized the initiative, advancing with the coffee pot. I would have too. I covered my cup with my hand.

“Oh, just around,” Poli answered, standing and shaking hands. Well, it was more like Hulk shook hands and Poli just shook. “I’d like you to meet my cousin,” Poli said. “Frat Rat, Meet Deltoid Epsilon.” I stood and reached down to shake hands with Runt. “And Alphonse Omega.” I looked up, looked way way up, feeling like the mouse in bed with the proverbial elephant, and extended my hand, mentally reviewing my health coverage. But Hulk’s grasp was surprisingly gentle. Guess he only shook the mickey out of friends. “Good to meet you. A cousin of Poli’s?,” he said releasing, but not in time for me to stop the waitress pouring coffee into my cup. “You down here visiting?”

“He’s here on business,” Poli answered for me, sitting down with a sweep of his hands to show the others should sit down too. The Runt looked at me closely, too close for comfort I thought. “Business?,” he said. “What business would that be?” But once again it was Poli who answered. Me, I busied myself with the business end of a sugar spoon, thinking I’d have some real business to attend to in a moment. “Oh, buying and selling. You know. But, tell me Alphonse, is your wife still stuffed?”

I nearly choked but Runt guffawed, “Stuffed every chance she gets,” and Hulk just grinned, colouring a little. Poli laughed back. “Yeah I guess she would be.” And they all started to trade small talk and even smaller jokes, the kind of aimless chitchat that whiles away the hours in a coffeeshop. I couldn’t tell if our GoBs noticed how smoothly Poli kept the conversation away from anything to do with me. But then by then I wasn’t noticing all that much. With each polite sip of coffee the pressure in my bladder compounded. I crossed my legs, finally slipped my hand down to cup my crotch, and inanely smiled and nodded as though I were following each ribald twist. I wasn’t. Against the pounding in my bladder, their prattle had faded into waves of near indistinguishable babble, an ebb and flow in which I desperately tried to find a point that I could cut in and excuse myself. But you know how it is when you really want to jump into a conversation but you seem to have disappeared and your barely begun interjection is intersected and the next wave is upon you. I was going down for the third time, my vision turning brown, when I felt a sharp kick at my ankle.

I looked across to Poli who was midway through some joke, turning his face back and forth for emphasis. Swinging past me, I thought I caught a slight flick of the eyes, a veiled message. Then I knew it was a message when the kick was repeated and Poli asked “What do you think Frat?,” the eyes looking straight at me, then flicking off towards the restaurant’s rear. “I think I need to pee,” I managed to say and, gratefully excusing myself, hobbled off. Moving made the pressure worse and I started to speed up. The tourists stopped their planning long enough to giggle at my half-walk, half-run past them. I didn’t care. Back at my table I heard a burst of laughter, then what Runt had said to cause it registered on my brain.

“That’s what I like to see. A man who thinks with his pecker.”

34

another comment from the writer

By definition, jokes and satire are inherently politically incorrect. They poke and they prod, and they upset — exactly the attributes that raise the ire of the modern PC Police. But today’s commissars of the laugh challenged are only following ancient tradition. The PC P were a fact of life even in classical Greece, the culture that dug the wellsprings of western humour. (Not that the Greeks were the first people ever to tell a joke — that honour probably belongs to some unknown Cro Mag regaling his mates with primitive ethnic jokes (Question: How many Neanderthal does it take to start a fire? Answer: Duh, fire? What dat?) — and they weren’t even necessarily the very first to write them down. But what they did have was a great P.R. machine — Plato & Plato, Aristophanes & Associates Inc. Now this was a group that knew how to put a good spinaret on any yarn — just take a look at the Socrates coverup — so good their clients have not only remained famous for centuries, but are still required reading in any Foundations of Western Drama course; drama, of course, including both the tragic and comic genres, which the Greeks saw as indelibly linked.) And any playwright worth his hemlock soon learned to hide his critiques in humour and satire, where it could be argued that ‘it was just a joke’ — meaning it was nothing to get all fired up about. That the PC P knew it was more than just a joke, but couldn’t do much about it, just made the subterfuge all that more delicious.

They even pointed to it, rubbed it in the PC P’s collective face — witness their centuries-worn dictum that ‘comedy is tragedy viewed from a distance’. Trite, but any dictum that lasts longer than 15 minutes has to have a kernel of truth in it. And the comic/tragic one does — a seed we don’t even have to Shirley MacLaine to retrieve. Just watch the tube any night of the week. Where does the humour in most sitcoms derive? From our having a greater level of awareness than the characters we’re watching. We laugh because we can see how absurd the situation is while the subjects can’t. Blinded by the scriptwriter, they react as though the situation is not absurd at all. So Earl loses the baby, dashes around like a lizard with his head cut off, but we giggle. So precocious brat assaults petty thieves while his parents learn to count on more than two fingers, and we pack the theatres for the sequel. {So schmuckhead rides a talking bike and the book becomes a best seller.} In real life, Earl would be appearing in court, trying to justify why the state shouldn’t take little gottaluvme into its care, while the kid’s parents would have their asses sued off by the crooks. {And the book would be remaindered at bus terminals and airports where people are desperate for cheap, disposable pulp.} It’s our point of view that allows the comic to exist.

But, equally, it’s our point of view allows the tragic to exist. Take the very same situations but share the character’s view. Suddenly, the tragic is there, even in yet one more insecure teen discovering an infestation of big weekend coming up zits. Interestingly, with only a little practise, this particular perceptual shift becomes easier, but its opposite — from tragic to comic — remains difficult, especially where it concerns events in our own lives. It’s not just that most of us have trouble laughing at ourselves — we do — but also that we are more wedded to our sense of the tragic, defending its honour with a pugnacious belligerence we wouldn’t dream of applying to the defence of our sense of humour. So adversity makes us strong; our struggles build character; heartache and pain bring out the noble. Not laughter. In fact, we tend to look down on those ‘who’ve had it too easy’, who’ve never struggled through the drudgery of an honest day’s work, who’ve never known pain. And, having bought into the tragedy, we like it. It’s comfortable. It’s secure. Life may be the shits but it’s our shit and the known is always preferred to the unknown.

So my breakdown. I wallowed in it. Revelled in my misery. Loved my tears even as I stood on my mountain top, cursing my fate. And never saw how the chains were my own. How the dragons that terrorized my nights were nothing but my own self-hatred. Nothing but the inner critic.

Never saw how funny it was. A grown man afraid to go to the bank, unable to insure his car because he was scared he might panic and this stranger might see it. Like it mattered. A man who shook with fear just to call up the passport office and explain how his passport had been laundered by his ex-wife. Like it mattered. A man who cut himself off from his friends because, inside, he thought he didn’t deserve their support. Didn’t deserve to be loved. A man who turned to his dragons, suffered their flames and was grateful because his pain justified his self-hate, and his self-hate justified his pain. Only in agony did he feel whole, feel happy.

The Greeks left out the corollary: tragedy is comedy viewed inside out, something I only learned when I found I couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying. Couldn’t tell if I was I, or if I was the cosmic clown laughing at my own sitcom — All In The Psyche, NEW! This fall on Reality TV.

{Now there’s an oxymoron.} [What?] {Reality TV.}

35

“Was it a good one?,” Snag asked. Flustered — Snag had been standing right outside the toilet door when he opened it, causing Dark, who was still doing up his zipper, to almost walk into him — Dark gave one of those half yes, half no shrugs and pulled the door snug behind him. But not before Snag’s eyes closed and his nostrils flared wide to catch the air he was wafting with his hands. “Aaahh,” he murmured like a vintner in olfactory paradise. “Smells like a good one.” The eyes opened and there was a happy little grin on his face. “That’s a good sign, you know.”

Dark squeezed past, moving out into the little foyer that preceded the can, now doubly flushed. Shit! Couldn’t a fella even take a crap in peace?, he wondered to himself. And what kind of a loonie has the writer hooked me up with this time? He turned to take his first real look at Snag, an examination that had been postponed by urgent bodily needs on arrival. This was a 40ish child of the 60s gone 90s — dulse-gaunt face, its sharp planes accented with well tended stubble; manicured pony-tail artfully — too artfully — arranged down his back; frilly open necked shirt that was almost a blouse showing a diamond of hairless chest; bell bottom jeans featuring tailor-sewn patches and multi-coloured trim; worn sandals. Dark’s eyes swivelled back up. Bell bottoms! Then swivelled down to his own non-descript boot cuts and Dark found himself caught between conflicting emotions; superiority — god, but this guy was out of date! — and, at the same time, jealousy that Snag was so well defined. Physically at least. Outright favouritism, he grumbled to himself and wondered what this character had that he didn’t.

“but that’s the thing, don’t you see? he’s not a character.”

Dark winced. He still wasn’t used to tHe PoEt’s ability to project thoughts, and this close — the bike was just outside, not even unloaded yet — the voice was so strong it was just like he was standing beside the bike. “Well what is he then?,” he asked out loud, without thinking. “Sorry?,” Snag responded, causing Dark to flush once more and flounder verbally for a face-saving way out, “No, it’s ah, nothing. Ah what did you mean, it’s a good sign?,” while sending a frantic mental signal to tHe PoEt to hold on a moment.

“Just that a good shit is a good sign. You see, one of the things I’ve found is that when I first arrive somewhere, I find a chance to excuse myself and go to the crapper — oh, bet you didn’t know that the flush toilet was invented by a Brit called John Crapper. Can you guess what the first models were called? Anyways, the kind of shit I have tells me the kind of visit I’m going to have. When I have a really good shit, I know it’s going to be a successful encounter.”

Stumped for words, Dark looked at Snag, searching his face to see if he was serious. Apparently so — his face had the beatific look of a true believer, someone who’d found the true meaning of life and was all too happy to promulgate it. Like a Hare Krishna, Dark thought. In street clothes.

“you see what i mean. he isn’t a character. he’s a caricature. haven’t you figured out what Snag stands for?”

“I know it sounds odd, but it works. And I’ll tell you, if I go someplace and can’t shit, I’m outta there.”

“snag. you get it?”

“You see, your body knows what’s coming up, it’s tuned in at a level you can’t access consciously. But if you listen to your body, you can get all sorts of helpful information.”

“s. n. a. g. sensitive new age guy.”

“It’s called BodyWorkings. I learned it in California.”

“so, like, ah, why don’t you ask him what he does if he has diahorrea?”

It was confusing, one voice in his ear, another in his mind, speaking practically on top of each other. Dark began to feel split, simultaneously standing just outside the can, edging away from Snag who was edging forward, but also standing outside, beside tHe PoEt, deep in mental conversation. The two scenes wavered in his mind, now one stronger, then the other. Snag edged closer, pinning Dark against the wall. tHe PoEt drawled on laconically.

”and, like, what’s the deeper meaning of zits?”

“You gotta get in touch with yourself. Know your body.”

“ah, now, ain’t that the shits.”

“Chant om at sunrise. Acknowledge your feelings.”

“this guy’s a winner. why don’t you ask him if he’s met his inner child?”

“Plumb the depths of your inner being.”

“me, i’d throttle mine.”

“Find your feminine. Merge with her.”

“ooo, now isn’t that all touchy feely?”

“Beat your drums. Touch your warrior.”

“oh. maybe he’s on to something here.”

The split stopped, abruptly, leaving Dark pinned against the wall. Snag’s face was so close Dark could smell the mouthwash and another fragrance — what was that? a part of his mind asked, then he understood as Snag waved a reefer like a hypnotist’s watch.

“And this is it. This is the key. Smoke this and you’ll enter a world of possibilities you never dreamt. Realms beyond realms. What do you say?”

Dark could only stammer. “Ah, ah, look I’d better bring my stuff in off the bike. It, ah, looks like I’m going to be here for a while, ah, I mean good shit and all.”

Snag smiled. “Yeah. It’s real good shit. We’ll blow it once you’re done. Hey. I saw your guitar. Tell you what. Get your stuff in and we’ll have a jam. And this will be the peanut butter.” Snag began to giggle, waving the reefer like the guy who directs planes into their berths. “Sticks to the roof of your brain, not your fingers.” And walked away, leaving Dark slowly sinking against the wall.

36

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

She was so tired, Abby wasn’t sure if she had sank down to the beach, or if the shore had rose to meet her. She’d been walking for hours, no particular destination, just one foot after the other, keeping to the firmer wet sand bounded between waves and the flotsam from that afternoon’s high tide. She tucked her legs in under herself, watched then felt a wave rush forward and swirl around her lower parts, felt its warmth lick up her thighs to her private parts. Shook with delicious chill, but remained. Watched the water froth backwards, withdrawing. Then another wave sheeting forward, her body rocking with the force of its thrust. Saw the small spiral shell it had left at her feet, the ocean’s glistening gift. Picked it up, turning it round in the evening light. Put it to her ear, wondering if it was one of the shells you could hear the ocean in. But couldn’t tell, not with the real ocean’s purr all around. She tossed it, arcing it high, lost sight of it in the fire-fringed clouds, found it again, watching for when it entered the water. There it was. Splash. And the water spurted erect, then fell back.

Men!, she thought bitterly. They were either whimpering nags or spineless yes ma’ams. Take Jhikl for example — God please take him! She hoped he wasn’t there when she got back to the hotel, that he’d figured it out and had taken himself off. — now he was a real yes ma’am. Was it good for you too? Yes ma’am. Did you enjoy that? Yes ma’am. You don’t mind if I drop off to sleep now? Yes ma’am, no, yes, I mean no ma’am. But don’t you want to spurt? It’s okay ma’am. You mean you don’t mind at all that I’m done in 20 seconds when it takes you an hour to ejaculate? No, ma’am. Don’t you feel cheated? No ma’am. Oh come on, admit it. Don’t you just hate that I can cum with just a twick of your bic but you have to work at it? No ma’am. You really don’t mind? No ma’am. So tell me. When was the last time you spurt? In the shower this morning ma’am. Oh! That’s why you were so long. And I thought you were just getting clean. It’s a big job, ma’am. Yes, I can see that.

Then there was Dickie. Dear sweet nagging Dickie. She looked out over the ocean, seeing not just the thousands of kilometres of their physical separation, but the psychological gulf. The lies she’d told to be here. The lie that was her marriage. The years of constant fighting. Saw that she’d never tried to understand his point of view. Never tried at all. Maybe that was why, in public, he was another yes ma’am but in the privacy of their home he became a nag, a minstrel of misery — she liked that turn of phrase — and, everytime he did, Abby got her back up. And the misery went on.

did you hear about the miracle baby?

it had a vagina and a brain.

Abby shook her head sadly. God, where had she heard that? And why had it flipped through her mind?

a woman’s definition of foreplay —

a four course meal and a burp.

Go away, Abby thought. That was one of Dickie’s jokes, one of the ones she’d sometimes overhear when he was out in the kitchen drinking tea with his buddies. They seemed to collect these bad jokes and trade them like playing cards. Giggle, giggle. Hey! Did you hear about

the woman who woke one morning with a cobra in bed beside her?

she didn’t know if she was coming or going.

yeah, and the undertaker couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

but did you hear what happened to the snake?

it was arrested for impersonating a man.

Abby shook her head again, harder this time. This was weird. More than weird. Abby had always prided herself on her mental sobriety, her — what Becky called — ‘straight-laced’ mind. Her seriousness, her no-nonsense approach. But now jokes — bad jokes — just kept cascading through her head, like she was standing outside the kitchen eavesdropping. No, it was like she was in the kitchen, she was part of it. In there like a french tickler as Dickie would say. In all the way. She got them, understood them, somehow shared the bitterness behind them.

what about the woman who wore a strap-on inside out?

she was arrested for the same thing.

so, hear about the woman who advertised for a man?

wanted: domestic god. must be able to cook and sew.

premature ejaculator preferred.

Wanted. Domestic god. Yeah, that’s what she had always craved, wanted Dickie to be. A servant with a dildo. No, not even that. Just a self-propelled vibrator. Exactly what she’d found in Jhikl. Had had. And found wanting. Not a flesh and blood human being. Not a person with wants and needs like hers. Like Dickie. She started sobbing, letting go in a shameful rush of sadness and tears. Domestic god. The phrase seemed to mock her, reverberating in her mind, then coming from the clouds, from the waves, from the sand. Domestic god. Domestic God.

Domestic GOD.

Then it stopped. Completely. Even the surf went silent, the waves now mute, the wind dumb. It was preternaturally hushed — you could have heard a prick spurt, was how Abby described it later. Gazing around at this mad world, she could feel but not hear her own stilted breathing. Couldn’t even hear the rush of blood in her veins as she rose, slowly, legs tingling from her long squat, ears screaming for sound the way waterlogged lungs screech for air. The way her eyes squealed ‘No More! No More!’, for they saw too much; saw the sun touch the ocean, unleashing a single pulse of golden light that shot forward to touch the clouds and cause them to boil. God, they’d finally spent some decent money on effects, a part of her said. Then realized she was wrong. It was the clouds from The Ten Commandments recycled. They parted, no — they formed, no — they vaporized. Leaving words. Words in the sky that shook her, terrified her. Words she read and heard as voice over — a male voice; cultured, resonant, strong, precise; each syllable perfectly spaced and enunciated — rolled from the clouds.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

It repeated.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

And once more.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

Sound returned as Abby collapsed, folding down on her legs, breasts crushing against her thighs. How long she stayed like that she didn’t know. She came to in the dark, to find a dog licking her face, the mongrel whining, shaking with fear and anticipation. She shooed it away and stood, shaking the sand off her legs. And started back.

Now she knew where she was going.

So, is that a ten litre bra, or
are ya just enjoying the show?

37

“What the hell was that?” Dark shot the question at tHe PoEt the moment he was out the door, the first time since the day before yesterday he’d raised his mental voice. His last-minute rapprochement with tHe PoEt leaving Hope, and the thank god absence of The Minstrel, had made for two days of relative peace: the hours spent deep in conversation, the kilometres marked off by the ever-present ticking of the motor, the nights passing in easy slumber and dreams. Dark’s ever-present anger had begun to fade as he and his partner crossed out of the coastal range and back into the dry interior. Princeton, Keremeos, Osoyoos and the Okanagan — the towns where roads to other towns collided in a profusion of numbers, names and arrows had swept past. They’d pressed on, leaving the interior, skimming between and around and over the Earth’s standing waves, tracking into the Cariboos and Bugaboos, the Selkirks. Finding a new land, new vegetation enriched with water. Riding through rain and sun, cloud and mist, even ball-bearing hail that cloaked the road in white and sent cars into the ditch — forcing them to sit and while, watching the highway reappear black. Castlegar, Nelson, Creston — they’d diverted from # 3 to see a friend in Boswell (he wasn’t there), then ride the eastern shore of Lake Kootenay, a physically demanding but exhilarating run they’d made in the fog-punctuated early hours of that morning. Then Yank, Cranbrook and, finally, Kimberley, Canada’s Little Bavaria, nestled into the western edge of the great rift valley that separates the Selkirks from the Rocky Mountains, the town where Snag lived. PoEt’s voice brought him back to the present.

“what the hell was what?”

PoEt’s counter-question irritated Dark and the old anger surged up. The bike knew what the hell he was talking about. Dark’s voice almost shook. “That split, that thing where I was inside and outside at the same time. Don’t tell me you didn’t cause that.” tHe PoEt laughed it off.

“oh, that. co-contemporaneous time frames. i told you about them.”

“No, you didn’t,” Dark shot back, hunching down beside the bike to start unloading. He struggled to untie the knot in the bungie that held the guitar to the side and on top of the saddlebag. It wouldn’t come loose and Dark snapped it even tighter in frustration, stood up and saw Snag watching him from the window of the house. Snag waved. Dark knelt back down muttering to himself, “Bloody well did not.”

“yes i did. but we were in a co-contemporaneous time frame at the time and your sense of time doesn’t allow that moment to exist. so you don’t remember it.”

Damn! Where was that knife? Dark moved to the other side of the bike and started untying the kitchen pannier. “You mean I create my own bloody reality.”

“of course. and with that reality you create your own time.”

He started rummaging through the pannier’s pockets, roughly, carelessly. Couldn’t find the knife. Frustrated, he sat down on the ground. At least he was hidden from Snag’s view by the bike. “Well, look, tell me again what you already told me and I’ll tell you if I remember it.”

“better yet, why don’t we co-contemporaneous the discussion. it’s still there you know and it’s still happening.”

This time he experienced the transition into split. A strange pressure came into his head and his ear drums began to pound. Boom. Boom. Boom. And suddenly there were two PoEts speaking in Dark’s mind.

2 “there you again, confusing concepts like time with some form of reality and that reality an illusion impoverished by its linear approximation.”

1 “you see, time is not what you think it is.”

And two scenes. The first him beside the bike, looking up over the seat to tHe PoEt’s mirror mirage warrior visage. The second not a scene but a time lapse montage, a hodge podge of shots from the past two days. Close up Dark’s hand on the throttle. Medium shot looking down at the wheel. Point of view out the windscreen to wide shot of vista, dissolve to highway sign streaking past.

2 “look a those road signs. now count mississippi. one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi. how many mississippis between road signs?”

1 “sorry, i mispoke. time is what you think it is. you see, time is a function of your consciousness.”

And the montage overlain with a map, the little line growing longer, twisting, weaving, town names zooming forward. Boom. Boom. Boom. Warrior in the mirror.

2 “so how long’s a mississippi?”

Tick. Tick. Tick. Warrior on the road.

1 “and a function of agreement. it’s what you and another consciousness agree it is.”

2 “that long eh? so how long’s a massachusetts then?”

Boom. Tick. Dissolve to odometer rolling over. Boom. Tick. Line cuts north. Boom. Now granddad in the mirror. Tickity Boom. No it was Einstein’s mother. Boom. Tickity Boom.

1 “but that makes it relative, doesn’t it.”

2 “and tell me, if a tennessee crocks it in the woods, is there anybody here?”

Reverse angle. Einstein’s mom now falling away, hand in the air, hand on her mouth. The road between lengthens. The hand in the air waves. Slow. So slowly.

1 “mississippis, seconds, minutes. time seems to flow but that’s only because you measure it relative to movement.”

2 “it’s like an unknown variable needed to make an equation work. you move from A to B. you say it took ‘time’ as though time were outside of the equation.”

1 “but it’s inside.”

2 “look at your speed.”

Cut to closeup. The hand sweeps forward. 120. 140. 160 thousand kilometres/hr.

1 “you’re approaching the speed of light. time still seems the same to you. but look at the other you.”

Cut to wideshot, Rider in bed.

2 “you’re aging. look at the cells live and die in bursts of energy. look at the wrinkles take over.”

Cut to closeup, flesh sinking into the bones.

1 “kind of looks like maggots, doesn’t it?”

2 “now disconnect the battery.”

Blackness. Not even that. Nothing. No time. No thought.

1 “that’s what you did to me when you disconnected the battery back in vancouver.”

2 “remember, you wondered how there were decades between that bloody gull book and this bike? this is where i was, where there’s no time because there’s no space and no thought.”

1 “it wasn’t decades for me. it wasn’t even an instant yet it was eternity.”

2 “when i came into your time frame, it was just in time to find you wheeling me out of the shop. remember how you dumped me that first ride?”

1 “‘what a dolt’ i thought.’”

“Hey!” The split collapsed with a jolt. “So you going to be all day or what? Time’s a wasting.” Dark looked up from the ground by the bike, had to squint against the sun, saw a silhouette, couldn’t figure out what it was brandishing. Then remembered. Snag. And the dulse. Picking up the pannier, he started to stand, heard tHe PoEt in his head at the same time as he heard Snag. “Listen. I forgot all about Kimberley’s biggest claim to fame. You up for some fiddling?”

“we’ll continue this discussion another time.”

Then that maddening chuckle.

37

Notes From The Shop

The Book.

That was how Bif and Bop referred to it. “How’s The Book going, Bim?,” one would ask, in all apparent seriousness. “Yeah, Bum, How’s The Book? Got over that block yet?,” the other would query. Then they’d exchange knowing looks, not even waiting for the answer. Because they knew. Knew the excuses. Knew Bim would tell them of his struggles, of his difficulties in writing — what he called writer’s block. It was awful, he’d explain to anyone who asked, and to anyone who didn’t ask for that matter, a kind of creative constipation that kept him from the keyboard. Sure he’d sit and wait for the dump, feeling the bulging intestines, the immense pressure of a load that just won’t unload. Sit for hours if he had to, never minding the voices that came through the door, just trying to let go, to go with the flow. When he could, of course. But there were so many pressures, so many demands on his time: work, wife, kiddies, lawn, shitbox, bills. He didn’t have that much time to sit and write, so he did what he could, spent time at the keyboard when it could be fitted in. Sometimes it was weeks between sessions, and then all he wrote were notes really, little pointers to the lucid and lurid text to follow. But he would write it one day. Yessirree. The Book would come to pass.

Just the same, even though Bop and Bif knew The Book was just a figment of Bim’s excuses, they still bought into it. For their lives were every bit as deadening as Bum’s, and in Bim’s excuses they found solace and comfort from their own realities, justifications for their own failed dreams. Deeper than that, they bought into the miracle myth, the life can change in an instant fantasy governments use to hawk their lotteries. The rationalization that it’s really not been all for nought, even if that’s what the bank balance reads. That all these trials have been but preparation, and the future waits to explode into fullness. And who knows how fate might work? Or cares? Bestselling book or luck of the draw, either fulfils the dream, even if it happens to somebody else — as long as it’s someone we know. Then, we can say, I was that close; I felt the air stirred by fortune’s wings; it could have been me.

39

It was like walking onto a movie set, a scene in Bavaria from a Fellini spy thriller: false fronts, fake rears, paunchy tourists. If it had been winter, any second now Bail Bond would have skied through the mall, upsetting donkey carts and causing dogs to bark as the bad guys chased after him, cursing their inability to aim their bazookas. But it wasn’t winter, it was summer, so Bail would probably have skateboarded. In this crowded mall it would have been mayhem just the same.

Tacky mayhem.

Dark had to shake his head. Tourist town, he thought and, for the life of him, if he had a life, couldn’t share Snag’s admiration for it. Triumph of the will, that was how Snag had described it on the short drive downtown, explaining there’d been a big mine that played out and closed down back in the early ‘70s. It was the town’s major employer, the reason Kimberley existed. Without the mine there’d be no town so a task force was set up to figure out a way for the town to survive. There weren’t many options. Too far from markets for heavy manufacturing, too small and poorly serviced to attract a high tech future, what the town did have was its mountain location. The answer was tourism. Find a way to bring tourists, create a niche, make Kimberley stand out from every other mountain destination. Build a theme and they would come.

So Little Bavaria was born. Stores adorned with fake beams and white plaster. Doorways porticoed with cuckoo clock trim. Names Germaned. Das Townhall. Mein Kamp Supplies. Der Spiegel News Und Smokes. Main street bedecked with paving stone and Fred, with a pair of leather shorts and silly walk, transformed into town mascot Fritz. {Don’t laugh. You’d walk silly too if your crotch was swathed in leather.} Postcards printed. Visit Kimberley. Home of the World’s Largest Cuckoo. Oktoberfest announced. And guess what? They were right. The world beat a path to Kimberley’s door. Loved the atmosphere. Snapped up the postcards. Upped Kodak’s profits with endless viz of mom and dad with kibbitzing Fritz while the bird cuckooed behind them.

Not cuckoo at all. Then why did Dark feel like he’d been cuckolded?

The dulse. What else? Snag and Dark had blown the reefer in the car, sitting in a dark corner of Dat Alpine Parkeria, just off the mall. Dark had been blown away by Snag’s ability to toke — he started sucking and half was gone before he removed it from his mouth. He motioned/mimed/mmm mmm’d Dark to take a hit, then ugn ugned when Dark smoked it like a cigarette, not even inhaling, {Must be harbouring political ambitions.} expelling a cloud that filled the car. Ugn ugnn he vocalized through his tightly held lips, then prised them open to demonstrate proper sucking technique. Ssssssss. And jammed them tight. Ike at. ol t nn. For emphasis, Snag bulged his eyes like somebody drowning. Dark tried again, sucking in this time. Then exploded in a coughing fit. It tasted like camel dung. He felt like retching and, with the air in the car getting blue from smoke, was having difficulty breathing. Ain. Ain, ol t nn, Snag repeated, then let go his breathe, hhhhhhhhgh. “I thought you’d smoked before.”, he said with a look that said something didn’t compute. “The reports of my drug use are greatly exaggerated,” Dark muttered back, still feeling woozy. “Okay,” Snag brushed it away, “That’s not a problem. You just gotta hold it in. But don’t try to take a big one. Pull it into your mouth, and hold it there to let it cool a bit. Then breathe in really lightly with your lips just opened. That’ll make it easier to get the smoke down. And remember,” Snag squeezed his mouth shut. “Ol t nn.”

So Dark tried again. And did manage to get a little down. Even managed to hold it there for a few seconds before losing it in another spasm of retching cough. But he was game and would have tried again except Snag had grabbed the joint and, in one long pull, polished it off. “Ets o,” he said and opened the door to get out. Kimberley awaited.

“Don’t you just love it?”, Snag asked, spinning like a figure skater. “Look at it. It’s marvellous.” He started zooming around the mall on airplane wings. “Sure it’s tacky,” he shouted back to Dark. “Sure it’s all marketing. And sure one day the whole world’s going to be one giant theme park — Vancouver pretending it’s Bangkok, Toronto tarted up to be Paris.” Snag landed momentarily to let a group of laughing tourists snap his photo. Dark caught a snatch of their discussion. Real Germans. Snag took off again. “I mean, it’s easy to be cynical, but look at it. Look at the verve. You gotta admire the audacity. I mean, these people had a problem and they solved it. They built a better mousentrappen.”

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

Three o’clock. The time registered somewhere in Dark’s brain. God he needed a coffee, and needed to sit down. His balance was off, his lungs felt like shit, his stomach worse. And, quite frankly, Snag’s antics were embarrassing, even in this citadel of the ersatz. He was drawing a lot of attention to himself and Dark was nervous about that too. Dulse, after all, was illegal and he’d been set up before. That there were no cops in sight didn’t lessen Dark’s anxiety. The mall was crowded and could have hidden any number of uniforms. Or plainclothes. Now that guy over there in the lederhosen…

Dark started walking, abnormally fast he thought, tried to slow down, stopping nonchalantly to examine a teeshirt on an outside rack. Tread-dead chicken in the middle of road, ‘The chicken that started the joke’. Turned away, casually sweeping the mall with his eyes, registered Snag still flying, moved on, snapping his fingers to the strains of a polka down the way. Part of the International OldeTyme Fiddling Contest Snag had told him about, he assumed. Just a tourist, he tried to say in body language. Here for a good shit and a polka. Saunter. Snap. Saunter. Check out the postcards. Ponder them carefully. Decide not to buy. Move on. Almost to safety now. A sidewalk cafe. Glassenstaffen Delicatessen. Move in, sit down looking out on the mall. Look casual.

“What do you want?”

The voice had come from behind, away from the mall, but when Dark swivelled in his seat there was nobody there.

“Down here. So what do you want?”

Correction. The voice had come from behind and below. Swivel down. The waiter was a gnome. One of the Grimm Brothers. The gnome waved a menu in Dark’s face.

“Ah, just coffee thanks.”

“Can’t have just coffee,” Gnome responded. “Five dollar minimum. Plus PST, 10%. Plus GST, 7%. Plus gratuity, 15%. The tip’s obligatory. You don’t like it, you go someplace else.” And waved the menu in Dark’s face again. Dark took it. “Ah, give me a moment.” Gnome shrugged. “Fine, but don’t take long ordering. Twenty minute time limit. No loitering.” And walked away.

“Dark!” Swivelling back to face the mall — he was going to have to invest in a Linda Blair neck at this rate — the first thing Dark saw was a stiltman, must have been 10 feet tall. Swivel up. He was dressed like somebody’s doddering uncle — blue/white striped pants, red vest, silly tophat embroidered with stars. Did nobody in this town dress normal?

“Dark!” Swivel down. It was Snag coming in for a landing, closing his wings as he sat down. “Don’t you just love that music?” Well, to be honest, Dark thought, he could take it or leave it. But now that his attention had been drawn to it, the music jumped in volume and Dark realized that he’d chosen a cafe straight across from a rotunda in the centre of the mall where a four piece band was pumping the polka. Dark tried to listen, to separate out the instruments. There was a fiddle, accordion, drums and something else he couldn’t recognize. Whatever his own feelings, the crowd that obscured his vision of the stage loved it: there were couples dancing polka here, square dance there; others clapping and stomping their feet, one or two even in sync; and babies on broad shoulders laughing toothlessly. The music crescendoed and wild applause broke out. Then a guy in a white tux grabbed the mike and yammered. “Ladies and Gentlemen. Paul’s Polka Express. Give them a hand! But don’t go away cause, coming right up, direct from the Maritimes, The Fiddlers Three.”

“Hey, they’re really good.” Snag said, conspiratorially leaning across the table like he was letting Dark in on a secret. “And raunchy too. You should hear their version of Devil Went Down On Georgia. Talk about feuding fiddles!” Dark was about to try a snappy comeback but was interrupted.

“Well, what do you want?” Swivel back — damn this was getting annoying — to find Gnome in his face, well his belly button really. Dark hadn’t even had a chance to look at the menu so he said the first thing came into his mind. “Devilled eggs.” Gnome shook his head. “Don’t have.” Said the second. “Steak sandwich then. Rare.” Gnome grunted, assent presumably, then looked`at Snag. “Just a coffee, thanks.” Gnome grunted again, grabbed the menu and left. Dark looked at Snag. “How come he let you order just coffee? He told me there was a fiver minimum here.” Snag shrugged, “He’s a friend, I’m a local, you know how it is.”

The steak was tough and overdone, the fries cold and the coffee, really, was nothing to write home to mother about. If he’d had a mother to write. But it all disappeared anyway, mostly into Snag’s mouth. Dark mostly made a pretence of eating. And waited for the dulse to kick in, determined to note every subtle or not subtle effect. So far, it had been a disappointment. He’d asked Snag what to expect but the answer had not been revealing. “Well, your sense of time will change,” he’d said between stuffing chips into his mouth. “Everything will seem brighter, more alive. You’ll be amazed by what you hear. You might even hallucinate, you know, strange people, strange events.” It sounded a lot like Dark’s everyday life. Maybe he had been smoking a lot of dulse after all.

The afternoon had turned warm so, pushing his plate across to Snag with a “Go ahead, I’m done,” Dark removed his leather jacket, and leaned back to take in the mall. Without a band on the rotunda, the crowd had thinned, dispersing into the shops and standing in groups of three and four. Now that he was able to see it, Dark discovered the rotunda looked like a large, hexagonal gazebo, except there were no railings. The roof was cedar shingles, stained deeply by years of rain and snow, and feathers of moss trailed down its edges. Underneath, black teeshirted technicians were busy moving instruments and sound gear, while the guy in the tux was checking his notes. Tux said something to one of the techs, gesturing at the front of the rotunda to make his point. The tech must have been dumb because even Dark understood the message. ‘Move those mikes to the front of the stage. Yes, three of them. One. Two. Three.’

Four.

The dulse kicked in. Or time lapsed. Or reality changed. Or the bloody writer just couldn’t be bothered to effect a smooth transition. One moment Tux and tech were ticking each other off. Then, snap, the band was on. Three guys in gangster costume necking their fiddles. Three bows in sync. Firing up a four\four frenzy. That stopped. And Tux stepped forward. “Ladies and Gentlemen!,” he trumpeted. “Your friends and mine, The Fiddlers Three!”

Then started. Even faster. Stopped again. Scattered applause around the mall. Kweeeel. “Ank U. Ank U imberley.” Kweeech. “Ts ood be back.” These guys were good, Dark thought, consummate showmen. Too bad about the sound system. There were gestures and hurried movements between fiddlers, techs and Tux. The squealing stopped. Then glances back and forth between the trio. A more leisurely “And a one, two, three, four,” and they were off. So was Dark.

Was he physically drawn toward the stage? Floating forward like he was in a space chair? Or was it his vision that sucked forward and narrowed, excluding everything but the group? Dark couldn’t tell. He seemed to be in an Imax theatre, standing looking up from the bottom of the screen, the fiddlers towering impossibly over him, improbably elongated into stiltmen reversed — humongous feet squeezing into huge legs into cartoon torsos into shrunken heads, needle-sized bows flying side-to-side on toy fiddles. What was that tune? He knew it. Had heard it before. But the tempo was wrong, it was faster. The space chair started lifting, arcing Dark outwards and up, the trio normalizing, then stretching the other way as the chair kept lifting towards the top of the screen. Damn! What was that tune?

Wooofsh. A fourth gangster materialized, fronting the other three, mike in hand. Dark was now too high to see a face, saw only the top of the hat, the feet tapping out the bridge. Then, as they moved into the verse, she started to sing. He travelled here, he travelled there. And with a spine chilling rush Dark knew the song. He travelled to the farthest point, point away from love. And knew he was finally stoned. But didn’t care. She lifted her face to stare straight through him. And he hurt when he lied. And he hurt when he tied. He was entranced, enchanted, enmeshed in the siren’s song. It’s called me by a fool, the fool that he was. Locked into her eyes, beguiled by her voice. The fools we all became when we, hurting, reached for the Me. Swooping down and in now, watching the eyes, watching the love dancing there. Hurting for these words… And knew the chorus, thrilled to its promise. Joined in, their voices merging. That we were never parted. At last!, he thought. My search is over. That we are always one. Lips almost touching now, voices almost one. And we shall be as one when Transformation’s done.

Wooofsh. Dark was back at the table. “Hey that’s not bad,” Snag was saying. “And I was told you couldn’t carry a tune. How about that, eh?” But Dark couldn’t respond. He’d been up to the mount, saw the bush burn, heard the voice and then it had dumped him. Discarded him. Thrown him through the air. Mergus Interruptus. He could barely breathe, didn’t even bother to turn when Gnome slapped the bill in front of him. “Time. Pay up.”

Time. Time. What was the time? Dark looked at his watch.

It was 3:33 pm.

In bed that night, swinging in a hammock up in Snag’s attic office, Dark thought back through the last few days, tried to put it together. Just over a week before, he’d left Edmonton, heading out into the rain for a 10 week journey, a puppet really, following the dictates of a mad writer. Then tHe PoEt had talked and Dark had seen his need for heart. The Minstrel had appeared and turned his reality upside down. And the song had started — he hoped it would finish. His thoughts were unleashed, the dogs of war, flashing in his mind, streaking across his fears and anger. Self-awareness. Co-contemporaneous time frames. A Coupl’a GoB. Dutch stacking dolls. Abby. Self-created realities. Apologies. Seagulls. Notes From The Shop. Bits of conversation. Potter’s pots. Potter’s pot — no, that was Snag’s. Good shit too. Swirl Eyes. The old fart. Writing his writer. The swirl increased and Dark felt himself falling backward, trying to remember a question he meant to ask tHe PoEt. What was it? It was right on the tip of his synapses. Oh, yeah. How had tHe PoEt known the Minstrel had stalked him on the anus? Known their conversation? How?

PoEt’s voice came, sounding a little tired, like maybe he’d been asleep. But tHe PoEt didn’t sleep — at least he said he didn’t. Hearing the mental yawn, Dark had to wonder.

“you rang?”

Well, no he didn’t. Sure he wanted an answer, but he’d intended to wait for the morning. Oh, well. Might as well go for it. “One thing I don’t understand — how’d you know about The Minstrel back there in Vancouver?”

“oh, that’s easy. he showed me your case report.”

[6] ...

bacon and eggs, over easy [back]

[7] ...

by policy, The Bi does not use the metric system, ostensibly on the grounds that it's a commie plot to disrupt society. The real reason is that most of our readers and all of our editorial board just don't get it. [back]

His lives were of this veil
the illusion we call me.
His sorrows were of his own making.
His joys a short-term end.

For the pain he had gained
could be given no name
while the promise lay
unheard.

For the pain was the same
pain he had felt
when the promise was first
given.

For love is the pain
For love is the promise
For love is the meaning
too.

For love is the pain
given to you
to bring you back to
the We.

It's called Pride with a view
be it ever so new
there has to be one better.

It's spelled Pride with a me
Yes it feels free
But the hurt just goes on
Hurting to keep you...

searching the real
searching for the memory
the fading memory
of these words

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

40

more ruminations from the writer

A writer friend of mine says one is nothing, two’s a fluke and three’s a pattern. Now, if there’s one thing I doubly hate, it’s being predictable, so there’s no preface to justify with absurdities here. The same writer friend, by the way, says four or more is a list, so I guess — it being Part Four and all — this book is developing a list.

To starboard.

The right hemisphere of the brain that is. You may have heard of research on the structure of the brain that shows it has two sides. The left side — dominant in most people — is connected with the logical, the empirical, the conscious mind. This is the seat of speech and mathematical computation. {So when it screws up a calculation, does that make it a Pentium?} On the other hand — literally, as each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body; so the left governs the right hand, and the right the left — the right hemisphere is connected to the intuitive and non-rational, the emotions. The unconscious mind.

The two halves are connected with the original information superhighway, a thick bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum, and fascinating things happen when this pathway is cut, either through accident or through surgical intervention. In fact, the differing roles of the two hemispheres were studied by surgeons severing the corpus of epilepsy patients in an effort to prevent the spread of grand mal seizures from one side to the other. These ‘hemispherically-challenged’ patients, the surgeons discovered, literally didn’t know what the other hand was doing. If their visual field was restricted so that the left hand was out of the right eye’s sight (remember, the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere, while the right eye sees for the left hemisphere) they had no conscious awareness of it. The left hand simply ceased to exist as far as the speechifying left brain was concerned. But not to function. Still under the control of the right brain, that hand was able to draw, select among objects and finger snap the rhythm to Ravel’s Bolero. (even though it couldn’t count to ten.)

Now, on the surface, much of this research seems of interest mainly to bored surgeons and the type of people who read Psychology Today, but the left/right dichotomy has — and has had — a number of interesting implications for the human species, and our everyday experience. In his seminal book, The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Brain, Julian Jaynes theorizes that, in early humans, consciousness was largely centred in the right side of the brain. As a result, in modern terms, these proto-people lived unconsciously with little sense of personal identity. It must have been a magical existence, except there was no capacity to conceive of magic because magic, in the sense of something unexplainable, is a perception of the left brain. The right has no need to explain. So when early humans heard the ‘voices’ of the gods directing their lives and experienced visual ‘hallucinations’, it was all, simply put, reality. Much of our myth, Jaynes argues, stems from this period before left-brain consciousness took over — engendering both a sense of personal identity, the ego, and defining the world, along with sanity, in ways that were consistent with its own nature: rational, logical, empirical.

Forget the wheel, forget the Renaissance, and forget the Industrial Revolution. [Now, there‛s a pattern. In fact, if you look closely, you’ll see that there’s a pattern to the pattern, kind of a superpattern patterned on the writer’s avowed dislike of patterns — which, really, is just another pattern.] In all of human history, that change is the watershed for, by allowing people to perceive themselves as separate agents, it set the species on the path to dominance of its physical environment, and provided the tools of reason and intellect to consummate that control. Now, it’s a truism that nothing succeeds like success and with every step forward, with every piece of progress cemented into the path of human development, the pre-eminence of the left-brain increased. Justifiably so. Or so the left brain thought. Trouble was, and still is, the old right-brain consciousness did not go gently into that good night, but chose guerrilla warfare instead, parrying, thrusting, constantly undermining the fortifications of the ego, trying to put the young upstart in its place.

But, rather than respond in kind, the ego chooses trench warfare, raising its defences higher, strengthening its boundaries and razing broad sweeps of no-man’s land around its core positions — a kind of scorched earth policy that reduces the world to black and white; sane and insane; more to the point, right and left. Remember, the devil sits at the left hand of God? It’s no chance placement. Controlled as it is by the right hemisphere, the left is traditionally regarded as evil, and associated with darkness — for example, just being left-handed was enough to get a middle-ages woman burned as a witch. I’d like to point out that period has been rather unjustly termed The Dark Ages, and the period that followed is often misnomered The Age of Reason. Like the Greeks, the ego has great PR, and this subterfuge masks the reality that the great witch hunts, religious wars and Spanish Inquisition [I like how you worked that in.] {Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!} came out of the ego’s tendency to see in others what it most fears in itself, and its intolerant insistence that ‘if you’re not with me, you’re agin me’.

Although burning witches is now generally prohibited, and the devil’s largely relegated to bit parts in schlocky horror picture shows, that old prejudice remains. As venomous as ever. For instance, consider the so-called dichotomy between the political left and political right, with the left, in rightist propaganda, portrayed as the anti-thesis of the rational, efficient right. However, the left not only uses the same code words to describe itself, but believes them just as much! Scientific socialism. A more ordered society. Right thinking. The dichotomy is more apparent than real, more projection than substance. The classic case was the characterization of the Soviet Union as an ‘evil’ empire by the Reagan and Bush administrations when, in psychological reality, the trademarks of that evil — repression, fear, control, denial, righteous self-justification — are attributes of the left hemisphere, the ego, the conscious mind, which of course is the political right. The real attributes of the right, which of course is the left, are the opposite. The left is intuitive, feminine, embracing, non-denying. Seen like this, it’s clear the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the left. It was just a more malignant example of the ego’s objectified struggle for dominance; in other words, just another form of left brain government.

What’s also clear… [Clear! Left equals right equals right equals left? The only way to figure this stuff out is to go into your local fun house mirror maze and try to rub your head and pat your tummy while you watch the reflections. It still probably wouldn’t work, but at least you’d get a giggle out of it.] {Spoken like a true left-chipper.} (Ummm, may I go on please?) (Thank you.) What’s also clear is… (Damn!) {Whasamater? Lose your train of thought?} [Never mind — you can pick it up later. I mean, it’s not as though continuity’s been particularly important thus far.]

41

“self-awareness does not free us from the petty politics of human intercourse.”

Cockroach time. But then, what would you expect in a fleabag motel, the kind with its price emblazoned on a buzz creaky fluorescent sign, advertising to the passing world that at $29, single, you too can have pets? Some pets, Dark thought ruefully, watching the sink reappear white from a shlivering mass of black. It was his own fault, of course. Even if he hadn’t really had a choice — what with the ride from Kimberley into southern Alberta being one long, cold, constant drizzle that precluded camping, and this the only motel he’d seen in the last two hours — he’d still known what he was checking into, known what to expect. He should have gone pee before he went to bed, before turning out the lights and leaving the darkness to the hordes. But hadn’t thought of it. Didn’t think of it either when he felt the call pull him out of sleep. Stumbling from the bed, then snapping on the toilet light had started the stampede, startling Dark for a moment, but then it was over. Leaving just one black speck. Yiminy Cockroach. Poking its antennae out the drain hole then, with a doff of its tophat, climbing out to sit cross-legged on the edge of the sink. For a chat. What else?

Where was the Raid when you needed it?

“now you know that wouldn’t work. i mean, you don’t really think i’m a cockroach, do you?”

"Well, zippity pee pee, now that you mention it…,” Dark started to reply but his mouth wasn’t working. So he let it go, moving past the sink to the toilet — just a matter of two steps in this tiny room — flipping the seat up and thereby breaking the sanitary seal. There for his protection of course. Funny how it was only the worst motels had them. Whhewwwwuh. It felt good. Dark lost himself looking up at the mildew on the wall above the toilet, thinking a bird in the hand really is worth two in the bush.

“but, then again, you still don’t think you’re real, do you? so what’s that then? the immaculate ejection?”

So much for sleep, Dark thought and looked down and over to the sink. The roach had turned towards him, hoiked his near leg up onto the edge of the basin, and was now sitting with his hands resting on a cane. Dapper little fella. “Nice carapace,” Dark tried to say, but his sleep thickened throat made it come out more like a slurry “ice carrot ace”. Still, the roach seemed to understand, and made a show of preening, removing its hat and dusting it with his hands.

“what? this old thing? why thank you. but really it’s just something i threw… ”

Roach stopped its preening, and looked up at Dark with a sly smile.

“heh. heh. thought you had me, didn’t you? a little flattery, a little change of subject. dark, dark, dark, when are you going to learn? i know you too well.”

Giving up on speech, Dark just grunted, flushed and went out into the room, flicking the light off on his way past the roach. Stubbed his toe on the foot of the bed in the sudden darkness. He went to the window — hardly a matter of eleven limps — and pulled the curtain aside to look out on the dirt/muddy main street of Manyfaeries. Still raining. Still cold. A lone horse picked its way through the puddles, got into a pickup truck and drove away. Dark watched its taillights disappear. Some First of July, he thought, letting the curtain fall shut. Some grasslands vista. He turned to go back to bed, only to find Old Whitey primly sitting on its edge, still using the cane to support his hands. His tone at least was friendly. And patient. Like an adult talking to a child.

“you know, this is like going to school. you go to kindergarten, grade one, grade two, three, four, five, etc, etc, but if you don’t listen, if you miss something way back when, then that kind of hangs around on you, limits your progress. now this whole, you create your own reality thing — are you taking notes? you should be — you think you’ve got it. but you don’t because you’re desperately hanging on to your idea that you’re a figment of some writer’s fetid imagination. don’t you see that what you’re doing is creating your own unreality? you, my friend, are creating the writer.”

"Sure, whatever you say.” Dark dragged himself over to the room’s only chair — a pad worn behemoth so ugly even Potter would have hesitated to try restoring it — and sat down with a sigh. Yeeooww! He jerked back up.

“see what i mean? how real do you want to be?”

"Really real. That’s what I want.” Dark shot back, finally awake. He ran his hand over the cushion, trying to find the spring that had bit his bum. Nothing poked through.

“you looking for this?”

Dark turned back to find The Minstrel smirking. Instead of the cane, his hands were now resting on a car size coil spring. Brand new, judging by its gleam. Minstrel collapsed it and slipped it into his pocket, stood and started walking around the bed, punctuating his questions with dramatic pauses like Johnnie Cochrane on his summation. [Old Whitey? Johnnie Cochrane? Would that be a double negative?] {If it doesn’t fit, it must be a dead epileptic.} Awfully spry for his apparent age, Dark thought to himself.

“i repeat. how real d’yu want to be? d’yu not pee? d’yu not fart? if i cut you, d’yu not bleed? d’yu not feel cold?”

Was this Perry Mason? Matlock? Dark knew there was a deeper parody here but nothing in his memory seemed to fit. The word porsche had an insistent niggle but that was a car. And that made no sense at all. {As though any of this makes sense?} In any case, he lost the thought in a sudden wide angle of Minstrel’s face, mouth and nose grotesquely distorted by the lens, millimetres from his own face. The face moved back and away, like a door swinging open, to show that they were now in a courtroom, Dark in the docket. He looked over and up to the Judge. The face was familiar, even under the white powdered wig. Then over to the Jury. Their faces were familiar too. More than familiar, they were the same. The exact same. Dark looked back at the Judge. The same. The Court Reporter too. The Bailiff. Counsel for the Defence. Clone city. But who did that face belong to? Not The Minstrel. His face was back in Dark’s face. Screaming.

“i said, answer the question! what’s that you’re holding in your hand?”

Dark looked down. And blanched. Shit, he’d done it again. Been caught glad-handed. He quailed, cowering back into his seat. Minstrel pressed.

“answer the question! now!”

"My penis,”Dark managed to stammer. A look of triumph came over Minstrel and he turned away from the docket, addressing Dark but speaking to the jury.

“ah! your penis! you admit you have a penis. but isn’t that part of the dirty nitty gritty of reality?”

Minstrel, swung back, eyes lit for the kill, hammering his questions to the finale.

“do fictional characters pee? did archie really flush or was that just a sound effect? is Schtuckerman’s shit indestructible?

“are you or are you not real?”

From the same pocket he’d shoved the coil spring into, Minstrel whipped out a mirror and shot it into Dark’s face with a snap of his elbow. The movement was so sudden and so forceful all Dark’s eyes could register at first was the general shape. It was one he recognized. It was the mirror from tHe PoEt. The broken one.

“who is this? look at it! who? who!”

There was a face in the mirror. Dark studied it detachedly, like he was looking at a mug shot. Male. Caucasian. Blue eyes. Metal frame glasses, fairly thick. Crew cut brown hair. Beard — kind of straggly, flecks of red in brown sideburned with white. Thin but adequate lips. Slightly oversize nose. Small white scar bisecting the brow. A solid, substantial face, Dark thought, one he rather liked. Good looking but for the tension and anger that marred it with lines. Then he realized whose mug it was at the same time as he heard the Judge’s boom. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury. How do you find the defendant?”

There was a scrape of chair as the lead juror stood. Dark swung his eyes to face him. Found himself facing himself. The juror — all the jurors — had his face. The lead juror nervously cleared his throat. “We find the defendant real, as described, Your Honour.” “Dark Rider,” the Judge’s voice again commanded attention. “You have been found real. Do you have anything to say before I pass sentence.”

But Dark had nothing to say. It would have been like talking to himself.

The Judge rapped his gavel on the bench. “Then, with the power invested in me by the state of altered consciousness, I sentence you to answering these three questions. What is the story? Who is the writer? And Why? This Court is now dismissed.” {My god, he’s actually picked up on that theme. And I thought it was just a red herring.} [The writer works in strange and wondrous ways.] {Malicious ways too. Don’t you just love how he sucked you in on that whole non-description rigamarole?} [It’s on the agenda for our next communication.]

The gavel rapped, the courtroom disappeared and Dark was back in the motel room, looking at the Minstrel still sitting on the bed. There was a smile of satisfaction on his face, a smile that seemed to deepen as he leaned back against the decrepit headboard and crossed his arms.

"so maybe now we can get on with the teachings. please pay attention and take notes — here, use your computer.”

Minstrel waved his hand towards the saddlebag that held the computer, which opened and the computer flew out to deposit itself on Dark’s lap, already booted and with a title at the top of the screen.

"The Teachings of The Minstrel

“now, i was saying that self-awareness does not free us from the petty politics of human intercourse, but i think we better start back at the beginning, just to be sure you’ve got it right.”

Dark groaned, wishing he’d bought some beer at the bar next door. It was going to be a long night. Well, he thought, as long as he had the computer, he could always have the last word. He couldn’t help the little grin as he started to type.

The Teachings of The Minstrel

A Yechhy Way of Knowledge

In the beginning was the name. It came out of the darkness, removing the memories of what had been before the darkness. And the name was repeated. And repeated. Over and over. The name. The name. The name. And the name came to be real. The name replaced the darkness, and what had been before.

And with the name came ideas. Thoughts. Ideas of self. Ideas of not-self. Thoughts of good and bad. Notions of hate. Notions of love. And with the ideas came judgements. Good became good, and bad became bad. Love was accepted. Hate rejected. Self was right. Self was wrong. And out of the judgements there grew values, beliefs, attitudes. Honesty was good. The honest would inherit the world. Liars should be taken out and shot. A whole framework of ideas that created the world the name lived in. And the name was the self. And the self was the name.

But it was all a lie. It was illusion.

The Self — the deeper Self — was in the darkness, back where the name had displaced it. Almost irretrievably lost in the baggage of thoughts and ideas, judgements and beliefs. Perpetually knock knock knocking at the door to be recognized, to be admitted. But the name never heard for, to the name, there was no door, there was no deeper self than itself.

The name grew, changed its ideas, modified its world. Learnt anger and fear. Learnt sadness and joy. Was angered by anger. Hated its hate. Embraced its joy and rejected the sad. But found joy slipped through its grip while the sadness grew solid. Found self-hate easier than self-love. And the anger escalated. And the fear compounded. And its nights were a misery of knock knock knocking itself. Poor little name, afraid to answer the door it couldn’t even admit was there.

And the name cursed at its gods, cursed at its fate. Cursed itself. But did nothing. For it would not accept responsibility. Would not accept that its experience was of its own creation. Of its own choosing.

Would not accept that it was the writer of its own story.

And that is the first dictatum of self-awareness.

Accept your reality.

42

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

"Gentlemen & Ladies!!!” The M.C.’s voice rang through the stage curtain. “The JackRabbit Club is proud to present, for the first time anywhere…”

God, she was nervous. Sure, she’d rehearsed, spent weeks perfecting the routine, honing it with promptu and impromptu performances at home and at work, forcing it on Dickie and Becky. Even Edie. Once — but Edie had told Dickie, and Dickie had told Abby to keep their daughter out of it. And, sure, she’d taken the time to perfect her costume, working out the makeup, even put on weight for the role. But it wasn’t enough. She was sure of that, certain she was going to bomb, be booed off the stage.

“…the incomparably scintillating…”

Deep breathe — god, her chest felt constricted — come on girl, you can do it. Another deep breathe, practise the mantra — relaxing relaxing relaxing. Ready. Here goes.

“…Schtudmeister himself! Ladies and gentlemen! — Betcher David!!!”

Betcher David. Betcher David. Betcher David. The name echoed away into a scattering of polite applause. The curtain felt heavy, could she pull it aside? Managed. Walk into the spot light. Throw the first line.

You know, I was talking to the missus last night,
well actually, she was talking to me, I mean in between
you know and falling off to sleep, and she said something.

She said behind every successful woman, there’s a good man.

Well, I thought about that, I mean she was asleep so there
wasn’t really much else to do, and I figured out she had it wrong.

It’s not that there’s a man behind, but there’s a man
inside every woman.

I mean, why do you think they’re called feemales?

Silence. Not even a snicker. Abby shaded her eyes from the spotlight, trying to judge her audience. But all she could see were backlit shapes, waiting, expectant. Was that Becky near the front? Couldn’t make out the face. Try the next line.

Whasamatter? Yeah, you with the twin derringers.
You wantta put them away? They’re making me nervous.

Last time a woman looked at me like that
I ended up married,
with children.

Silence. Not even a snigger. God, she thought, this is so different from working to camera. Screw up there and you don’t read about it for months. Screw up here though…

Anyways, now you think about being that man.

I mean what’s it like? Here you are inside some cigar chomping,
oestrogen-laced power maniac and all you want to do is
get out the frillies and settle back into a nice evening
of flipping through the family photographs, you know,

a little wine,
a little indulgence in memories,
a few caresses and maybe, just maybe, you’ll…

well, you know.

Nothing. Maybe Dickie was right. He’d said it would never work, that there was no market for male impersonators.

You do know, don’t you?

Damn. I told my agent not to book me into any more
girl scout conventions.

And I thought it was just a case of clit envy.

So anyways, you’re imagining you’re that man.

Do you get your needs acknowledged?
Nooo.

I mean do you get treated to flowers?
Nooo.

Do you get little presents that say ‘hey babe, I love you’?
Nooo.

You don’t. You get ignored.
You get treated just like a husband.

A giggle!

God, was that a laugh I heard?
Quick, somebody call a doctor.
I think one of these stiffs is alive.

Four giggles! And a guffaw! For a line that wasn’t even hers — not that any of them really were. Maybe he wasn’t right, maybe Dickie’s reaction was less than impartial. He did seem threatened by it, by the routine, by the cross-dressing for the part. What was it he said? If you play the man, what role do I have?

So I asks myself, lying there thinking
while the missus snores beside me,
‘So which came first, the husband or the inner guy?’

And I get the answer.
Right in between a ugghuh and a aggggghhh from the missus.

It was the egg came first.

Three, four, ten tables were laughing. This was better than working to camera. There if you succeed you don’t read about it for months. Here though…

Hey. Come on. Stop it.
What do you think this is — a comedy routine?
This is a serious discussion on male/feemale differences.

Now look, I know it’s illogical but
that’s just the way the male mind works.
You input A and B and you don’t get C, you get 333.

Well, OK, sometimes you get testosterone.

Thank God for Becky. She’d supported Abby all the way, hadn’t laughed or made rude comments, hadn’t dismissed the voice on the beach.

Now, I want you to think about that.
The egg came first.

And doesn’t that tell us a lot about the
so-called war between the sexes?

Had even helped, fed her lines, suggested the chicily demure outfit she was wearing — a femalish suit with ruffed shirt and pink rose stuck into the lapel. Said don’t wear pumps — women get uncomfortable around a man who’s taller than them.

Not that it’s much of a war.
Isn’t it kind of like Iraq going up against the States —
you know, surplus scuzz bombs
against computer-guided, laser assisted, bombastic genius,
green kids against green berets?

Jock straps against falsies?

And it was Becky who’d said she knew the Jackrabbit’s manager and would try to line up a gig. Becky who’d made tonight possible.

The egg came first.

Now I know there’s a lot of women say
it’s not their fault feemales come at the drop of a zipper
but males can’t get no satisfaction
without pumping for an hour.

That’s just evolution they say —
women are so fertile the brakes had to be put on somewhere
and, if the shoe fits, men should wear it.

And Becky who’d encouraged her to follow her instincts and develop the routine around male/female differences, around the dissatisfaction she’d found herself facing on the beach. And whatever did happen to Jhikl? He’d just disappeared from the face of the Earth, gone, like his function was finished and he’d been written out of the script.

I mean who needs condoms?
No spurt. No hurt.

She’d seen it happen to better characters.

And you wonder why men don’t like Mutha Nature.

Maybe Dickie would be written out too. Hell. Maybe Abby herself would get to meet the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky. The one that spoke on the beach. The one that fed her the lines.

So tell me.
Is that a ten litre bra?
Or ya just enjoying the show?

The one that had turned her world upside down, inside out, and back to front.

43

Just A Coupl’a Gob

"Watch your step.”

That was Runt. Now there was a GoB with a talent for stating the ludicrous. Watch your step! How could you? It was blacker than a lab’s belly out here, the sun still a few hours away from its path through the day. Not that we were likely to see it, not that we wanted to. We’d been lucky. We’d only had to wait three days for the right weather and tide combination — overcast with heavy morning fog, the tide waning to low at 5:00 am. With any luck, no one would see us. And that was fine with me. Protecting sources is one thing — The Bi’s lawyers loved justifying their paycheques with the public’s right to know — but reporters getting involved in criminal activities was something different. Especially if they were undercover. And harvesting dulse was illegal.

But, as they say, a reporter’s gotta do what a reporter’s gotta do.

Even if he does have an irrational fear of beaches.

I digress, but it’s important to a full understanding of subsequent events. You see, the thing about beaches is that they’re always located beside water. Not exactly an earth shaking revelation, I’ll admit, but for me it is bowel shaking, the residue of almost drowning once. That was back in high school. It was spring and I was fooling around on the local river with a chum. We were in a canoe, fancying ourselves whitewater champs, playing chicken with the curtain of water spilling over a dam — one of those old ones where they drop in square logs to change the water level. We’d figured out that if we shot in real close to the curtain we could get far enough into the main current’s central plume for an exciting buck ride down and through its standing waves. Did that three times. Each time closer. The fourth time, natch, I mean that’s the point of this little anecdote, we got too close and the side of the canoe got under the curtain. Over we went.

I wasn’t scared. We were still to the side of the main current and the shore wasn’t that far away. I looked for my chum, saw he was alright, then turned to look for the canoe. And was pulled under.

It was just like a giant pair of hands had reached up from the bottom of the river, grabbed each of my feet and yanked. Down. The surface disappeared and I was pushed and pummelled by currents I couldn’t see. It’s strange, but when you’re in that sort of situation, you either panic or a kind of detached mental calm takes over. For me, it was the latter and kchick kchick kchick I knew I’d been grabbed by an undertow that probably wouldn’t throw me up for a hundred yards or so. And I’d be dead. Just that. Just dead. No panic, no fear. Just a very calm acceptance that this was it. And no, my life didn’t flash before my eyes.

It wouldn’t have had time. As abruptly as I’d been pulled under, I was shot back up to the surface to find myself off to the side of the river, but caught in a whirlpool that was dragging me back and around into the curtain.

That was when I panicked.

I just knew, absolutely knew, that if I went back into the main current, I would drown. So I started to fight for my life. Fortunately, while the whirlpool current was strong, the water was only five or four feet deep and I was able to find footholds in the bottom rocks to brace myself, feet behind, body angled forward against the surgings of the current, while I slowly worked my way out. It must have taken a good five minutes, with each sideways step a terror-filled moment of giving up the security of a solid foothold for a stone that might not be there.

It took about fifteen minutes for the adrenaline to work its way out of my system, but the panic never really left. I still find my heart pumping wildly anytime I look at whitewater, even on television. And just being near a body of water makes me tense up inside, like I’m a firing squad’s guest of honour waiting for the bullet. For that matter, I can’t do the laundry because I get as agitated as the water. (Well, that’s what I tell my wife.) I deal with it by not dealing with it, by avoiding. I haven’t been to a beach in decades and, when I can’t avoid bridges over rivers, I close my eyes and think about my editor — that usually grounds me in a hurry. My shrink says I have a phobia and tells me I have to confront it. Otherwise, he says, the phobia will grow and I’ll start avoiding more and more situations, finally ending up locked in my house, afraid to even answer the phone. Angorraphobia I think he called it. {Fear of fuzzy sweaters?}

I just call it survival.

But, like I said they say, a reporter’s gotta do what a reporter’s gotta do. If the story demands the reporter go to the beach, then he has to go — even if it’s dark, and fog-bound, and not really a beach but a mud-encrusted, boulder rocky flat stretching hundreds of feet into the Bay of Fundy’s maelstrom tides; one that makes you feel like you’re an Egyptian and any second now those Jewish slaves are getting out on the other side. And you’re psychic.

Yes, if the story demands, then the reporter has to go. But he doesn’t have to like it.

And he’s allowed to swear at the editor who sent him out here to the back of nowhere — what was it they called this beach? Heaven’s Gate? Like it’s not emblazoned on my mind! — knowing full well you have this little problem with water.

Bastard even said he wanted underwater photos.

Of me.

44

No. It was Twixtland. Twixtland. Twixtland. These prairie towns had such interesting names. What was it Bach had told him? Some settler getting off the train — bags in hands, eyes bleary with lack of sleep because all he could afford was a bench seat — had looked straight up into the deepest, darkest blue of southern Manitoba’s looming, booming sky, then cast his eyes to find the horizon; felt himself pulled outwards into infinity, past the train station and single hovel of a town that was not yet a town, turned to his companion, the one he’d shared the bench seat with, and remarked he felt like he was caught ‘twixt heaven and earth’. And the name had stuck. Twixtland. Twixtland. Twixtland.

Journey to Twixtland. In The Rain. Now that, thought Dark, would be a good name for a book — one he could write about his own experience, caught twixt heaven and Earth in the wettest summer on record. If he had the time. The past few days, between visiting, riding and coping with The Minstrel et al, there just never seemed to be any time for his own writing — and so Notes remained more figment than data, more Bim than Rider. And everytime he did manage to pull out the computer, he’d make the mistake of reading the next miraculous instalment of A Coupl’a Gob, or rather aimlessly paging through The Teachings, trying to understand this self-awareness business. There was a part of him, even if it was all bound up in anger, could grudgingly accept that some of it did make sense. But he kept hanging up on the question, Why would he do this to himself? Why was he out here pummelling into endless rain? Why would he create The Minstrel and tHe PoEt to hound his days and nights? He found no answers, and made no progress at all on his own book — despite his almost constant internal dialogue of affirmations. ‘I am going to write my book. I am going to write my book. I am going to write my book.’

"well, that’s the trouble you know. you expect affirmations to work like little miracles, but they’re not miracles at all. they’re really just ways to help you focus your energies and your thoughts towards a goal. you’re still responsible for making them come about.”

Dark had been so deeply into his thoughts, it took a moment to pull himself back to the bike, the unending rain and tHe PoEt. The interruption was irritating. “So what you’re saying is they’re not worth a farthing.”

“au contraire, mon frere. they’re definitely worth a farthing — or a pfennig, or a yen. but you have to be realistic. if you think repeating over and over that you love yourself when you don’t is going to magically end your self-hate, then you’re going to be disappointed. all you’re doing is wallpapering over the problem. it’s still there, you still hate yourself.”

Great, thought Dark. Professor Shrink was in session. “No, I don’t.”

"sure you do. you incarnates all grow up to hate yourselves — that’s the inevitable result of all the negative messages you get as a child. ‘darkie, do this. darkie, do that. you’re so stupid, darkie’. if anything, affirmations like ‘i love myself’ just increase the internal tension because you’re trying to bury an aspect of yourself when it doesn’t want to be buried. it may be negative from your point of view but, to itself, your self-hate has just as much right to exist as you do. so affirmations can create internal conflicts, not resolve them.”

"You sound like you’re reading from your manual again. Isn’t that the one your supervisor gave you when he let you read my case report?”

There was silence for a moment — the strained kind that happens between friends when one oversteps the mark. Dark knew he’d hit tHe PoEt with a stinging barb but, right at that moment, he didn’t care. His frustrations had come boiling up with the interruption, and to be told he hated himself — when what he hated was the writer — had ticked him off. {Talk about dogs coming to look like their owners — this guy’s as thick as his writer.} He looked out to the rain-softened horizon of rolling hills and grass, wondering who could think these prairies were flat. Except for a few relatively small patches — where they’d built the cities of Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg to make it easier for developers — the parklands and grasslands of western Canada were a restless, but frozen sea, held in place by vaulting skies. A natural cathedral, a gratifyingly wondrous and varied terrain. Riding through it, even in the endless rain, Dark could understand that settler’s remark. Finally, with a dramatically audible sigh, tHe PoEt responded.

"for one thing, no matter what he says, he’s not my supervisor. i told you before, he’s a classmate. what i didn’t tell you — for your own good — is that you’re a joint project, kind of like a thesis. you see, he and i only have conditional licenses to channel — and the conditions won’t be removed until we’ve successfully completed our first case, and reported on it to the Controllers. for another thing…”

"Well, now. Isn’t that nice. The two of you up there in la la land decide you’re going to put me under a microscope and screw with my brain, all in the name of science, of course. What the fuck gives you the right?”

"you did. you agreed to it all. you just don’t remember.”

"Piss off. I never agreed to nothing.”

"double negative.”

"What?”

"double negative. you used a double negative. like ‘i’m not no virgin.’”

Great. Now it was Professor Pedantic. “Big fucking deal.”

"look, let’s not get hung up on grammar…”

"You started it.”

"yeah, i did. but let’s drop it and concentrate on the consequential — which is that you did agree to all of this. you created this whole experience. you chose every detail before you were born, before you were even a lustful look in your daddy’s eye…”

Dark interjected, “I wasn’t born. I was created. And I don’t have a father. Or a mother for that matter,” but tHe PoEt ignored the interruption, except to start underlining his key words. {Quite a trick for a bike. Can we see it?} [Your wish is my editorial prerogative.]

"you chose this experience. you chose to think you’re fictional. you chose to be our thesis.”

tHe PoEt’s sudden forcefulness — he could feel the emphasis on each of the key words — rattled Dark. This was more like The Minstrel’s verbal bludgeoning and, for the first time, Dark wondered if Minstrel and PoEt weren’t really one and the same. After all — cockroach, seagull, Whirl Eyes, Olde Farte — why not a bike? But then, why the deception?

"because you need to go through this experience in order to remember who you are. and why you are.

"So you admit you’re The Minstrel?”

"no — i didn’t say that, and no — i’m not. i’ve told you before i’m a warrior spirit and The Minstrel’s a classmate. what i am saying is that you chose to be so blinkered, so blind to your reality that you need a good swift kick up the tail pipe to awaken. and that’s us — tail pipe kickers extraordinaire.

"of course, of the two of us, I’m the more extraordinaire.”

Dark snorted, fed up with this self-satisfied prick. “Au contraire — with all due respect, mon frere — you’re all too ordinaire. But what I can’t figure is, if I chose all this, then why did I choose a couple of neophytes like the cockeyed pair of you clowns? Why didn’t I choose one of your Controllers? Or a blonde? Or a Harley for that matter?” He finished with a half-muttered, “At least that would have had some class.”

"well fuck you too, poncho.”

Dark’s mouth dropped, the transition was so sudden and the anger so intense. In not even a blink, {So, would that be a blank?} [Closer to a blonk actually.] Pompous Piloted had been elbowed out of the way with a vicious Nnyahnyah Nnya Nyha Nnnynahue. ‛Well, welcome back Kid!,’ Dark thought. He’d almost forgotten the professor’s alter juvenile. Not surprising. After all, how long had it been since the kid popped in and out of nowhere — just one more inexplicable inexplicably left unjustified — for as unskilled a piece of character development as he’d ever seen? Amateur stuff. Not worth a pinch of coon shit. [Ditto my earlier discussion on political correctness.] (Raccoons. The expression refers to raccoons.) {So now he wants trouble with animal libbers?} [So it appears. Aren’t you glad our real names aren’t on this?] But that was okay, cause it gave Dark an opening you could drive cattle through. In a flash of insight, he knew he had tHe PoEt — kid or prof, it didn’t matter — and, by extension, the writer corralled. Knew he had discovered the central flaw in the whole line of reasoning he’d been struggling to work out. He couldn’t help himself. He fairly chortled it out. “Then tell me this. Why did you choose it? Why did you choose to be a Goldwing rather than a Harley?”

There was no immediate reply — no doubt every chink in the trap was being tested. Then, as though he was feeling his way in the dark, tHe PoEt began. It was the prof, back in control.

"well. it’s a long story, but, do you remember that book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?…”

45

ruminations continued

What’s also clear is that the fundamental problem is the insecurity gnawing at the roots of the ego’s self-importance — its awareness that it is not only not all there is but is, if anything, just a small part of a much larger whole. But that just feeds the delusion. In order to create, then consolidate its position as king shit, the ego has to deny the validity of all else. Vehemently. It cannot accept the existence of the unconscious and the existence of the many realities that each human incorporates. To the ego there can be only one reality. It’s own. So all else must not only be unreal, but dangerous.

But the truth is exactly the reverse. What’s really dangerous is the pretence and sheer negativity of the ego when confronted with a challenge to its supremacy. Threatened, the ego is not a friendly guy and — bearing in mind the ego creates its own reality, attracting the circumstances that justify its perilous claim to power — the nature of the beast is that it’s almost always menaced. One way or another. You can get an idea of the inner struggle, the endless jockeying for survival involved by looking at it’s physicalization in the endless wars and deadly chores of nationalism’s various forms. Their deadly toll. Egos swamped by their own inner conflicts use jingoistic chauvinism to bolster their psychic self-defence — waving the flag emblazoned with their externalized identity, their righteous self-justification that “I’m ‘American’, ‘black’, ‘Islamic’ so I’m okay. Because ‘Unca Sam wants me’, ‘black is beautiful’, ‘Allah is good’.” These ‘nations’ of the like minded may or may not correspond with political boundaries but they all derive their power from the ego’s objectified struggle to keep its ‘other’ personalities suppressed. So nationalism doesn’t allow for subset races, minorities, other beliefs to exist as equals in the confederation. They have to be denigrated and oppressed to safeguard the position of the impostor right. Which of course is the left. (But I know you’ve got all that straight.) [Right to front as it were.]

It’s a sobering thought — when you consider the millions and millions of lives killed, wasted and ruined in the name of these nations — that, individually, we’re each of us astride that same volcano. Struggling — hard — to avert disaster.

Of course, nationalism is not restricted to the political, racial and religious spheres, nor are its consequences always so catastrophic. For example, did you hear the one about the HOGger who got lost in a blizzard? They found him by following his oil slick. Now, as far as this type of bad taste target the out group joke goes, that’s more of a polite groaner than anything else — even if it’s true. But tell it to a HOGger and you’re likely to meet an icy silence, if not a kick in the groin. HOGism takes itself as seriously as any other nationalism, perhaps even more so because riding a HOG is, allegedly, something you choose, not something you’re born to. (Even if you were born to be wild, how you express that, again allegedly, is a matter of choice. Hell, there are some express it in accounting.) So you have a lot more to defend, a greater investment by the ego in justifying its choice. So HOGgers are compelled to ignore all but others of their breed. So the technological and creative dominance of Japanese bikes becomes a threat to the self-image of the HOG nation, to be countered with tee-shirts, big belt buckles and yearly pilgrimages to the birth place of their Maker.

Look around one of these hogarees and another truism jumps out. No nation is an ism unto itself and, with the Hog, there is an interesting blending of brand and country. Flags everywhere. On fenders. On dirty jeans. On biceps flexing to take down anyone who dares challenge their fervour. In their homage to Harley and Davidson, HOGgers also deify their bikes’ yankee roots, harking nostalgically to a time when America ruled the world. That it doesn’t anymore — that America’s national will has been subverted to global markets, the debacle of Vietnam and the loss of its technological superiority — strikes directly at the HOGger’s self-esteem, feeding the insecurity that drives the ego to refuge in external identifications. My country: love it or leave it. My bike: worship it or die. The more threatened the ego, the more important its crutches.

This is not to imply that HOGgers are, by definition, immature egos. That would be tantamount to libel, and far from the truth. There are bikers who simply ride Harleys, whose self-images are not intertwined with their machines. And there are those who ride Goldwings, or Ninjas, or scooters whose egos are every bit as tied to their bike as the most fervent of HOGgers. And there are those whose identification of choice is a Mustang or Porsche or huge house in the country. Or a label on their suit. Or a particular brand of scotch. The dynamics are the same. In fact, it’s doubtful that our market economy could exist without the driving force of ego identifications and insecurities. Seen like this, the consumptive twins of marketing and advertising serve two purposes — yes, to foster brand awareness and loyalty, but also to reinforce the ego’s insecurities, and thus perpetuate the system. In the end there is only product and the temporary salve it delivers to the embattled ego.

And doesn’t that put a different light on the triumph of the right over the so-called left? Communism’s failure was not one of ideology. It just didn’t deliver the goods.

(Of course the mature ego, no longer striving to be king shit but existing as a necessary aspect of the overall person, does not need nationalism as its proxy defence. Nor endless consumption. If human society ever comes to the point of being mostly populated by mature egos, nationalism as the divisive force it is today will lose its punch. So too the market economy.)

Now all this would be of interest only to political scientists, and the type of people who read Hansard for inspiration [The Proceedings of Congress if you’re American.], except for the light it casts on the Big I. Perhaps insanity is not insanity, but a sane response to the cleavage of the ego from its roots in the unconscious, an attempt to bridge the devastation of no man’s land and bring about a truce, an integration of the left and right. But one that’s gone wrong, got caught in the crossfire, forever locked into a cartoon arcade rifle game. Turning to the right. Bing! Turning to the left. Bam! To the centre. Wham! Bang! {Thanks man.}

And that throws an interesting light on the activities of what could be termed the professionally insane — the writers, artisans and channelers who venture the dark wastelands hunting for trophies, for the promise implicit in the siren songs of the mistress. Music, poetry, sculpture — ironically even scientific inspiration — the greatest works of a society built on reason come from its nemesis, from its deserters bringing the trojan horse into the very centre of the castle. Not out of malice, mind you, but as an attempt at healing the psychic chasm on a social as well as individual level. But it’s a difficult feat, as unwelcome from the collective ego’s point of view as from the individual’s, and insanity — that twirling turkey target tableau — is always just around the corner. It’s the same old Catch 69. Open the door and stand in danger. But slam it shut and fasten the bolts and you cut yourself off from the mistress.

Hell. Maybe this was a preface after all. So call me ol’predictable. Just spell it right. I mean left. I think. {There 4 u b?}

46

He remembered it well.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book Dark had heard of years before, and often seen on bookstore shelves; one of those titles any thorough review of new age literature was bound to encounter. But his hand had always passed over it, following some inner nudge to read the book next to it, or up a shelf, or in some other store altogether. With hindsight, Dark thought it was probably some dim awareness of the future that had stayed his hand. A subconscious waiting for the most propitious time to read it, when the inner quiet of zen and the outer freedom of a bike would beckon.

The time had come and so, finally, had the nudges. When he’d first broached the idea of this trip, all his friends, even the X, said Dark just had to read it, with the kind of nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean? (know what I mean?) expression [Interesting rhythmic structure. Did you ever think about music?] {He doesn’t like to talk about it, but that’s what he really means by heart.} [Maybe we should call it the heart of darkness.] {Nah. It’s been done. And we don’t want to invite comparisons.} [Or scrutiny for that matter by any august, spry and courtly body charged with protecting the common weal of language.] {Foreshadowed conclusion.} (Grrr.) that suggested he really ought to read it. (Know what I mean?)

So he did, just after he’d bought the Wing, propitiously finding a copy on the third shelf, third from the end of the third bookcase outside the door, just exactly where the previously enjoyed book shop’s wizened proprietor had said it would be. It was an interesting book, but not at all what the nudges had led him to expect — which was either a drug-laced, hyperbolic paean to the ‘60s, a kind of Electric Mind-Aid Tangerine Machine, or one of those pithy hessian epics. Instead?

Ratchet Lobotomy 101.

While Dark admired the precision of philosophy, and the sheer gumption of its multi-levelled story, what he’d really loved was the concept of a chautauqua, the whole idea of a directed line of reasoning supported and furthered by a fictional motorcycle trip. It fascinated Dark how the story and philosophical argument interwove and, thinking about his own book — now stalled to the point of give-it-away frustration — he thought he’d like to respond with a chautauqua of his own, then see who else would join the conversation. Better still, inspiration flashed across his mind — and he hoped tHe PoEt wasn’t listening because who knew what he might try to do with this idea? Or god help us The Minstrel! — but what a concept! Two or three writers working together but apart, say doing it all by computer. Just starting out with an idea, and seeing where that might lead them. Make it a game, an interchange of ideas, with structured rules of course, a writtiquette you all respect. And make it anonymous, you don’t want to know these guys. You want the interchange to have that feeling of alien contact and what better way than to limit all contact to modem. So give yourselves names, more symbolic than personal, and that’s all you know each other by. Just names that ring eerily right. You might call it The Computer and I.

And that, thought Dark, was one hell of an idea. A brilliant concept if he’d ever had one and he’d had one or two, he reckoned. He just knew it would work, and that it would be a fascinating, hell, absorbing experience. One he’d go for in a moment if he just didn’t have this nagging little uncertainty about it all. You see, the thing was, he was pretty sure the precondition to the whole string of memory and inspiration had never happened.

He had never yet read the book.

But that suggested that his memories weren’t real — even the ones that didn’t feel like they’d been shoved down his throat. Their numbers had been growing ever since he’d seen his face in that courtroom; little flashes of a past he seemed to have forgotten — moments with his children, arguments with the X, friends and projects from a career he’d thrown away. The memories had fostered a sense of solidity, a nascent feeling of reality he had treasured. And hope. Hope that The Minstrel was right. That he was already real, that his search for heart ‘out there’ was misguided. Now? Dark mourned the loss of that hope, thinking once again he’d been fooled into playing along, fooled into believing his own thoughts. For a while at least. But if you couldn’t believe them what could you believe? Where was the edge of sanity in this ever shifting world? [I have to admit I’m beginning to like this Dark character, I mean he’s thick as a brick, but you still gotta admire his resilience.] {Kind of like some dogs are so ugly they’re cute? I had one of them once. His name was…} [No. I mean as in admirable. She was an admirable character.] {Stop showing off.} [What?] {With the italics. You know I can’t do them.} [This time around.]

He worried about that edge a lot, wondered how you would know you approached it. Were there signs? This way lies insanity? Or surgeon general’s warnings? The sg has determined that stepping over this line can be detrimental to your health. But what if he had missed the warnings? Was he already standing on the precipice, one toe poised over the edge? Apart from questioning his own memories, Dark had been trying to work out this feeling that there was too much going on but, at the same time, too little. He found it hard to express better than that, though no doubt tHe PoEt could do better. Too much and too little. His life had become a series of vignettes and, in between… he wasn’t sure. Take his whole ride across the grasslands. He knew he’d ridden it but there were blanks when he tried to think of the road; when he looked at the map and knew he had taken Highway 3, dipping down to the American border and then riding parallel with it across most of Saskatchewan, before angling north into Manitoba, headed for Twixtland. But how had he got to # 3 from Manyfaeries? Had he cut north to the TransCanada, then south on Sask 41, skirting grasslands so desolate the map showed no paved roads? Or had he slithered the bike across 80 kilometres [about 50 mile] of rain slickered dirt road that dwindled to track, and picked up # 3 from below? Try as he might, study the map, look at town names as much as he could, no memories stirred.

Not that it was the same experience as the space between chapters. That had been just an awful black, a nothing so profound he still shivered to think of it. One he’d thought he’d overcome back in Part One. But then the Abby dreams had started, like some kind of alternate reality he slipped into and out. And the more he slipped into it, the less he remembered. Abby’s face — the one that had scared him — was just a bare memory now, a pastiche of features that didn’t quite form a whole, not even a sex, hanging just on the edge of completeness but in that way not really there. He’d had dreams since that first one — rather, half-dreams, half memories of audiences in blackened halls, and laughter and catcalls, and, lately, twinges of a profound anger. But the dreams had left as soon as he woke, and his grasping hands couldn’t hold them.

Then too there were the even vaguer memories, well no, they weren’t memories, but a sense of otherness someway connected to the book being written on his computer. The GoB one. It was as though, momentarily, he was in that book, feeling the character’s emotions. What was his name? Mellow Yellow? The strongest — and strangest — experience had come crossing the Rafferty Dam outside Estevan.

Although he hadn’t known it consciously, it was the dam had determined his route across Saskatchewan. Some inner compulsion had pulled him to Estevan, then turned the bike north, out of his way, for the dam. It was only once there, slipping in the mud of the overlook to stand beside the artist’s deception and compare it with the finished product, that Dark thought he understood the roots of the compulsion. They were in the career he’d left, a controversy he’d covered. Rafferty had been one of two dams the provincial government had been determined to build, arguing Estevan needed flood control and the secure water supply the dam’s reservoir would provide. Environmental groups had been just as determined to stop it — almost had, winning a precedent-setting court case that forced the federal government into an environmental assessment. He’d covered the hearings, finding a cauldron of power and duplicity, rant and rage. And finding himself caught in it, part of the story. Shaking his veneer of journalistic objectivity. Part of the reason he’d thrown it all away.

He’d have to write about that one day, maybe starting his tale with the original interview, in this very same spot, looking out over a flat-bottomed valley that was “What? Three quarters of a mile wide, would you say?,” his subject polished and crafty, manipulating. “And I’ve seen it covered in water, three, six feet deep, for weeks at a time.” Hitting home with the ultimate grasslander’s fear, and the perfect clip. “And you know, we didn’t save a drop.”

Well, they’d got their dam, almost provoking a constitutional crisis — the provincial government wasn’t going to let the federal government order it around — but they still hadn’t saved a drop. Two spring runoffs and the wettest summer on record ought to have seeded the reservoir, should have started the slow inundation that would obliterate this valley from living memory. But the dam held no water. The Souris River still meandered greyly across bottom meadows pockmarked with sodden bales of hay. Riding down from the vantage point, Dark remembered the project’s critics had painted exactly this scenario, arguing the dam would never fill, that it was just a pork barrel, a way to launder public money into a government riding. The Premier’s riding. Boondoggle.

Coming around the bend that opened to a view of the entire dam, the charge reverberated in Dark’s head. Boondoggle. It certainly looked that now — for all the world the dam was no more than a raised roadway across a broad prairie valley. An incredibly expensive road, a via alpens curving gently against the flood of nothing it was holding back. Incongruously, a sign at its start advised that no swimming was allowed, that currents here were dangerous. Dark began to shake.

There was no reason for it — the road was wet but wide and paved, with rails on either side so there was no danger — but the front wheel wobbled just the same. He was seized with memories, with the pushes and pulls, the efforts to suborn him and make him choose sides, the manipulations and tricks. He’d felt close to drowning, desperately grasping for his objectivity, losing it, going down, down. Heart pounding, he realized he’d slowed to a crawl, had to put his foot down to keep the bike balanced. He was in the middle of the dam, staring straight ahead and down at the road, caught in his memories, unable to look to either side. It was only when he caught himself thinking about his editor that he caught the connection with the book. With Mellow Yellow. But it made no sense. Why would he react like one of the characters in a ghost-written book?

Then fugue had come to mind. Fugue state to be exact. If psychology can ever be said to be exact. Fugue state was the term used in cases of multiple personality to describe the experience of the persona that disappeared to, what? — slumber? hibernate? dissolve? cease?, while subpersonalities replaced it. A good word for it, Dark thought. Fugue didn’t try to define the experience but simply pointed and said ‘there it is’.

And that was a fugue of its own. Dark was no psychologist, so where had the word come from? He sometimes felt like there was an encyclopedia shelved somewhere inside his head, one so big the pages riffled like thunder when they were turned. A strange encyclopedia, with incomplete listings on common topics, but full of the most obscure references. Psychology seemed one of its strong points — the listings in that area were so thorough and detailed he could find the meaning for almost any word, or the word for any meaning. Rather, they found him; suddenly, appropriately, there when he was trying to work his way through a problem — words and meanings he instinctively knew but had no memory of ever encountering. And fugue was one of them.

Was he cracking up? was that the message?, he wondered; splitting into separate personalities that each somehow came front and centre for a bit while Dark disappeared? It seemed too fantastic a notion to entertain… except for that sense of gaps in his life, the areas of the map he couldn’t recognize, the other characters whose emotions he felt or dreamed.

But if he was cracking up, what happened during those times he was out of it, he wondered? Where was Dark when this was written? And what did it mean?

The Teachings of The Minstrel

Accept your reality.

You are the writer of your own story, even if you can’t see it, even if where your story is written seems so far away it can’t {possibly} [Really?] be you.

It is you.

You exist in layers, in depths that reach backwards and down, forward and up to the entire universe, layers upon layers of names that each struggle to survive and exist, struggle to learn and grow. But all are you. And in your totality you are the writer of your own story, from the level that suffers and endures to levels you can’t even conceive as you. You are the writer. And you are your own characters. And you are your own storyline in a universe of wonder and hope. Sadness and pain. Your own special storyline, the story of how you came to be you.

Yes, you.

Of course I mean you. Who did you think I might mean?

The other you?

The one you learned to be? The name you came to be? Ah, who cares about that? {Me!} (See what I mean?) What? You want to focus on all that stuff? [Hold on. I’m sorry but I think that’s rather unfair, writing him in like that. How’s the reader to know when it’s really him, or just one of your little games?] {Bitch.} [If you won’t abide by the rules, we’ll have to give it up.] (Look. It works. So can we get on with it?) {Not that I mean to be rude.} (You mean you have to intend it?) [Who’da thought?]

Not to be personal, but

you gotta be kidding.

This is an important book on self-awareness.

We got no time for that ego shit in here.

So let it go.

[I hate to say it, but nice one — making that look like the Goldwing symbol...] (It’s not intended.) {You mean you have to intend it? I thought they were all in the mind.} (What isn’t?) […and I applaud your decision to give them some idea of just what the hell is going on…]

And may it rest in peace.

{Yeah. This stuff is challenging. I know I’m having trouble with it.} (Like, that something’s new?) {Bitch} [but I think it’s a shame you won’t figure out a way to let them know which level is talking? I mean how do you expect them to understand all this? Most of them can’t even read the program, never mind deal with more than one reality at a time.] {Yeah. This is supposed to be fun.} [So play fair, or we’ll give it away.] [I mean it.]

Now what the hell was going on? What was this? Another immaculate encryption? Dark had no memory of typing this, no memory of an encounter with The Minstrel for another round of dictation. And editorial correction apparently. Then was it writing itself? Was there another bloody book writing itself on his computer? And how many did that make then? He’d lost count and wondered if his computer ever got any down time. Or if it needed it. And what were those voices in brackets? That had to be what they were, other voices from outside the text. But Dark couldn’t make out their relationship — they turned on each other like frenzied hyenas, alliances shifting and shorting with the speed of Doukhabours.

And that is the second dictatum of self-awareness.

Let it go.

{More like a densely woven tapestry of self-confusion.} [I like that.] {The tapestry deepens.}

Let go (your name here).

Let go of (your name).

Let (your name) go.

Be nameless.

Laugh at your weakness. Laugh at your triumphs. Laugh at your pains. It’s all a play and you are the player. You act out a game of exquisite irony, that to forget is to remember. Forget who you’ve learned you are and remember what you are. A piece of god. Part of the eternal. And to be eternal is to know the transitory nature of these experiences. The play ends but the player goes on to do it all again. Over and over to play the role and learn it to perfection. Then unlearn it. In a flashing blast of awareness or a gradual accretion, it makes no difference. You learn that you are god, part of god, a piece of god — who cares how you define it? For the truth is in that moment that is eternal, that moment you’re welcomed back, the prodigal son returned. Who cares how you experience it? See past the experience to the truth that lies behind it. No definition can approach the All. No belief encompass it, no knowledge pierce its depths. It goes on and on in the endless possibilities of an endless universe. So call it what you will. Believe of it what you wish. It makes no matter. The universe thrives on belief for that is its power, and its reason for being. To bring the eternal into the now, the here and thou of our existence, and then report back. Just for the joy, no, the hunger for experience that drives existence.

And it’s all done with mirrors — with beliefs that create their own image in ‘reality’, and eyes that only see what they believe. Value only that which agrees. Judge that which does not.

And that is the third dictatum of self-awareness.

Judge not.

"ah. i assume you know we’re getting a little low on gas here.”

Another one. Fugue. Reading the book, then suddenly on the bike. Dark looked around, squinting past the rain on his visor into the headlight punching away the darkness of yet another prairie-straight road. Darkness? He’d been riding all day. Twixtland must be close. “Where are we?”

"i’d rather assumed you knew that too. you’re the one with the map and it’s not like i’ve been through here before. most riders would take good highways, but not our friend dark, no sirrie. you’ve taken us on every dink ass road to nowhere and didn’t bother to watch the tank. you should have filled at that last town.”

Always so nice to be back, Dark thought sourly, then looked down to the glow of his instruments, saw the gas needle flat against its bottom pin. He reached down with his left hand, felt the lever of the fuel cock. The handle was pointing straight down. He was already on reserve. “How far back was that?”

"lost the plot have we?”

"Hard to lose something you never had,” Dark muttered.

"no, i mean the probability plot. it’s hard to bounce around a bunch of co-contemporaneous co-relations without losing the plot. especially for a novice like yourself. i mean you left the kettle on in one for writer’s sake.”

"A who, what, when, where?”

"very good. you got the nub of it right away. a who what when where — the why’s a given, in case you’re wondering — is a reality. change all four and the two realities are unrelated, although they may end up relating. that’s for karma to decide. but change just one or two of them and what you have is a related reality. and the two are affected by each other, events in one have implications in the other. so they are said to be co-relations.”

"More wisdom from the manual?,” Dark griped but he was only half-listening, worried how far the nearest gas might be. A concession sign swept past, then the road itself. 10th Line, Oknapa... Township, he managed to read but, for all it told him of where he was — he’d never heard of Oknapa anything — it could have been a township in the deep South. tHe PoEt just kept on talking anyways.

"then there’s the time element as well, which we’ve already discussed. there are as many co-contemporaneous realities as you can imagine — and as many levels of possible realities for each such reality again. i know it’s hard for a linear consciousness like yourself to imagine but try this. think of it like a wicker basket chock a block with ribbons, you know, the kind you use on presents. and they’re all jammed in there — here one doubled over, there the other folded and crimped, touching each other at times, other times separate. now — you with me? — each of those ribbons represents one possible reality. what you’re doing is jumping back and forth across the ribbons as they intersect and interact. and it’s just non-productive as hell.”

Dark had to shake his head; he wasn’t following at all but he was damn sure it wasn’t his fault. His voice was almost a snarl of frustration. “So what’s your point?”

"just that there’s so many possible realities — we tend to call them probabilities in formal discourse — that you could spend all of eternity visiting and never complete the round. so i suggest you concentrate on just a few of them.

"and watch out for some gas — we’re running a wing on a prayer here.”

Suddenly, floating in the darkness at the side of the road, there it was. A sign. Just tiny, but readable. Twixtland. 22 Km. Dark heaved a sigh of relief, settled back into the saddle, suddenly painfully aware of the stiffness and aches that come with a 15 hour ride. He’d be there soon. Could lie down, take it easy. Try to sort his way through the enveloping madness.

As long as he didn’t first run out of gas.

"i mean, don’t you think it’s time you figured out that mileage thing? we’re not talking rocket science.”

Or choke his nag.

"oh, and by the way — you didn’t tell them about the book.”

Which one?

47

Just a Coupl’a GoB

"Use the top of that rock for balance. Yeah. It’s right there beside you. But keep your weight centred so you don’t slip.”

That was Hulk but my question was, What rock? It was still too dark and too foggish to see anything. Or so I thought. What I didn’t know is that Hulk’s eyes were said to be better than chickenhawks by guys who Robin Hood would have happily recruited. What I did know is the big guy knew this location as well as he knew his own front yard. Better probably, because front yards are really rather wasted spaces, with generally no more purpose than to set the house back from the road and to impress the neighbours with an expanse of artfully tended green — the sort of space you clip and cut and fertilize without really coming to know so, when you try to think about it, the yard remains amorphous, a memory you can’t quite pin down. But this space, this beach, was different. More like a back yard, the place where you spend your time, and so you know every bush, every tree, every little twist in the ground that can trip you up. Every rock.

I just wished it was their backyard. It wasn’t. Hulk and the Runt’s franchise, their little piece of the Dulsia’s action as Poli described it, was about 60 miles up the coast and they knew that one like the palms of their hairy hands — where in a quarter mile of rocky headland the best dulse grew, where you were wasting your time, where the rips were. Where, if you drowned, they’d never find the body. They had to know it that well. Harvesting the weed — and after Poli explained it, ah fully, shall we say, I had to agree — was dangerous, far more dangerous than I really cared to think deeply about. Especially here. And it was easy to see how a dulser’s first line of defence was an intimate knowledge of the site. I could see that very well. Especially now. And I could see how the Dulsia would have had problems in the early years when laissez faire prevailed on the supply side. There were too many would be harvesters scrambling over too many sites. Too many harvesters who ‘took the deep walk’ on beaches they didn’t know.

Nice euphemism.

Now one thing the Dulsia’s good at is accounting, and it didn’t take them long to figure out there was no point creating demand (as in demandez beaucoup) if supply wasn’t there. It just brought in competitors. Besides, there was no accounting for nothing and the Dulsia wanted to be one lean, mean, fighting machine of a profit-oriented corporation. Just like the multinationals. So they instituted a harvester co-op and voted in the franchise system, portioning out the entire Bay of Fundy among the survivors. It was a sensible solution enforced with strict rules and a strong sense of honour. On your dulse ground, you were king. No other members could harvest there without your say so. In return, you agreed not to harvest from any other site. This beach was one of the few exceptions. But it was still by invitation only.

If you haven’t figured it out, and this is one of the points of the story, all the images I had had of a shadowy hinterland of deceit and intrigue, a world of death and power were wrong. That crock I mentioned earlier. It turned out the Dulsia operates as a kind of giant AMWAY. No, there’s no catalogue — who needs one when your product list is so small and, most often, your prices are scratched out on the back of a book of matches? — but what the Dulsia had learned from that mother of all there networked was the importance of motivation. Not just financial mind you, and not just competition, but the motivation of fun. For if there’s one thing good ol’boys like Hulk and the Runt like, it’s fun.

Think of how women act at lingerie parties {Not to be sexist.} and multiply that by about a factor of ten, throw in a mortal threat for good measure and hope for the best. That’s your basic GoB’s sense of sporting fun. They live for it, even die for it — and that’s a fact the Dulsia knows and takes advantage of; reserving half a dozen dulse grounds around the Bay for their annual Mr. Harvest competition. Half a dozen of the most productive sites you could find. The most lethal too, with names the harvesters spoke only in awe, the way skiers speak of their favourite triple black diamond runs — the kind that start with the advisory you use this run at your own risk. Yeah, as though that’s going to stop them. You might as well tell people that cigarettes kill. Or bungies are known to snap. It just goads them to fly down the run, light the next fag, make the next jump. Enter the Mr Harvest competition. Why? Just the sheer hellforit fun of engaging in what is, after all, a basically silly activity. Racing the tides for what? Prestige, a shot at the limelight? A fistful of loonies? As motivation, not one of them made any sense to me, but that’s why we were here.

For the fun of it.

Knocking at Heaven’s Gate.

Knock knock knocking at the knees, where I could feel the water knip knip knipping. {Dylan must be turning in his grave.} [Is he dead?] {So they say. He was seen with Elvis mucking out a pig farm in Pontypool.} [That’s certainly not a living.] {So they say.}

I reached out with my hand and, sure enough, found the boulder, about shoulder-height. Thank god for those eyes! Perforce, they inspired more confidence than what Hulk playfully called his ‘book larning’ — the hours he and the Runt had spent poring over maps of the site and accounts from previous competitors. These were mandatory accounts and, in theory, with each passing year, with each new volume, the odds of success grew higher — a good example of the group’s penchant for protecting the bottom line. (And the pretext for my presence. I was to write the report.) In theory. It was the half dozen or so missing volumes that disturbed me.

The water-smoothed stone was coated in a wet, cold-slimy algae that did nothing to calm my nerves. It felt like, if I put any weight on it, my hand would slip off, while my feet, well they seemed to hover on the edge of a Chevy Chase that would pitch me, face first, into the water. I’d like to say I wasn’t terrified but I was and, with each swollen lap of water, memories of my close encounter with death spasmed up my body, aimed squarely at my head. You know how it is when you almost choke on your own fear? How the almost choking is even more frightening than the fear that started it, and so the terror compounds and the choking increases and you’re into a riptide vortex of escalating panic?

Well, it wasn’t as bad as all that. But I was close.

I digress, but sometimes digression, used with discretion, is good for the digestion — not that I had anything to worry about there, not after… But I digress. The Mr Harvest competition only has finals every four years. But GoBs think they’re worth the wait. (That’s what we were in, by the way, the finals — Poli really meant it when he said these guys were the best.) Six competing teams, six beaches and six months. Each team gets a one month crack at a one-time crack at each beach. Success is measured in pounds converted into dollars — American of course — and the team with the fullest competition bag at the end of the season takes the trophy — and the goods. That’s right. The goods.

Mellow yellow.

I digress but this is a digressive digression… There was a third criteria used in the selection of the competition grounds, apart from productivity and intrinsic fun. And that was quality. I mean, quality weed. Mellow yellow. The best of the best, with a TPHZ [8] rating of YBB (see sidebar). The stuff of barn-door profit margins. Enough to set a GoB up for life. All you had to do was risk your neck six times for what would eventually turn out to be just a few handfuls of a golden yellow powder. But it was worth far more than its weight in gold. In fact it was the kind of stuff only presidents can afford.

Too bad they can't afford to inhale it.

TPHZ Level(m/gm) | Trade Designation
1 — 5 | MAWSSW [9]
5 — 10 | Fundy Bronze
10 — 15 | Yo High Silver
15 — 20 | Avocado Gold
20 — 25 | Yellow Belly Bliss

The yellow was characteristic of TPHZ, and the deeper the tone, the deeper the stone. By another peculiarity, TPHZ concentrations and the resulting yellow tone actually increased if the dulse were, first, biologically processed, then taken in liquid form. There were devotees who claimed these ‘golden showers’ could bring a man to god. If that was where he wanted to go. Runt told me that’s why they called this Heaven’s Gate, because it produced the very best dulse, the mellowest yellow. But he was laughing when he said it, and I figured the name had more to do with the vicious nature of its tidal surges, and the half dozen or so GoBs who’d shuffled off this mortal roil here.

I digress again, but you might be thinking that it’s too easy a contest to rig, that unscrupulous contestants could just chuck a bunch of dulse from their own franchise into the competition bag. Maybe even try a couple of runs at a beach, just to get the point totals up. It’s not likely. For one thing, due to a genetic peculiarity, which Poli did try to explain but I couldn’t understand, dulse from different sites has a slightly different chemical structure — kind of a fingerprint that identifies the source beach for a piece of dulse as unerringly as a human fingerprint can point the finger at a light-fingered culprit. The identification process was developed by Sonya, Herr Reefer’s second-wife, not coincidentally the biochemist who first identified the psychoactive ingredient in dulse to be TPHZ. Also not co-incidentally, she was the second person ever known to be stoned. Which may explain her interest in the topic. But, unlike her husband’s immortalization, Madam Reefer’s contribution seems to have been lost, and there is no one I know of refers to a joint as a sony. Her name isn’t even attached to the identification process which, because of its expense, length and prior requirement for three levels of biological processing, is only used on a random basis. Or when the yellow doesn’t seem properly mellow.

I digress again, but my editor, bless him, did say to provide full background… Even so, and even with the immense honour and pride that GoBs take in their title, some potential for cheating remains. The Dulsia keeps it squeaky clean with liberal doses of procedure and technology. The very best technology — they can afford it — including competition bags that are anything if not foolproof. Each bag is made of a special lightweight but incredibly tough fabric, [10] and they come with a computer-controlled locking system that only allows one opening per competition month, and that automatically closes after six hours — one tide cycle. If that isn't enough, there are officials who oversee the competition and in particular frisk the competitors before they start into the water. They'd even frisked me. Believe me: they were thorough. Still, it has to be admitted, theoretically there's always the chance of cheating. But, I'll tell you, if any group has ever made a sport honest, it was this bunch of crooks.

But I digress.

48

The engine sputtered and almost died. Revved. Sputtered. Revved. No mistaking the cause. The last few dregs of gas were being sucked between gasps at raw air.

"I told you.”

Sanctimonious bastard, thought Dark and vented his frustration with a roundhouse kick to the engine guard. “So mark the bloody calendar. July 8, Pigshaft was right,” Dark barked, adding with a growl “For once”. The bike was not amused.

"it’s PoEt. tHe PoEt to you. thank you very much. and i don’t need to mark it on the calendar. i’ll remember it for all of eternity. and so, i think, will you.”

"Fat chance. And if you don’t shut up, I’ll pull the battery cables once we’re at Bach’s and let you fucking well contemplate eternity,” Dark snarled. Now the bike was amused, emitting a long self-satisfied chuckle. Or was that the engine’s final spasm? Dark could almost picture him, tHe PoEt, leaning back, arrogantly folding his arms behind his head, taunting.

"ah, yes. bach. he’s a composer isn’t he? no… a failed photographer? what’s his last name? igor? no. eyore? no, no, that’s my cousin vinnie the phew. now i remember, he doesn’t have a last name… or is it his first name that’s nameless? is it nothing bach? or bach nothing? would darkie know? didn’t darkie say he’d met him before? no, he thinks he’s met bach before. but who can be sure when life is a fugue?

"now there’s something sounds like bach would have said.”

If Dark had been listening he might have responded, might have matched wits with the twit. {Certainly something he could manage, I’d think.} [Towit, perforce I’d agree.] But he was stuck with a close encounter of the worst kind. It had been the engine’s final spasm, but one last retching cough had stranded the bike just past the darkness at the edge of town, final push come to shove him into the lime light glow of a gas station built to look like a UFO. Not even fifteen metres [pretty much the same in yards] from the pumps, where a gangly attendant in a silver body suit had stopped to watch. What the hell was he looking at — Dark grimaced mentally — standing there in a halloween costume alternately splash splashed red/blue from rotating neon flash flashing Cosmic Gas? Even gazing at that absurdity, Dark felt he was the one stood out like a dumb schmuck.

After all, GoldWings are born to run, not run out.

"so what do you do here, darkie my friend? do you walk over there and try to get a can of gas? or do you push me? well boy, what’s it gonna be? and don’t you just love me?”

"Love you for fucking ever,” Dark snarled, kicking the kickstand and attempting to dismount. Attempted. Numb with cold, his right leg caught on the big pack strapped to the rear seat, twisting his back and dumping him on his seat. Falling, he heard a rrrriiipppp, then felt more than heard the sploooshhh of mud, like a sudden case of reverse diahorrea. Cold diahorrea. Scratch one pair of cheap rain pants. And scratch his pride. A shadow fell across him and, looking up, Dark confronted a faceless apparition, haloed against the green of one of the station’s landing lights. Panic welled from a place he’d never felt it before — a surging, volcanic paroxysm that poured adrenaline into every pore, every cell of every muscle. The rush was maddening — he wanted to get up and run, flee that outstretched hand, which he had no doubt was The Minstrel, come back after… how long? Four days? No. July 1 to 8 minus 1 = 7 days. A week since the Manyfaeries Motel? But that couldn’t be. Twixtland was only a two day ride from southern Alberta…

"Want a hand?” The voice was gawky with puberty. The headlights of a passing car burst onto the face. It was acneed and pimpled, ears cauliflowered. An ugly Richie Cunningham. {Redundant adjective.} [Back off with the editing. That’s my role.] In a better frame of mind, Dark might have thought it was brilliant. Who would purposely put that on as a disguise? For that matter, who would choose that as their reality? But not right now. Ignoring the hand, he rolled to the side and stood up, feeling a squelch of mud run down the inside of his pants. Well, at least he hoped it was mud. Scratch one pair of pants too.

"Boy, it’s lucky you broke down right here. Do you want help rolling it into the station?” Dark shook his head not, studiously avoiding any eye contact. “No. I just ran out of gas. You got a can?” The kid snorted. “Only if you got fifty bucks deposit.” “What, for a five dollar jimmy can when you can see me every step of the way from and to the pump? You gotta be joking.” Kid snorted again. “Look, I don’t make the rules. I just work here. It’s fifty bucks deposit; doesn’t matter if you’re here or on the moon.” “Forget it. I’ll push the fucking thing.”

And he did. But a Wing’s not a machine that you stand beside and walk. It’s too heavy and too prone to falling prone, with you underneath. And that’s when you know just how big the beast is. And how heavy. Dark knew. He’d dropped it the first time he rode it. Nothing dramatic mind you. He’d been stopped at a stop light, waiting to turn right, eyeing off the chick in the car next to him, when the machine started to tilt and he couldn’t stop it. Fortunately, the engine guard did, leaving the bike at a sixty degree angle and Dark sprawled across the pavement. The girl next car door had giggled, then roared off in an unlady-like spray of dust. It had been a struggle to get the bike upright, and it had almost fallen over the other way before Dark realized the only way to balance it was to be astride. So that’s what he had to do now. Get on the seat and, in a kind of rocking horse cowboy gait, push with his tippy toes. Push, swing the legs forward. Push again. It was hard work, especially up the fractional slope into the UFO’s landing pod. tHe PoEt found it all highly amusing, breaking out into his version of a drunken cowboy country song, complete with whip snaps, injun whoops and sound track soon to be released on CD.

"geeyup geiyup. ride em cowboy, wagons ho! get those wagons rolling. rawhide!”

Seething inside with past and present embarrassments — not the least of which were the clammy tendrils propagating along the underside of his leg and seat — Dark did his best to ignore it. Push. Squelch. Push. Squoosh. Push. He did his best to ignore the attendant as well, who stood waiting at the pump with his thumb out like a galactic hitchhiker. Prick, Dark thought. I hope you get abducted.

"Fill it up, sir?,” the attendant gibed. Dark just glared, but had to answer the next question. “Premium, sir?” Snapping the key out of the ignition to open the tank cover, Dark growled, “No way. The cheapest piss you got,” then dismounted, damn careful not to catch his foot on the pack. The attendant was now standing there, holding the pump handle out for Dark to take it. “Well, what are you waiting for? Fill it up. And wash the windscreen too,” Dark growled, and started walking away.

"Most bikers don’t like us to touch their machines” the attendant called after him.

"Well, not all of us see our bikes as extensions of our peckers,”Dark shot back. Then muttered under his breathe, “Even if it is a prick.”

{Hah. Sucked you in again, didn’t he? ‘It’s too early for them to be lovey-dovey’. ‘It’s just not believable’. ‘Antipathy sells’. He let you go out on a limb and then stumped the tree. I love it.} [You’re not supposed to do that.] {What?} [The italics.] {So sue me.}

A personal note from tHe PoEt

look. it’s a job. you know, i’ve nothing against him personally. i mean that. i really do. fact, in a funny kind of way i really rather like him. i guess he reminds me of me back in the early 1,000s, when i was about as stubborn and dense a grunt army serf as they come. oh yes, i had a lot of ideas above my station, you might say a lot of hi-saluting ideas about how to run an army. but it’s not like i didn’t know what i was talking about — i’d had lifetimes of experience. do you think you manage a horde of mongols by letting them eat horse? discipline. that’s the ticket. patton would have been proud of the professional way my men pillaged their way across asia. salute and ‘beggin your pardon ma’am but those cupcakes are spoils of war; the wiener buns too’ stand to attention and ‘forgive us for this intrusion sir, but we’d like those sweetbreads. yes, both of them’. (i know contemporary history doesn’t agree with me on this, but you have to remember that history’s nothing but revisionism and may the best PR firm win.) and that was just a job too — leading the horde — a way to fill the hours between hangover and first drink. and grunt army serf was just another job too. course i didn’t see it like that at the time. i took it all too seriously. assumed i had something to contribute. that i had a role to play. that history would remember me kindly for the innovations i helped introduce to warfare. but does history remember the accountant? no. history merely venerates venereal degenerates. grunt in the trenches or wench in the front and history doesn’t even record your name. (for the record, it was arnie.) get your head chopped off and see if history has a kind word for you. unless you’re a woman. or royalty. even better, both.

arnie was neither. and not very bright. he had this insane belief that butterfat rises to the top.

sure. that’s where they become curds to be scooped off and creamed.

Of course the light was burnt out. Or broken. Or maybe just not there. Perhaps toilet illumination was too down to earth for an out of this world fuel stop. Or too high tech. And of course there was no window. That would only add weight when the saucer had to lift. So he had a choice. Absolute darkness with the door shut, or a puke green murk spavined red and blue through the open door. A glimpse of the mess on the floor convinced him the door open was the lesser of two…

"your problem, of course, is you take everything too personally.”

…make that three evils. He sighed, thinking better the devil you see than the devil that be, and peered around the door, trying to penetrate the shadows of the toilet and sink. Nothing. There’d been no sense of direction to the voice, no clues on where to look. Stumped, Dark took a half step in and opened the door wide. Carefully swept his eyes. Wished Silver Slug had swept the floor. Still nothing. Not a roach in sight. The room was empty. Had to be. The voice repeated, sending the hairs on his neck into convulsions. It was behind him!

"i mean, what makes you think you’re so important the universe has to go out of its way to make your life miserable?

But, swinging around, there was nothing. Until he looked up, way up, and there, in the darkest patch of murk, safely shadowed from the dank invasion of green, red and blue, a pair of bead eyes glittered a redder shade of red. Just that. Nothing else. Just eyes. Then — and Dark was never sure if errant headlights had made a stab at illumination, or if he was creating reality on the spot — the body materialized around the beads. Well, he supposed, a change is as good as a change, and he had been starting to feel a touch of aroachnophobia. Being able to see his adversary gave him the confidence to attack. “No. My problem’s a pervert who likes hanging around toilets. Do you get your jollies this way or what? Maybe it’s time you came out of the water closet.”

The Minstrel didn’t bat an eyelid. He didn’t have to. He was a bat.

“if that was meant to hurt me it didn’t work. i’ve been and can be homo, hetero, bi, a, self and sell-sexual. do you really think the universe gives a fig leaf how human beings express their sexuality?”

“I wouldn’t know. But what about bats?,” Dark countered. “How do you express your sexuality? Radar love?”

“now there’s an idea — i’ll pass it on to The Controllers; could be good for a giggle or two. but let’s stay on topic. what makes you so important the universe has to go out of its way to make your life miserable? you do a pretty good job of that all by your self.”

49

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

Well, fuck him. Fuck Dickie and fuck the whole lot of snivelling insecure pricks if they couldn’t take a joke. Fuck’em all.

Abby was not in a good mood. The latest edition of The Bi-National Enquirer had started a row between her and Dickie that she was sure meant the end of their marriage. But — as she wished she’d told him — frankly my dear, she couldn’t give a damn if some slick-clit, illiterate pair of boobs on the hoof had had the temerity to ask Dickie, “And what does Mrs. David think of all this?” — meaning his success, David’s that is, Betcher David’s incredible ride to superstardom. And then the engorged labia to actually publish his answer, Dickie’s that is, under the headline ‘Who wears the skirts?’ with a mocked up shot of Dickie in one of them, a nice little number actually, alongside the now almost iconic image of Betcher David strutting his ‘stuff’ in front of a flag-draped fireplace — complete with wine glass in hand and a cum hither look Jhikl would have envied. Nothing much more than commercial photography really, but commercial photography can be damned good. And the patch up job on Dickie’s skirt showed it was meant to be known it was not meant to be a real photograph — a few too many lost lawsuits had made The Bi a little more cautious about things like that. And Abby could understand Dickie’s resentment. For sure there’d be more lewd reportage but, sorry Dickie, that was kind of her stock in trade. That divide between male and female where the snide and the crude, the rude and the sublime reside. That gulf where we struggle with our own inner dualities. Yes. Vive! la difference! cause it put the bread on the table honey.

Besides — Dickie baby — if the skirt fits, wear it.

For Abby now had no doubt that Dickie had a female inside him, just as she had Betcher David. A female Dickie wouldn’t admit to: angry, brassy, loud, controlling; the personification of all the traits he buried below his surface image of the emotional and intuitive male. And not just Dickie, but all men kept this shadow self, this invasion of their opposite polarity, hidden, out of sight, denied. And all women too kept their own males in check. Each sex locked into a parody of its totality, afraid to express the aspects they’d been taught weren’t part of their gender. Their proper role. Each sex, she now saw, belittled and demeaned by the labels and their judgements. Each isolated from the other by revulsion at the sight of its own shameful shadow. But, like moths to flame, or tongue to sore tooth, or any of dozens such cliches, the abhorred attracts, fascinates.

That was the vein Abby’d tapped, the motherlode of internal strife that had propelled Betcher to stardom, and taken him from nightclubs to talk radio, then talk tv where her previous work as an actress was uncovered. Fawned over. There was talk of guest spots on sit coms, evening soaps, a movie — even a porno, David Does Dallas. Dickie had insisted she scotch that. And she’d had to learn to do stand up sitting down, put up with put downs, and pretend friendship with yet another faceless host. Oprah and Leno, Letterman and King, they’d merged into a composite image of tasteless vacuity that, in the end, cared less for her message than the chance to skewer the messenger. Did your father dress you funny? What made you come out of the kitchen? And what do you recommend for stuffing? (Really dry bread crumbs, home-made, and lots of good-old sage became her stock reply to the latter.) It had been irritating at times but Abby had understood, seen it all for what it was — the caverning maws of The Biz had opened; swallowing Betcher to feed, ruminate, finally fart him out when his twenty minutes were done.

And all it had taken was a voice on a beach. A voice that was no longer there.

It didn’t need to be. It hadn’t happened the first time Abby dressed and walked into the limelight — that had been an actress putting on a role. But somewhere in the weeks and months after, sometime among the thousand strides across the divide, a whole other side of her personality had opened and a completion had been made. Betcher David became real. From then on, the voice was inside, more like her own thoughts than external source. Part of her, free at least, basking in the attention. Sharing himself, and in that sharing s/he’d found a new Abby; more complete, more replete, without the sense of inner vacuum that had sucked her steps across the sand. She’d come to live, hell to be her own version of eclectic kitchen kitsch. In the kitchen and of it, but out of it and apart.

And that — no matter how much Dickie protested it was the dirty ditties among the dishes, the gritty gibes at the garborator that grated — was his real problem. Abby had broken free, shattering the implicit promise that, til death us do part, she would be a role, a figurehead, a comfortable familiarity. Wife. Breadwinner. Absent mother. The bastard that, joined in the communion of shared frustrations, Dickie could rail against among his mates. Now the bastard was a bitch, and it was his mates who did the railing. Riding Dickie unmercifully. She’d seen them just yesterday prancing around the kitchen table in a mocking parody of the male thrust — giggly chanting And does he do this? Thrust. Thrust. And does he do that? Thrust. Thrust — while Dickie sat at the table, face buried in his hands, writhing with shame. It was vicious and cruel in the way of grade schoolers; ribald comeuppance, a taking down by his peers of a member who’d let his partner break the rules. Break free. And yes, Abby had felt some sympathy, but she’d seen through to the truth. Dickie chose to be ashamed. Dickie chose to submit to these ancient rites. Dickie chose his prison.

Abby chose different. And that was where their marriage diverged.

"How can you do this to me?,” he had shouted, throwing The Bi down on the table where it had fluttered and died like an angry yellow eye. “How can you do this to Edie?” Abby’d been fascinated by the anger, had never seen Dickie express it so openly, so, so femininely, channelling it instead into the barbed bitching and bitter jibes of the masculine. Fascinated, but repelled. If only he could see how close he was to breakthrough, how near his own voice was. And so Abby had shouted back, trying to pry his understanding out of the ruts and the rituals, “How can you do this to yourself? Who cares what some rag vag prints? Who cares what your friends insinuate? Don’t give them the power for god’s sake Dickie. Don’t give it away!” She’d walked over to the table, picked up the tabloid and viciously torn it to shreds, her own anger rising. “That’s all this is worth. Cat litter! And if you take all this shit, then you’re not worth a damn thing more. Cat litter!”

And that was when he had gone silent. Coldly silent. Frigid. Then turned and walked out. Back in character.

Arrrrgggggggggggghhhh, Abby threw the pieces of the paper in the air, then stalked through their fluttering descent out to the living room of their new condominium, (tastefully decorated in tones of earth and sky, and recently featured in American Living) and sat on the tan leather couch, mentally cataloguing the noises she could hear in the bedroom — a drawer slamming, a closet door swept shut, a heavy zipper’s closing. She could see it all as clearly as reading a radio script. Footsteps in the hall, approaching, passing behind her, the schwclick of deadbolts on the front door. The moment of no return. A voice, his voice. “I’ll be picking Edie up from school. Don’t try to take her.” If there was a pause, a fraction’s opening for Abby to come to her senses and beg him not to leave, it wasn’t taken. There was nothing to say. Then the door had shut. And she was alone.

But complete. And all of a sudden she wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

There was a price, and part of it had just walked out the door. The other part stayed right with her, and she was only beginning to realize what it was. Burying her face in her hands, she sobbed, “Goddamn you Dickie! Goddamn you!,” blaming him for the feelings that beat on her like heavy rain. Pain. Hurt. Shame. Hopelessness. Blaming him, but at the same time knowing what they were, whose they were. They were Betcher’s feelings. No, they were hers, Betcher was her, she was Betcher and, now she saw, her rapprochement with her other side did not allow her to pick and choose which feelings she could acknowledge. No matter how much she tried to bury him, push the feelings away, Betcher came through loud and clear. He didn’t want to lose his daughter. He didn’t want to lose his home. He didn’t want to lose. Weep, whimper, curse, sob — she’d been in a storm once when the rain became sleet and the sleet became snow, became hail, became rain so fast you didn’t know what was hitting you. That was how she experienced her feelings now — the control, the years of denial were swept away and Abby was flooded, racked, wrenched and torn as the too long denied claimed its birthright. Her awareness. Her acknowledgement. But too fast — like too many fireworks to appreciate each rocket, each feeling’s impact was lost in the next, rendered almost meaningless in the overall gestalt. Except one that finally rocketed through and dominated. Anger. Anger she took out on the only person she could. Because she couldn’t take it out on the one person she should.

"Fuck you Dickie. It’s all a joke. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” She was ranting, frothing, barrelling from curse to worse, ricochetting between screams and slapping the phone off the wall, schwooping magazines off the coffee table, throwing Dickie’s photo at the fireplace. “A fucking joke!” Kicking his vase when it was down. “A joke!” Hitting a thundering crescendo with flailing forearm chops to the piano keys.

Then the anger was gone. Dissipated. Expressed, however poorly targeted.

Drained, Abby stumbled over to the bay-style window, but barely registered the sweeping metropolis her alter ego had conquered to afford this commanding view. Had no feeling for the symbolism of that vista — blocked to one side by her building’s condo companion, she could look to the other and see miles of city buildings falling away to malls and suburbs. All filled with people. Filled with one-sided folks who didn’t know any better. The root of her pain burst through.

"Why me?” It was barely a whisper, but in her head it reverberated every bit as much as the voice on the beach had. Surely the people down there heard. Surely they stopped and looked up to find the source of that anguished cry. “Why me? I was happy, or at least as happy as I expected to be. Why did you come to me? Why did you open me up to this?”

She was wandering, aimless, now. Racked with sorrow and inner pain. The world seemed darker, more limited. Less alive. More like destiny’s beach than success’ reach. Her vision narrowed, and she found herself staring at the leadlighted french doors to the balcony, watching them swing open at the end of a long tunnel. She walked out, or was she pulled?, into a constricted maze of plants and expensive deck furniture. Just a few weeks ago, this had been a bare and oversized concrete oblong. A vagrant marvel at its transformation — Dickie’s project; his point of contact with the earth so many floors below: the roots she’d lost contact with — flitted past. And she felt a nudge from behind. Then another. And another.

Swinging the tunnel around, expecting to find Dickie, or maybe Edie, there was nothing. Just another nudge. But this one from the front, now pushing her backwards. Towards the railing. The nudge came with a low bzzzzz. Another. Another low bzzzz. Like a symphony reaching its crescendo, a hundred bzzzzs joined in, the sound — amplified by the tunnel’s raucous echo — pushing her backwards like a piledriver. Somewhere she’d read that plants could communicate and she felt that now, felt their condemnation, their anger at her upset of their brave new world. ‘Get a grip on it girl,’ she said to herself. ‘Plants don’t talk. That’s as silly as talking insects.’ But the feeling wouldn’t go away, she felt it as a pressure on all but her front, like contractions in the birth canal pushing her towards the railing. She swung the tunnel, looking out. How many floors up?, she thought. How certain it would be, just that one fractional moment of decision and then letting life take its course. The one course it had. Birth into death. The one path it could never avoid. Why not?, she thought. Why not give it away. Let it go.

The phone rang. One of those electronic buzzes that are replacing the old fashioned drinnnggg. Or had it been ringing incessantly for the past few moments? Was that the bzzzzz she’d been hearing? Abby couldn’t tell, but some inner force pushed her away from the rail, battled its way back to the balcony doors. She stepped through, almost fell on her face as the plants’ forceful condemnation suddenly stopped. Crawled to the phone, found it under bits of broken vase. Hoisted herself up and around to sit on the floor, back against the couch. Forced a hoarse whisper. “Hello.”

"Abby! Is that you?” It was Becky, her voice near panic. “Thank god I got you. I just had this overwhelming feeling I needed to call. I can’t explain it, but are you all right? Why didn’t you answer the phone right away? What’s wrong?”

But Abby couldn’t talk. She felt like a bung had been jammed down her throat. She gasped, choking, clawed to pull air past the obstruction. Becky’s voice almost screamed, “Abby! Talk to me!”

Then implored, “Abigail… please!”

The pleas seemed to do it. [Old manners die hard.] {And old manors for that matter.} With a pluppp, the bung let go. Her first words were a hardly intelligible “Dickie’s gone. He’s left me,” but they sharpened into a flood that built and built, the whole story coming out, nurtured with that’s okays and let it gos from Becky. And not a judgement, no hint of condemnation. No puzzled shake of the head. Thank God for Becky, Abby thought. She was exactly what Abby needed. A friend who just let her be Abby. Or Betcher. Let her be someone who felt and heard plants. Heard voices on the beach. The flood dwindled, and Abby found herself sitting on the island of Beckie’s voice.

"There’s a book I’d like you to read. You don’t have to buy it, I’ll loan you my copy. A friend of mine actually wrote it, but that’s not why I’m recommending it. I think it may help, give you a way of looking at your situation.

It’s called…

50

The Teachings of the Minstrel

Judge not.

Not that you be not judged,
but that you not be imprisoned
by your own judgements.

For that is what they are. A prison whose walls you erect, whose guards you employ, whose spotlights highlight the shadows of your own inner fears. You judge in others what you fear in yourself and in judging fear it more.

Judge yourself for crying and who pays the price? You do. In strangled emotions and tormented nights. But, judge the crooked politician and who pays the price? Not so easy to see, but you do. In anger and frustration at events beyond your control. Judge the unwed mother and who pays the price? You got it.

You.

For in your judgement you deny The All, deny the roots of your existence and so deny your deeper realities. Just as you exist at levels beyond levels, so you are the crying man, the crooked politician, the unwed mother. All at the same time. You have been and will be a drunkard, priest, tinker, sailor, addict, spry. These are all expressions of The All. None better. None worse. None ultimately judged good or bad. How could they be? Rapist. Mass murderer. They exist because The All wills them to exist. [I think we need a conference call. This is getting a bit too radical — it practically amounts to giving people a license to kill.] {James and I agree, but it’s his rope. Besides. Heh, heh. Who are we to judge?} So what is there to judge?

Nothing.

Call it radical self-awareness if you like. Call it anything — grog or fob, who cares? What’s in a name but a limitation on your understanding? And an inducement to judge? For you can’t judge that which you can’t name. Whore. Prick. Slaggard. Angel. Judging and naming have been intertwined in your awareness ever since the name first erupted out of the nameless. Your name is your prison. And names are your walls.

Destroy them.

And that is the fourth dictatum of self-awareness:

Name not.

It was spreading — so it had to be a virus. Some hacker nerd’s idea of fun that had somehow gotten into his laptop. Though what virus could create a book out of nothing and then critique it, Dark didn’t know. But what else could it be? He’d had to give up on the idea those square and curlicue brackets represented voices from outside the text although — superficially — it did make sense, perhaps even explaining the constant bickering. (He’d even come up with names for them that somehow seemed appropriate to each one’s ‘character’ — if disembodied interjections can be said to have a personality: Doc Square, and the Curlicue Kid.) [I think I’ve been insulted.] {As you think so you are.} But, logically, that meant there were three writers with access to his computer and he knew that couldn’t be. Couldn’t happen. He now kept the laptop in one saddlebag, its battery in the other, and had segregated the key to a string around his neck. Like some godforsaken albatross. And he’d had to give up on his second idea, that these were aspects of the writer’s personality, a mirror or precursor to his own feared fragmentation. For the same reason. He could feel the key cold against his chest, inspiring a chilling logic. Whoever or whatever the writer was, however he or it managed to write on Dark’s computer, he or it was not external.

But was the virus in the computer? Or was it in Dark himself? The three questions reverberated in the empty echo of his stomach, now complicated by a fourth:

Who is the writer? Which is the story? Why? And How?

"We’ve lost our ability to celebrate, that’s how, and, without it, we’re rootless. That’s the heart of the problem.” That’s the heart, your problem, my problem… there were too many problems, too many tunnels with echoes he couldn’t locate. Too many co-contemporaneous co-related probabilities. Dark had to shake himself, try to find the one silk ribbon the voice had come from, plant a solid foot there, clutch the thread of what Bach was saying.

"What I mean is that celebration originally comes from our relationship to the earth. The cycles of the years. The seasons. The harvests. That’s the very ground of our mystery, of how our mushroom lives come into being from nothing. There! There it is! Life’s sudden blossom in the detritus of death.”

Terra del Fugue — Bach’s animated gestures solidified the scene, in their own way demonstrating his point. A beer in his hand, empties on a table, Bach’s fatly florid face flowering into existence. He wasn’t that fat in memory. And the other scenes, the other stories withering to spring-expectant seed. Back into the nothingness.

Who is the writer? Which is the story? Why? And How?

"The big bang, you know, it’s the same thing. There’s nothing, then there’s something. It staggers the mind. It challenges science which is based on denying the very possibility of mystery; reducing everything to the mundane, the prosaic, the explainable. But it can’t deny, can’t reduce, can’t explain this: there’s nothing, then there’s something.”

Bach helicoptered his beer to an exclamation on the table, and stared at Dark as though daring any challenge. Details filled in: cheap wooden table, the kind with a slab of veneer and tube metal legs that can be stacked 20 high; rows of them, penned in with matching wooden chairs, the kind with curved veneer slats that can be stacked 40 high; hundreds of them, pinned here and there to a vast concrete floor by a few dozen desultory drinkers, the kind you find at country fairs on a rainy afternoon and you know that, by evening, they’ll be stacked 60 high; the whole shebang corralled under rows of orange arc lights and the curved wooden trusses of an arena.

"And all you or me or science can do in the face of that is stand in awe. And celebrate. What else can you do?” Bach’s beer helicoptered again, sweeping in the arena, drinkers, chairs and tables, settling on Dark. “All of this is a miracle and we are each one of us minor miracles. Celebration’s… no, celebration was our bond to that immensity. To the mysteries. But we’ve lost that connection. The modern world has thrown it away. Food doesn’t come from the earth — it comes from the store. Water doesn’t change into wine — we go to the liquor store.”

Bach stopped for a chug, tugged at his rug and looked off into the distance, momentarily silent, before adding a wistful, “We’ve lost so much.”.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ thought Dark to himself. ‘Time, continuity, certainty, possibly sanity. All lost.’ Bach burped and went on. “That’s why I make wine; you know — the nectar of Dionysus, Bacchus’ divine libation. I mean, just think back to those times when nobody knew nothin [double negative] noway {triple play} about yeast and fermentation, tannin and tartaric acid. You didn’t need to. It was a gift of the gods, hell, the gift of the gods themselves. Dionysus’ acolytes said when they drank wine they were actually drinking their god, they were lifted out of the mundane, their awareness expanded so they thought and felt as the gods. No wonder his mysteries were so orgiastic. As above, so below — to feel like the gods let one act like the gods who, for the Greeks, were about the randiest, unself-consciously human pack of divine misfits they could imagine.”

Bach stopped, a half-smile flitting across his face in search of the other half. “And, boy, could they imagine.” The half smile was chased off, replaced with a sudden and specific gravity. [1.095?] “And all you had to do to partake of your god was seal up grape juice someplace dark. Just seal it up and wait.”

Bach started rising to his feet, visibly unsteady, leading Dark to wonder how long they had been here. Judging by the number of empties on the table, it had already been a long afternoon. Holding his beer out as though to make a toast, Bach pounded the table with his free hand, causing a few less than curious glances from other tables — judging by their reaction this was not the first time they’d been so addressed. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” he shouted. “I give you a miracle!

Wine!”

“whine. whine. that’s all you do. and, quite frankly sherlock it’s getting boring as hell.”

Terror de Fugue! The changes were now happening just like snap. One moment with Bach, now back with Bat/Minstrel, declatching from the toilet roof for an exquisite mid-air half-gainer made the more impressive by his simultaneous transformation into Silver Slug, landing softly on his feet standing up, but his bead eyes never lost their glitter. Bach’s half-smile found his lips.

“don’t you think it’s time you started practising the ten dictatums of self-awareness.”

"Right,” snorted Dark, barely aware his own consciousness was now making the transition just like s[ch]nap[ps?] “And exactly what would they be? I don’t believe we’ve covered all that much ground.” A silvery laugh peeled from Slug/Minstrel’s throat.

“ah, but we have. we have. we’ve covered it all in depth, in detail, in situ and vitro. we’ve reviewed, recalled, reinforced and regurged. we’ve even covered the one hundred corollaries, and their associated axioms. all that’s left is for you to practise what i’ve preached. but you! you just refuse to get it!”

"Don’t you get it?” Snap. “It hasn’t changed at all. Sure, it’s more complex now, sure I use chemicals and fining agents and I know how yeast converts sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, but that doesn’t change the magic of the process. What I do is help the juice move into the mysteries, transform itself and in return it transforms me. It centres me, grounds me, roots me in the those mysteries. But you… you my friend, you don’t have any roots at all.”

Snap.

“how can i help you if you refuse to change? how can i bring you to self-awareness if you scramble to squabble with every lesson, if you scrabble every word into it’s opposite. get it! and get it straight! you are being taken to self-awareness. and there is nothing, no one, nowhere and no why [Home run!] {Eat your Joe out, Mrs Robinson.} will stop you getting there.”

Snap.

"about bloody time you got back here. while you were in the can playing with your willy, jackie jerkoff here filled me up with an alcohol blend. you know what happens when i drink alcohol? you don’t want to know.”

"That’ll be ten dollars fifty, sir. Ten for gas and fifty cents for using the toilet. No, we don’t take credit cards.”

51

Hard to say if it was the right place — more than a few years had passed since the one time Dark’s memory said he’d been here. If he could trust it. Which he doubted. But the psychic memento was there: lilacs primly pruned to a hedge fronting a plain, but pretty, little two-story moated with richly overburdened flower beds; to the side, a Manitoba maple pimpling high into the sky; and, Twixtland Gothic, standing on the sidewalk, Bach’s parents, old but not yet frail. They were waving goodbye.

Even accounting for the darkness and the passing of years that had dissolved Bach’s parents from the tableau, Dark had difficulty reconciling reality and memory. These lilacs were so tall and ragged, even looking up past their rain and street-lamp splattered frieze, there was no sign of house or tree. If it hadn’t been for the slight gap in the overgrown hedge hinting at a gate, and through which a dim light could be seen throwing shadows across ancient wood, this could have been a vacant lot in an otherwise orderly small town neighbourhood, some tax dodge or disputed inheritance. But Bach had no siblings, and had never earned enough to worry about taxes. If it was the right house, Bach wasn’t much into tending garden.

Only one way to find out. Fumbling with the gate latch, then squeezing through rain-pungent lilac, Dark felt a little more reassured. It was the right style of house, narrow and clapboard wooden with windows in the gable — the attic room he’d slept in was up there — and there to the side was the tree, unkempt branches hanging down to mate with scraggly foot-high grass. His memory said the house had been white. Perhaps it had. Whitewash probably, washed away now to leave grey and cracking wood. The doorbell didn’t work, so Dark had to open the old wood-frame screen door, feeling splinters of paint rub off on his hands, catching his rain suit on ripped metal screen. Knocked. And knocked again, idly examining the water stains that showed where street numbers had once been. 333 Bleeding Wood Ave {been preferable}. Knocked again, even though he figured it was no use. There was no one here. Probably hadn’t been in weeks, months, years.

Wearily Dark sat down, jack-knifing his body down the steps, letting his head fall between his legs. And he cried, warm tears coursing down his face to mix with cold strings of rain. He couldn’t help it. All day, or at least as much of it as he remembered, he’d kept himself going with the thought of a warm bed and a possibly friendly ear. A chance to rest and reflect on the mad happenings of his life; literate computers, talking bikes, morphing miscreants, and realities that wouldn’t be pinned down. In time or place. A break was what he wanted, needed, desired — even if he had to break his word and disconnect PoEt’s battery to get it — or someone he could talk it out with. He’d risked the hope Bach would fill the bill, that he’d be more understanding than Potter and less of a caricature than Snag. His memories seemed to indicate that he did in fact know Bach — they’d worked together early in his career — and he’d hoped Bach would know him well enough to help him piece the pieces into pieces.

But that was not to be, and his options were unpalatable. Camping was out of the question — even if he’d had the energy to set up the tent, it would only mean a night of drowning in soggy earth — but the alternative filled him with dread. Motel rooms were The Minstrel’s happy hunting grounds.

He was caught, in Twixtland, twixt heaven and hell, and no amount of tears would put out the fires.

"Can I help you?”

The voice was female, old, with undertones of an eastern European accent. Suspicious, wary. But at least it came with a sense of direction, from the gate. And when Dark looked, it’s owner seemed to match. A crone, well — Dark’s mood was making him dramatic — an older woman, late sixties?, sun-gnarled face, shoulders knotted with a lifetime’s labour. Behind her through the gate he could see tHe PoEt, gleaming wet, and the likely cause of her suspicion. The bike’d been right — he didn’t hold his methanol, and the sot had very quickly turned tipsy, wobbling over the road and playing with the turn signals while humming how dry i am rather too loudly. Then vocalizing some shockingly dirty ditties punctuated with toot tittie toots on the horn. While Dark took vicious comfort in finally meeting someone with even less musical talent than himself, by the time they’d reached Bleeding Wood, Dark could only thank his lucky stars [Figure of speech?] {Must be. This boy’s short on lucky anything.} they’d encountered no police. He could imagine the chuckles when he explained it wasn’t him drunk, it was the bike. ‘Sure buddy. And I suppose it talks too.’

Dark had been down that road before.

Crone challenged again, even more guarded. “Are you looking for someone in particular?”

"Yes, I am,” Dark replied, standing up. [As opposed to what? Standing down?] {Standing out?} “But I don’t even know if I’ve got the right house. Bach… ah…”, (and here Dark was stumped because that was the only name he knew) “…well Bach. Do you know him? We used to work together but I haven’t seen him for years. Did he live here? Does he still? The house kind of looks like it’s deserted.” The woman snorted, relaxing a little. “Oh, yeah, he still lives here. Doesn’t take much of an interest in yard work, not like his folks did. He’s down at the fair… no doubt, you’ll find him in the beer tent.”

"Thanks,” Dark mumbled, reaching the gate, fumbling again with the latch. More evidence he was drunk? Apparently so — the woman backed off, keeping a prudent separation, and flicked her eyes behind her. Brushing through the leafy passage Dark understood. Across the street there was a neat little bungalow that, arriving, he hadn’t particularly noticed. How, he couldn’t imagine. The front yard sprouted a veritable giggle of animals; bushes pruned into a buffalo and calf, a pronghorn antelope, Canada goose taking off, wood chuck chucking up. To name a few. Unlike Bach, these people were into yardwork. One of the animals, wrong, a person, a miniature Buffalo Bill, moved. Son? No it had to be a grand-son, posted as sentry and no doubt poised to call for reinforcements.

If they were needed.

Well, they wouldn’t be. “Listen,” he said, angling slowly towards the bike, no sudden moves, soberly placing his feet one in front of the other. “If Bach comes back, could you tell him that Rider’s in town. Dark Rider.” The woman sniggered, more comfortable now that Dark was visibly leaving. “Sure, if I see him, I’ll tell him, but you’d be best to get down to the fair and find him yourself. He’s as like to be away all night as turn up back here.” Dark had to wonder at the anger in her voice — there was more than just a difference in gardening styles here. She was personally affronted by Bach and, Dark sensed, somehow disappointed. Then it hit — straight out of The Teachings of The Minstrel. [Imagine.] Crone judged Bach, and — judging by Dark’s flash-forwards, if that’s what they were — it was Bach’s drinking she judged. Or anyone’s. Dark could feel her judgement waiting to pounce on any evidence of the same failing. Get on the bike, smile politely, ride off. But first things first.

‘Are you listening to me?’ he shot the thought at tHe PoEt. ‘You’re going to ride away from here straighter than a teetotaller on her way to a temperance meeting. And I’m sure somewhere in all those lives you claim you must have done exactly that, so you know how to do it.’

PoEt’s surprisingly amiable — ‘Slure, slure, whashever you say’ — was contradicted by a ferocious gazglurgally belch timed to coincide with Dark’s straddling the seat. Rather like a whoopie cushion. {So, would that be a burpie seat?} Incensed, Dark swung a roundhouse kick at the engine guard hidden from crone’s view, and masked the clunk with a stab at the ignition. ‘Cut it out. Fuck up and I’ll sell you to a Twixtland accountant as a tax loss,’ he snarled mentally while tossing off a smile for crone and an ever so polite “So where would I find the fair?” “When you get to the bottom of the street down there,” she replied with a sweeping gesture behind and to her right, “just follow your ears. You’ll find it.”

Kick up. Kick down for gear, gentle revs, slowly release the clutch, ever so gently start rolling away. Smile the smile. Talk the talk. “Thanks. Have a good night.” Keep the bike straight. Ignore pisshead’s prattle.

Not that it was easy.

"yoush know i shink i know zhat woman, i mean i shink i knew her’n anosher lifetime.”

Not in his current frame of mind.

Dark hadn’t doubted on his ride from the UFO that PoEt was inebriated. He’d become so used to strange events — not in the sense of accepting them, but just accepting they were happening — he hadn’t questioned the possibility that a motorcycle could get tanked. It made as much sense as anything else these days. But PoEt’s, rather too fortuitous, oral flatulence had flouted common sense. Pigs might fly, HOGs might fart, but Wings did not eruct. Just another bloody act, Dark thought. Red Skelton meets Merryl Streep.

"or sheveral lifes. she wash my wife i shink. hashn’t changed. didn’t like, urrp, scushe me, drinking then, schtill doesn’t. yu’d think sh’d’a learned.”

Phoney accents and all.

"ash’a trouble wich karma. ifu urpp scushe hic again don’t ler lear learn from it, you’sh gonna repeat it.”

But he held his counsel. All the way down the street, Dark hadn’t looked back to check if crone was watching — fearing any moment of inattention would let the bike branch into physical comedy. Bleeding Wood ended at a tee-intersection, no stop sign, so he swung right, managing a glance back to where she’d been standing. The street was empty, a good sign. Or so he hoped. Still, better prudent than puerile. {Ooo. Fancy word. Must have got a new thesaurus for his birthday.} [Nah. He’s just been listening to his shrink.]

It was showdown time.

{Cue the Jaws theme.}

52

The Teachings of The Minstrel

And so, you ask, what is justice?

But a human concept — the penalty for disobeying an agreed-on or imposed code of conduct. You may do this. You must do that. You may not, you may. But, being human, justice flounders in its own exceptions. Thou shalt not steal. Except when you need to. Thou shalt not kill. Unless you must.

Or can’t help it.

So don’t confuse justice with judgement. Lawyers don’t. {Quick. What do you call a lawyer bobbitted by a shark?} [Poetic justice?] {Stubby.} [Let me know when it’s time to laugh.] Nor do judges — leading to the distemper of your times that justice has gone awry: murderers get away with murder, sodomists with sodomy, politicians with policy; the simple verities of judgement — I’m right, you’re wrong — in need of defibrillation. The demand for judgement is not slaked by justice.

How could it be?

Heads you’re wrong, tails I’m right. Judgement rises from fear; justice from order. One closes; one opens. One strikes out; the other measures. Two spheres only peripherally related, antagonistic at their core.

So don’t confuse justice with judgement.

Handlebars gripped tight, Dark idled along for half a block, a block, a block-and-a-half before finding a suitable spot; a hundred year old willow overhanging the street, forming a natural tent between road and sidewalk. A cone of silence. A deciduous OK Corral. He angled straight in, oblivious to the wet caress of trailing leaves, and killed the engine, expecting another instalment in the Saga of Sagepiss Sam. Instead, it was Dylan Frost, redolent with pomposity.

"two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and i took the one less travelled by. i wrote that too you know.”

Dark ignored him, and drew down on his mental sphincter. He was going to control this confrontation. He was going to win. Mudnuts could bloody well wait until Dark was ready.

In the meantime, crone was right. The swirling swish tinky tan tin melange of a small town fair washed through their tent: five different scratchy recordings for five different rides; a dozen or three barkers yipping for rubes amidst a scattering of dopplered teeny bopper screams; embellished now and again with the flat clonnng of another farmer sledging the cracked jackpole bell to claim a two metre [six and a half feet] high teddy bear for his beloved. Not real close, Dark estimated. At least three or four blocks away, maybe more — given sound travels further in moisture laden air. (That mental encyclopedia was sometimes useful.) He’d check it out, try tracking Bach to his lair before checking into a motel. But right now he was hungry and cold, and from what crone had said, Dark had all night. PoEt, food, Bach, in that order, he decided.

"my horse must think it strange to…”

Then undecided in a snap, as an ecstatic chill sped in tightening circles around his scalp.

"stand here watching these woods fill up with snow…”

And hold to the fifth dictatum of self-awareness.

Fear not.

"Quiet.” Dark hissed, cupping hand to ear, trying to pull a single sound out of the impinging hash.

"washamata bosh? cat got yur goat?”

"Shut up!” Dark commanded, hitting the ignition. The machine fired in a beat, and in the next beat Dark had it moving, bursting out of the tent so fast trailing leaves caught on his visor and a perambulating dog yelped in fight or flight shock. tHe PoEt hi-yawed, “hold her newt! she’s headed for the barn,” then, laconically, “i take it something came up.” But Dark had no time for banter: like a heat-seeking missile, he’d locked on and was following the trail to his quarry.

The song.

Turn a corner, roar down another tree-lined street, turn again. At each moment of decision, the target bipped on his internal radar, holding to a beat he knew by heart, {Heart? He’s got a heart? What’s he looking for then?} [Liverwurst on rye?] {In Twixtland?} a cadence that reverberated to the bowels of his soul.

The siren song.

Luring him on. Turn again, roar, veer. And there it was — no mistaking; the bipping pulsated concentric waves to the centre of his mental screen. X marks the spot. X marks the song.

X marks the fairground.

"hey! watch it!” PoEt snapped as Dark jumped off. “the kick won’t hold in this shit!” But its rider was already running across the parking field, splashing through puddles, not caring. Not seeing the bike titanic gracefully down onto its side. Not hearing the hot hiss of tail pipes sinking into mud.

"Hey!” He didn’t so much hear as feel the interruption, a burly arm grabbing his and holding him back against the song’s seductive pull. “You want to go in it’s five bucks.” “Sure, sure,” Dark muttered, struggling to fish his wallet out of the depths of clothing. Grabbed a ten and didn’t even wait for the change, dashing through the gap in the temporary snow fence.

And stopped.

The song was gone. His internal radar had shut down.

Panting, he looked around, taking in the assortment of buildings, assessing them. Directly in front was the facade of an arena, which a faded sign above the metal double doors averred was the Twixtland and District Community Rink. To its right, Stable City; three rows of low open-faced shed buttressed with hay bales, housing cows and horses for the fair. The stalls were full, the alleys between busy with competitors grooming and feeding their chargers. A horse being led back to its stall billowed steam. Immediately to the left, the side of an ancient wooden grandstand triangulated the glare of modern floodlights.

His breath slowing down, he caught the smell of donuts from a get’em while they’re hot truck, then noticed details filling in: a chip and hot dog wagon, candy floss vendor, overweight Daughters of the Empire selling heart shaped balloons. The rain had made it a slow night down at the fair; peddlers outnumbered buyers at least two-to-one, and more than one looked at Dark with hungry eyes. “Red hots. Red hots. Get your red hots here.” “Donuts. Hey! You haven’t been to the fair if you haven’t had fresh donuts.” “Just three bucks for the best wiener this side of Minnedosa.” And his personal favourite, erupting from the belly of a rain-slicker clad matron — proving the writer had a sense of humour, even if it was rather sick — “Like a heart?”

But no song sang to his heart out of the rain and night.

He felt deflated even as his wind returned. He’d acted on impulse, on an irrational inner certainty that, this time, his experience of the song would be different. That there was something waiting for him in the song. Knowledge? Realization? He didn’t know what it might be. Just wanted it, feeling that ache rekindled, the yearning for music he kept battened down. Remembering Little Bavaria and the joining with…

That was it. The Gangster Trio Plus One! They must have been playing here. Were done, or on a break. His head swung back to the left. Ahh! The Grandstand of course!

He was running again, desperate to connect, sidestepping the floss cart, oblivious to its luscious smells, reaching the corner of the stadium in a blink [Blank.] {Blonk.} of a ‘watch it!’. It was decrepit, wooden, slate grey with age, and cracks in the roughsawn planks showed through to tiers of backlit feet — maybe it wasn’t such a slow night down at the fair, just out on the grounds. He stumbled at the turn into the entrance through to the stands, retained his balance with an arm, sprinted down the shaft and out into the floodlights.

Into a greased pig competition. For kids. Wreeeeek. Wreeek. A dozen young’uns dogging a dozen oinking piggiwiggis. Swie! Sooie! And laughter, the stands breaking up, Wreeeeeeeek, arms pointing out each missed tackle, Soweeiii!, faces larking each fall from grace, waahhhhhhhh, gentle eyes supporting each kid down for the count. Warm bravos for the last defiant piggy squirming his away to market.

But no song. No fiddlers.

Shit!

Fear not.

For what is fear but your deep reaction to the loss of your deeper levels, of the All, the we split into you and not-you? The anguish of ejection compounded with rejection. Your confusion in the face of the communal turned alien. The dank foreboding not-you is dangerous, because not-you has already hurt you. Fear spiralling from your vow to survive this hostile creation, giving birth to self-righteous anger and hate, the illusion of lack, delusions of shame and guilt, the collusion of belief.

Relax.

The split was only chimera; you, not-you just figments of the cosmic play. The name just a cheat, a device to let the All experience itself. There was no ejection, no separation. No loss of union. The All remains the All, and all that remains is for you to let go of the fear, cease the naming and judging, and accept your reality by letting it go.

Thus can you remember who you are, what you are, why you are.

"And we have a winnah!” the judge’s voice blared with the ponderous tones of an AM jock. “What’s your name son? Yes you, step over here and tell the folks your name.” Who cares?, brooded Dark. He turned away, moped the tunnel back to the stadium’s entrance and slumped against the corner, sinking into mute despair. Wallowing in sulking, in a pout of self-hate. ‘See, I was right, I get the treatment I deserve’ — a maze of deadends, a kick from every side. Teased with vain promises. Dark shook with inner pain, recalling and angrily rejecting Minstrel’s claim he took everything too personally. Ditto PoEt’s contention he created his own reality. He was — pure and simple — the bell cat, the ancient mariner chained to the albatross of his writer’s spite.

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

It slipped up on him, starting so subtly it hardly registered, except as a gut reaction, the heartbeat beat pulling him deeper and deeper into the abyss of self-hate, darkness closing around him, the heartbeat swelling…

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

...to dominance, so thick it was almost corporeal, pressing on him,

pushing…

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

…jostling…

Kadadaboom. Boom. Boom.

…and he was fighting back, head down, swimming against the stream, only half-aware he was moving, being moved, past the far corner of the arena and into carney alley. Only half-aware when the voice began.

His lives were of this veil.

The siren’s voice, but not singing — talking — measured, metronomic, emotionless.

The illusion we call me.

Drum and voice now enjoined with a wavering synth line, a vibratoed string plucked on the first full beat and let die away…

Badadapluck. Boom. Boom.

His sorrows were of his own making.

…to resurrect with another pluck in the second next bar. Rising and falling to the faintest hint of melody. A melody he knew and ached for, letting go, finding himself deposited in front of the bottle ring toss, his siren running the show, throwing rings to whirring connections on ancient coke bottles.

Badadapluck. Boom. Whirrr.

His joys a short-term end.

Siren turning to him, her face smooth, sending a ring spinning at him, exquisite slow motion while a hint of singing swam into her voice…

For the pain he had gained
could be given no name

…the ring spinning larger, now bigger than him…

while the promise lay unheard.

…and slipping right over him, an energy field that carried him away and deposited him back on the mountaintop where he’d first heard the song. The girl’s singing started to envelope and speed, and Dark found himself waiting for his cue, for the axe’s role in the sun.

For the pain was the same
pain he had felt
when the promise was first given.

A pregnant stop, then the electricity started, zapping down his arms to his fingers, causing them to pull at strings, siphoning the bones of the melody into a star-spangled tune, rocking to the beat, hitting the wows to his quiver. The girl transformed into a k.d. lang, belting it out. And he was playing, actually playing! feeling the notes as currents of muscle spasms triggering his fingers, feeling the wows and wavers physically, picking notes that he just knew, smoothly, lingeringly, pulled into the music, pulled finally into the chorus, joining in on vocal…

That we were never parted, that we are always one,
that we shall be together, upon awakening.

…resonant to his core, understanding, seeing, knowing, feeling that the song was about him. Transformed with ecstasy, feeling the promise! Yes, the promise.

That love there truly lies can no longer be denied,
And we shall be as one when transformation’s done.

With apologies to Chapin’s Mr Tanner: ‘And he sang with his heart, and he sang with his soul. He didn’t give a shit how good he sang. It just made him whole.’ Moving now into the final part of the chorus, the tempo increasing, guitar singing, he and she hoarse with output. Then hitting the end, the abrupt dead stop he’d heard before but never with this power. The world, the mountaintop, the guitar suddenly gone. Back in carney alley, looking at the girl running the ring toss. “So you going to play or what?” Recognizing her look, the one says I’m about to call for help. Suddenly feeling a jarring slap on his back, a painful swing that spun him around, already knowing what to expect.

“Hey! How the fuck you doing?” It was Bach.

Of course.

What? You were maybe expecting a cop?

[8] ...

tetraprohydrozac, n. (tet-ra-pro-hi-drone-sac) an alkaloid chemically related to psilocybin, the active ingredient found in magic mushrooms, lending some support to the theory that dulse is the genetic descendent of an ancient fungus that invaded the Bay of Fundy and prospered in conditions that would support no other plant life. See mushrooms, magic, dulse, Canadian Maritimes. Also, listings in American Franchise Monthly, "Dulse: Prospects for Sustainable Development." [back]

[9] ...

Might As Well Suck Seaweed (maw-su-wed) [back]

[10] ...

dulp, woven with fibres taken from the sword-shaped fronds of the dulse plant, a point of commercial interest from many who argue that dulse cultivation is more environmentally friendly than synthetics. While some experiments in commercial cultivation have looked promising, the potential is limited by the plant's illegality. Federal scientists are working to develop a de-TPHZ-ed plant that could bring employment and stability to a depressed Maritime region. [back]

Then it finally came
the light most feared
in all of the darkness
in all of illusion

'twas love's sweet light
awakening.
'twas transformation
taking him.

Yes we know, yes it's true
it came as this hymn
but it was we, yes
it was we who sang
we who sang
we who sang

It's your pride and its strife
keeps you in life

It's your pride that is cruel
but it's only a tool
to bring you home from school.

Lose your pride and you'll feel
this promise made real.
Lose your me to the we
then you will be

free as the sea, free as the we
you will be...

Gaining
gaining the love
gaining gaining the joy
gaining the power of these words...

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

53

Notes From The Shop

{Finally!}

To say that Bim was mechanically challenged would be like saying Phaedrus was philosophically inclined. {Of course, that would be assuming that one had read ZatAoMM — not that our Rider, who in this case is our writer, can make that assumption.} [When life is a fugue, how do you know you’re not out of tune?] Fact, the point was so moot, his friends thought it cute to hoot at the coot in the zoot suit. {And does he really expect to root out the loot with a boot?} [Mute as a lute on a toot.] {Rote rot rit ;ioujihc naecxm,SDNbrGORamKLCJWE./K75 837TGNV9#$%/-U+hSIloPni/dAEDs’eILlop

Dark smashed at the laptop’s keyboard and turned it off without even bothering to SAVE. It was shit. Suffering what he’d self-diagnosed as writer’s block (he hadn’t written a byte in Part Four after all), he’d been trying the technique of just writing anything came to mind, aping the adage to get it writ, then get it right. So he’d just writ, even trying to mimic the bracketed interjections plaguing his computer. But a thousand monkeys at a thousand keyboards for a thousand years wouldn’t have come any closer. It had degenerated into meaningless rhymes. {Meaningless? Read it backwards and it clearly says Pollie’s dead in Polish.} [And slopping pigs in Pontypool?] {No that’s Dylan. Pollie’s peddling pubes in Prague.} [Who’s got pee-pee problems now?] Cute but certainly not moot.

Probably would have helped if he wasn’t suffering from the birth mother of all hang-overs as well.

{Badadaboom.} [Boom. Boom.]

“Hey. Look at this,” Bach giggled, and assumed a cultured English at odds with his rotund face and dishevelled hair. “‘Poet’s Corner. Classic dry red.’ Now is that a synchronicity or what?” Closing the laptop, Dark looked up from the morning-after kitchen table, oww, that hurt, and tried to make out what Bach was holding. His eyes, once their focus came good, registered an empty green wine bottle, litre size, one Bach had insisted they imbibe as a ‘control’ or reality check on the taste of his homemade wines. A little self-control might have been more in order. Five bottles? No, there were five empties on the counter so that made six. Plus — of course — several brews to shut down the beer tent, sorry, beer rink before (strangely sensible for their condition) abandoning the bike to teeter home afeet. [Glad to see some political correctness for a change.] (It’s not PC. Just commonsense. Only a fool would ride under the weather.) {Or fly.} They’d stripped the packs and guitar and, doubly loaded, lurched off, leaving PoEt capsized and cursing in the parking puddle. “Hey! Don’t leave me in this pisshole! I’m getting mud up my muffler!” a bitching wail Dark found hilarious, and that launched him into a drunken description of the bike’s truculent tenant.

Which of course led to The Minstrel’s incarnations, co-contemporaneous co-relations, supernatural narrations, and the transformation song. Revelations and berations. Fugue states and rude snakes. Unbelievable detail fleshing incomprehensible fact. Realities stranger than fiction. It all vomited out, taking the entire walk back; a cleansing purgation Dark couldn’t, didn’t want to control: booze woozy, finally able to let go without concern for repercussions, trusting the instincts told him he’d found a friend who’d accept if not understand. {Or, at the worst, wouldn’t retain any of it next morning.}

Bach? He’d taken it all in stumble, laughing at the more absurd bits, even whipping his pecker out a couple of times to ‘check if I’m real’. But it wasn’t crude — well, okay, it was — but it wasn’t cruel. Rather, it was sympathetic buffoonery, the eternal fool lightening the load with a rouged smile and a ‘see, there is something funny in it, so why not laugh?’. Coupled with a maternal ‘There, there. It’ll be alright. Take two beers and call me in the afternoon,’ it gave Dark the mental space to accept Bach’s other self-anointed role.

As Loki’s lackey. Hermes’ hack. {Say that five times real drunk.} Yes, Bach had agreed, Minstrel’s nostrums did make sense: accept your reality — whatever it is — then let it go. That’s the only way to just get on with living. Don’t grasp, don’t demand reality adjust to you. That just creates frustration. Pointing out, too, that Dark was so hung up on labels and names he was missing out on experiences people shelled out thousands of dollars to attain: channelled communications, transcendental archangels and mystic unions with the gods of music. Was he going crazy or being introduced to levels of reality beyond human conception? Did it matter? Judge Not, Name not, Fear not were a sound prescription, antibiotics for the mind’s virulent attachment to its own description of reality. Whatever the cost. {Pretty lucid for a drunk.} [I believe the writer claims here that he’s paraphrasing; you know, ‘separating the malt from the lees’, ‘honing in on the essential and pruning the non’, ‘highlighting the core interaction while downplaying the petty politics of human intercourse’. Something like that.] {Pretty grandiloquent for a ventriloquent.} [Look who’s talking. We can see your bits move when you babble.] {That reminds me. Did you hear the one about the Pope in Pontypool?} [Silence.] {He pontyficated.} [Dead silence.]

“For example, Edwina ScissorHands over there,” and here Bach stopped outside his own unruly gate, and pointed to the herd grazing shadows across the street. He laughed, “See her peeking out past the curtain? Give her a wave, come on, she knows I know she’s there. It’s our little game. She’ll call the cops. They’ll say thanks and, other than dropping by once in a while to show the flag and take a nip, leave me alone.” Waving cheerfully, Bach turned in through the gate and held it open for Dark. “I suppose I shouldn’t laugh… Old Eddie got drunk, drowned on his own puke. Left Edwina with four kids, a dog and no income. Here, we have to go round to the back door. Front doesn’t work.” Bach’s arm guided Dark off the concrete path and into the brambly grass where their feet made a wet swichk swichk. The tree loomed ahead, apparently impenetrable, like some black wall, but Dark had to trust Bach knew his own frontyard. Still he walked with an arm slightly raised in self-protection.

“She survived, I’ll give her that,” Bach continued, making a practised shoulder duck into the branches that almost lost Dark. “But now she’s terrified of booze, calls anyone who drinks a drunk. Judges them. Bitterly. Watch out for that branch… it’s got me more than once. She’s locked herself into a horrific world where bottles stalk her nightmares. So, of course, what happens? She lives across from me, the town drunk in her face night and day. And she’ll stay right there, sitting in that window looking out on the world until Judgement Day.” Bach stopped and took a moment to chuckle. “Unless of course she stops judging… but then, hogs might talk, eh?”

They’d come to a rickety outhouse-like extension on the rear of the house, just wide enough to admit an old plank door, it’s construction shown by a light inside burning through in the mark of Zorro. The zed [zee] squeezed into another dimension as Bach shoved the door open, no latch, no key, and a bare bulb’s yellow beacon swept across Dark, briefly blinding him. But not before he’d registered an owlish look on Bach. “Funny thing is,” Dark stammered, “the pig said he thought he knew her. She was his wife or something in another lifetime.” He stepped up through the door, eyes adjusting. “Said she’s never learned, had the same problems with drinking back then.”

Bach opened a second door into the kitchen. “Oh, all that garbage,” he snorted, stepping in. “Past lives. Karma. Soul mates…” He sent his hat skimming across the room — it was the kitchen — and threw his sodden coat unto a pile hiding a chair by the door. As outside, Dark thought looking around, so inside. The place was a mess: vines of muddy tracks spraggled across the floor, fruiting with heaps of newspapers, garbage bags, and milk crates crowded with empty wine bottles. Two, six, ten… one hell of a lot of empty bottles. Shadowed in grim light, the counters despaired under a cornucopia of dishes, open cereal boxes and mouldering fruit, while the refrigerator announced its age with a chuddering whinge. The air was chill, wet, depressing. Not that you’d know it from Bach, who stood cheerfully by the fridge.

“Say, ah, did I tell you I make wine and beer? Some Bach Hock or a Bach’n Ale to start?”

Dark sighed, tired but too polite to decline just one glass. But, he promised himself, that would be all. Just a glass. The wine was chilled, wet, quite refreshing for home made. Just two glasses. “Here, try this cabernet blackberry.” Just a bottle. “Now this is one of my favourites.” Well, okay, two.

It was a good few hours before Dark finally slipped his face onto the kitchen table, only vaguely aware of Bach chuckling as he paged through the laptop books, even less aware he’d meant to ask Bach why he thought so little of past lives.

54

Epilogue

(Well? Why not? See earlier discussion on prefaci.)

Of course, there are varying forms of insanity, and self-destructiveness is not restricted to the mistress’ acolytes. In fact, it could be argued that self-abuse — whether spurred by self-hate, material ambition or spiritual greed — is the norm of the human condition. It would be an easy argument to win, given all the examples that could be cited: hair shirts, jogging, penile implants, to instance a few. In fact, the argument could continue, self-abuse has been elevated to high art in almost every culture, every era, and sanctified in the name of — just for example — god, evil, beauty, culture, corporate profit; its greatest practitioners held up as models and archetypes, blueprints for sculpting a ‘worthy’ person on the pedestal of a worthless beast. So go and freeze your butt in Tibet. Cinch your girdle tighter. Work a ninety hour week. Self-abuse is good for you.

Especially in matters of the spirit.

If it wasn’t so crazy it’d be insane. Friend ego perpetually whacking itself across the head to drive out the inner devils? {But it feels so good when I don’t stop.} Squeezing itself like a zit to find inner peace? {Out! Out damn flaw!} Biting off its dick to spite its balls? {No — I’ll let that one pass.} [Thank you.] I mean, think about it. No! Don’t think, because that’s exactly the problem. The whole charade is based on an artificial construct, the name, this misidentification of thought and subjective inner states with objective reality, concluding, in all its rationality, it’s just not good enough! A pig that could be an angel, it needs to change. And so it sets out into the mystic, rooting in the ruts of the arcane, the profound and the holy for the scent of that most magical mushroom. Grace among the truffles. {Finally! Duffles of truffles!} Cosmic consciousness. Self-transcendence. And if the truffles don’t work, well there’s always the ten foot pole. [Don’t touch it.]

You might as well try to mould water with a sieve.

Try this experiment. Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself, What is this thing wants to change? Where is this ‘self’? When you’ve answered those questions, grab the bloody thing and squeeze your hand down into a fist. Tight. You don’t want it to get away. Then, guarding with your other hand, open your fist, just slightly, for a peek. What do you see? Nothing? Then open your fist a little further for a good look. What do you see now? Still nothing? Then open your fingers completely and answer this:

Where has your fist gone?

The same place the self has. Into the abstraction of thoughts, the stream of consciousness. An action confused with a thing; cognito, ergo sum. A state misnomered a statement; crybabo, ergo bum. Warehoused memories misconstrued as the structure itself; memento, ergo slum.

Inventory mistaken for essence.

Try this mind game. A dark room, pitch, suddenly bursts into light, falls back to night. But you carry the image of a baby on your retina. It dwindles. Then another flash, another image, a toddler. It fades. Another, now quicker, another again. You see image after image; toddler to preschooler to angst-struck teenager to whimpering death: each glimpse now melting into the next, and you forget there ever was a darkness, there ever was a source of light. You are at the movies, sucked into the screenplay, the illusion of movement and change. The illusion of you: that’s me, you say, up there on the screen. That’s me. That’s me!

But it isn’t.

To the extent that you exist, you are the light. You are the source of the movie, the illusion machine in a warehouse stuffed with rotting memories. And, certainly, you can rifle your wares on a long winter night, refurbish, restock and repress as you like, re-illumine each mental moment: the warmth of the breast and its devastating loss, half a dozen first kisses and a baby crowning, granddad’s last hracking grasp. What you can’t do is turn it around, stand on memory and look back at the light. A projector can’t even cast its own shadow.

Never mind decide to change itself.

55

Just A Coupl’a GoB

But then, wouldn’t you? Digress I mean. After all, the recollection of how you almost drowned a second time is not the type of memory you hold close to your face — even if it did change your life for the better. And being forced to write about it just adds insult to perjury. By the Bi, that’s the type of writing my editor would usually cross out as too cryptic.

Well, fuck him. {No thanks.}

For, if there’s anything Heaven’s Gate wasn’t, it was cryptic. It stank of its own power, reeked of death. Teased nostrils with the bitter whiff of embalming salt.

Or am I being mellowdramatic?

Not a bit. Of all Fundy’s dulse grounds, Heaven’s Gate is the toughest, a decapitated snake’s head of tangled tide-broken rock, severed from its peninsular body by half a mile of rubble. At high tide you wouldn’t know it was there — the head and its crushed jugular covered completely in 20 to 30 feet of water. It was only at lowest ebb the crown could rise from its encumbering crypt to reveal itself. And challenge the dulse-hunters, daring them with a mere two hours of opportunity, when the tide was low and stable enough men could clamber its rocks, stand up to its erratic currents, and go down for the bobbitt.

But first you had to get out there, a slip sliding task that took the worst part of an hour. Or the shortest part of a lifetime if you weren’t careful. Which the Hulk was. Not satisfied with book larning, he’d insisted on a scout the day before — a surreptitious sixty-six.six minute (stop-watch timed) snake’s spine slink to a slew of sea-sculptured stone overseeing the site. (Perfectly legal under the Mr Harvest rules: as long as you didn’t actually go in the water.) (Which was fine with me.) With a general’s precision, he’d shown me his planned route, mapping imaginary markers on one palm while pointing with his other out to their concrete reality. “We’ll go in down there at Hanlon’s Point, bear to the left over to Rocky’s Balls — see, that pair of boulders — cut right until just before the Gallows, where we’ll hang back to the left to straddle The Terminator.” Runt cut in with a smirking “Should we warn him about the Tempest?” but Hulk shrugged it off. “Not if we splash through Finnegan’s Wake… I think that’s where Ulysses and son went wrong. You can’t get through The Tempest but I think we can manage Finnegan’s.”

To which Runt muttered, “Better than he did I hope.”

The Hulk went on, squinting and sketching, calmly recalling the names of another half dozen waypoints. Death’s Door. Tricky Dicky. Kirk’s Folly. And, you know, it all made perfect sense. As long as you kept your eyes on the palm. Take them away though, look out at the lobster stones thrown into the boiling water of a rising tide and everything changed. This was madness! Try to calm yourself by looking back at the palm and guess what? The map had disappeared. Only lifelines left. Truncated. So I asked the kind of insightful question any reporter worth his salt-petre would pose; even a clandestine aquaphobe reconsidering the wisdom of his high school guidance counsellor.

“Ah, considering all the complicating factors of limited time, tidal patterns, earth-moon interactions and butterflies flapping their wings in Cincinnati, juxtaposed of course with the vagaries of auguring cracks on the shells of washed-up turtles, and, ah… assuming — and I admit this may or not be a valid assumption — ah, a certain inherent bodily need for continuation… ah…

“So why not USE A BOAT!?”

Runt just snorted. That was another of his talents — a peculiar grrrrnt dripping with phlegmy derision I’d come to know rather too intimately. Runt didn’t like me and didn’t want me along, points he’d made clear the moment I returned from the washroom back at the Imperial Motel and Grill. (I’d gathered from a few of Runt’s comments that Hulk had thought it would be a lark to take me on their competition run, but Runt had been appalled, in fact had almost walked. He claimed he only stayed because they agreed that if I turned out to be dead weight, then, fine, they’d leave me for dead meat. Poli brokered the deal. I guess that’s what politicians are for.)

“It’s been tried,” Hulk gravelled. “Trouble is, with all that rock and the tide going crazy it’s a good way to make driftwood.” Runt laughed, shaking his head to an inner joke. “There was even a fellow tried to make like the ark. Seems he figured if he anchored over the Gate, when the tide went out he’d beach ever so gently, and could clean up before the tide came back in.” Runt snickered and arched an eye at me — he was enjoying the telling of this tale. “I guess he was thinking with his pecker. The anchor dragged and caught, the boat flipped, and was bucketed between the rocks like a pinball. They found some pieces of it. They never found him.” Runt spit. “Amateur.”

I looked over to Hulk, staggered at Runt’s calm recitation, but he was back to making maps on his palm, muttering the way point mantra. Like firefighters or marines, death was just a fact of life to these GoBs, and if I did turn out dead weight — I had no doubt — I would be dead meat. Just another anecdote. Struggling for journalistic objectivity, I asked Runt how, if they never found the body, they knew someone had tried.

“Pigs. See the town down there by the point? Big RCMP office there and they know about the Gate. They see a craft or any kind of action out here, the paddy boat’s on its way. Not that they could help you if you get into trouble. Crossing takes twenty three minutes in good weather. You can drown a dozen times before they get here. The moral of the story…,” Runt paused, very effectively, for dramatic effect, “a boat’s a quick ticket to hell or jail. Take your pick.”

“It’s a quick ticket to disqualification too,” the Hulk cut in, motioning it was time to slink back. The contest rules, he explained, were very strict. The dulse had to be harvested in the traditional, decades-honoured way, by hand and on foot. Besides, he went on, biting the words, boats were for chicken-shit amateurs, for quick-buck priss-heads. His vehemence was surprising, and ripped the stuffing from my nurtured-in-eternal-hope mental image of a gentle giant. This was his passion and it boiled down to this: dulsing was a way of life in which everyone had to pull their own weight. And, if you’re going to be Mr Harvest, you want to be able to hold your head high.

No pun intended. [None taken.]

But I digress.

56

"It’s like losing your keys in Harlem, but looking for them in Manhattan because you like the amm-bay-unse better.” Bach’s baby bloodshots held Dark’s a moment, coldly, as though daring any challenge to either the thought or hoity-toit French, then graciously grazed off to other tables. Not sure he should have asked the nagging question, Dark gave a silent mare-sea. {That’s French for sea-horse isn’t it?} It was true what they said. [And just who is this they?] The eyes were windows on the soul… and there were times Bach’s eyes simply scared him. With what? He wasn’t sure. Not malice. Something deeper, some existential angst. The threat of infinity? Eons of pained frustration? Whatever it was, Dark felt an intuitive connection with his question, What about past lives? For that matter, Dark had to wonder but hadn’t asked, what about precarnations, the already-experienced- and-described down to the door’s dayblue slash across the arena floor? The spaghetti stain on Bach’s plaid shirt? Conversation Dark could have forespoken almost word for word? The feeling he knew most of the arena’s afternoon delighters by name?

"Look. It’s not that I don’t think reincarnation is possible but whether I was Nefertiti or Tom Titty Tum Tum means diddly squid.” The eyes had swung back as he talked, and now fixed on a point somewhere directly behind Dark’s head. Not as though he was looking through Dark. More like Dark and the arena weren’t there, and Bach was speaking directly to God. Or maybe directly from the writer. “Ever hear of Ram Dass? No? Funny, you’re the right age… anyways he was one of the original Harvard dulse heads, friend of Timothy Leary’s who turned Bhuddist. Wrote a book called Be Here Now! Never heard of it?”

Dark had to shake his head but, his suspicions confirmed, he suspected it wasn’t seen. Bach had launched on one of the writer’s interminable monologues — and the bastard wasn’t even going to paraphrase it.

At least he hadn’t heard it already.

"Well, the basic idea is we don’t live in the past. We don’t live in the future either. We live here now, and everything you need to learn, everything you need to deal with, is right here, right now. But a lot of people hang up on past lives, looking for karma there-then rather than here-now. It’s an ego-trap, just another double blind.” Bach switched to a carny con’s conniving cadence, then back. “‘Keep your eyes on the shell now, never let your eyes leave the shell’ while the hand sleights away. It’s just more judgements, more names, and ultimately putting responsibility back there instead of here where you might be able to do something about it.” Bach stopped, took an angry swig of beer, then continued. Scathing. “Put it on your computer and then do a global SEARCH/REPLACE past lives with all the other ego-traps like religion, childhood trauma, astral planes, drugs, you name it.” He stopped to finish his beer. One fell glug. “Lecture finished,” he finished.

Then summed it up with a stunning urruppppption that walloped into echoes against the cold steel roof. Died away in a scattering of applause.

These people certainly did know Bach.

“What about booze?” Dark asked, but immediately regretted it, knowing he’d violently transgressed The Brotherhood’s prime directive: never put a fellow member on the spot. Bach’s eyes went frigid and now bored directly into Dark’s. He started to stand, stiff with anger… then the blizzard suddenly softened back to despair.

“You named it,” he said as he turned and walked away.

The Teachings of The Minstrel

Thus can you remember

Who you are. What you are. Why you are.

And so answer the questions

Who is the writer? What is the story? and Why?

“I’m not a garu. I don’t have to be perfect. And you have no right to judge me.”

It was the kind of statement could have been a challenge or threat. But, with Bach still standing on the far side of the table — eyes averted, shoulders hunching hands into his torn jeans — body language belied either interpretation. Delivery too — more like the mournful recitation of a well-rehearsed speech than impromptu anger; perhaps accounting for his lengthy absence, which Dark had measured with another beer and daylight’s lengthening slab. Time enough… and sure enough, the speech wasn’t finished.

“And even if I were, I wouldn’t. And you’d still have no right to judge.”

But, to speak of that, we must first address the we — that which was there before the confusion, before me and name became one.

And the same.

Trouble is, we has no address. Can you pinpoint and describe the intersection of infinity and eternity? You can. But not on any map, not in any word. The All transcends maps, baffles language. Words break down where there are no boundaries so, at most, can only point, not describe. As Chuang Tzu said, if it could be talked about, everyone would have already told his brother.

So. Just pointing:

The All has no boundaries, no centre, no form. It pervades more than invades. Unmanifest, we is the nonexistence necessarily pre-existing existence. The formless background existence bubbles out of. The unity underlying all dualities. Trialities. Quadralities. The unknown, unknowable, nothing. Still just pointing: imagine this nothing. No time. No space. No events, no cause. Can you do it? Or do you find the shadows of your own thought rippling across that, what? — vastness? smallness? emptiness? fullness? — trying to name it? Conceptualize it?

Make it known.

Do you find Heaven there? Styxian ferries? Blind chance or synchronicities? Astral or multidimensional planes? Galactic turnkey projects? Do tunnels of light beckon? Frigid wastes repel? Are there islands of life, or just Life? A became? Or a becoming?

Names. Words. Projections.

The ruminations of fleas trying to comprehend dog.

They can’t help it. Unlike nature, mind abhors vacuum, finds it hard to accept nothing, to shrug off emptiness. So it infills, incessantly plagiarizing its own nature into gods, plundering its own assumptions to find self-evident truths. Dog exists to haven fleas. Flea serves to pester dog. What dog? Form, it follows, follows expectation. Until the microscope of mind finds its own shadow changing the landscape, comes face to face with its own uncertainty principle.

Remember. Even nothing is just another name.

Just another leap of faith.

57

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

Paparazzi!

Abby bolted the gauntlet of staccato flashes, shielding her face with Betcher’s arms, and ducked into the limo, crunching down into the rear seat. “Driver! Get us the hell out of here!” she ordered.

Damn that Jhikl!

‘Look. That’s just the price of being a star,’ Betcher thought to her. ‘You can’t change the world, so let it go.’ ‘But I can’t stand the unfairness,’ Abby gnashed her teeth, hating the voice of reason. ‘The hide of that prick!’ But reason wouldn’t leave. ‘Oh, he’s got a hide alright, and yes he does have a prick. And he’s got a damn good ghostwriter too. All in all, a sound recipe for a successful lick and tell. But you don’t have to buy into it.’

"But there’s millions reading that trash,” Abby griped, forgetting to hold her tongue. “Pardon ma’am?” the driver asked. “Nothing!” she spat. “Keep your eyes on the road and your nose out of it.” “Yes, ma’am.” ‘And you…,” she turned on Betcher, careful this time to hold it inside, ‘Don’t give me that SAS!’

‘If I don’t, who will?’ Betcher queried, laughing lightly. ‘Better me than The Minstrel, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What?’ she snorted mentally. ‘Better a non-existent fictional character than a bloody figment of my imagination? Hodson’s choice if you ask me. Besides, you know bloody well that book doesn’t exist.’

She turned away, determined not to listen. They’d had this argument too many times.

The Teachings of The Bloody Minstrel. Betcher had lapped it up, reading Becky’s copy of the book at least half a dozen times before returning it. Memorized the dictatums. Meditated on their meaning. Tried to apply them to his life. Which was Abby’s life. Which, after 333 lectures on SAS — Self-Awareness Shit! — had totally pissed her off. {You’da thought she’d be shitted off.} [I’m surprised you had the intestinal fortitude for that pun.] Countering a constant semi-conscious colloquy of oh, but don’t you sees and the eighth dictatum would suggest thats was worse than having a conscience. In fact, they’d almost come to blows. Once. Then Betcher reminded Abby what that would mean, and suggested she might contemplate the first and second dictata. {Shouldn’t that be dictati?} [As in, dictati, ergo stalin?] Fuck you, she’d replied and would have left if she could have. Betcher smugly suggested she consider the applicability of the 13th Corollary.

Blow it out my ass, she’d retorted petulantly.

So, still, just pointing.

Whatever you may accuse the we of, it did not invent creation. It did not will the universe into being. Rather, as seed is potential plant, so the we was latent, a nothing so absolute it could only be a something. But what? Like seed, we has no awareness of sun, no concept of earth, no notion to grow.

It just does.

Breaking the soil, sending roots to the depths, potential unfolding. Shooting upward to dance in the sun, soak in the rain. Unfurling its leaves, roots knitting still tighter weaves. At what point is it plant? Does it know it is plant? Does it sense its existence separate from earth, independent of sun? Can it exist except in relation? Apart from its growing towards extinction in seed?

When does the embryo become foetus become human?

When does it sense itself separate
from the womb growing it?

A time machine, Dark thought. Landscape’s a time machine — if you know how to read it, how to decipher the stretch and scrape marks breaking eons had left. Like the worn mountains of interior BC and these tree-frozen dunes of storm-whipped sand. So slowly undulating, the bike barely noticed them, powering smoothly up their long slopes to crest and sight the next one. Floating down into the trough. It took a knowing eye to notice them at all, and Dark doubted many of the other drivers on the TransCanada knew they were surfing the receding shorelines of an ancient inland sea, travelling backwards in time to the furthest reach of a vast, cold, mudchoked lake spawned in the death of the last ice age.

Glacial Lake Aggassiz. Once covering most of southern Manitoba, over thousands, thousands of years, the lake slowly drained, dwindling in grandeur to a few remnant sloughs [comparatively speaking of course; Tourism Manitoba would hardly agree with calling Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis, even Dauphin Lake, stagnant ponds] while dropping a thick blanket of fiercely fertile sediment. Those deposits are now Manitoba’s great flatlands, picture perfect in their sweep out to horizons unblemished except for bluffs of tree, farm buildings and the distant skyline of Winnipeg. It had taken Dark a good three hours to cross them, throttle locked, feet up on the pegs, Guess Who on the stereo running back to Saskatoon. While the day was wetly chill, the sun hidden in masses of dark cloud, at least it wasn’t raining. There’d only been a few spits just as he left Twixtland. Even fewer spits from tHe PoEt, who was still sulking at being left out overnight in the mud.

Dark had been glad for that silence.

58

And that was the worst of it. Armed with SAS, Betcher had become a frigging prig, a been-there-done-that-got-the-point blow-hard who reduced her to childish frustration. Full of hot air, allusions and quotations from Chairman Minstrel. Almost twenty-four hours a bloody day! Even invading her dreams, fabricating a faceless, obsessive-compulsive alter-ego to demonstrate his ruminations, or the applicability of the sixth and seventh dictata. Alter-boy seemed to have an affinity for animals. Bor-ing. She’d have given anything for a good wet dream.

Or the blissful slide into the darkness between dreams, when the self — or selves, as the case history may be — disappeared.

Then, Betcher had insisted on buying his own copy, their copy, of The Teachings, but he/she/they couldn’t find it. Not in any book store. Not in any library. Not anywhere. That’s strange, said Becky. No problem, said Betcher. Citing Minstrel’s citation that we create our own reality, he simply set alter-boy to writing. Betcher wanted a reality where the book existed, even if it was only in Abby’s dreams. What Abby wanted was a reality where bloody Jhikl and his goddamned book didn’t exist.

He hadn’t been written out of the script at all. He’d just been writing his own.

The morning’s goodbyes with Bach had been strained, a shuffling dance around the rift Dark had opened with his tactless question about booze; even though they had, in a sense, patched it up the afternoon before. Sure, Bach admitted back at his house, he was alcoholic. He had no illusions about that. His arms swept the kitchen, drawing in the mess. And, yeah, he was a piss-poor housekeeper, an even lousier gardener. On top of all that! he masturbated wearing women’s panties! {Ooo.. bet he regrets revealing that.} [If he remembers.] But, Bach categorically declared, that didn’t change his deeper being — those were just traits, problems perhaps but not flaws — nor invalidate his thinking about life and ego-traps. Demanding perfection of the messenger was a cop-out from the message, a tidily self-righteous avoidance. See he’s not perfect, so the message can’t be right and, so, I don’t have to apply it to myself. Well, friend, Bach concluded, there’s no such thing as perfection. If there were there could be no learning, no growing, no evolution. Life is open-ended and to be human — to be anything — is to be less than perfect.

Chastened by the clarity, the logic of Bach’s argument, Dark had no reply. What could he say? Argue perfection did too exist? Maintain we could so demand perfection? The greatest truths were so self-evident they faded from awareness. Until they were shoved in your face. So he fell back on PoEt’s definition of apology, “Look, I’m sorry. I regret hurting you and I hope you’ll forgive it. Really, I’m sorry.” It seemed to work. Like a priest, Bach reached for the wine, a nice little chokecherry, started pouring a tankard. Sighed.

"No… there’s, there’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t hurt me. I could have ignored what you said, or just laughed it off.” He held up the bottle, no question a question, but Dark waved it down. “The thing is, I hurt me with my reaction to what you said.” He sipped, savoured, found a place for the bottle on the counter — no mean feat — started pacing. “Which shows me I haven’t accepted my drinking as well as I thought.”

He stopped by the window, stood there looking out, hurt and anger on his face pastel-lit to softness. Lost in some deep time when Dark and the kitchen did not exist. Finally, “heh”, a strangled groan. His body shook with a spasm of resignation and he turned to face Dark. “So I suppose, if anything, I should be thanking you for helping me see that.” He raised the tankard, “Thanks bud. Salut!” and downed it.

Wiped his mouth, stared at Dark. “Now, I get to return the favour.”

59

More commentary from the writer

It’s said Prince Sidhartha only finally became Buddha after seven years of desperate inner struggle; wandering the forests, fasting to delirium, meditating til his buttocks hurt. His goal was to pierce the veils of what Indian tradition calls maya (commonly translated as illusion), which refers to the concept all of reality is nothing but mind stuff. But, as even the idea of maya is itself nothing but mind stuff, the term might better be transliterated as delusion and/or collusion. Still mind stuff, but at least the finger is now pointing the right way: not out-there, an imposition, but in-here, an externalization. Mind tells us the sun rose this morning. But what is sun? what is rose? what is morning? Is arose by any other name still a rising? Or something different?

Of course it’s something different. Look at the multi-petalled red flower in your garden and call it brgoramu. Would you give it to your partner on Valentine’s Day? What if you called it weed? Would you smoke it? Mind views the world through language and ideas, coercing reality into their stiff grammar — to the point there’s no direct perception of whatever reality is really out there. Mind mediates all. Does the sun go around the earth? Or earth around the sun? Our daily experience says former, we can watch it, but modern mind says latter, we can measure it. But is either anything more than mindstuff? Perspective? Comfortable delusion? Seen from the far edge of our galaxy, Earth and sun are partners in a cosmic tango, a genteel dyad sailing the winds of infinity, and the question of who’s leading is, simply, irrelevant. Fred&Ginger overwhelm abstraction.

So we moderns can’t look down our schnozi at the ancients who believed earth kept the beat.

Now perhaps you can see Sid’s problem, and how it relates to the Big I. He’d set himself the task of escaping illusion using the illusion machine itself. Try as he could, strive as he would, deny each vale in turn — there was always another veil to pull aside. Like chasing monsters in nightmares, there was always another to pick up the baton and beat him over the head. Seeking release only entangled him further in the gnarled branches of mind. Looking for the atman, the eternal self, all he could catch was the flickering of his own mind’s I.

You’ve heard of the proverbial three-chord band? Well this was a one note symphony: me me me meee. I! want release. I! want to escape maya, ideas, desires. I! want freedom from identification and attachment. I! want to help others escape their suffering. I! Captain I! demand it. {Ici, said the blind man.} [Isi, said the yes ma’am.] (Icy eye. Cut it out, said the writer.) {You started it.} So, even if his goal could not be faulted, even if his motivation was thoroughly compassionate, even if he’d given up a kingdom for these hoarse nights [on Broadway?] — he had — it made no difference. He was caught in the web of mind and the more he struggled the more firmly it bound him.

Now Sid wasn’t stupid, just a little slow. {Bhuddists don’t believe in things like death edicts, do they?} [No. They figure it’d only come back to haunt them.] It only took seven years poking at the demon in his eyes before he finally threw up his hands, and said ‘bugger this shit.’ He just let it all go, had a real meal, then sat down under a bodhi tree. Not a special one, mind you — even in a swim suit, it wouldn’t make the cover of Om and Edens — just an ordinary fig that happened to be in the neighbourhood when Sid dropped I. {Sd?} Which of course is what happened. Sid sat there all night, no doubt anticipating his first good crap in eons, until, as the morning star swept the heavens clear of night, anuttara samyak sambodhi — unexcelled complete awakening, as he called it — stole his mind.

And the rest as they say is history. Which I won’t bore you with, except to note that when he was later asked by a student what he had gained from his ass, he replied, “Just so, Sabhuti, I obtained not the least thing. And for this reason it is called unexcelled complete awakening.”

In other words, nothing special.

Sabhuti’s response is not recorded.

60

An hour east of Winnipeg, the land had started swelling with its echoes of that distant lake, and the twinned highway tunnelled into the poplar and birch of the Whiteshell Provincial Forest; the morning’s panoramas abruptly constrained to a straightjacket of foliage, each set of lanes suddenly alone except for glimpses at intersections and across insect-breeding swamps. Dark found the change depressing, as though endless opportunity had been narrowed to a predictable, and, utterly unchangeable future. Worse, just ahead was a transition into a still deeper past, northern Ontario’s Pre-Cambrian Shield, where eons-sullen rock would ricochet the highway into blind curves and gear down hills. Forcing the present into the patterns of the past. Dark riffled the encyclopedia, found the entry he knew was there. Determinism, ‘the view in classical physics that all future events are determined by past conditions. Consequently, in theory, all future events can be predicted.’

But what about free will? He riffled ahead, scanned the entry. Free Will, yes, that was the fly in the deterministic orgy. Dark could, at any point he chose, make a turn into the sand roads of the forest. Get off, stretch, make camp. Stay for a day, stay for the summer. Or work his way down into the States, maybe zip down to Texas or over to California.

The choice was his.

And can that be anything but illusion?

Already three weeks on the best seller list, Abby Dear Betcher had rocketed Jhikl to international prominence. Not too surprising. His long blonde hair and sculpted-to-instant-wide-on physique had coupled with his smarmy poise and PR’d image of a carefree surfer (Hah!) to quicken the pulse for thousands of women. And Quicken the bottom-lines of more than one boyie magazine. He’d become the All-American heroine and the focus of more myths than Joseph Campbell could collate. According to The Bi-National Enquirer, he’d been mobbed in New York, rooted at least 30 virgins to exhaustion in Virginia, and routed an invasion of alien body snatchers in Sutherland, Maine. And that was an off day. So frequent were these stories — and so outlandish — The Bi, in an uncharacteristic fit of journalistic fervour, had even assigned a crack team to check them all out. Until the rag’s multi-national owner reminded its editor that another of its subsidiaries had published A.D.B. The team was disbursed to report on ESP, mongoloid UFOs and an upcoming total eclipse of the sun in NB said to signal the start of the latest and newest, all the rage, New Age.

But Abby, if any woman, knew a man doesn’t live on good buns alone. The fuel in Jhikl’s rise had been jealousy and rage. Not his, though it was there, but the envy of a million women and the spite of a million more; ignited and channelled by a loose network of Old Gal CEOs and MBAs calling themselves Real Wimmen. Real women indeed. Incensed by the legislative success of the men’s liberation movement, Real Wimmen waged clandestine campaigns against employment equity and equal rights, and had turned on Abby for her alleged betrayal of their sex: Betcher’s jibes at their complacency, his ridicule of their power, her jokes about men having to sleep their way to the top wearing blinders.

However, consummate media guerrillas, they’d waited until the fourteenth minute, when public and media interest were declining, to launch their campaign. It was a textbook example of the Nixon/Kissenger Doctrine: discredit them on the way down and they won’t even rate a whatever happened to? The nation-wide release of A.D.B. had been the first salvo, backed up with same-week gigs for Jhikl on every talk show Real Wimmen owned. Week two followed with a fax-cast flurry of Abby/Betcher jokes (Did you hear she did herself to get pregnant? It was in psycho.), swamped open lines, rumours, ‘She’s on drugs.’, innuendo, aspersions. ‘She really is a cross-dresser. Probably queer.’ {How droll. A thespian lesbian.} Outright lies. ‘Yeah, I’ve slept with her. Who hasn’t?’ By week three, the campaign had gone public and media outlets slavered to get Abby in their sights, paying outrageous sums to deliver Jhikl’s simple and consistently repeated message: ‘She’s schiz. A multiple personality. They should be locking her up, not letting her poison audiences.’

Quaint technique, Abby grudgingly admitted — running the flashback scenes as reflections in the window of the limo. Jumping out of the passing streetscape, their highlights intermingled with Betcher’s shadowed reflection, reminding her she was still in costume. Four levels of reality in one, she thought. That’s what Betcher would say The Minstrel would say. The world’s a looking glass and Alice never lived here at all. She just watched. Oh look, there’s Opah — funny I didn’t think she’d have any highlights. Oh, and look, there’s the sheets burning Betcher’s effigy down in Alabama. Looks good on him. And — oh my god — there’s a restaurant sells liverwurst on rye! What the hell was that question?

“Driver. Stop! Stop!”

She was back in the car a moment later, her question unanswered. It wasn’t New York and they’d refused to serve Betcher. Add that to the cancelled bookings — Real Wimmen was going to pay! She’d find a way.

Perhaps that was what Minstrel meant by he created his own reality.

Probably not.

If he understood it at all, Minstrel’s point seemed to be that he had no choice in this actuality, that Dark had made his decisions long before there was an awareness called itself Dark — call it Dark Then. So, still a puppet, free will a chimera, Dark Now could only follow the unfolding of those choices, hemmed in by decisions he couldn’t remember, doomed to rollercoast ups and downs planted in the distant past. Yeah, landscape’s a bloody time machine, Dark winced, gunning past a lumbering tractor-trailer. Cranking it open. 120. 130. Torque kicking in. Shame there wasn’t a time machine to unmake those choices. 140. His mood darkened with the sky. 150. For sure he was going to ride back into rain.

No, the we did not set out to evolve. Unleashed in the Big Bang, [Would that be a euphemism for orgasm?] {No, it’d be a eunuch for the Big Cheese.} (That doesn’t even make sense!) {Sauce for the gander.} it just set out. One step, then another, constructing webs of its own essence; patterns, pathways. Learning itself through growth, through taking blind ends, dead alleys, feeling, groping about the dimness, as babies find their feet.

Hmm, that wasn’t there this morning.

Latent possibilities becoming extant — matter, life, thought. Probabilities collapsing into the rules of the game. Potentials explored. Refining growth into evolution. Branching and branching, enthralled in its own diversity. Feet separating into toes, hands forming fingers. Seeing itself through multiple eyes, coming into awareness through multiple Is.

We becoming me. No me! Yes, me.

Losing itself in that awareness. Sinking into oblivion, a sea of mes, each believing itself special, unique in name and existence and not just another flowering in the expression of an unfathomable All. And therefore important; and they’re right. Each name is loved with a passion. Each experience treasured. For that is its purpose, the we’s raison de n’etre.

To learn itself.

For, like you, even the All cannot see its own source, cannot stand on awareness to look back at awareness. Even the we lives out of mystery, only able to see its own shadow, its own reflection. So it hungers for light, for mirrors. For experience. For a way to touch itself.

Thus, you and me.

Proxies for the we. Persona non greta. Actors, butterfly dreamers. Living, learning, feeling on a stage called reality. Lost in our roles, oblivious to our roots in the depths of the universe except for the nagging echo of Ariadne’s promise.

Come back.

The glimpses, yearnings, the feeling there must be more. These memories, hopes left there to call out in the darkness, to remind, to cajole and start each me on the return. To rebecoming the we, rejoining and rejoicing in the sharing of the lost dreams. Like Voyager, sailing the abysmal depths of space, you set out to experience and to learn what there was to learn. Then to come back.

And it is…

61

“Time!”

Runt again, spitting it out like some foreign object, more demand than query. But I was prepared. Not only was my personal computer-linkable combination calculator/wrist chronometer/GPS locator accurate to within a millionth of a second and water-resistant to 100 feet — about 100 feet more than me — it glowed an attractive dawn pink in the dark. In a more collected mind, I might have noticed how closely the colour matched the eastern sky out past the Gate. But I didn’t. I just made it up. Just now. A little after three, I replied, emphasizing the little more than the after.

“Running slow,” the Hulk grimaced. “Most we’ll have is an hour.” “Yeah, well what’d expect dragging a sea anchor?” Runt muttered. Just loud enough for me to hear. Hulk shook his head. “No. It was my mistake. Should have done The Tempest. Those currents in Finnegan’s almost earned their name.”

I could have kissed him for that. Finnegan’s had been more than a rude wake up. Ever seen the whirlpool below Niagara Falls? Well, contain that in a 50 foot neolithic amphitheatre, and place openings at either end. Gaps in the wall of rock really. Water comes in one gap, not straight in, mind you, but angled, so it has to churn circles before finding its way out the other. On palm it looks easy; an almost straight line from one gap to the next. But it’s against the current coming out to get in, let the backwash carry you to your exit, then back to slogging it out against the current coming in.

It helps if you have the presence of mind to follow instructions.

I didn’t, and instead locked into the past tense, into the memory of fighting the currents back in high school; angling into them, judging safety by a constant pressure against my chest. No way I was letting go to float to the far gap. So, once into the breach, I took the long way round, against the current, struggling for every inch — like some grunt soldier at Vimy Ridge. Oblivious to Runt’s “Hey!” which quickly became pounding streams of profanity. Oblivious too to the Hulk trying to scream me into letting go. “Get into the backwash!” he yelled from an eddy by the far gap, which he and the Runt had reached in just minutes. My body screamed back No way! Apparently so did my mouth. Runt yelled “Fuck you!” and started shrieking at Hulk about they had a deal, gesticulating like the Minister for Silly Semaphore. Curiously, from my point of view, there was a certain unreality to it all — it could have been a cartoon, just a coupl’a scavengers arguing over a corpse, their voices retreated into occasional bi-syllabic balloons. Dead weight, dead meat. Dead right!

160. Coming close to max rev, bike starting to whine. 165. Wonder how fast it’ll go? Zroooooom-mmmmmmmmm pass Falcon Lake. Zwiiizzzzzzhhzhhzzz past another truck. 171. Crest a final wave and wave goodbye to the plains, bye-bye Manitoba. 172. The no-border border. Chroooooommmmm into Ontarie-airy-airy--ee-oo. 173. 174.

Curiouser, the pair reminded me of a ventriloquist act I’d once seen in India. (I was there digging dirt on a Georgia garu’s garden of earthly delights. Never found any, so I just made it up. My editor loved it.) Anyways, Big Vent’s little shtick sat on a stick, about four feet high, so Little Vent — a right dapper little twit with a smarmy pom accent — could see eye to eye with Big Vent. Except he didn’t. They disagreed on everything. They had a wonderfully caustic routine about colonial subjugation, which Little Vent kept misunderstanding as controlling your colon — something my editor’s big on too:

The routine finally ended when Little Vent, making a face to demonstrate his point, said it was time for afternoon tea and ‘scrunchits.’ Whereupon he jumped down off his stick, said he was glad he’d packed his lunch, and disappeared off the stage. Leaving the audience so open-mouthed you could hear the crap drop. Sp-link Sp-lash. They only broke into thunderous applause after Big Vent and stick, acting out the eternal question, ponderously pitched forward; smashing his face to splinters on the stage floor as a disembodied voice cursed, “bloody frigging mongeese”.

Okay. I guess it loses something in the translation. But it gave my mind something to concentrate on at a time I didn’t want to focus on objective reality.

And, boy, did I object to this reality.

‘You know, Axiom 19 states: if you can’t beat’em, join the dots for them,’ Betcher patiently counselled from the window. ‘Screw off,’ she thought, and powered it down, vanishing the reflection. Cryptic bloody bastard. What the hell does that mean? ‘Just that as long as you fight on their terms, there’s no way you can win. So don’t,’ Betcher answered from no where. ‘Turn it around. Confirm everything. If they ask, Are you on drugs? answer Why? do you have some? If they ask if you’ve stopped beating your Dickie? say No! Why should I? When they inquire Are you schiz? answer Yes. No! Maybe. In short, Abby dear, as they want to create reality, let them. They may not like what they get.’

“Don’t you dare call me that!” Abby snarled, her anger rising. “Pardon Ma’am?” the driver asked over his shoulder. “I’m not talking to you!” The driver threw up his hands. “Yes, Ma’am. But can I ask, since we’re almost there, if you’d like to go in through the garage. You’d avoid them that way,” he finished, pointing ahead where Abby could see a paparazzi phalanx running to form up at the front entrance to her condo. Her own Praetorian Guard. Cameras ready. A few eager mongeese already shooting. The flashes jammed her eyes with hatred, and she understood how the later emperors must have feared their guards’ ‘Hail Ceasar!’ hurrahs hiding the knives. Her penned emotions started boiling.

"look out!”

Brake. Jam, swerve, try to hold the bike. Beeeeepppppp! Get out of the way! Fffffupppp.

Shit!

"did it now, didn’t you.”

Runt’s semaphore ended with a sweeping uppercut to single finger. He was not a happy scamper. Hulk mostly looked confused, torn, half-turning to follow the departing Runt out the far gap, half-turning to yell a pleading “Let go!” Which I couldn’t, even though I was tiring from the constant attack. Wouldn’t, even as I knew I was essentially authorizing my own execution. Most importantly, didn’t. Hulk’s arm swept down in open-palmed futility, triggering the completion of his turn to follow Runt. With his height and bulk, Hulk was able to grab fingerholds on either side of the rocky gap to pull himself through, and a part of me thought there goes the last human being I’ll ever see. I blinked away a tear, or maybe it was just a drop of seawater. In any case, that was enough for Hulk to disappear.

Just like that. One second there, the next gone.

The next, history repeated itself, my life story flickering across the gaps of a mind letting go. Born on a mountain down in Tennessee. I felt my legs begin to buckle. They all became retarded. Muscles going numb. Folks said Red, better move away from there. One foot then the other losing its hold. A four hour trip. Giant arms sweeping across my chest, flipping me backwards. He’s my best friend. Gasping as the water bit my face. Does whatever a writer can. Wishing I’d had the foresight to write my own obituary. Good evening, it’s been a day of tragedy. Leaving it to be discovered in my empty motel room. Bi Guy Says Bye. One of North America’s foremost tabloid stars drowned today.

Oh god no! Dark groaned as it hit home, finally stopped, looking back down the empty highway to the lump of bloodied flesh. Twitching bloodied flesh. I’ve killed a dog. I’ve killed someone’s pet. He started muscling the bike through a two-point turnaround, excuses jumping out. But, it wasn’t my fault. It just came out of nowhere, dashing up from the ditch and I didn’t have time…

"what do you expect riding that bloody fast?”

“Oh just shut UP!!” Dark snarled, biting the words to keep the self-anger, sorrow and pity controlled. Taking it out on tHe PoEt. “If you want to be part of this party then you can’t just take part when you damn well please. I got enough silent treatment from the X to bloody well last me a lifetime. So, if I piss you off, then you say so! Right then! Otherwise hold your peace and keep the fuck out of my head! Got that!” Not surprisingly, PoEt had a mocking come back.

"yes, sir! got it, sir! aye sir! and, sir, i think the dog got it too, sir!”

Frustrated, Dark shut him out, pulling the sphincter so tight it hurt. He was approaching the body now — it had taken most of fifty metres to stop the bike — and could see the damage. It was a small dog, one of those yappy breeds with long fur, the kind dowagers like to carry in their arms, murmuring poopsie this and poopsie that. What the hell was it doing out here? He hadn’t seen a house or business — he hadn’t seen anything but trees and swamp for kilometres. Well, whatever poopsie was doing out here, right now it was dying. The left side of the head was caved in, hit by the front wheel, a bauble of brain ooozing around the eyeball popped uselessly outside its socket. The legs twitched and spasmed to the leaden crescendo of death, some remnant instinct trying to run to safety through a volley of pain; shooting squeaks, indistinct growls, choked howls at its tormentor. They worked. On Dark. Hitting remorse, guilt, sorrow, shame, self-pity. But not on tHe PoEt, damn his inhuman hide!

"reminds me of a really sick joke… what’s blue and doesn’t… well, i guess to look on the bright side, damn good thing it wasn’t a moose or something big. that would have been a right pretty pickle, ollie.” {north?} [is south and west is best but the twain shall meet in the east.] {Ooooo… foreshadowing.}

But a pickle Dark would have preferred. He’d sooner have hit something wildly noble, more his own size, smashed and crashed, bashed his own brains to mash, than this pathetic pet. For the same reason [most] adults find it easier to hurt another adult than a child — it’s easier to rationalize when eyes don’t look at you with trust and innocence. Don’t beg with extended hand.

Don’t whimper ‘why did you do this to me?’

"well, not much we can do here. let’s go.”

It was so callous, all Dark could manage was a pained croak, “What do you mean there’s not much we can do? We can put it out of its misery, that’s what we can do.” PoEt sneered his reply.

“how? you got a gun? you going to camp knife it to death. club it with your guitar? no, i know what to do. drain some gas and burn it. now that’ll put an end to its misery.”

Grimly, Dark recognized the prick did have a point, but there was no arguing the main point. “We can’t leave it like this,” Dark stated flatly. “So if you have a constructive suggestion, make it. Otherwise…” tHe PoEt cut him off.

“okay. try this one for size — run over it again.”

62

It took us a good fifteen minutes to catch up to the Runt, Hulk practically lugging me like a sack, not once letting go the grip he’d used to drag me under back in the Wake. And if the Runt hadn’t come to the harvest zone, where the only way forward was back, I don’t think we would have caught up. Ever. He wasn’t happy to see me either, even if he did have the ten gallon bag.

“Here, make yourself useful,” he snarled, and threw the competition bag at me. “Slip the strap across one shoulder, then loop it around the other wrist,” he ordered, adding a menacing, “Don’t even think you might lose it.”

He turned to Hulk, “Let’s do it,” and started splashing across the shallows, which for him were almost up to his shoulders.

It was the moment I’d been waiting for. The harvest. While Poli had explained the technique in assiduous detail, it’s one of those things you have to see to believe. Not that I’d be able to see much of it. Dulse only roots at a high tide depth of at least 33 feet, so, even at lowest ebb, the nearest tubers were still seven, eight feet under water, concentrated in holes and cracks in the rock. Easy to find — their surface shimmying fronds could be followed to their source — but not easy to get at. You had to dive, pulling yourself down the fronds, hand-over-hand, into an utter void of muddy seawater, blind feeling for the root to cut it off as close to its host rock as you could. All this while you were being buffeted by errant currents that could smash you into the rocks or tie you to a watery ending in a knot of fronds, and the clock was ticking away the ebb and the mad scramble to escape the next rising tide.

It was a job for two men. One to dive and the other to anchor; one to go for broke, the other to salvage if the breaks didn’t go the right way. As you’ve probably guessed, Runt was the diver, Hulk the steadfast bulwark playing out the safety rope, their vastly different physiques the reason they were considered one of the best dulse teams ever. Like a pelican to Runt’s tail-slapping otter, Hulk stood his ground in the shifting waters and caught the baubles Runt threw up, paring the fist-sized tubers — I swear they glistened like turtle eggs in the faint dawn light — of their fronds before handing them to me to drop in the bag. And, yes, you can be sure I damn sure made sure I didn’t drop any outside. {You sure?} [As sure as sure can be.] {How many sures could a would sure sure if a would sure could sure sures?} [Sixty-nine.]

It was a bit like watching a well-oiled pump jack. Runt could hold his breathe almost a minute, and each burst to the surface dragged another two or three tubers into the light of rapidly blooming day. And each such outburst also brought a bigger, more triumphant smile — working their way forward from one patch of fronds to the next, the boys were on track for a damn good haul. Immersed in his work, Runt even seemed to have forgotten his anger at me. Every fourth or fifth re-appearance would bring a gasping “Time?” and a grunt of satisfaction at my answer as he disappeared again.

Everything was just going snickers. Which of course is exactly the time you have to watch out for the kicker. In life as much as fiction.

“Ma’am?” the driver repeated. “No,” Abby replied. Slowly. Coldly. “I’ll get out at the front door.” The flashes intensified as the car swept into the semi-circular driveway and then to a stop. Grasping the door, Abby swung it open and…

100. 120…

"target bearing 0, 150 metres and closing.”

140…

Runt had just surfaced with five, count’em, tubers, when “This is the RCMP!” bullhorned through the wreeking gulls. “Stay where you are!” Being a writer, I don’t know if a picture really is worth a thousand words but, I’ll tell you, a picture right at that instant would have said at least one word on three faces.

Shit!

"target moving! bearing 0.5. compensating. 100 metres and closing.”

Nothing more though, because there wasn’t time. For a big man, Hulk could move like the chickens and his arm had pushed me underwater before I could get out the exclamation. I gulped raw terror along with sea water and panicked, gargling screams and thrashing at my assailant. I felt split, pulled down by a millstone, tugged forward off my feet. Current threw my back against a rock, then another tug pulled me off. My head broke surface backwards, water splashing over my face and into my nose, my mouth, my eyes. I’d hardly caught a breathe before the millstone again pulled me down, almost ripping off my shoulder, dislocated for sure. Hot pain seared cold flesh as realization shot in: the fucking bag — it’s going to drown me! I tried a desperate watusi, wriggling, jerking, jack-knifing, but I just seemed to get more and more entangled. Shit no, it’s dulse fronds! Spider webbing to pin my legs, strait-jacket my arms. No! It’s the bag! With a mind of its own, taking a chokehold….

It wasn’t that Dark needed the extra force — 40, hell, with the weight of the bike, 10 k would have done the deed. But Dark knew he couldn’t do it twice — he could barely manage a single run. And, he didn’t want to see, feel or hear it, wanted to be so long gone past the body he’d never know if he’d succeeded, if poopsie’s misery had ended or just been enhanced.

"50 metres.”

Dark gripped the bars, tightened his legs, pushing down on the pegs to ride up off the seat when the bump came.

"40. 30. 20.”

He closed his eyes…

"10.”

Aggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Peace. No more pain. Finally letting go. Silence. Panic gone. Timeless. Spaceless. Changeless. Thank you lord.

…shot them open. Confused. There’d been no bump, no half-liquid schplu-aht. No nothing [Double neg.] {Negnag.} to signify poopsie’s timely demise. Damn! He must have missed — either the bike wasn’t quite in line when he closed his eyes or, finding some supercanine reserve of strength, the dog had draggled its ass to safety. Dark let go the throttle, and managed a rubbernecked glance backwards. Stunned, he jammed the brakes.

Not only was there no poodle puddled to a dot on the highway’s receding exclamation, there was no dog.

Period.

63

Slumped into the seat, Dark could only shake his head, finally just letting go any expectation of normality. His life was just one, big, fucking, weird, and there was no way he could write a book about it like Bach had urged — getting his own back the day before. Pretending he had self-awareness but titting every tat. ‘What a crap out!’ Rubbishing Notes From The Shop! ‘You should be writing about talking bikes, write about your bloody trip!’ Yeah. Right. ‘Hell, call it Me and The Piss on Everything Toy! Should be good for a titter. And don’t worry I won’t charge you royalties.’ As though anybody would believe it! ‘You think people believe tv? Come on, you worked in it. Besides, who gives a shit if they believe it! As long as they buy it!’ But who’d buy it? ‘Who wouldn’t! People don’t want to read about some bimbumtwit caught in the backeddies of angst. They want escape, they want to fantasize there’s some meaning to their life, that angels are lining up to greet them. So give it to them!’ That’s an awfully cynical view. ‘Who cares?’ I do. I don’t write just for money. ‘What? You’re too pure? Or just too caught up in getting back at your writer?’ I am not… ‘Are too.’ Not. ‘Have it your way then. And, if you just gotta make it meaningful, then throw in some self-awareness — not that anyone’d pay attention.’ Thanks for the advice, but… ‘Here! Put this bloody label on your computer so you don’t forget you need to write about your life, not your fucking writer.’ You can’t do that, the glue will… ‘Will what? Gum up the works? It’s only on the case.’

One, big, bloody weird where even the goddamn laptop had a label. A name. Poet’s Corner!

Classic dry red indeed.

…yes, that’s right. Time…

Fifteen seconds. Quiet on the set. Two, you’re medium wide. In ten. Two, loosen it up. Seven. Three, ready on the curtain. Five. That’s good Three. Four. Two, steady it up. Three. Cue applause. Two. Two, ready to move. One. Up on Two. Cue the music…

…and cue Joanie.

Wasn’t it Andrea Warhol said the way things are going everybody’s going to be famous for fifteen minutes?

Roll prompter. Two, start your tighten.

Well, what if you’re greedy? What if that’s not enough? Maybe you want half an hour. An hour. What do you do? Bite a dog? Chew tobacco? Vote Republican? Well, tonight, someone who’s solved that problem.

Two, that’s good. Hold it.

Ready on Three. He’ll come through the curtain.

In fact this lady, well this ‘person’, well I don’t really know what to call him, says ‘if you got the time, i got the personality.’ Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome please

Three!

for Betcher David and

Three don’t move yet! Wait on hi.. yi yi!

The Usual Crowd!

…to, finally, answer, you know which, questions.

A poem on infinity.

Space wells, time swells,

collapsing.

Where dwell the bells

Chiming time’s passage?

Well, no poopsie, no worry. Like PoEt said, nothing else to do here. Let it go. Rising out of his slump, Dark dropped into gear and looked up to move on. But it was only his hackles moved. Straight up.

You are illusion. A trick of the light. A flick of the cosmic projector, your journey to the screen only apparent. As light, or electron, only comes into physical existence when it is measured, observed, so you only come into being when perceived. As an electron exists in all time and all space prior to its observation, so you exist in all time, all space, still cradled in the womb of the we. Not separate. Never parted.

Forever one.

And, so, how can you lack? at what can you anger? when, at your deepest levels, you are not separate from the source of that lack, the cause of that anger? when you are embedded in the All, woof and weave, part and total of its self-expression, it’s cosmic What if? game? What if we grew a brain on two feet? What if it were hungry? Waddif it’s neighbour stole its food? Ah, yes… interesting. Let’s try… hey! we know, let’s give it a self-image! Far out. Now, what if it were born deformed? What if it was judged ugly? Now that’s intriguing… waddabout we..?

“eeehhh ehhh heh hehehheh, agggga hehahe hahaa…”

Don’t scowl. Don’t react. Play dutch boy and put a finger in the sphincter. Pretend he’s not there. Ignore that maniacally raucous laugh.

“hehhaahaggg, but i am here, come on! haarck, hehhoh, dark ol’boy, hhahaa, you slay me, or should be that be past tense? you slayed me? snort, grackle pop. here, see for yourself.”

Still giggling, Minstrel — the Olde Farte version — agilely lifted up onto his toes, started spinning like a sufi through a rapid pirouette; the kind where the face snaps front to front as though disconnected from the body twirling beneath; pasted smile and eyes snap snap snapping back to Dark, each gyrating grin goading a growing glimpse of poopsie’s puckered head, til there was nothing but the dog hoola hooping a brain splattered eye in the middle of an empty highway. The spin made Dark giddy, and he felt a welling upsurge in his stomach, tried to control it. Couldn’t.

When the spasm finished, he found poopsie gone, Old Whitey at a stand-still, smiling contentedly, picking his teeth. He spread his arms wide, showing his palms in the universal sign of ‘nothin up my sleeve’.

“i’m sorry. sometimes my sense of humour is worse than my bark. but i had to get your attention. i couldn’t let you go on thinking all that rot about determinism and free will.”

Dark was hardly mollified, snapping “You could have sent a telegram, or put it on the bloody computer.” Minstrel only giggled.

“but that would take all the fun out of it.”

64

God look at that outfit! Two! To the audience! Who is it tonight? Take it. Little Beau Pete? Looks more like Julia Ceasar on dulse. Back to Three, start your pull. Well the audience likes it. That’s good Three, hold that two shot. Ready on Two…

Ah… Betcher?

[Smiling] No, Betcher couldn’t make it. Something about a rectal exam. But I could and I just have to tell you how happy I am to be here tonight Bobbi.

Two. Three hold your shot.

Ah, that’s Joanie.

No [Slight pause] Jo Knee couldn’t come either. She’s just lashed her hare.

Back to Three.

Two, medium shot on him…
errrr...

her hair?

It? Steady. And Two.

[Offhand] Yeah, you know, one of those wild ones from Australia. Says G’day, wanna boink? Doesn’t do much for me but hey it keeps her occupied.[Look around]

Three, medium Joanie.

Oh, hare!

Stay with it Two.

[Fast] What is an airport in Chicago! [Hopeful] Did I win? [Sag] No? [Resigned Shrug] [Move Around] [Openmouthed] Ooooh, Bobbi! What a lovely house you have! [Check for dust] A little spartan… did you decorate it yourself? Oh yes, ni-i-ice chair. Do you mind if I sit down? [Engaging Smile]

House? Take Three. I think it’s part of the act.

Please do.

Nice springs. [Brightly] Early Salvation Army?

Two, gimme a two.

[Embarrassed] Oh, excuse me. I’m forgetting my manners. We haven’t been introduced. I’m She Ra, and you’re Bobbi of course.

Take it.

Ah, Joanie.

[Taken aback] Funny. I could of sworn I said Jo Knee couldn’t come. [Concerned] A little Alzheimers in the family dear? [Brightly] Hey, that’s okay… best thing about Alzheimers is never having to remember you’re sorry.

Oh god. The network won’t like that.

Who cares? The audience does.

[Look around] Wow! [Wide eyes] That’s amazing. You have a laugh track in your own house! Girl, you really are insecure. But hey [Stage Wink] that’s okay. [Stage Nudge] Best thing bout insecurity is never doubting you’re sorry. Isn’t that right Bobbi? [Big smile]

Three!

Joanie!

[Exasperated] Look, you can call Jo Knee all you want but she won’t come. We have a very strict rotation and it’s not her.. AGgGHh rUMh AgFAah HRRAAAAAA BLLHHAGGHA

Two! Quick!

In other words:

We is the writer. You are the story. But you are we.

Great, a Ukrainian standoff, complete with useless sphincter. Old Whitey stood blocking the road, his cane — there had been something up his sleeve — flicking out to create a barricade in whichever direction Dark thought he might go around. Left, right. Flick. Flash. The instant he thought it. Left — flick. Left — just a knowing smile. Dark shifted back to neutral and the Minstrel lowered his cane. Leaned on it with both hands. Smiled.

"pardon my french, but once again it’s that goddamn dualistic thinking of yours.

Ah,bugger it, Dark thought. No way he was putting up with another lecture from Monsier Morbide. If you can’t go round, go through… Minstrel would just have to get out of the way. He jammed into gear, popped the clutch and shot straight at the bastard, ramming into second, dead sure Minstrel would flinch and jump to the side.

Which of course he didn’t. He just opened his legs, allowing the front wheel in between, which, if you think about it, should have hurt. It didn’t seem to. Instead, it appeared Minstrel simply let the forward motion of the bike lean him gently into the windscreen, one elbow on the other hand. Like he was sitting at a desk, cheeks puffing into a cheshire smile blocking Dark’s forward view. Putting on the pandering voice of a disappointed god-father.

"free will! fate! choice! doom! destiny! i mean, i’m trying really hard here, you know. i talk to you, i explain, i re-explain, i set up the lessons so they lead you to brink of realization, and, i ask myself, how do you repay this generosity?”

Minstrel leaned back, shifting upright into an Annie Oakley {dog and} pony trick, or Ben Hur driving backwards, hands waving exaggerated sorrow as contortions of exquisite inner anguish rippled his face. Quite a performance. Annie, Chuckie and Marlon would have been proud.

"and, i have to answer, you just stand there, looking down, muttering ‘well i’m not really here.’”

With a snap, he was gone, Dark’s view forward suddenly clear. Just as sudden, hands cupped his eyes from behind.

"well, if you’re not really here, i guess it doesn’t much matter if you can see or not. stands to reason, eh?”

God what’s happening. Stay on it Two! Don’t let her out of camera. Somebody call 911. No, no, it’s just part of the act. Act? God, I wish we’d rehearsed this. Well, it looks like Little Beau Pete just lost his sheet. Three. Get Joanie’s reaction. Dig the duds underneath. Three! Where’d he manage to hide that sword?

Betcher?

Two!

[Statement] No. Hu!

Who?

[Forceful] Hu nKra. I am Hu nKra!

Three.

Sounds like a bad cough. You should get it che…

[Imperious] Silence! You may call me Lord Hu!

Thre.. Two

Hu?

[Doubly imperious] Lord Hu! And who are you?

Joanie, ah you got that, Joanie Carlsberg. You’re on The TonitE Show.

[Scanning] How can that be? [Perplexed] It’s afternoon! [Anger] Witch! By what black magic have you transported me here?

[Brandish Sword]

Oh oh. Wow, that’s
a big humswinger.

Hey. No magic. It’s just tape delay. Please sit down.

[Scanning] [Menacing Scowl]

Two, stay with him.

Three! I didn’t tell you to move. Ahh… just a question:
are we insured for sword play? Go
to Three.

Look, why don’t you just sit down. Here’s a nice Salvation Army cha…

[Shouting] Army!?

Two! Now! Widen it!

[Drawing erect] Are those your knights? Must I fight them to prove my valour! Very well! [ReBrandish Weapon] Draw your weapons you single-eyed spawn of hell!

What the hell’s going on? Oh god. He’s stalking for Two. Two hold your ground! Three! get Two! What about Joanie? Fuck Joanie. {Okay.} We got Jonestown right on network tv. Second thought Two, you’d better back off, keep the camera between you and the maniac.

[Cold anger] So!, you feint with me! Scoundrel! You’ll pay for toying with a warrior! [Charge!]

Three! Shit he hit the camera! Take Two. Where’s security? Somebody make sure we get the overnights. Shit he hit Two again.

Two! Two! Get off the lights!

[Triumphant] Aiy… not so tough as yee thought?

Two? Two?! Floor,
what’s happened to Two?
Three. Take Three.

[Mocking] Aiy… as yee seed yee shall reap.

Floor here. Sal on
Two fell off the
stage.

[Turning] [Challenging] Now!
Demon! Would ye too taste my steel?
[Charge] Agggggghhhh!!!!

Shit now he’s going
for Three! Floor, get on Two. Get security the fuck out there. Three! Back up! Back up!

Aggghhhh! Hyack. Blaaaaggg. Hurrrmmpp. Gackkkk….

Two! Get on him.

What the fuck’s going on? Talk about in-your face.
God look at those molars. Shit his breath is steaming up the lens.
Two! Reminds me: What’s blue and doesn’t fit?
Uggn, not that one. It’s sick.

agHHgGgghhHhhh…………..

What? Like, this isn’t?

Thus, the sixth dictatum of self-awareness,

Give up illusion.

And two axioms,

It’s not that we don’t get what we want:
we just don’t want what we get.

&

Nobody can make you feel anything
you do not choose to feel.

65

He wasn’t anywhere. At all. Not on the bike. Not in northern Ontario. But he was everywhere. At once. In a New York slum. A medieval cum. Hungry tum. He wasn’t Dark. At all. But he was. He wasn’t the cosmos, but he was. The All.

Duality had simply ceased. All sense of separation, identification, of thisness, thatness disappeared into an infinity hushed with silence. Minstrel’s hands closing over his eyes had inaugurated the change but, seen from this new perspective, if you can conceive an All-encompassing point of view as a perspective, there had been no change. Ever.

"that’s right. there never was a change. at all. just the appearance.”

It wasn’t Minstrel’s voice. But it was. It wasn’t even really a voice. More like unconscious thought that hung, no, emerged, no, that simply was the fabric of the stillness — that fabric vibrating with meaning, and Dark/All so interwoven, so integrated with Minstrel/All, the voice\thought hadn’t wormed into awareness, but sprang out of it, surprisingly gentle, almost…

"loving?”

Yes. Surprisingly, that was it.

Betcher?

Stay on it, Two.

[Cheerful] You betcha.

Widen it…

No. I’m Joanie. You’re Betcher. I hope. Do you know where you are?

That’s good.

Oh oh. [Sinking] It happened again didn’t it?

Three. Get around in
front…

Something certainly happened.

[Nervous] Who was on first?

I don’t care if
you’re in Two’s shot. Just bloody well do it.

No. Hu was on second.

[Straight] Who?

Hu.

Oh. [Still straight] So who was on first?

Take Three.

No. Hu was on sec.. Hang on here — deja hu! I think I’ve seen this skit before.

[Giggling] Of course you have. I mean there’s really only four basic jokes, and everyone’s been ripping them off ever since God first told them to Eve in the garden.

Just four?

Yeah. [Sudden Thoughtful.] Seems a shame she didn’t get them but, hey, people have been banished for less. [Throwaway] I’m just thankful God didn’t rib Adam first.

Listen, can we sit down and get serious for a moment.

Take Two.

[Puzzled.] You want that putz? I mean, no disrespect to Sirius, but she is a bit of a dog.

Loving. But not love in any sense he’d ever understood. Not The X’s — controlling, always consequential. Nor, for what it was worth, memory’s mother — aloof, caring but frosty cold. No, this was different, was, was… damn! what kind of encyclopedia had no room for love? [One written by Voltaire’s bastards, perhaps?] {Stands to reason.}

"unconditional?”

No that wasn’t it, although it was maybe the flavour of it, like the sharp bite of lemon in the mouth is not the fruit, just its tangible expression. No it was…

"warm?”

No, again that was more just colour, just aroma, what it felt was more like…

"belonging?”

Yes. In a nutshell.

And where dwells the shell
of each emptied peal?

66

As above creates below, inside forms outside, so illusion concocts delusion, twisting the self-image into self-swindling shame, the garrote of guilt.

Give them up.

They serve no purpose except escape, come to recognize no master except self-hate. Whatever their specific cause — falling down drunk, getting caught in a lie, refusing to live by someone else’s dictates — guilt and shame are shams. Hair shirts. Scarlet letters for all to see, most especially the one(s) you’ve ‘wronged.’ An artful dodge, they let you off the hook by keeping you dangling. Let you avoid responsibility for your actions. ‘See, I feel guilty, I am shamed, and because I feel guilty, because I feel shame, because I am punishing myself, there’s no need for you to punish me.’ If only shame and guilt were so easily sloughed off. Suborned by self-hate, they continue and continue, feeding on your innards, reducing you to automaton, flung this way and that by delusion.

Thus the seventh dictatum of self-awareness:

Give up delusion.

And the axiom:

Shame and guilt let you off the hook,

but keep you dangling.

Back to Three.

I mean… forget it.

[Precise] So who, meaning who not Hu, was on first?

Two, gimme a two.

Sh.. he.. said his name was She Ra.

And take it.

[Confused] She Ra? That’s a new one. [Moving on] So who was on third?

Three on Joanie.

No. Hu was… no, you were. I mean you are. What did you mean that’s a new one?

[Offhand] Personality… they just pop out all the time. I can’t keep up with them.

That must be a problem.

Well… [Noncommittal] sometimes. Like they say, multiple personality is always having to go back to say you’re sorry. But don’t get me wrong. There are advantages.

Like?

Well [Searching] say I’m at a boring cocktail party, I get Hu nKra to come out and liven things up.

He does that alright. But tell me, when did it start?

[Straight] What?

The personalities. You started out as a cross dresser right?

[Dead straight] No. I was quite happy.

Ahhh…

{Lean forward} [Confidential] Having two personalities meant I was never lonely. And I always had someone to argue with. That’s important you know. It’s like isometric exercise, you know where you develop muscles by opposition. Abby and I had some of the best arguments.

Then…

Then Hu nKra showed up, one night, just out of the blue. We were both pretty embarrassed when we found out — we hate reading about our selves in the tabloids. Fortunately, we were able to settle out of court… [Muttered Aside] I never knew tv cameras were that expensive.

Speaking of which…

[Interject] But hey! [Laughing] As long as the tabs spell the names right, who cares? [Pause] Nice laugh track. [Resume] And after a while we figured out it was okay anyways. I mean, there is precedent — the mother, the son and the unruly ghost.

Oh…

[Yawning] Listen, do you mind if I lay down?

Why?…

[Explanatory] Well, you remind me of my shrink and I have some of the best naps when I see her.

Naps?…

Oh oh.

[Lightly] Yeah. It’s pretty restful when I can deke out the back door. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.

Cameras ready…

Ahhh… Who?

for anything.

{Waving down} No not Hu. He’s had his fling already.

Floor. Signal a break.

Promise?

You can say that again.

Ok… [Puzzled] But why? I really don’t like repeating myself cause I’m never sure if it’s really myself repeating myself. [Concerned] I’m not repeating myself am I?

In ten. Nine…

No…

[Relieved] Good. Cause I really don’t like repeating myself. Anyways, as I said, I’d like you to meet AgahHRackByLLyteebby.

Seven. Ready Black.

Six. Wrap it Floor.

Five…

Hang on there Betcher… we’re going to have to go to a commercial break. Folks, when we come back, hgghhggh, Who knows? Stay tuned!

Two. One.

Go to black.

{And don’t never come back.}

Belonging. In a nut shell. In a nut shell. Belong.

In a nut shell. Belonging. Belonging. Belongs.

Even in a tale more than replete with the bizarre and the absurd, it was the most extraordinary transition. Minstrel’s thought — if that’s what it was, but again who could say when the ‘thought’ had no source, had no existence outside the fabric of awareness — pulsated with a lethargically hypnotic rhythm that snared and enveloped the pattern of Dark’s answering thought. The two patterns merging like the superimposition of waves, strengthening and defining each other, coming into sync, finding resonance and harmony, sharpening to melody.

In a nutshell. In a nut shell. In a nutshell. Ba boom.

Belonging. Belonging. Be-long. Baa ba boom!

In a sense, the patterns egging each other on, pointing out the half beats and missing notes, filling them in, widening into chords, until everything — Dark, not Dark, might be Dark, might not be anything — throbbed to a reminiscent unison. A joyous reunion.

In a nutshell. Belonging. In a nutshell. Ba boom.

Belonging. In a nut shell. Ba da da daaboom. Boom. Boom.

The song fleshing into existence (Yes, the song, the transformation tune.) {Surprise. Surprise.} as Dark, grokking their import in that infinitesimally infinite womb where thoughts birth, fleshed the lyrics with life. Then it finally came. With meaning. The light most feared. Seeing, understanding, In all of Illusion accepting, But it was We the song had no flesh apart his, Yes, it was We who sung no existence save Dark, Lose your me no meaning but this promise made real. The reunion promise. That we were never parted. No conditions. That we are always one. No consequences, no threats. That we shall be together. Just belonging. Upon Awakening.

67

“Down there! Look that’s him.” Silence broken. Faint. “Naw. That’s just tideweed. No way he could have made it.” Louder. Pain come back. Shoulder hurts. Uuuuk, mouth tastes like sea. Footsteps, shlunnk schunnk, boots in wet sand. Look up, spit out sand. How’d that weed get in there? Look way up. Two. Way way up. Big one. Little one. Two survived. What about third? Me third. Me Mellow. “Frat! U’kay?” No. Frat Rat. Dulse. Harvesting, cops, under, drowning, bag!!!

Vomit, retching, puking seawater, god that hurts. Wits coming back. One. Two. Three, four… about right. Feel like I’m lying on top of a turtle. Can I lay eggs? “Frat, here, let me help you up.” Oh god, dizzy, Hulk, Runt swimming, No! We’re not swimming, we made it. “I don’t believe it. Heh heh, I just bloody don’t believe it.” Don’t believe what? Hulk look down, follow. Bag. Bag? Bag!! Still attached! I don’t believe it either. Look up, smile woozily at Hulk, and he smiles back, before whooping up and down the beach.

Hell, even the Runt smiled.

So there that's it
my story's done
except for this one
this small postscript.

That you are the god
my song spoke of that's all
You are the god who dreams.

You are the Me lost to the We
You are the missing chord.

And just as we are the pain
you feel in the dark

you are the pain we feel.
Yes you are you are the pain.

And so this song is given
is given of we now
is given for we
is given to we

but we are you

come sing it with us now.
come join us for it's true
Transformation waits
in the power of these words...

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

That love there truly lies
can no longer be denied,
and we shall be as one
when Transformation’s done.

66

Just a Coupl’a GoB

Poli swigged at his beer, finally broke the silence my description of almost sleeping with the turtles had left. “Listen Mell…” he started, tried again, “Frat…”, rolled his eyes in frustration, finally spit the question I knew would come. Eventually. “Say, just what the hell’s your real name anyway? I mean your real name, none of this bullshit cover stuff.” Took another swig, lowering the beer to nest it, out of sight, between his legs.

Give credit where credit is due, I thought; knowing from experience how most people are practically insulted at not knowing your real name, the one you were given at birth. As though that’s somehow more real than any other. So they ask. But Poli’d held off longer than most. And I did have a stack of names I could have pulled out in response, in fact, a whole collection of life histories I could rote convincingly. Tools of the trade if you like. But Poli had these incredibly penetrating eyes, a kind of psychic WD 40, which he used to advantage — as when he got Hulk and the Runt to take me along. Under their power, I swear, I couldn’t help myself even though, compliant with The Bi’s policy covering deep cover operatives, even my editor wasn’t privy. Yeah, I fessed up, dragging it out of the bit of brain where you bury garbage and nasty memories. It took a moment — I’d buried it pretty deeply. And — like I figured — Poli guffawed, slapping his knees with both hands, then snatching back at the wheel to miss a side-trip into the ditch. It wasn’t the first time.

“Bjarnas Bertrand Bumstead! Bet you got rubble-assed about that,” he snorted.

Copping a swig from my own beer, I grimaced at the memories running amok, gritted, “Rubble-ass, Blarney Bert, B.B. Bum and every other asinine derivative stinking school kids can think of.”

“Well listen, Barney,” Poli continued, getting back to the topic. “You let your imagination get away with you. Not that I don’t understand why — Deltoid’s generally pretty moody and irritable and god knows he just gets worse at competition time. But even Delt, never mind Alphonse, wouldn’t have left you for dead.” There was a pause for a tooth-glinting smile straight at me. “For one thing, I don’t care what you’ve heard, GoBs just don’t do that.” And a throwaway as he turned his attention back to the road. “Besides, the boys knew our plan.”

“Look, if you don’t mind, that name’s just between you and me,” I gritted, “okay?” Then — something about that throwaway triggering the ever-curious journalist — had to ask, “What plan?” {Dum de dum dum dumbbbbb — like Ogopogo rising from the depths, a plot finally heaves into sight.} [Is that the mythical monster lives in Okeefenokee swamp?] {Noooo. In Lake Okanagan. B.C.} [That old?] {Har har.}

Poli took his eyes off the road, fixed them back on me. A long moment — as though evaluating the next move in a tightly-fought game of chess. He seemed about to reply, but glanced at the rear view, grimaced, then to each of the side mirrors in quick turn. His grip on the wheel tightened and I started turning to look. “Don’t,” he hissed, his own eyes straight ahead. “Don’t look back. It’s probably nothing anyway.”

Well. I’ll tell you — for nothing — it had a most substantial effect. Poli’s ever-easy demeanour had stiffened with tension lines while his eyes danced back and forth to the rear view. His nonchalant driving, wandering anywhere within the bounds of the pavement, was gone too — his knuckles on the wheel turned frost white keeping the little Suzuki four wheeler dead straight. Now two and two may be four, but toeing the line and playing it fine could only equal one thing. So it didn’t matter if I couldn’t look-see. I knew what to expect.

Pigs. Of course. Cops. The Fuzz. Probably an unmarked car. Following Poli, the Honourable Member for The Rump? Or following me, the Honourary Mr Harvest? (The boys had insisted on the title and I’d accepted, even planned to use it as my by-line. Just once. Just to piss my editor off. It had been offered, but I’d refused any more substantial reward. I was glad of that now. The most any sniffer-dog could find on me would be a perfectly legal souvenir bag of fronds.) Either was a concern. While I was clean, I didn’t know if Poli was — had no way of knowing — but the cops, and courts, are all too prone to guilt by association.

In any case, it didn’t matter. Whatever it was must have turned off. Poli relaxed, letting the Suzuki resume its wandering. Cocked an eye into a half-embarrassed little shrug, the kind that says ‘well, you can’t be too careful’, and took another swig of beer. “You ever thought about legalization?” he suddenly asked, then added, superflorously I thought, “For dulse, I mean.”

I shook my head, negative, having never smoked tobacco, much less dulse. Or done any other drugs. Not that I was morally against them or afraid of their illegality. It’s just that, when you can’t even go to the beach because of this little personality disorder, you don’t take many chances. Period. I’d just heard too many horror stories about mind-blowing drugs.

“Not surprised, really,” Poli continued. “Most people don’t. They seem to think it doesn’t affect them… you know, no smokie, no worry. Which a lot of vested interests like just fine. Cops, politicians, the pushers, they don’t want a lot of people really thinking about our approach to drugs. Because they know. The whole criminalization trip, the busts, the prisons, they don’t work. Why? Because people like getting stoned and that’s just the facts, ma’am.” He paused, settling back into the seat, murmured “just the facts” into his bottle, then glanced for any reactions. But I had none, just the recognition Poli had brought out the soap box. He was tabling the hidden agenda.

“I mean you look back in history, you look around the world and people like getting ripped. Spaced. High. Blasted. Fritzed. Zapped. Hell, there’s almost as many words for altered states of consciousness as there are for fucking. And you know what that says.” Emphasizing each word. “People just like to get stoned. And, yeah, there is a percentage of the population gets hung up, strung out and messed up by their drug of choice, even dulse, but prohibition doesn’t work. It doesn’t stop them wanting, it doesn’t stop them using. It just jacks up prices and forces users into the back allies. So big brother state throws people in jail, gives them criminal records, spends millions, millions trying to control ‘the dulse problem’. Doesn’t work. You know, they bust a shipment of weed down to the Big Cumquat. There’s half a dozen gets through. So they hire another few dozen Mounties and put them in airports, throw up taxes to pay for it. So now they manage to grab two loads but a baker’s dozen get through. So they shift their focus back to the user, throw more people into gigantic jails they have to build and staff with millions more tax dollars, which they finally can’t afford so they privatize them. And guess who ends up running the jails? Front companies for the drug cartels, that’s who!” Poli snorted derisively. “Talk about taking your profits at both ends.”

He shook his head, almost sadly I thought. “It just doesn’t make any sense. You won’t stamp it out, and even if you managed to completely cut off dulse, then people’d just find another way to get high. Smoking banana peels, chugging nutmeg, shooting cabbage, I mean who knows? So, given it doesn’t make any sense, why not legalize it? Governments already push nicotine and alcohol and god knows there’s more problems with them than dulse. So why not legalize it but control it, sell it in government run stores, the government gets extra taxes, they reduce crime, they save all that money.”

Poli took a moment to correct an alarming veer towards the ditch. Came real close to a mailbox, too close to read the name. The Suzuki leashed, he checked the mirrors, raised his beer and polished it down. Dropped the bottle behind the seat where it clinked against another. He sighed, rubbed a big hand across his head. Shrugged with bemusement. “And you know I never thought I’d see it but that’s finally beginning to sink in. There’s a lot of politicians, even a few police, beginning to rethink the approach and question its wisdom.”

Let’s cut to the plot, I thought, and said so in not quite so few words. “So you’re looking for someone with journalistic expertise, persuasive writing skills and an established nom de plume to work out a pro-legalization campaign. Someone whose talents can help you shift the tide of public opinion towards ending the stupidity of our current drug laws. That’s where I come in, right? That’s why, when you offered The Bi the inside dope on the Dulsia, it was on condition I got the assignment, right?”

“Fuck no,” Poli snorted. “That’d just kill the profit margins. Who wants a return of five or six percent when you can scoop five or six hundred? No. We need someone to help us keep it illegal. We want someone with the brains for Reefer Madness, an example to stiffen the backbone of those spineless dolts who’d kill the golden turtle. That’s where you come in.”

Oh.

67

the writer comments

That the mind\soul\spirit/body problem has bedeviled western thinking since well before Descartes’ Latin ruminations testifies to its irrational importance. Clearly, it matters to a great many people whether humans are more or less divine. Galactic flukes, or flakes of dandruff off the godhead. It certainly mattered to Descartes. While generally credited as a founder of the scientific method, his spiritual beliefs led him to postulate the pineal gland sheltering an immaterial but cogitative leprechaun playing on puppet strings to the brain and body. [And he wasn’t even Irish.] {Cognac ergo francais?} The pineal, he asserted, was the seat of the soul.

For many of his descendants in science, that’s one of those slightly embarrassing, unfortunately out in the open, family secrets, like Uncle George got off wearing tutus. The power of the scientific method is precisely its reductionist approach, reducing nature to observable bits and pieces in order to study them. While not quite ‘the whole is no more than the sum of its parts’, reductionism tends to force its practitioners into a leap of faith that puts them squarely in the body camp: what can’t be observed cannot exist, so there can be no immaterial forces or agents, no souls or minds to act on physical systems. No spirit. There can only be the brain.

Certainly, it can be argued that current evidence supports that notion. While Descartes worked with scalpels to dissect dead — presumably already vacated — brains, today’s technicians can monitor neuronal activity in living brains, identify motor, emotional and language areas on the fly, add or subtract neurotransmitters, zap a synaptic gap here or there. Excise a problematic bit. And all this technology and all its legions of technicians still can’t find the bloody leprechaun. So — manifestly — it’s not there, and those human-defining characteristics of emotions and thoughts end up reduced to the chemical artifacts of a brain evolved to sniff out rotting meat on the African savannah. (At least, that’s the current fad: previous fashions reduced the brain to a telephone switchboard, then to a computer. Reductionism tends to adopt its metaphors from the front pages of Popular Mechanics and Life.)

To the reductionist brain, the mind/body question ends there even though, logically, a current negative finding does not necessarily preclude a future positive. The current negative not only supports the reductionist’s original leap of faith, highly reassuring, but nicely fits with the assertion that both sides of the question cannot be true. So one must be false. {And we know which one that is.} [Do we really?] Which seems logical and has the comforting certainty of common sense… until you consider quantum mechanics.

Here, common sense and the logical proposition break down. Light, for example, can be either a wave or a particle, depending on the experimental setup. Look for a wave and that’s what you’ll find. Try to pinpoint a particle and the results will show a particle. Although they seem contradictory, even mutually exclusive, the two views or aspects are complementary and neither is of itself sufficient to describe the nature of light. Nor can we arbitrarily fuse them into a wavicle or parve that exists when we aren’t looking. All we can say is that, under certain conditions of observation, light has the properties of a wave, under other conditions, the characteristics of a particle. The nature of unobserved light remains a mystery.

Matter itself exhibits the same complementary duality. Electrons — once thought to be hard little building blocks of matter — can behave as either wave or particle, again depending on the experimental setup, on what we’re looking for. Proton waves, neutron waves, every previously-thought-solid particle alter-egos as a wave function: leading the lay mind to fog out, trying to conceptualize how waves of matter can create the everyday experience that ‘I touch the table and it touches back’. Solid. Impenetrable. And, sure as hell, not waving.

The reductionist brain fogs out too, trying to rationalize how the deeper it explores into the bits and pieces of objective nature, the more seamless, indivisible and subjective the world/universe becomes: energy and matter joyfully twined in a perpetual dance of mutual unfoldment; annihilation and rebirth; form and the formless. Receding like a desert chimera, the reductionist’s goal of dispassionately describing the most basic units of matter was first forced to acknowledge the observer, then to insert the subjective I as active participant in the creation and unfolding of the world. Finally, to wonder if mind/soul/spirit was not just participant but the necessary condition for any existence. The reason. Physics, the hardest of the hard sciences, now often sounds as steeped in the spiritual as any mystic or seer.

So, returning to the, so-called, mind/body problem, Descartes’ error wasn’t his postulating the little fella; reductionism’s error is not studying neuronal pathways. The error in both cases is demanding reality acquiesce to true/false logic — a little like Portia insisting Shylock take his pound of flesh bloodless.

It can’t be done. Of course mind and brain are interwoven. Of course mind works through brain, and brain works on mind. And, yes, neurotransmitters do affect mood — quite profitably, if you listen to prozac — but mind, social factors and mood affect neurotransmitters in turn. {So which came first? The joke or the chicken crossing the road?} The quantum realm tells us reality’s a teasing tart playing to our fantasies and desires, our preconceptions. Set out to find brain and you will; seek the mind and you’ll succeed.

But the tart won’t be pigeonholed: of itself, neither brain nor mind is sufficient to describe the nature of a human being. Sure, right here, right now, at this particular intersection of eternity and infinity we are biological creatures, but we exist beyond here, beyond now. We exist in the timeless depths of the we. We are as light, sometimes wave, sometimes particle, always mysterious.

68

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

It had worked — like a charm. Damn him. Betcher’s cynical honesty had stymied the media. Accustomed to ritualistic no comments and categorical denials, a cheerful you betcha, sure’nuff, whatever you say gutted their questions, left them shadowboxing on the febrile veneer of their claimed moral outrage. But — Punch and Judy without Judy — the play was so patently ridiculous the jokes turned on the media. So the script was hastily thrown away and the media reverted to its only other mode, canonizing Betcher and The Usual Crowd with the ferocity they’d first crowned Abby. Love on the rebound could be no less forgiving. (Best of all, there’d been nothing Real Wimmin could do. Like fighting a martial artist, it had been their own force turned against them that won the day.)

Just like Betcher had predicted.

Betcher. Betcher. Bloody Betcher. God! she’d gotten tired of him. Tired of his smartass smile in the morning mirror, sick of his silly charades, fed up with his taking over everything from setting the alarm to ordering meals… shit, she hated vegetarian! Weary of feeling she was sleeping ten to a bed and she was the one shortsheeted, forced to the edge, and finally off. Her. Abby! Abifuckingail! The original personality. The real one. Who’d created Betcher in the first fucking place. Not that you’d know it anymore. He’d been letting her out less and less, especially in the act, claiming she didn’t have the skill to play the roles, the chutzpah to pull it off. Smoothly, too suavely, assuring her, let me take care of it all. Look at how well I’ve done so far…

Which made her feel like throwing up. Or was that just another side-effect of the estafanil?

Now that had been a trick, she gloated, privately, getting the prescription without him realizing just what it was for. And he said she couldn’t act! Hah! Thinking and talking in code for weeks, telling the shrink it was pms depression she needed help with, chemical help, “you know one of those new super-duper brain pills”, meaning the prozac cousins, promising instant change, a better mind for just a coupla bucks a pop, a more pleasing personality. Guarding that what she really wanted was a few less personalities, one less in particular. Scotching suggestions for prozac, zoloft, paxil, effexor, citing friends who’d tried each uselessly, or media reports of strange side-effects such as men growing clitties. (She could cite scores of these, mostly gleaned from her old friend The Bi-National Enquirer)

She’d arched an eyebrow in interest at the mention of estafanil. Lied through her teeth. “Oh, I’ve never heard of that.” Listened carefully, very thoughtfully to the description. Chemically unrelated to prozac class SSRIs, it was originally tested and marketed for schizophrenia. Kind of a super-duper triple-whammy with discernible effect on serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake and a very marked effect on dopamine levels.

“Interesting,” Abby murmured. “And you say it’s been found helpful in pms depression?” Well, that’s the thing with these new drugs, the shrink explained, full of useful knowledge and the prescription pad. All of these brain chemicals are involved in so many aspects of personality and the body, doctors just keep finding different disorders they seem to help with. Did you know prozac’s even being used for constipation?

“Creative or physical?” Abby joked, then sprang the trap. “Well, why don’t we give it a try? The estafanil. It can’t hurt…” me, she kept the thought unfinished. And had to choke off laughing at, which dictatum was it in Betcher’s bloody Teachings? Oh yeah…

And that is the eighth dictatum of self-awareness:

Give up collusion.

And what a strangled piece of loopy logic that had been, she tittered to herself. You create your own reality out of beliefs that were taught to you, absorbed as verities before you could question them. And now you collude with your teachers in maintaining those beliefs. So give up collusion. Give up creating a reality that others have taught you. Hah! Only Betcher could have swallowed that shit whole. Sure, Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch, she’d created her reality. She’d created the act. Created Betcher. And, yeah, look where it got her… caught, trapped in her own Francinestein. But it wasn’t her beliefs that had kept her trapped. No way Houdini. It had been the prick himself, with bloody Jhikl’s help of course, that had gagged and bound her, thrown her to the wolves, and turned away with a chuckle to hobnob on the television.

“God, I feel so sick…” Betcher’s voice in her mind was noticeably weaker, distant, throat-rough, like he was on day four of a five-day hangover. Which he was in a way. Except for the side-effects, the estafanil had worked like a charm, and much quicker than the shrink had said to expect. In fact, it was hardly a week before she knew it was working; Betcher started complaining about the side-effects. “Shut up,” she’d told him, her own teeth gritted from the headaches. Snarling, “You never felt my pms. You don’t know what it was like. Fact I’m rather glad to have you sharing this. For a change.”

For all its venom, the anger was more put on than real, a caution Abby felt necessary. No way she was going to let her real anger up. Not yet, not before it was too late for Betcher to take drastic measures if he figured out her plan.

“Well, I can’t understand how you could have felt like this when I never felt a thing.” Betcher had moaned. “Well, la Dee da,” Abby jibed back, drawing the syllables with derision. “You’re not a woman. You think because we share the same body you’d feel everything I do?” And when Betcher had no reply, when he didn’t jump and trample all over such a patently dumb argument, Abby had known his faculties were already slipping. He was losing his grip on her. It was going to work.

And — she couldn’t help the, dangerous, snigger — without a body, it couldn’t be called murder.

Could it now?

69

He walked out, mindful of the broken and patched cement, moving close to the windward edge where he could watch the waves roll down the old breakwater’s side, playing out their complex patterns on the sodden concrete. That morning’s storms, a series of five a.m. thunderbusters that had shaken Olie’s house, waking them both to sit on the verandah drinking lousy instant coffee, had left a strong swell running — a good three to four feet, with the odd crest high enough to break over the wall and surge wetly across the top. Within minutes, his riding boots were wet, his leather jacket starting to glisten from spray, but he kept on, amazed to be back here. Amazed to be here.

Period.

Port Maitland. Lake Erie. Southern Ontario. Dark’s memory claimed there’d been no time, no distance at all between northern Ontario, the scene for his last encounter with The Minstrel, and this place, what? 2000 kilometres [1200 miles] to the east and south? No rain, no highways, no motels. Just a shift, an opening of Minstrel’s hands and he was pulling up at Olie’s, tHe PoEt chattering on about something or other, like they were the best of friends and hadn’t just argued over killing the dog. Hadn’t tried to run The Minstrel down. Hadn’t magically bipped from one place on the map to another. For all tHe PoEt gave away, it was just another day on the road.

And maybe it was… sitting on the verandah, Olie was clearly expecting him and, walking his lanky six feet down the short steps to shake hands, said he was glad Dark had phoned the night before (The night before! Dark’s memory said he’d been at Bach’s the night before.) {You know, I get the feeling our friend’s setting up for a sequel. You know with some godawfully tacky title — like Dark II, The Lost Kilometres.} [I like that…] {You would.} [But it’s not part of the deal so it doesn’t matter.] otherwise Olie would have been out of town. Hey, good to see you. Come on in, come on in, Olie had urged. Back slapping camaraderie. Good to see you too. You remember Susie? Down girl! Down! I guess she remembers you.

Everything so absolutely normal, Dark’s mind couldn’t hold the inconsistencies and so, as the evening progressed back to the verandah, pushed them away, and just enjoyed, no, luxuriated in a quiet evening with an old friend, music and reminiscence. Sip savouring a whiskey sour. Catching up on news, rumours, gossip. Old buddies from high school. Chicks fell pregnant. Marking the hours by the full moon’s rise across the treetops. Went to bed feeling normal for the first time in weeks.

Morning thunder jolted that out of him.

Unlike the last time he’d been here, the water was muddy from turbulence and runoff, white splotched with foam. Dank green algae tumbled with the waves, but these patches were nothing, mere vestiges of the kilometres-wide sheets that, three decades before, in the era of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the awakenings of environmentalism, were choking fish, rotting on beaches. Raising quite a stink, Dark recalled. Missing the point, the media had trumpeted that Erie was ‘dying’. Hardly. It was just over-alive, flooded with too much shit, phosphates and fertilizers, and the algae were just living up to evolution: the survival of the fittest for any ecological niche. Less Useful To Humans is what the headlines should have read.

Except that wasn’t news. It was progress. The great fishing fleets of last century that bustled life into harbours like Port Maitland had already been in steady decline for decades. The algae were just completing the job overfishing and habitat destruction had begun. And without the boats shovelling economic life from their holds, the ports had shrivelled away, or turned their backs on the lake and sought growth in other ways. Leaving their harbours, breakwaters and lighthouses to deteriorate.

Progress.

Dark toed a patch of concrete loose, hooked it into the lake, seeing in his action just a small part of a majestic interplay, embodied here in the ever weakening concrete of the breakwater set against the ever more successful water. The dance of polarities. Earth and water. Life and death. Yin and yang. Exquisitely balanced on a knife edge of mutual annihilation, each polarity death to the other. Sometimes, he mused — aware tHe PoEt might be listening back there on the shore — water seemed to have an existential purpose, a kind of group [If water can in any way be said to be a group because water is a truly at one element — no matter how small you split it, or how vast, it is always just one, it is just water. Even waters, the archaic use, was really quite singular.] drive to achieve the ultimate synthesis of earth and liquid — a planet completely covered in water, with all its lands shared equally with all its waters; a resolution the Earth just refuses to accept, shaking her rejection into the ever rising mountains and continental plates to stand defiant, but losing ever so slowly just the same: and all of it in measures of time that simply have no sense to humans, but can be felt as patterns in the processes that create and enclose and sustain we people along with all other life. What Dark had once termed The Living Flow.

Yes, Dark saw, exquisitely balanced, but evolving just the same. Changing. Life renewing itself in death. Left alone, the breakwater’s stand against the swelling years would fail, and its molecules dance on time’s wave to some other existence. The structure’s human neglect, its decrepit cement patches on even more decrepit concrete, was just accelerating the resolution of this phase. As Bach, Dark saw of a sudden, was doing with his booze...

A shift. Minstrel’s hands closed again. And Dark saw

70

The Teachings of The Minstrel

Not mine, not thine, but our will unfold the eternal.

Understand this. Free Will. Fate. There is no difference. How can there be? Like night and day, they’re but polarities bound together by movement, by growth, by change. Neither can exist of itself. Understand this. Accept your destiny — or — take arms against a sea of troubles. There is no difference. None. In the eternal unfolding of now, there is only the we expressing itself, as you, now a glistening bead of spray separating from the wave, remembering itself, now the droplet merging back.

what he had missed, what he had been missing all along. The crux. The key. The niggle of understanding that had come with the song. The meaning of the chorus.

Hell. The meaning of it all… you know, Life, the universe. And all that other shit.

[I’ll stick my thumb out and hazard a guess of 42.] {I thought it was 69.} [No. Fact, I don’t think that number has any meaning at all.] {Snort. I’m not surprised. Chiphead.}

And in between?

The illusion of free will. The delusion of fate.

Life happens now, not to spec, not to a grand plan hoary with antiquity, but as a growing, a learning, an opening to itself.

Life happens now, not to please you or me, not on demand, but as a probing, a testing, a sifting of the possible.

Life happens now, in that space before conception and deed, where there is only the unity of polarities, where free will and destiny are not just indistinguishable, but inseparable.

How he’d missed it Dark couldn’t figure. It just seemed so obvious, so clear as day. Now. So bright as a bell. Now. {So, tell me. Why do cliches dominate the throes of revelation?} [Dunno.] {Weight of numbers.} And, how many times had Minstrel said it? tHe PoEt too? The song?

You create your own reality.

But we were never parted. So it is we that create. And we are always one. So there is no difference; my will, thine… the separation, the division was fallacy. There was but a single will, expressing itself here, now as Dark: through him, for him and of him. Our will: the eternal fabric of existence he’d felt with Minstrel, humming with thoughts, emotions, desires. Testing, tasting each one. Purring; clay arching into Potter’s hand. Basking; Snag’s starry-eyed acceptance. Revelling; even in Bach’s resigned self-destruction.

With love.

That was what he’d missed, rather, where he’d missed. That love just is. That love can mean pain, that love can mean hurt. No problem to see unity, to find love in the positive. To thank your lucky orbs for the job that fell from the heavens. To kiss the ground that bears bumper crops. But — Dark saw — face drought or unemployment, suffer polio or a burnout and love disappears, the fates seem against you. Bereft and lonely, mountaintops give platforms to scream out your pain. To curse your tormentor, your god, or guardian angel. However you conceive it.

To damn your writer to the same hellish path.

Yes, life happens now.

But, always, with love — the we’s love for itself. And always out of love — the we’s devotion to all its expressions, to me, to you. Yes, and always, full of love, even in the times it reaches out to squeeze and contort, to test and strengthen. For the we is love, and love is the heart and soul of its creation.

Love. The filaments of life.

Sustaining the finite with infinity. Carrying the eternal to its spark. Reaching out from within to coax and cajole, pamper and please, teach and learn.

Embracing itself.

What was that axiom Minstrel had thrown out the first night, back there in Potter’s bedroom, just after it all started? You attract the circumstances you need to learn and grow? Dark had laughed, called it trite, dismissed it as mumbo-jumbo, told Minstrel to turn off the lights when he left. But he must have heard wrong, Dark could see that now. Must have because the axiom had to be more like…

You create the circumstances you need to learn and grow.

The word change shuddered in his mind, striking a wavering chord on the pool’s placid surface, rippling with Truth… and triggering memory. That was almost exactly what Minstrel had said, but it was far too abstruse, too profound for Dark to hear then, never mind accept. Too demanding of that wondrous insight, the gut, no, soul-deep recognition of the chorus, that we were never parted. The certainty that, yes!, we were always, always one — had never been anything but. The clarity to hear the promise. Damn right! we’d be together. On awakening. Memory tickled again. Minstrel had actually said

You are the circumstances of awakening.

And, so, Awakening to itself.

“ve-ry good… ve-ry good… per-haps there is hope for you… af-ter all.”

Minstrel’s chuckling voice, alive with warmth, resonated to infinity and back, stretching each word into farcically pompous syllables. But the insult was the kind old friends share, both knowing no insult is intended. At least that was how Dark perceived it, felt it — now — when before, he recognized, his anger would have gorged itself full, risen to strike back.

Like a cobra. Ever deadly. Just waiting on chance.

“but you’re still missing it.”

Just waiting for that moment of inattention, that blink of awareness. Minstrel chuckled again.

“yeah… you missed that one too.”

And Dark saw that he had. Bungled the snake charmer scene. It was rising around him, its watery figures crystallizing real. And Dark saw: what he’d dismissed as tuff muff, the Guilt of Masturbation, was anger, fury, turned inwards, wrath become guilt. The scene was changing, memory rewritten on the spot. The charmer had grabbed the snake, encircled it with both hands, soft strokes suddenly turned to pounding pile-hammer blows, driving, ratcheting the beast down, down into the earth, out of sight. Out of mind. But the girl! The spectator with the telegram!

Minstrel chuckled.

“are you forgetting you create your own reality?”

And there she was, shyly handing the slip of paper, the pale yellow sheet fluttering, but it was burning, its flames lighting her face… and whose face was that? His lady of the dreams? No! Yes! It was.

Abby.

How had he missed it? Or had the girl changed too? Was memory so malleable, just so much clay to be cast and reshaped? And when was it finally fired into cold hard fact? Minstrel’s answer was direct, all trace of humour gone.

“never. look out at that immensity, dark. look out with open eyes.”

Dark did as he was bade, Abby, snake, the charmer dissolving into luminous golden filaments criss-crossing into webs, the webs growing within others, smaller, larger, producing a lattice, a great multidimensional X that stretched to no apparent end, no visible beginning. And all vibrating with the strength of Minstrel’s voice.

“if the task of self-awareness is to understand this infinity, to drink that eternity, and it is, then self-awareness can only be a spiral, a spiral rising into ever expanding loops but constantly returning over the same ground, like a plane circling an airport beacon, but at unceasingly greater height, incessantly wider vision.”

The voice lifted Dark, gently, carried him spiralling upwards, describing the greater and greater circles described; the ground, at least the point of the web he’d started from, opening into vistas so grand, so vast his eyes started aching.

“and each pass opens to a new understanding, a deeper penetration of the mysteries glimpsed from below. revisiting, relearning each lesson to glean evermore trenchant truths every turn of the growing screw.”

The voice had shifted now, from without, to within. Fading out of any separateness, folding into his own awareness. Pure understanding — lesson and insight simultaneous with the same scene repeating, over and over the same players locked in the serpent’s trance, but each denouement different, new words on each fluttering page. The Guilt that lets you off the hook but keeps you hanging rose out of buried anger. That Anger sprouted from Self-Hate. Self-Hate from Rejection. Mom’s. Dad’s. School’s. Our own. Each recalling, reinforcing the primal rejection, the ejection from the we. The hurling of the spark into abysmal dark, flickering, fluttering, desperately grasping for survival, taking refuge in the me but already hating it because me had been rejected. Was not good enough. Not able to accept, or believe, even hope that that rejection came out of, had anything to do with, was full of

love.

Still the spiral churned higher, and where the voluminous luminous filaments of that lattice met, criss-crossed in their paths, the filaments contracted, spinning diaphanous spheres of energy, each reflecting every other sphere on their insubstantial surfaces. Not a house of mirrors, though the effect was the same — billions, billions of nodes suddenly times quadrillions more. And Dark knew he was seeing what the Buddhists call Indra’s Web, understood the meaning.

The All permeated all, but each sparkling node in turn suffused All.

A burst of overwhelming brilliance forced his eyes shut as the spheres exploded outwards, the fiddlehead filaments unfurling that endless lattice, now alive and pulsing with energy. Spurs of golden energy whishwhishing every which string. Silver too. Translucent blue. Cold reds. Webs within webs humming with life. Every node sharing, every node shaking with ecstasy, arching into each passing pulse. Orgasming. And Dark instinctively knew the meaning of this too.

It was the chorus. Made flesh. In a way.

No. There had never been a separation. None at all. Each spark still fed from the we. Never a rejection. No exile but amnesia. A forgetting that could, would end, toppling all the dominoes. No rejection. No self-hate. No anger. No guilt.

Dark opened his arms, opened the heart he’d finally found, fell away and disappeared into the infinity of The Minstrel’s open hands.

And that is the ninth dictatum of self-awareness.

Embrace the All, as it embraces you.

" "hey pancho. you wanna get your passport out. they’re going to want to see it you know.”

71

Just a Coupl’a GoB

“It’s just ahead,” Poli said, eyeing me intently. “Now you remember what I told you, and follow my lead.” Sure, Sure, I thought, a little miffed. Hell! In my career I’d covered bloody royalty, traded quips with comics and grilled Nobel winners. [Personally, I prefer them poached.] Even been trod on by Trudeau. {You and another 23 million Johnny Canucks.} I didn’t need a lecture, or reminder, of how to handle myself among the rich and famous, the powerful and ugly. So, given that background, even if he was the head of a multi-million dollar drug syndicate, meeting El Grandé Poohbah, der Fundy Fuhrer — the Dulsia’s CEO in plain English — wasn’t even something I’d bother writing home to mother about.

Even if she hadn’t disowned me and slashed return to sender across my letter of apology. But that’s A Whole Other Story — and I wouldn’t want to digress — so, maybe another time. [Looks like he’s setting up for a sequel as well.] {Must be contagious. It’ll be you next.}

Poli must have sensed my irritation for he kept staring at me, then his eyes suddenly flicked backwards, face stiffening again. Turning before Poli could order me not to, I caught the briefest glimpse of a large black car, parked in black shadows on the narrow gravel shoulder, black trench coated driver slump sleeping behind the wheel, collar up, black fedora down over the face. {Observant little shit.} A little odd, I thought, daytime sleeping on a tree fringed highway to the backside of bushy nowhere, smack in the middle of The Rump. But it didn’t strike me as significant. [Nah.]

It did Poli.

The Suzuki suddenly flew right, hard right, almost pitching me into Poli’s lap. I looked over the dash to find ourselves about to punch through a wall of leaves, but a sharp left pull at the wheel parted the green sea, and we were scooting down a puddle-pocked track, some abandoned backwoods trail. What the fuc… Poli jammed the brakes to a scruddering stop, almost dumping me into the glove compartment. SkeeRuuunnnch. Poli threw it into reverse, snap crackle popped the clutch, madly painting the surrounding leaves in earth tones. Nearly completing the impression of my face on the dash. We burst backwards out of the trees just as I managed to get myself upright. Whack. Poli jammed the brakes, stalling the engine and trigger-lifting the front wheels off the ground. Flinging me into the back of the seat. Goddamn it, that hurt! Birds sang. Angelic pigs flew. And Poli sat there, glaring past me at the black car, maybe twenty-five yards away.

Trenchie didn’t move. Fact, I was sure I heard his snoring. Maybe not. My heart was pounding that loud.

Poli? Well if you think of all those old gunfighter movies, you know, where hero and villain eye each other off, slomo sec after surreal moment, glaring, daring, taunting the other into a chickenshit blink, then you know what this wasn’t. Without Trenchie to return fire, Poli’s glare was about as useful as balls on a priest — even less I suppose, given some recent scandals. The glare wilted in seconds and Poli shrugged, dispensing another of those dopey ‘well you can’t be too careful’ grins as he fired the motor. Yeah right. But you can be too paranoid. I’ll tell you, I was starting to entertain some serious questions about this guy’s balance.

Maybe he’d been in politics too long.

By then we were grind flop spin lunging back down the track, branches ra-ta-ta-ting the Suzi's sides. Must be the back entry, I thought, throwing up an arm to keep my head from hitting the roof. A secret passage to the drug lord’s lair, his hacienda of illicit wealth.

Made perfect sense to me.

I looked in the trees, straining for a glimpse of cameras and security trips, or the fleet shadows of goons cradling Russian-made submachine guns. I’d have to talk to one of them, I thought — it’d make for a good sidebar, Why Muthahs Buy Red. Yeah — and talk to the security head too, for a piece on high technology, When Money’s No Object. Yeah — and… I was so busy glimpsing the possibilities, I missed the burst into actuality, the breath-taking first view of my-soon-to-be host’s grand manor.

Except it wasn’t.

Expecting something completely different, I had to shuffle the mental filters before I recognized what it was. A hunting camp, fifty years if a day old, perched on the edge of an abrupt slope down to what I assumed would be a river. A roughplank, fifteen by forty low sloper was crowded against the trees on one side of a small clearing by half a century of junk — a couple of hood-gaping cars hunched on their axles, an old tractor listing to its flat tire, a couple of incomplete stoves, and half a dozen woodpiles anchoring other mounds of rusting something or others. Except for a faint wisp of smoke spitting from a crooked chimney pipe, it had the look and taste of abandonment.

Poli hissed “Remember!” and motioned me out, ploughing his way through the debris to the edge of the slope. Still adjusting the filters — was this a joke? remote safehouse? or just an artfully belying fake overlying an elaborate underground complex? — I followed, picking my way through boot high grass.

“I love this place,” Poli grinned as I came up, throwing a grand sweeping arm to indicate near to 180 degrees of red gravel-bluffed valley, blue seamed with riffling meanders writing some message to the heavens. It was, I had to admit, quite breathtaking, and my opinion of the site soared from dump to landfill. “See down there,” Poli pointed to the river a good 40 feet below. [As opposed to what? A bad 40 feet?] {Repent! Repent ye damned Imperials!} “That’s one of the best salmon pools in the whole bloody Rump. And there ain’t no rich yanks allowed.” Poli grinned again. “Jimi’s pretty particular about his company. We’ll go down later, but I think we’d better say hi first.”

The screen door had shut on better days — ripped and rusted, the screen loose in places, half the bottom bulged like it was always opened with a swift kick from the darkness inside. Poli banged more than knocked, shouted “Hello! Jimi, you there?” Was answered by a flurry of high pitched barking and a scurry of something white crashing into the metal mesh, ballooning it outwards, ripping an inch or so free of the frame. I jerked backwards, an involuntary reaction, but the screen held and bounced the dog away. The growling doubled, launching another attack, another bulging blur of bare fanged white. Another inch torn free. But the screen tossed it back again. Now the dog was enraged, snarling viciously behind the obscuring veil, hunching to spring for the jugular. I stepped further back. Voluntarily this time. Suddenly

“Ootl!!”

I didn’t recognize the language, Danish or one of those Scandinavian countries?, but it was the kind of voice could stop a doberman. Cold. Thick with menace and a sheer Don’t even think about it! tone. Growls turned to a pathetic ur uring whimper and the dog belly-slunk backwards, turning its head to look into the room where someone was approaching. I pulled myself erect, trying to force my heart into a calmer rhythm. I was finally going to meet the fabled Jimi, lord of all the dulsers, the genius who’d convinced a bunch of crankily independent GoBs to work together, then, back before there were charts and competition reports, won the Mr Harvest title seven years straight. The guy who’d…

God! Seen better days himself!

Between 25 and 30 thousand of them, judging by the face squinting through the screen. Wrinkled, storm worn, sun cancerous — had to be eighty-something at least. Small too, five six, if that, painfully slight. He didn’t seem to hear too well — even this close, Poli had to raise his voice. “Jimi. It’s me. Poli. Can we come in?” And I guess he didn’t see too well either. It was a moment before his watery eyes showed any sign of recognition. Then, maybe Poli’s voice finally breaching the brain circuits, the eyes flashed alive and he swung the door open.

The dog growled.

I tried to hang back but Poli shoved me in, made the introductions. “Jimi. Barney. Barn. Jimi.” Still half-blind in the dim light, I missed the handshake, connecting instead with Jimi’s elbow. He cackled and gripped at my elbow in return, pushed, pulled, push push pull, an oldtimer’s version of high fives I figured. He seemed extraordinarily pleased — maybe we were blood brothers now — and gurgled something like “Ood o met ou.” “Good to meet you,” Poli translated. “KoOn ih.” “Come on in.” The dog growled again, low in the throat. “Oh, excuse me,” Poli laughed. “That’s Total. But I think you’ve already met.”

Correction — just almost met; but it was only now, with my eyes finishing their adjustment from outside, that I actually got a good look at the mutt. Yikes! It looked like a cross between a poodle and a scotch terrier, with the poodle’s comic gangly body on the other breed’s stumpy legs. The head, though, was all blocky terrier: though it wasn’t all there. The left side of the skull was completely stove in, missing an eye, and the ear hung in shreds. “He got hit by a truck. Out on the road,” Poli explained. “Jimi didn’t have the heart to put him down. So now he calls him Total.” And laughed. “I guess we’d better have some tea. Hey Jimi!” he raised his voice and made drinking motions. “Tea?”

“s, t,” Jimi replied, pointing over to the cupboards. “Ut ta ettl on.” He started shuffling towards the table in the centre of the shack’s open plan main room, rhythmically cackling at some inner joke, “Oli ut ta ettl on. Oli ut ta ettle on. wal ha t,” leaving me alone by the door. Total growled. Bugger this, I thought and went to sit at the table — deflecting wide around the dog, and figuring this part of the story was a total bust. No problem, really, I’d just fake it, then try freelancing an article on Alzheimer’s. What to do When the Lights Go Out.

At the table, Jimi offered a roll-yer-own cigarette — which I declined. Thank you very much — so he lit it himself and then sat there, fag dangling from the edge of a dopey grin, waiting I figured for me to start the interview. Great. So, Mr Drug Lord, how much did you say you make? Ots, you say. Really? But don’t you think this place is a little too lavish, too ostentatious, that it might attract unwanted attention. You don’t say. Now that’s an interesting point.

Frustrated, I turned to look around. The decorative style of the main room, combining kitchen, dining and living areas in a single functional space, was spartan. A row of unpainted cabinets against the wall by the door defined the kitchen, which opened to the dining lounge featuring a round formica table from the 40s, complemented with half a dozen metaltube, woodslat chairs in varying stains of shitbrown and red. Dining area in turn led to vistas of the living space, tastefully dominated by a single delegged couch; vomit green, wear spots gleaming in a trickle of light from one of four small windows on the valley-side wall.

Opposite, in a concise statement of contrapuntal architecture, a long partition wall opened to four rooms. Master bedroom, guest quarters and watercloset were all obvious through their open doors. Oddly, the door at the far end was not just shut, but…

“Tea’s on!” Poli sang out, bearing three mugs. “Here Jimi. It’s your favourite.” And handing one to me, stage whispered, “Remember! Follow my lead.”

The tea was a pale yellow, reminiscent of chamomile, with darker bits of leaves mottling the mug’s bottom. Dutifully following Poli’s lead, I bent down, wafting a sniff with a wave of my hand. Yes, there was a hint of chamomile, but it was masked by a slightly acrid pungency I couldn’t quite place… whiff again… Lapsang Souchong was the closest I could come, very weak and made with bad water — except I couldn’t see Jimi having swampy water with that river just down below. Naive, eh? But, lifting his own mug for a slurp, Poli indicated with a movement of his eye that it would be some form of insult to local mores if I didn’t drink it. So I did. We all did, draining our mugs to a cascade of toasts, cheers and hosannas. The Queen. Her Escort. {Nice little car that.} Even a toast to the drug pigs, Poli’s, “bless their authoritarian little snouts”. Jimi’s “men.”

I was too polite to say the tea tasted like piss.

72

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

“Why?”

Betcher’s whine oozed wearily through the few remaining cracks, his voice faint, pained with the effort of being heard. But still cunning, aimed for effect, trying to twist the pain into sympathy. Desperately probing for any weakness that might allow a full frontal assault. Any weakness would do. “Why mother? Why did you do this to me?

Mother! Mo-th-er!!!”

It wasn’t working. Chuckling, Abby turned the page of her book. A Rub on the Wild Side was the fictional autobiography of Constance Clitoris, the first person, ever, to ride a motorcycle around the world — backwards — and Abby was thoroughly enjoying it. She found the humour subtly dry — far removed from Betcher’s bombastic bash’em — and the situations judiciously surreal. Like that description of a rear entry driveshaft, incorporating, as Constance put it, American efficiency, German chutzpah and Japanese creativity. Installed, it chugged and it lugged, then expired with a splat of viscous liquid. But not before Constance, an avid birder, had added another entry to her lifetime list, complete with footnotes and annotations on breeding and comportment, tongue style, diligence and a rating from one to ten. Abby couldn’t help laughing when she found Constance generally rated Scandinavians near the bottom of the list. Was intrigued to find Canadians consistently on top. {Of course.}

Betcher changed to a wheedle and probed again. “Mother, please talk to me…”

Enough was enough! “Oh would you pu-lease put a twist cap in it,” Abby gritted, snapping the book shut. Directing her attention inwards. Letting sarcasm express her anger. Digging. Poking. “Lord, the way you carry on, a person’d think you were being crucified.”

Needling back. “Besides, I’m not your mother.”

Emboldened he’d finally gotten her attention, Betcher pressed his advantage, modulating the wheedle down to an aggrieved sulk. “But why? Why are you abandoning me? What did I do?”

Abby laughed, scornfully. It was time, she decided, to take the gloves off. “What did you do? What didn’t you do? Listen you bastard. I made you. I brought you into the world. I fed you and clothed you. I got the gigs. I worked out the lines. Without me, Betcher David’d just be one more cross-dressing hump-and-clitillate working the dives for a couple of bucks shoved down your falsie. And a quick fiver in the back corner, tissues included. That’s all you’d be. But you got too cocky. You got too big for your condom. You thought you’d blow me off and swallow the glory, hog it to yourself. And sure you dressed it all up in that self-awareness shit — as though you actually were a self, spouting Minstrel’s nonsense like it actually had some meaning. Yeah, you could outargue me any day of the millennium, but that didn’t make you right. It didn’t justify what you tried to do.” Abby was almost shouting. “You tried to kill me!”

Betcher had no immediate reply — he’d pulled himself back to escape the force of Abby’s tirade. Moving back into Abby’s awareness, he briefly considered matching her anger, but discarded it — he just didn’t have the strength — in favour of his most reasoned and patient voice. The shrink. “So now you’re trying to kill me. But Abby, do you really think two wrongs make a right.”

It also didn’t work. “Wrong,” Abby gloated. “I’m not trying. I’m succeeding. You’re dead. You’re kaput. And you know the best part, Betcher dear? You’re going to meet your maker and she doesn’t give a fuck. That’s right, Betcher baby. Saint Michelle’s going to meet you at those big pearly gates and say, ‘Funny we don’t seem to have a record of your birth. What exactly did you say your name was?’ Then turn you away because you don’t exist. You never did. And you never will.”

“So, Mister Betcher David,” she finished triumphantly. Twisting the dagger. “Is that a ten litre condom or did someone just prick your balloon?”

She waited, ready. Primed to chop, slash, rebut any comeback. Ready for the kill. But there was no reply.

Then, feebly, barely audible over the washboard roar of adrenaline drenched blood, a child’s soft voice. Singing. Kind of. Daisy daisy. Flat, listless, practically tuneless… tell me your answer dooo. Fading perceptibly… the days are long, the schlong is gong, tel me yur ansr…

With a final gurgle, Betcher disappeared.

Just the way shit flushes down a toilet.

73

"merde.”

It seemed infinity wasn’t all that far away. What? Five, six hundred kilometres, Lake Erie to the Quebec border? No more than that. For sure. But — and this confounded Dark more than the sudden geographic shift, the split moment’s awakening to a new scene (he was getting used to those, was even starting to enjoy them) — but this was a whole other world.

Literally.

"but you do parlez francais? mais oui?”

Well, no he didn’t. Parley. Except a bit of high school Parisian, just enough to get him laughed out of town, and a smattering of the more common obscenities, largely involving bodily byproducts and the procreative act. Enough for the schoolyard pretence of sophisticated toughie…

"merde! and no passport either?”

…but probably not enough to get him through customs and immigration. Oh god!, Dark’s newly found heart skipped a verse. Especially…

"look, without a passport this’ll be a real hassle. let’s just turn around, slip back to kingston and down into…”

…in flagrante possession, with a reefer tucked down there at the bottom of one saddlebag, the joint Snag had given him as a little ‘tokin’ of his friendship.

"merde du pissoir! imbecile! you gotta get rid of that before it’s…”

But it was already too late. Caught in the no man’s land of the bridge across the Ottawa River, not only was any retreat ruled out by concrete barriers but, with a rather baroque barrage of backfire farts, the car ahead vacated its slot in the line of inspection bays. There were half a dozen of these, their white fronts sporting large blue fleur de liis. They were linked by the black edge of a long flat roof, which supported and underlined cut out letters — also blue, and with fleur de liis at either end — that read Québec, le bel pays. Which even Dark’s limited French could understand.

What the hell had happened to la belle province?

Reeep Reeeep. Raaaaap. Cantankerous honks behind pulled a head out the door of the booth ahead, shouting with impatient authority. “Venez! Venez!”

"that means move your dumb ass, anglais. pardon my french but — shit, merde and fuck me backwards — don’t you know what quebec’s drug laws are like?”

Screw the drug laws! Dark muttered, dropping into gear. I don’t understand just what the hell a border crossing’s doing here. Since when is Quebec a separate country? PoEt’s answer showed his exasperation.

" "since when? since the refer… look, we don’t have time for that so you listen up. i had a few lifetimes in france, so you just repeat whatever i say. you got that?”

Sure! Dark was about to gripe… let your ringers do the talking. But he was already in the bay — and the line of fire. “Nationalité?” snapped the guard through a slot in the booth’s window. She’s asking what country you’re from, PoEt hissed, redundantly. Just say Canadién, and that’s all.

“Kanajen and that’s all,” Dark forced a smile with his reply, then had to swallow it, realizing just how dumb he must have sounded. {I know what he means. Last time I heard that line used I fell off my dinosaur laughing.} “I mean, Canadian,” he tried again in English, but now pitched it too loud, as though he were nervous. Which the guard seemed to think — taking a moment to stare harshly at Dark’s face, then standing to step outside her cubicle. She was tall, a regular Amazon and, with the extra height of the booth’s concrete base, towered over Dark on the bike. Officious, one hand held a clipboard while the other hovered lightly over the gun holstered at her waist. PoEt hissed again. Menacing.

"just sit there and don’t say tickity boo.”

It seemed the guard had mostly the same instructions. Without a word, she stepped down to the front of the bike, then began a measured circling, taking in the torn leather jacket and faded jeans, the saddlebags half hidden by the packs and guitar strapped to the backseat. Dark sat staring ahead, trying not to look scared. Or nervous. Or even concerned. But he was — all three — and he nearly dropped the bike when Amazon suddenly barked at his left ear.

“La raison pour la visite? Est-ce que c’est pour travailler ou la plaisir?”

“Travellier,” Dark blurted, not waiting for PoEt to translate. “Just travelling through.” Which was fatal mistake # 1: assuming that, sharing common roots in Greek and Pig Latin, all French and English words that sound the same mean the same. Then fatal mistake # 2 — which any self-respecting smuggler would recognize: volunteering too much information. As though he had something to hide. “You know, I’m out of work, en vacance, seeing the country, ah, just taking it easy,” he tailed into a mumble as the guard stepped forward, ripping a page from the clipboard and flicking it at Dark’s face. Snapping, “Donc. Vous devez y aller pour l’inspection.” And pointing to the main building where three cars were already being examined.

Thoroughly.

Half bent out of sight to rummage through the trunk of the furthest car, a uniformed agent was strewing its contents around the pavement. The next car, its four doors wide open, was suffering the indignity of having its upholstery felt up. And the nearest car — with a pair of feet sticking out below its front end — appeared to have run over someone. Dark gulped. They wouldn’t need those kinds of gymnastics to find his little stash. Losing patience, the guard snapped again, “Vous comprenez ou non? Allez!” PoEt added his own sardonic note…

" "that’s just another way of saying move your dumb ass. schmuck! we’re in for it now.”

…and continued berating Dark all the way to inspection. He was quite the linguist, cursing Dark in at least a dozen languages and a few ways that weren’t language at all. There was little Dark could do except pull himself to safety behind the sphincter, like a turtle disappearing into its shell. {Or like night worms in the glow of a flashlight.} [Now that’s an interesting image.] {If the sphincter fits…} He wanted to disappear even further when he saw the customs agent approaching. Big. Bearded. Unfriendly.

Reaching for the paper the first agent had given Dark, the bearded agent glanced at it, then lifted his eyes to Dark and locked on his face. “Please to dismount,” he ordered in near perfect English, “and stand to side.” Feeling faint, Dark did so, carefully, so the wobble in his legs didn’t show, but scrupulously avoiding any hint of hesitation or refusal. His heart was pounding, his face boiling with conflicting and unresolveable fears. Flee! Fight! Neither was possible. Nor could he object when the agent bent down to open the left saddlebag. The one with the reefer.

As shit luck would have it.

“Please to unlock,” the agent commanded, turning his face to look up at Dark. Then, dropping his voice as Dark fumbled with the saddlebag keys, asked, “It’s an ’82, is it not?” “Ah, yeah,” Dark mumbled, too spaced with adrenaline for polite conversation. “Yeah. ’82.” Jammed the key, and had to twist it back and forth, finally springing the lock. Nearly died of embarrassment as the agent opened the bag and a pair of dirty underwear fell out, flip flittered to the ground. But the agent ignored them, and started the search, pulling a few clothes loose and slipping an expert hand in behind, then commented, “GoldWing. It’s good bike.” Then he stood and pointed towards the staff parking lot. “See mine over there? Same year.”

Dark thought it must be a joke. Or some kind of entrapment. The only bike he could see looked like a large bimmer, [That’s bikietalk for a BMW.] in basic black but without fairing or bags. No motorguard either, so the horizontally opposed cylinders stuck out like awkward jugears. But, no, no, the tank was different, more sculptured than a bimmer’s. “I just got it last month… traded a Harley for it,” the agent said from the other side of tHe PoEt. “Maybe one day I get windscreen and bags like yours.” Which clued Dark in. It was a Wing after all, but bare, without the touring accoutrements, giving it a squat but powerful appearance. A runt compared to the hulking mass of tHe PoEt.

With a half-smile, the agent handed back the sheet of paper. “Maybe one day we ride together.” Then, seeing the confusion in Dark’s face, added. “How you say it? Get the hell out of here.”

Dark lost no time doing so.

74

Just A Coupl’a GoB

Total saw ghosts.

Well, some such spectre shot from that neutron star of a brain: packed to twice its normal density by the crushing weight of gravity locking eighteen wheels to bitumen; his head in between; thth thup th thup thup, th th thup th thup thup; neurons squeezed, jammed, forced into God only knows how many extra synaptic connections; so that synapse a fires but triggers neurons b, z, q and u rather than just b, for a wildfire round of pass the message transmogrifying a’s original message, fly in the corner, into a mutated alien abductee escapee; or maybe a jackal and hide’n go seek; then perhaps his fantasy bitch sporting leather collar and garters; sending Total lunging into the kitchen, snarling at the couch, chasing a piece of tail into the can; beating a fast retreat out, run run running from the braying nightmare of a truck bearing down. And down.

Who am I to judge, but letting him live was no act of mercy. [So, tell me, what do you think about euthanasia?] {Oh, I think they’re pretty much the same as kids anywhere else.}

Total showed signs of short term memory loss too: recent data seemingly sucked screaming into that black hole of stripped and twisted neurons, never to be seen or heard from again. So his whole world was perpetually new, a raw landscape scraped bare under the grinding mass of glacier wheels, just the toughest oldest features still somehow familiar; like his master’s voice, but not mine; not me at all. I ceased to exist each time doofus turned away; then sprang back into being, new and unwelcome, each swing of that lone good eye back to the table (where I sat sipping tea and waving off refills, determined to avoid a repeat of the scene in the Imperial Motel and Grill. In retrospect, I needn’t have worried.). In that dog’s world, I was — truly — out of sight out of mind. Then, in sight and in mind, a dangerous new presence. Fleabag lion? tinpot robot? scarecrow? God only knows how that dog saw me, but it was certainly as a threat — each rediscovery bringing the dog snicking across the floor, the wary hunter growling deep in the throat, his good eye cocked and loaded. Until…

“Ootl!”

…Jimi would call him off and bug-a-lugs would slink to the corner for another few rounds with the beastly fly. Until, ding-a-ling, he caught another glimpse of me. Then the performance would repeat.

“Tootl!”

Not that I was doing much better. It was only in retrospect I realized that, barking at Total, Jimi’s speech was improving — his diction sharpening, the voice more and more resonant with command, more clearly speaking English. More like that first voice I’d heard from outside the door. Even stranger, for an experienced journalist like myself, trained in the skills of acute observation, {Does that mean he studies babes?} [No. In fact I suspect he’s latent.] {The only thing latent about this character are his brains.} I totally missed the subtle changes happening to Jimi each time I turned away. {See what I mean.} Failed to note how decrepitude was falling away like flakes of dandruff; his face and body growing younger, stronger, becoming more the man I’d been expecting.

“Total!”

All I can say in my own defence is that each change was so insignificant of itself they never crossed perception’s thresholds. Besides, I was rather busy appreciating Poli’s changes. Which weren’t subtle at all. No surprise there.

Now Poli’s a big guy, sure not as enormous as the Hulk, but massive enough he had to squeeze into his little Suzuki. A little odd, but I’d pegged that as an affectation, a politician’s way of showing he was just one of the little folks. However, you’d think when a guy has trouble squeezing into a fifteen by forty foot shack, then you’d have to figure out something was up.

Specifically, me. That I was high as a skeet.

But — again, this is all hindsight — when sleep and panic attacks are your only experience with altered states of consciousness, then you should be forgiven if the transition sneaks right past. To put it another way, altered states normally make the abnormal normal, so how can you discriminate? I mean, doesn’t everybody suddenly balloon to house size? They do in dreams. Right? And don’t most people abruptly shrink to the size of a cockroach? The panic victim does. And doesn’t everyone have a toon eye that sproi-oings out of its socket for a closeup look at your face?

Jimi did.

Now that was interesting — examining that eye as it, bobbing slightly in the exhalations of my breath, examined me. The iris glowed with at least a dozen shades of blue, set off by bloodshot whites and pupils so densely black they threatened to engulf me. There was some speck down in there, way back at the retina, some kind of reversed and upside down image. I peered in, grabbing at the edges of the pupil to force them wider, shoved my head inside for a better look.

That’s when it blinked.

Which is quite a trick when the eyelids are four feet away at the end of a rubberized occipital nerve. But I didn’t have time to appreciate Jimi’s skills in the matter. You see, when the eye blinked shut it didn’t open, so the effect was rather like a creepy crawly caught in the snap of a venus fly trap. Or a patron of Madame Guillotine’s. {Boudoir?} [No. Boo hoo.] My crown was cleanly separated from my body and sent tumbling inwards, rolling head over neck stump, call it down, towards that speck on the retina.

It was a long way and, after the novelty of falling bodiless through the inside of a living, osmosing optic device wore off, generally quite boring. So I had plenty of time to finally put it together. Fact one: this was not normal. I was pretty sure of that now. Fact two: people may be decapitated in the blink of an eye but not, by-the-by, by the blink. Even in The Bi. Fact three: a million angels may intercourse in the eye of a needle, but even an anorexic pin can’t disappear inside an eye — never mind a head as large as mine. So, my conclusion, I was stoned, ripped out of my skull, as it were. Pie-faced. {Does that mean he has 3.14 ad infinitum faces?} [No. Reductio absurdum, it means he’s off on a tangent.] {Arc. Arc.} (Seal it. Now!) How? Well that was crystal cle… well, actually, crystal yellow. Poli had laced the tea! With Jimi’s conniv… oh god no… Poli’s plan, the whole fucking scheme splashed into full awareness, starting with a tinkle of memory — that mention in my background notes of biological processing for dulse — that became a golden shower. It was with more than Jimi’s connivance!

The fuckers had peed the tea.

75

You are the circumstances of awakening.

So Minstrel had said. But — in a way — Dark had misunderstood, hearing it first as you attract the circumstances you need to grow. Then, his irritation-fogged brain hearing it as, you create the circumstances you need to learn and grow.

As tHe PoEt pointed out, you could as well say any one, or all three, were true.

They were just different points of view, different levels of the spiral. Just the congenitally blind awakening to the same elephantine totality, basing their descriptions on what they found close to hand. A leg, a trunk, a splat of still-warm shit. Diving into it, ordering their lives according to their descriptions. Believing them. Creating their own reality.

Commes les Québecois.

Now that was a story and a half. The story being how a bare majority, some fifty thousand votes, had triggered a unilateral declaration of independence by a separatist provincial government. The other half, of course, was figuring out that Dark’s last confusing shift had been to a co-contemporaneously co-related reality, where the referendum of ‘95 had results the opposite of the reality Dark had been in at the time. As Minstrel might have said — perhaps had, Dark couldn’t say — in all that immensity out there, there’s room for a dozen realities where Canada does not include Quebec. Or where Lennon wasn’t shot. Or, for that matter, where Cortes was skewered and done to a turn.

Interestingly, once he’d gotten over his tiff from the border, this reality’s version of tHe PoEt turned out to be quite the storyteller, philosopher too; marshalling events, facts and, he admitted, spurious innuendo into a narrative, no, it was more a chautauqua, that lasted past Québec City. Events leading up to the midnight UDI: the confusing cacophony of promises and warnings from both sides; the appeals to raw emotions; the pro-Canada rally turned to headline riot. The political war after: vote tampering alleged, coercion denied; threats, counterthreats, lawyers and armed forces placed on high alert; France extending diplomatic recognition, the US withholding. Economic war. Canada demanding le bel pays pay its share of the national debt. The new country refusing. Quebec’s Canada Savings Bonds frozen. The National Museum of Civilization seized in response, riot-garbed Sureté de Québec overwhelming a dozen latino janitors, even though they seemed sympathetic, shouting Vive le Québec Gratis! to their last gasp of tear gas. The loonie savaged, caught between a ROC et un dur pays. Civil war. L’Assemblie Nationale blown up by militant anglais. An Anglo daycare attacked. Calgary yobboes frying frogs. Net wars too — Canada finally giving the American anchors the commuter war zone they always wanted. Peter Jennings on location in a Montreal that could have been Belfast. Tom Brokaw, near James Bay, chatting up Cree freedom fighters. Dan Rather in super telephoto on the 401, just outside the new border, smugly coining the media war’s first hot phrase to describe the traffic jam between his ears.

The Mini-Van Exodus.

(And branding himself forever after as Clod Van Dan.)

It made no rational sense, Dan’s closure had opined. And it certainly didn’t, PoEt allowed — at least none in the way that term has been redefined by Voltaire’s late-twentieth century bastards. In an age of globalization and the tinkle-down effect, nations of any kind were pictured as expensive anachronisms, hobbles to the free movement of goods and wealth. Small nations, in particular, the liturgy claimed, lacked economies of scale and, worse, were prone to disgorging parochial politicians preaching the pap of a public good greater than the infinite wisdom of the markets. (A not-infrequent problem, so there was a 24 hour rapid response team of blue-eyed, red-suspendered traders, trained in South American boot camps and seasoned with skirmishes in New Zealand and Mexico, to deal with that type.) (If a quiet million from the Markets ReEducation Fund didn’t work first.)

So, yes, old Clod was right — within the limited confines of a system that can rationalize ecological and social clearcutting as efficient while, at the same time, giving control of the world’s monetary system to speculators imbued with the attention span of a baboon in heat. Even fewer morals. Within those ruts, [metaphorically speaking… I hope] Quebec’s independence simply didn’t wash. But step out of those self-servingly narrow terms, tHe PoEt had argued, for instance, just take a look at what you’re riding through and — once you discount the obligatory French on signs, and mark down those narrow seigneurial farms and old buildings for what they are, the faded remnants of history — well, you can see where separatism, even if it’s economically insane, does make sense… the one kind rationalism and its economic confederates have failed to subdue. Probably never will.

Emotional sense.

It’s a frequent lament for the modern world, he’d continued, warming to his own invective, that it suffers from Americanization. The wail misses the point. Modern ‘culture’ is no more American than Zulu. Like Lou Gehrig’s, or Murfitis for that matter, the sickness was named after the patient; the Yanks were just the first to be totally subjugated. Perhaps the most willing. It’s not a melting pot either, which at least might produce some interesting and useful new combinations. It’s more like a dark robotic smelter, singed against the twilight sky, burning out the impurities of human variance — the ghost in this machine being the mindless drive of the market; heartless, insatiate, endlessly casting, stamping, pounding its own insistent image into the raw materials of variation and nuance, individuality and culture. Incessant, brutal, uncompromising. Metropolis unleashed. The god of Technology mated with the harlot of Efficiency to spit out consumptive eunuchs, stripped of identities, their needs suborned to the produce consume consume even more addiction of an unquenchable, unstoppable, unassailable behemoth.

It’s no more a culture than a computer is civilization.

But it is every bit as inflexible: restricted by its own logic and architecture to a contagious plundering of planet and people, jamming bits of increasingly identical product into a cankering blanc mange melange of malls, zuburbs, four lane circuits. “Talk about co-related co-realities!” tHe PoEt snickered. “Wake up in any other one than your own and you’d hardly notice the shift.” Caustically continued, it was like a fly vomiting itself across history and culture, liquefying them down to the market’s ideal slurp shlurpable mush — endlessly repackageable, brandnamable, digestible. The ultimate consumable, for the ultimate consumer enthralled by the ultimate in marketing — the product as identity, the self as inventory. Solidity purchased, existence confirmed in consumption.

But it’s Chinese food, PoEt snorted: an hour later, the self’s hungry again, famished, craving another yes! yes! i am ok jolt to the ego, another sweet rush of satisfaction. Another.

Another.

Finally, desperate for an anchor and dizzy from the ride, grabs at the ring, swings on the promise of a deeper, more solid identity, embraces Mother Church, brother HoG, Father Dope, un bel pays. Whatever.

And dangles. Comme les Québecois.

“Don’t you see,” tHe PoEt chuckled, wrapping his dissertation, “All they’ve done is exchange one ego trap for another.”

" "So now , instead of getting a hard-on driving a Lexus rather than a Chev, their peckers erupt at Olympic gold, or some anglais dolts trompling their flag… speaking of which, why do you think Americans are so jingoistic? So bloody prone to so many forms of self-righteous fundamentalism? And I don’t mean just religion.”

The opening for an answer caught Dark by surprise — it was the first in at least an hour’s monologue — and he had to lug himself up from the depths of autopilot, groping for a response, but split, trying to hang onto a niggle PoEt’s spiel had triggered, a niggle more feeling than thought and pregnant with urgency. It wasn’t soon enough for the bike, who turned his own questions to irate rhetoric.

" "because they’re the most infected with marke-titis, the most stamped, stomped and stripped into individual oblivion. so they grab at just about anything that might give meaning, and grab it so hard… ”

Dark was just reaching the surface, a witticism almost loaded, when the split became too much, the tension overwhelming. Like an overstretched rubber, PoEt’s harangue slipped from his grasp, and he snapped backwards, hurtling into the niggle, towards ground zero.

Oh shit, he thought. Here we go again.

76

the writer speculates

Yet another writer friend says the beginning of the end is also the end of the beginning, and so beginning and end cascade into and through the other; like 69 or the twin fish, each framed by and framing the other. (She's prone, too, to placing a preface wherever the hell she likes, and damn the Critic’s torpedoes.) I find an interesting resonance in that with Einstein’s answer to the question, if he had it all, meaning life, to do over again, what would he do, to what would he devote his being? Studying the mystery of light he responded, meaning not just its dual nature, its shimmering refusal to accept just one form, but its equally mysterious weavings through the fabric of space and time.

Now, it's a familiar fact that light takes about 8½ minutes to cross the space separating Earth from the sun. That's a simple mathematical function of the distance between those bodies and the absolute speed of light in a vacuum, which is another familiar fact, some 297 thousand kilometres per second, the famous c in e = mc². But familiarity here inbreeds ignorance, and a bastardization of the complexities of Einstein's theories.

For instance, the speed of light is not an absolute absolute, but only a relative absolute. In a vacuum, as one example, no matter what the velocity of any given object, light always travels at 297 thousand km/sec in relation to it. [My italics.] So (temporarily ignoring the roughly 3% decrease in light's velocity travelling through air), grandpa chugging down the freeway at 80 km/hr could, if he had the inclination and the equipment, measure the velocity of a passing photon, and would find it was c. No matter which way it was going. [Mine again.] Not c + / -(80km/hr) — as common sense and all those math problems about trains leaving Pontypool in varying directions would indicate. To confound the issue even more, grandpa's great³grandson, tooling down the hyperspatial expressway at just a little over the posted maximum of 80 % c, would still find a photon leaves him in the cosmic dust. And if he had the equipment, a more likely scenario, he could measure its velocity too. He'd get the same result as the old guy, 297 thousand km/sec faster than his own. (My italics.) [Mine too.] In fact, if a passing temporal anomaly temporarily placed gramps and descendent in the same co-contemporal vicinity, all other factors held constant, but batteries not included, both could simultaneously measure the speed of that smartass photon as c faster than their own.

Two points: first, never bet against light in a horse race — wine's a much better way to blow your life savings; and, second… no — hold that thought for a moment.

On the face of it, these examples suggest that light is somehow able to measure the velocity of any object, and then boost or drop its own to maintain its relative absolute velocity. Now, excluding the question of why it would want to? as unanswerable, and leaving aside the inevitable objections of anthropomorphizing an inanimate energy, I have to point out the explanation doesn't make sense: light just doesn't have the time to make those calculations and adjustments. It doesn't have any time at all. You see, for a photon, that 8½ minute journey from old Sol to us doesn't happen. Zipping along at the speed of light, by definition, the photon is subject to the relativistic effects Einsteinian theory predicts. As velocity increases, time slows down, to the moment when, at c, the moment ceases to exist: either time stops or the moment becomes so momentously huge the concept of moment loses all meaning. Take your pick. The point is, to the photon, the moment of departure and the moment of arrival are one and the same. Which means it travels no distance, because distance equals velocity times time, and anything multiplied by zero equals zero. Hence, the photon travels nowhere in no time. (And that's as true for a photon on the interGalactic Express as for our examplary (sic) [Indeed.] friend doing the Sol milkrun.)

Now for that second point: c is not a velocity, but a universal constant underlying the relationship between any awareness, embedded in space and time, and the undulating fabric of space/time itself.

I suppose I should explain.

“So, what do you think?”

Abby rubbed her head tiredly, pulling back from making yet another choice. There were too many consequences. One choice led to too many, too damn many choices. She wanted somebody to make the choices for her, just let her get on the road, disappear, let the gaping wound formerly known as Betcher begin to close.

Ironic, she missed him, in a way. She felt like part of her was missing, like she’d woken to find her name, memories and feelings had disappeared. Gone. Leaving this sense of lobotomised incompleteness, a just half-there feeling that had to be subdued and boarded over or it would fill itself with guilt. And she didn’t want to live with that. Didn’t want the doubts guilt would fertilise.

“If it was me I think I’d go for that GoldWing. There’s just something about those machines that…” The saleswoman paused then shook her head sadly. “Ah, there’s no point even thinking about it.”

Abby walked back over to the bike for another look but it still left her cold. It was too… what? bulky? squat? Just too damn big with those fairings and bags. Just about every other bike in the big showroom left her feeling the same. Except for one, this cute little Virago clone, jammed against the far corner, all pink except for black leather saddlebags. Her eyes kept going back to it — drawn like a stick man as Betcher’d say, if he could — but her mind kept pulling away, too much in agreement with the saleswoman’s nasal contempt. ‘Brggggh, that’s a guy’s bike,’ she’d said, dismissing it. ‘You want a real machine, something that says something about you.’ Brgggh indeed, Abby had thought. But what did she want her bike to say? That she’d thrown the shackles of everyday life, turfed the hubby and brat, murdered her alter-ego, then gone chasing an eclipse of the sun up in Canada? Abby wasn’t sure she really wanted to make that statement. Even if it was true. Besides, that cute little machine… she felt like it was calling her name.

“No I don’t like that one,” Abby finally responded. “I just don’t like it. I want the pink one.”

The saleslady stiffened, clearly surprised, perhaps even a bit affronted her advice had been rejected. But she was a professional and quickly controlled it.

“Fine,” she said and called out, “Jo. Get the papers for a transfer. We’ve finally sold the Harley.

Even if temporarily displaced into a co-contemporaneous reality, gramps and the speed freak still inhabit different temporal frames. For gramps, time passes much as we all experience it everyday. If he were to pick up a passing hitchhiker and ask the time of day, the answer would be what he'd expect. A little past 4. However, while grand ³ also experiences time much as we all do, if his tractor beam managed to snag and reel in a roadside thumber, not only would they not agree it was a little past 4, they wouldn't agree on what epoch it was. [Plasticene?] Stranger still, they wouldn't even agree on where they were — somewhere en route to Pile o' Bones, Saskatchewan, or somewhere t'other side of Sirius. [The latter. Definitely.] Their respective values for c at the start of the encounter have locked them into different space/times. And even Scotty’s best ‘thas’all aye can do Capin’ tractor beam could not nullify that difference.

But, quicker than you could mimic a self-satisfied ‘ah, but my dear Watson, it was so alimentary’ [I told you the butler did it.], I hit, smack a little dab’ll do you in the middle of the retinal speck. {I guess he made a specktacle of himself.}And, faster than I could register it was my own image, trailing veins and all, I sailed through — feeling just the teensiest resistance of flimsy membrane stre,e,tching, breaking — to find myself heading (sorry) [I should hope so too.] into the depths of a curving, multi-branching tunnel. The occipital nerve, what else?, alive with whizzing light and pulsing tingles .

Another eternity falling, reminding me of that scene in 2001 where Dave, having dumped HAL, is himself shot down the bowels of a strange black obelisk. Tunnel. Eye. Tunnel. Eye. Tunnel vision. As near as I could ever figure out, the scene was symbolic, a mythopoetic rendering of a greater sentience’s sewage treatment process trying to clean up humanity. But the only time I ever saw the film — it was a midnight special in 70 mil and stereo — I’d been out drinking with a mate first, and vertigo from that scene set us both to chundering into popcorn bags, then sleeping it off in the lobby. So it’s possible I missed something important. (I think it was soon after that my friend’s wife divorced him.)

About this time, I began to experience the strangest sensations, these random little jolts of electricity, which I first dismissed as nothing more extraordinary than a close encounter with the odd nerve. But I had to discard that dismissal as, the damnedest thing, I realized the tingles weren’t tickling my cranium. Now it’s not something I was particularly expert in, but I had done a few stories on amputees who reported they could feel their missing parts, as real and as itchy as if they were really there. Phantom limbs, they’re called. While my stories were nothing too deep — just your garden variety, ‘lookada-poor-sod’ yarns they use for fillers in The Bi, like my interview with one of the last surviving eunuchs of the Chinese Imperial court (although I didn’t have the balls to ask him about ghostly appendages). Even so, I’d never, ever, heard of anybody reporting a phantom body.

And, the damndest thing, that body didn’t feel like mine. At all. Looking down I grasped why.

Ever seen the Michelin Man?

Another example might help to clarify the situation — the so called 'cosmologic red shift', the phenomenon of light from very distant galaxies being shifted downwards in frequency towards the red. Towards longer wavelengths. Given that those galaxies are known to be receding from the earth at immensely huge speeds, the apparent effect seems the same as the Doppler shift of an approaching/passing/receding train's reeeee aaaaaa ahhhhhhhhhghghghgh. And, on the surface, the comparison seems valid: between the start of any sound wave and its ending, the movement of the approaching train shortens the audible wavelength, and so the ear registers a higher frequency. As the train recedes, the train's movement lengthens the audible wavelength, and so the sound is heard as lower. The effect depends on the position of the observer relative to the train. Observer a at a hundred metres from the track will hear a less pronounced frequency shift than observer b, standing one metre from the track, because the train's movement relative to a is much smaller than its movement relative to b. (Observer c, standing directly in the train's path, would experience the most profound impact.)

Does this square with the red shift? No, just the opposite. ]An inverse square?[ {Typecal. {sic}} [Look who's back.] (I was wondering what had happened to him.) [Well, you know what he's like… he can't write and carp at the same time.] The more distant the receding galaxy, the more pronounced the cosmic red shift.

To understand what's happening, think back to roasting marshmallows over a childhood fire. As the marshie begins heating, apart from taking its first steps towards a delectable golden brown, it starts expanding. Now, the marshmallow is not getting bigger the way a child grows year to year. Rather, the core is liquefying and that molten mallow takes more space than it did back when it was fresh from the bag. It’s similar for the universe. The galaxies aren’t fleeing each other's bad gas; the space in between them is actually stretching. Kind of like super-duper-goo. That stretching's been going on ever since the ‘moment’ of the big bang.

Splot-ch. Kaboom.Kibosh.

Dark felt gypped. Ripped off. Fleeced. In the moment before impact, Dark’s pained oh shit had transformed into a resounding Yes! Yes!, he wanted the experience. Whatever it might be, just give it to me. Yes! Yes!, he needed it, like a junkie off junk, looking for that next hit, that next dose of dulse. Yes! Yes!?

But ground zero had been ground nothin. No sound effects. No perceptual changes either, none of the shifting instant karmas, the co-related realities he’d come to expect. And want.

This was just so bloody ordinary, just another highway, another roadkill, another rise to another spectacular view of slope leading down to endless water. A too familiar sardonic drawl from the PoEt, the real one, well, the first one, the one he’d done most of his cross-country trip on, well, as much of it as he could remember.

“Well, lookie there pardner. Trail’s end. The Atlantic Ocean.”

Except there never was such a moment. While much has been written about the first three minutes of the universe, in which it burst into existence from non-existence, then evolved from a glutinous soup of energy into a crazy dance of elementary particles and then into the first atoms which merged into the first simple molecules, you could as meaningfully call it the first three zillion years. There was no time per se because all those original particles shared the common property of c. So any dancing they did had to have been in 0/0 time — the same lethargic polka that smartass photon is still doing today. Time in any way similar to how we experience it only came into existence with the emergence of atoms and molecules that no longer shared c. That’s our heritage, the stuff of which we’re made, and why we seem so locked into the waltz of temporal existence. But that timeless, spaceless dance of creation is still there, perpetually grabbing new partners and pulling them in.

And there’s the nub. There’s fairly recent research in particle physics that shows two particles can share faster than light communication, which was a supposed theoretical impossible. But the universe is far stranger than any theory can predict. Of course particles can communicate faster than light. In the particle world there is only here, only now, and where there’s no time and no distance there are no barriers. Every particle birthed in the beginning is still in touch with every other, even though we can measure the space between them as growing at many times the speed of light. And every new particle rebirths that same beginning, recreates the timeless here, the spaceless now of what should more properly be called the Big Orgasm.

And we are part of it. We are not alone in our temporal aberration. We are bathed in that infinite now, cut off from it only through the abstraction of c, through our concepts of time and space, beginning and ending — the placental walls of our minds that sometimes, somehow break down, fall apart, dissolve back to the fathomless eternity we sprang out of.

And there be God. Buddha. Mind. Source. Whatever you want to call it.

[So, tell me, what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?] (Nothing, but it does explain why bears shit in the woods.) {Why?} (Because they’re there.)

77

The motor died with a soft cough and Dark removed his helmet, but didn’t dismount. Sat there, the bike balanced between his legs. A long moment. Two. A short one.

He’d parked at the end of a narrow mud lot squeezed into the knuckle of a headland’s jutting finger. Beyond him, five feet of manicured green gave way to wild stubs of salt grass, low shrubs and trammelled paths towards the spray-chiselled line where land’s end met a slope of dark grey water. The Atlantic — almost as wide as the continent Dark had just crossed, far more foreboding. It was Twixtland all over, he thought, feeling even the land behind him hunching under the overwhelming onslaught of sky, wind, ocean. Like a cowering boy suddenly face to face with his own misdeeds, his turbulent past, not daring to look up at the bulky figure of the cop had nabbed him.

To the south, the headland gave way to a soft swirl of beach, skinned with metres of wet sand and the whorls of a dozen lessening tides. To the other side, an old lighthouse now become a fishfood palace beckoned Dark’s empty belly. How long had it been since he’d had a real meal? Who could tell? But what should have been scenic — the building of the tourist pictures, grey and seeped with age, boards flapping in the wind — was instead an incongruity. The lighthouse shone with new paint, and seemed plunked into the scene, like one of those bad seascapes you can buy at Zellers, already framed and ready to hang. John’s Lighthouse Café. Dark wondered what PoEt II would say about that.

“so tell me,” PoEt I interrupted. “is it everything you were looking for?”

“Dunno,” Dark shrugged, feeling cheated, here too suddenly to be ready for it. He laid his helmet on the handlebars and kicked out the stand. Was he looking for something? Expecting something dramatic, some fitting climax, conclusion to his coast-to-coast epic? Yeah, Dark had to grudgingly admit, he was. It seemed only fitting that the end of the road should be as well symbolised as that view Potter/Minstrel had shown him down the anal passage to BC’s mountainous haemorrhoids. And wasn’t life a literary device anyways? Shouldn’t this scene just ooze significance?

Where in the bloody hell was the writer when you could use him?

But simple reality, just the act of getting off and starting to walk, made Dark question his expectations. Was the trip really over? This was really only the half way point, the turn-around, the fulcrum. Not even that in the larger scales of life. So maybe there was nothing to expect here, no magic, no symbolism. Just a point in time and space he imbued with his own expectations. Then it hit him. Life just was. It happened and flowed and moved and bit you on the bum if you weren’t looking. But there was no inherent significance, no one moment that stood out from the others as more important. It was we who made any given moment significant, who gave it meaning, who ransacked experience, shouting ‘hey look at this’ and ‘wow! what an experience’.

Life wasn’t a literary device after all. It just was.

"by george I think you’ve finally got it. thank the lord bejeesus murphy!”

Old Whitey stepped up beside him, no surprise there but, surprise, slipped an arm across Dark’s shoulders. Like they were old army buddies. Or worse. [God. Now he’s gay baiting.] Whitey gave a low chuckling laugh. “i wonder if he ever will,” and cocked his head backwards to indicate tHe PoEt. To Dark’s wide eyes, he shook his head.

“no, he doesn’t know i’m here. like i’ve said, you create your own reality and he doesn’t want me in his. he’d sooner stay stuck in that machine than exercise self-awareness on himself.”

Minstrel’s tone seemed sad, almost mournful. “But I thought he had his license to channel,” Dark said. “Don’t you have to be self-aware to be running around imparting wisdom like he does?” Minstrel shook his head no.

“does a license make you a good driver? of course not. a license to channel doesn’t prevent ego traps. do you remember that spiral I showed you? how self-awareness constantly circles back on itself but at higher and higher levels? believe me, it’s damn easy to hit a spot on that spiral and think you’ve got it, you’ve reached the goal, you’ve arrived. but you haven’t. you’re stuck. and you’ll stay stuck until the fat frog croaks if you can’t break out of it. trouble is, the bit of self-awareness you do have can stop you seeing your bind.”

It took a moment for Dark to digest. Minstrel seemed to be saying that you couldn’t trust channelled entities. Or ‘angels’. Or ‘spirits’. Never mind those time-travelling rakes. At the least you had to take what they said with a shaker of salt, even.... but Minstrel either anticipated or caught the thought.

“don’t forget the tequila... and yep, you’re right, even me.”

Minstrel’s face had become fiercely serious but Dark thought there was also a change in his tone, like the teacher had been replaced with... a friend? Or maybe, finally, the real Minstrel, without any of his guises.

“i don’t want to be your ‘garu’, dark, so don’t believe a goddamn word i say unless you feel it’s right. i’ve got my own limits, my own weaknesses, the same as arnie back there in the bike. you have to be your own garu.”

Minstrel’s tone suddenly changed again — Dark could almost feel him stepping back into the corpulent, chuckling skin of the Olde Farte.

“now, about arnie... i think i need to change my tactics with him. fact, given your own progress, i was thinking about making you his, ah, supervisor.”

“No thanks,” Dark snorted. “I think I’d sooner eat meatballs at a cannibal convention.”

Whitey laughed gently, “we’ll see.” Then he stepped around to Dark’s front and placed one hand on each shoulder, stopping Dark in his tracks. His eyes had that same devilish glint Dark had seen the first time they met and Dark had that same feeling of a showhorse on inspection. The eyes swept him up and down, hands straightened his collar and flicked off a piece of lint. Or was it birdshit? “but we’ll talk about him later,” Whitey almost giggled. “i have a delivery to make and you have an appointment... out there.”

And pointed towards the lip of headland where infinity birthed eternity.

What a backwater, Abby grumbled to herself. She stepped out the hotel door straight into a blaze of sun thrown off the post office window across the street. The glare caused her to misjudge the step down to the sidewalk and her foot hit with a thud that shot up to her teeth. It did nothing to improve her mood.

Shielding her eyes, she looked up and down Hickston’s alleged main street. Nothing special. She’d seen half a dozen just like it the last few days of riding — crowded to narrow by mostly two-story clapboards painted in a dozen bright colours. Sometimes on the same building. Shops defined by plate glass, inset entrances and hinged signs dangling in the fetid air over the sidewalks. No neon. Picturesque — she’d give the old maritime architecture that — but the travel agent hadn’t mentioned time travel as a prerequisite for getting here. She’d gotten so used to being recognized as the woman behind Betcher David, so accustomed to just ignoring the startled looks and catcalls, that she found it unnerving how the locals clearly had no idea who she was. Not a glimmer of recognition anywhere. Even using her stage name to register hadn’t seemed to register with the hotel manager. Did they even have tv here?, she wondered. CNN? Time? Newsweek? Sure it was a different country but Betcher had had a dozen fan clubs up here in Canada.

Had had.

The past tense hit her like a sled.

Or the Dilsbury Dough Boy?

Well, that was me. Sort of.

Except I wasn’t nascent bread and I had no tread. I was… I reached down to check, giving my rotund little belly a good pinch... marshmallow. Soft, squishy marshmallow. Sorry but I couldn’t help breaking into hysterical laughter. It was just too damn funny.

Mallow Yellow.

My editor’d probably think it was a typo.

But I didn’t get to finish the laugh as — just like that — the next phase of my incredible journey began. My portly, twinkle-toed body was elongating, smoothening, Santa’s gut fading away. While the general evolutionary trend seemed clear enough — the fins and tail suggested the genera ichthya — fish — all my reserves of high school biology weren’t enough to identify the species. It was only when I heard myself let loose a sniggering high-pitched chigger that I realised I had the genera wrong.

Just call me Flipper.

Then I noticed my world was morphing right along with my body. The veined red burrow of the occipital was breaking out with rounded blocks of what looked like white stone. Although there was no coherent pattern to their placement, no neatly mason-stacked rows, it was still impressive, like the lower tunnels of an obsessive-compulsive dungeon keeper. And I felt I was ‘seeing’ through to the essence of creation, to the bedrock that underlies the myriad forms of the cosmos. Wrong. I bounced off one of the walls. It was marshmallow. Of course.

Herr Reefer was right.

The world, the whole bleeding universe was made of marshmallows.

The little ones.

But she pushed it away — a trick she’d gotten really good at — and looked around for someone who could help her. The street was empty, barren, except for one old man leaning back into a bench outside the post office. Abby had to squint against the glare to see him. He looked to be sleeping, soaking up the sun while it was still there. No, not sleeping... she saw an arm swat lazily at the air, fall loosely back to his lap.

Apart from him though, and the putative fly he was sharing the bench with, Abby wondered if everyone else had already gone out to their chosen spot for the eclipse. She looked at her watch — 1:20, a little more than two hours left until totality at 3:33. She’d liked that word, it’s tone of absoluteness, of complete erasure. It was what she wanted with Betcher, whose ghost somehow still managed to mount the battlements of her memory. Totality.

Stepping down from the curve, she suddenly pulled back, heart racing, feeling she’d almost been hit by a car! But the street was empty. ‘Don’t be silly, girl,’ she scolded herself and started crossing, but the whole way she had this agonizing sense the street was busy with traffic. Like there was just a curtain between her and a whole other world and that curtain had gotten bare enough in spots to see through. ‘It’s empty. It’s empty,’ she repeated to herself. ‘It’s the bloody rump of the universe and it’s empty.’ Reassuringly, she saw the old guy swat another fly.

Or maybe he just had a tic.

He didn’t move as she approached so she had time for a good look. A little portly but militantly neat. She could see the bristles along the lower edge of his mustache had been trimmed to a precise length, just enough to leave the line of his upper lip visible. A good sign she thought. Faculties all there.

“Excuse me.” One eye half opened, just enough to examine her against the backlight of the sun. Just enough to give Abby the sudden willies. She felt naked, like that half eye could see through her, see down to the depths of Betcher and Dickie and Edie. To the pain. The guilt she was still fending off.

“Excuse me,” she had to repeat when there was no further motion. “Can you tell me where there’s a good place I can watch the eclipse?”

The other eye opened to match the first, stayed that way and Abby’s discomfort increased. She could feel prickles run up the back side of her calves, and was about to turn away, thinking she’d been wrong, this was an inbred, when he finally spoke.

“Eclipse?” The voice was weak, more under the breathe than spoken and the tone was questioning. Like not only was today’s eclipse news, but the concept itself was novel. “Oh, the eclipse. Well,” and now the eyes opened wide, straight into Abby’s. “I think there’s a lot of folk gone up to Armoury Hill for that. Big picnic. Fireworks. Lot of noise I expect.” He paused, letting the eyes sink in. “But you don’t look like a lady wants to be in a crowd.”

He let the statement hang there for Abby to confirm or deny. She did neither, suddenly uncertain inside. Crowds were good because they usually meant she didn’t have to think much and right now that seemed a good prescription. Easier than riding, than being alone, pushing her feelings away. But Betcher had been too much like a lover, too much a brother, too much herself not to be grieved — to be sobbed over and cried out for in the wrenching loneliness the end of any such relationship brings. But she hadn’t sobbed. Hadn’t cried out. Had fought grief to an agonizing draw.

But no truce.

The old man shook his head slowly side to side. “No I don’t think you’re the kind for a crowd,” he went on, watching Abby intently. “I know the place ... go down this road bout two mile then go east on the old Horan Gorge Road. When you run out of road, park your car and follow the bit of trail that’s there, oh bout half a mile. You’ll come to a beach I reckon’s good a place as any for an eclipse.”

He stopped, watching Abby’s face for understanding or confusion. But she had the directions pat and was just about to thank him when he concluded, “There’s not many go there so it’s a good place for working things out too.”

“Does it have a name?” Abby asked. “Well nothing official I don’t think.” the old guy replied. “But there are those round here call it Heaven’s Gate.”

“Don’t ask me why.”

And if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d have always pooh-poohed Herr Reefer’s mathematics as just too damn abstract to have any bearing on reality.

Not that I was totally certain this was reality.

But it was the only one I had at the moment and... oh god! I suddenly remembered where dolphins live. In the...

I’d hardly thought the word when I was flashing through it.

Land ended abruptly at a 10 metre [33 feet] plunge of dirt and gravel down to three glacier-flattened ridges of rock that jutted into the water like the fingers of an alien hand trying to call home. The middle one extended twice as far as the others, and the insolence was well noted: dark swells buffeted down the spaces between, reaching hungrily for the earth the fingers guarded to suck it back into dissolution.

The fingers were narrow, the middle one the thickest, a little more than wide enough for a sunbaking person with arms stretched forward to lie across. The woman doing just that made the estimate quite precise. She was lying on her stomach, her head furthest away and she was starkers. Totally. There wasn’t even a pile of clothes near her. Dark debated going down, he didn’t want to intrude, but even from this distance, Dark thought the figure looked familiar. Something in the swell of her buttocks. Or the splash of hair across her shoulders. It had to be... no. With a sinking feeling, Dark knew where he’d seen her. So it was no surprise when she glanced back, over her shoulder, and her face was missing.

Whirl Eyes had made the same cross-country trek.

She rolled to her side, exposing a cadre of voluptuous breasts, and with a smile beckoned him down.

Abby stopped to wipe sweat off her forehead and pull her tee shirt off its clinging dependence on her upper body. The old guy wasn’t much for distance, she thought. Bout half a mile? More like a mile, a bloody country mile in a township laid out by drunken surveyors. The path had been little used, an old track overgrown with shrubs and invaded by branches she had to push out of the way. And there’d been enough uphill near the start to get her breathing hard and taking short rests. She’d kept looking at her watch, afraid she was going to be late, stuck on a goose stinking chase when the eclipse came on. As her breathing slowed, she could hear the creaking busyness of the woods around her. Then a low rolling smoash, followed by another several seconds later. She pushed on, listening as the sound grew louder, saw blue through the weave of green ahead. Then, pushing a final overhanging branch up and out of the way like a curtain, she was there.

Her little gasp of wonder just slipped out.

It was picture pluperfect, a 100 metre elliptic of rock sandy beach tucked between darkly forested headlands. The location scouts had done their job well for this scene, and she could see where the director would be setting up the camera for the long sweeping shots into the heroine, the background swatches of scenery that would be used to frame the character’s inner turmoil.

She was impressed.

The stage had been well set.

78

Dark was paying too much attention to Whirl Eyes’ buxom buddies and stumbled at the lip, his foot catching a small washout that slashed into the tough grass, then dissipated to a smooth delta down the face of the drop.

Dark stopped, took a moment to choose his path. A trail led down through a larger washout to his left. After a first sudden drop of a good chunk more than a metre, the slope lessened and the path changed into a series of short switchbacks and padded flats between dirt locked boulders. He had to step across an old deadhead thrown against the slope in some once-in-a-century storm event. The log’s sunburnt surface had been sandblasted to a dull shine, the path where feet stood to cross it stained dirty. It was slippery too, loose sand ballbearing under his feet for a giddy moment of fear and choked-off-embarrassment. But Whirl Eyes hadn’t seemed to notice, just beckoned him closer, weaving the air with her hands in some language he didn’t understand... but something in him responded and it dragged his mind into a narrowing focus, losing awareness of the water, boulders, land’s fitful end.

And the music started.

Now I know the universe loves a joke but this was fucking ridiculous. Here I am, an aquaphobe of the 99th percentile, still fresh from my close encounter at Finnegan’s Wake and you’d think life would have the decency to go a little easy. You know, pamper me a little. Something like a soft patter-pat on the back and a mother-warm voice, ‘there there, it’s alright Jarney’. But no. That’s not the cosmic style. Instead, it dumps me in my mortal element with a tittering ‘sink or swim kid.’ I could feel the dead cold panic sitting along my dorsal.

But as soon as I felt it, I was bursting out of the water, doing a triple luganous into a cascade of sky, cloud, distant beach, then back into the water, clean as a diver’s wet dream.

Then out again into the same whirligig of air, just long enough to register I was closer to land. In again. And out, switching to a floating back roll that put the world inside out, horizon span-spinning upside down into vision, rolling through a round sky and a crescent moon of beach, now closer, where I could see a person sitting at the water line. A woman.

Abby watched the dolphin — or was it a porpoise? — envying its utter freedom. Wishing she could be as removed from the cares, the regrets of her life. She checked her watch, but the flurry of seconds that dogged her path to the beach had slowed to a near surreal manana. Hardly a minute had passed since her last check, still fifteen minutes to go but already she was feeling it a bust. Being here. Sitting here, waiting for the sun to disappear and take her cares with her. The past hour had dragged her through a morass of feelings — confusion, anger at herself, regret, resentment. They’d centred on Betcher of course, on the raw guilt she’d finally been unable to bury. She’d killed him and it was murder even if there was no body. She’d choked a part of herself to the death. And laughed, chortled, twisted his last minutes into an agony of rejection.

Holding back the pain, she waited, resigned to the inevitable. There’d be no totality for her feelings, she knew. No exoneration. And when it was over, she’d get back on the bike and ride off, as burdened as ever.

Betcher’s ghost would see to that.

Dark found it hard to follow at first. The music came in snippets, fragments, memories of the parts of the song he’d already heard, bits of lyric and rhythm and tune calling out to him. Reminding him not of the words themselves, but the feelings they created, the pain of the traveller, the loneliness, the aching emptiness of the unheard promise in the ozymandean desert. And that was the story, Dark saw. Not dates and places and scenes. But feelings. The only reality that lasted past the spark’s sputtering fall to oblivion. Emotions that coloured each new rising into dates and places and scenes. Then lasted past them again. Snippets now from the last part of the song he’d heard, Dark feeling the joy, the traveller’s exultant bliss at reunion.

Dark groaned, shaking his head. He hadn’t understood a thing. Caught up in his despair and anger, enthralled to find his passion for music answered, he’d missed the meaning of the song. Like a flattened stone, he’d skipped across its surface and never found its depths.

The song finished its recapitulation and started afresh. Shaking, he felt it reach up and pull him down, knowing he was either going to drown in it or be renewed.

The Teachings of the Minstrel

Embrace the All,

as the All embraces you.

Reach out, reach in. Unfold your arms. Open your heart. Don’t get tangled in words. However you perceive it, open to your truth. Embrace it. Feel the All embrace you back.

Feel its joy.

And damn it was fun! The panic had gone, replaced with the exhilarant catharsis of a mammalian brain deep in the throes of play. I was diddling in my mortal element, untouched by the fear and panic that had shaped, no truncated my life! And I could finally understand what it was attracted GoBs to dulsing

Absorption. Total immersion in the moment. Freedom from doubts and fears. It’s all in the mind, I realised, flinging upwards. All in the mind, splitting back into the gray green depths.

All in the mind — my panic, fear, racing heart. All those years of wretchedness had been myself trampling myself into the dark, putrescent dung of my mind. Which of course begged the query worth more than a few thou smackeroo.

Why?

Why would I do this to myself?

I burst out, back into the sky, feeling the magic marshmallow once again do its thing. I looked down to the changing dorsal and had to laugh at the answer.

Reee reeee raaa.

Abby shook her head, certain she’d now parted company with reality. Somewhere back there. That damned dolphin had entered the water with hardly a splick of water, but something somewhere between a dolphin and a giant seagull had fountained back out, reee reeeing upwards, pulling her eyes with it to the sun. She lost the bird in the glare, slipped her eclipse glasses on, saw the nick on the sun’s waist.

It was starting. And, reee reee reeee, damn if that bird didn’t seem to be talking to her!

So there that’s it

Dark felt the song rising out of him my story’s done the lyrics known as soon as they crystallised in his mind except for this one feeling their point rising, a growing excitement this small postscript the final chink falling into place in the wall of his understanding.

That you are the god my song spoke of
You are the god who dreams

Of course. That was it! The nexus. The missing thread in Indra’s Web. His awareness, his understanding of his truth.

You are the me lost to the we
You are the missing chord

Whirl Eyes had risen now and the mesmeric movements of her hands were speaking straight to the understanding the song had opened. The languorous movements were familiar though, with those breasts behind them, hard to focus on and place. The world was darkening around him, colours draining, a deep silence growing. He heard a distant seagull at the same time he finally consciously understood.

She was potting.

More than that, she was Potter, and Dark recalled the scene in his basement, the dance of creation shaping the unformed and embryonic into the myriad.

And as each shape rose into life, flitting from the wheel, a glistening tear dropped from Potter’s eyes, wetting the clay for the next.

Feel its joy. Feel its grief.

Just like you, the All feels emotion. Just like you, the All sobs with anguish at each parting, each spark falling away. And just like you the All reverberates with joy at each awakening, for each portion suddenly remembered, abruptly recognized.

Tenderly pulls it back, embracing it,

like a mother whose child was lost then returned.

And just as we are the pain
you feel in the dark,

The figures now poured from the wheel, like spirits rising from their graveyards on judgement day, a swarming infinity of sparks caught in reality’s hot updraft, each writing it’s own jagged, wavering tale on the darkness that caught and snuffed it’s brilliance. And now Potter’s tears were hitting the clay like hard rain on salt-dry dust, exploding outwards into showers that caught the delicate lattice of the web, giving it form. And Dark saw the energy that connected and pulsed between those billions and billions of tears.

you are, yes you are
the pain we feel

“It’s all in the mind!” I shouted, racing upwards, exulting at the stream of air past feathers. “It’s all in the mind!” Flicking wingtips to cartwheel into a swooping kamikaze back toward the beach, the woman in my sights. Shouting again, “It’s all in the mind.” For some reason I was desperate she understood, as though if I couldn’t share the realization it wouldn’t be real, it would disappear. And it seemed to be disappearing, the world was going inexplicably dark and I was caught in some temporal warp that stretched the distance between her and I so that my dive brought me no closer, hanging there in a perpetual plunge into the cavernous twilight, shouting and watching her face for understanding, which faded from curious to blank and, just as the darkness went full, to open-mouthed terror.

“It’s all in the mind.”

The moon’s fattening crescent had backspaced the sun to a final glinting wink. It was like lights down at the theatre, that uncanny passage between worlds, the last minute gibbers of sound falling to the silence of expectation as the first actor waits, feeling the challenge, how long can you hold it?, before the hush just screams for breaching. Waiting it out, letting it build, letting the first nervous scuffles creak. Still waiting it out. Letting the tension twine tighter, holding the audience in that limbo til they’re sure there’s some mistake, some glitch in the program. Til they’re stealing anxious glances, wondering who’s brave enough to demand release.

Exactly the moment, the actor judges, to lob the grenade and let all hell break loose.

“Ree reee reea!” The seagull had abruptly appeared out of the faltering light, just yards overhead, throwing its strident call at her, a grating “Rhee reeeh rheah!” that suddenly commingled, coalesced to syllables. Human. Abby panicked as the voice echoed across the stygian beach. It was the voice of retribution, karma. The circle come full. It was...

“Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.”

It was emotion, pure and simple, the universal coin, bartered for experience in the realms of a god’s dreams. Didn’t matter to the web what the emotion was. Love. Hate. Joy. Pain. Didn’t matter. The web fed on emotion. Existed to feel. Minstrel was right. Every turn of the spiral opened to new vistas, new understanding. The play was not the thing. Rather, it was the emotions engendered, the fears, the distress, hopes and lusts the play gave rise to. All viewed with love, yes — Dark had that part right, love suffused the web — but it was the love of a mother watching her child, knowing the youngster must suffer its own growth, its own anguish.

A love imbued with stoic wisdom, the acceptance that her own evolution depended on the emotions she would feel watching the child stumble, pick itself up, move on.

They say no one can hear you scream in space. Well — let me be the first to tell you — it’s the same in the lower intestine.

At least I assumed that’s where I was. My last memory of the light was the gaping cavern of the woman’s mouth suddenly warping into streaking colours, then the darkness double dipped and, after a moment of erratic jostling, I was cocooned in what felt remarkably just like a sea of warm marshmallows. It was a forgiving medium, buoyant and alive with languid riffles, parting smoothly, flowing so easily around me it was hard to tell where I began and ended, indeed if I had any shape at all, any discreteness beyond a clucking gaggle of self-deluded marshmallows in the great migration of life.

Another glimpse at the underlying unity of the universe?

It would have been pleasant, except for the rather gamey smell bathing me, and it would have been peaceful, except for a constant, rough rumbling interspersed with rabid growls that I felt as much as heard. (It took a few moments but I managed to peg my location from those clues.) It was hard to separate those tremors from the gently rhythmic squeezing that seemed to be pushing me along, although, in the unrelieved darkness, I wasn’t absolutely sure. Interesting... I’d never realized how much we depend on vision for our sense of motion. More proof that it was all in the mind?

Of course. And, I had to chuckle, it all made sense. In the mind, life had this certain grandiloquent justice, where what went around came around and what went in went out. In the end. Clearly I was immersed in a mytho-poetic rendering of my own psyche, a faithful illustration of that insight about what my fear and panic actually were, with overtones of that scene from 2001. Hell I thought, given the malleability of the marshmallow world, whatever scene I could imagine would exist. Had to exist. Somewhere. So, it made real sense, I probably had company. I whispered, because no one could have heard me scream.

“Dave? You there? You...”

Betcher!

And with the boom of the voice Abby was back at the first beach, watching the clouds split, the words that had changed her life clicsh appear, clic clicsh spasmodic, clicsh letter by clicsh letter, cli cli clicsh like a three fingered writer on an old Underwood clicsh bashing at the clicsh sky’s blank sheet.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

Oh god, Abby thought, as the words slowly faded. That was where it all started, where Betcher had first exsinuated himself into her awareness. Her stomach churned painfully. Where she’d started down the path to Betcher’s murder.

Cli clic cli clisch.

The typist suddenly found a rhythm, began pounding out the story, describing the scenes better than Abby could herself — the heart attack, her agonizing ennui, the fights with Dickie. Her embarrassment the first time she’d tried on a jockstrap, and liked it. The breakup. Edie’s loss. She shook her head, not wanting to read anymore, to get to the ending. Because she knew the butler didn’t do it. She did.

But cli cli clicsh the story wouldn’t stop. The kickoff gigs. Bad jokes. Betcher’s, at first, comforting presence. The scenes and details were piling on top of each other, jumbling into a stenographic blur. It was too much. With a sob, Abby hurled herself at the past, determined to stop it. Change it. Prevent the denouement.

But the past was a tornado of whizzing keys, actions and reactions that tore at her hands and twirled her helplessly about. She was bawling now, in agony as her last shards of hope were ripped to a few shrieking tatters of desperation.

And in that moment of utter despair, charged with the strength of a person hanging off a cliff, she managed to grab a key, pull it to a halt, just microseconds from the start of that awful, final sentence.

‘Then she killed him.’

And so this song is given
Is given of we now

There was a new voice in the song, a second, haltingly uncertain voice, feeling its way into the rhythm, finding the melody. His vision of the web collapsed into the first shivers of renewing light, and Dark made out Potter’s sly grin and the shift of his head that said Dark should look to his left.

is given for we now

Bach grinned, a little dopish, like he wasn’t really sure he belonged here, then pointed to Dark’s right as another voice joined the rising chorus.

is given to we

Becky. Smiling at him, like she was proud, damn proud. Singing with abandon. Whole hearted.

Come sing it with us now
Come sing it share our joy

And behind, yet another, so familiar Dark didn’t bother turning to look. He didn’t need to; he’d be seeing her soon enough. Besides, he couldn’t have. The song had grabbed him, the final meaning of the promise had come into the light. He walked the bridge to the chorus and, triumphant if a bit hesitant, joined in.

That we were never parted
That we are always one
That we will be together
Upon awakening

Abby shook with the effort, squirmed her body between the key and sky. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “God I’m so sorry.” And she meant it too, she knew that. Meant it more throughly than she’d ever managed behind the facade of self-control she’d built against her feelings. And that was all it was. A facade. A Potemkin village of happy peasants waving to the passing Czarina. Ensconced in her coach, she’d only fooled herself.

But that could change she swore. Could. Would. She’d seen the movie set, the false fronts. Had gone past them. Now she just needed a little rewrite, a minor adjustment to that last line of the script.

Just one word.

The light was swelling all around her and a sudden beam hit her cheek, refracted into blazing rainbows on her tears. She had to look away, past her cheek, then past the corona dying in the widening sliver of sun, to the sky. And there he was. Large as life. Large as the sky in fact.

Betcher. Smiling sadly.

His smile was filled with compassion, Abby could feel it, like some angel looking down from heaven. Her heart filled with hope, her breathing stopped. It was a smile that could grant absolution, could forgive. “Please,” Abby whispered. But Betcher only shook his head in a sad, gentle no.

And with a sob wrenched past the Czarina’s crumbling ruins Abby knew he was right. The tale was the tale. Her actions were her own. Damn his dictatums, she had to accept her reality and let it go. She’d killed him. There was no undoing it, no going back. That was the deck she had to play with. She had to stop judging herself for it, destroying herself with guilt-ridden names and fear. They accomplished nothing except to keep her locked up in the past, unable to move forward.

Betcher’s features were fading into the wash of increasing light, but Abby was sure she saw him nod with pleased agreement. With a sigh of relief, Abby let the key strike him from existence, finally, fully, accepting her responsibility.

That love there truly lies
Can no longer be denied

The power of the song was staggering, each word ringing of its own, separate from their five voices, as though the earth, water, sky, the universe itself was singing. Dark briefly wondered if people back at John’s Lighthouse Café could hear. What would they think? But the thought flit off. There was no time. The song had joined him, joined them all together into the burgeoning swell of light.

And we shall be together
When transformation’s done.

He wasn’t. Dave I mean. I mean he wasn’t there. Well at least he didn’t answer. Then again, maybe I just missed him in the excitement.

In chaos theory, a system can sit at the edge of chaotic behaviour, and all it needs is a little shove to hurl it over the precipice. The little shove was my whisper. It’s pitiful vibrations had kindled those background rumbles and squeezes into full blown earthquakes. I was shoved and buffeted and thrust forward towards a blazing crack of light the movements had opened. But I was okay. I’d seen the truth. It was all in the bowels of the mind. The whole scene was an illusion, a delusion. And I’d let it go. I wasn’t going to collude with myself anymore to keep myself stuck in the muck.

Shit no.

Memory gets a little vague here. The crack had opened to a blinding orifice and the light pouring in carried glimpses, phantasms of other scenes. Long white hallways. White shadows talking around me. Two of them. Poli’s face, half there, worried. Opening a locked door. Jimi’s winking eye. A gleaming white throne that I opened my arms to embrace. Hell I embraced them all, even the yammering furball. I was incredibly happy, hurtling towards the growing light, finally free to accept life just the way it was.

Ah. The magic moments of realization, and how quickly they go to ground once the bladder starts insisting it’s full. I desperately tried to hold unto my understandings as ‘objective reality’ came bursting out of the light.

As one we shall be
As one we shall be
As one we shall be
We shall be as one.

The song stopped on its final note and, one by one, Potter, Bach and Becky all disappeared. Like a puppet suddenly bereft of strings, Dark’s legs gave out and he sank to the rock. He didn’t even have the energy to check if the one behind had gone too. It didn’t matter. He’d see her when the time came. Back up there somewhere beyond the lip of land.

It was all so simple he saw. How he’d bought the illusion of his separation, of his fictional nature, bought it, caught it, swallowed it hook, line and clinker. He was the writer and his mountain top screams had been for nothing because they’d been sent outward, missing their proper target. He was the writer and it was his own anger, fear and self-hate that had locked him into the abyss the song had finally freed him from.

Give himself credit, he laughed. He’d certainly chosen a symbolic name back there in Vancouver.

Abby felt a cold spot on her hand, looked to find a dog snuffling it’s nose, whimpering for attention. Sobbing gently with her release, she reached and pulled the dog to her, encircling it with her arms in a desperate hug as the moon cleared the sun and sailed blithely on.

Poli’s big arms lifted me off the floor, then pointed to a hand written note taped to the top of the toilet. I had to squint to read it.

If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
If it’s brown, flush it down.

Now there was cryptic I thought. And about as succinct a statement of my realizations as I could imagine. There was a little jar sitting on top of the toilet tank. Poli was pointing at it, gesturing obscenely I vaguely thought, then I realized what he was trying to tell me to do.

But I couldn’t. It just wouldn’t come. And with a sinking feeling, I watched the tunnel opening. Oh oh I thought. Here we go again.

Turning around, Dark looked back at the slope. It looked higher and steeper from here than it had from above and he wondered if he could make it. Riding boots weren’t made for climbing and Dark had to use all fours at times, grabbing tussles of grass to balance himself. But the final three feet were going to be the toughest, almost straight up, the washout slippery. Dark reached up to the edge of the washout, found grass on either side, clasped it into bunches and tried to move one foot up but it slipped on loose dirt and the polished soles of his boots. He was about to try again when a hand appeared in front of his face. He looked up.

The Olde Farte, The Minstrel. Grinning.

“And that is the tenth dictatum of self-awareness,” Whitey said, reaching his hand down closer for Dark to grasp it.

“Surrender.”

Surrender.

Surrender to yourself. Surrender to your life.

Surrender to your place in the We.

For what else makes sense? What else can you do?

Fight yourself? Fight your life? Fight the We?

You cannot. Except in your mind, except in delusion.

Surrender.

Dark looked at the hand a moment, then up to Whitey’s face, feeling old alarms, anxieties, suspicions racing forward. But shoving them aside he grasped the outstretched hand, strongly, let Minstrel pull him up and over the lip into the light.

one
that’s what we are
one
that’s what we share and
one
that’s our soul and
one
that’s our role
to ply in this lifetime

but it’s over
time to come home

so come sing
come sing this song of of joy
come sing it with us
come share it with us

come join us in the sea

come home to the we
home where we’ve always been,,,

That we were never parted.
That we are always one.
That we shall be together
upon Awakening.

And that love there truly lies
can no longer ...
no ...
no longer be denied.

79

“Well pardner, was it everything you were hoping for?”

PoEt’s laconic drawl broke Dark’s mood. But he wasn’t sure, had no answer. If life was or was not a literary device it didn’t seem to matter, so any hopes had no meaning, except as traps to catch you in, to hold you to your preconceptions. Life just was.

Note: dark senses a different relationship with the poet

Dark waited for a car to pass. There was no hurry. There was just the highway, and the possibilities it could open. And every choice, every road taken affected all the others. Directly ahead was the road he’d come down to the ocean. The highway climbed to the right with a long rise into a mottle of stunted pine and rock, the next headland. Was that the way back? The way forward? To the left, the road took a sweeping bypass of the beach, then disappeared into a covey of dark trees. Was that the way back? The way forward?

Was there any difference?

Dark felt the answer more than thought it. No there was no difference. Whichever way he turned now would affect experience but make no difference to the outcome. The universe, the forces, god — whatever you wanted to call it — was awakening through him and there was nothing to do but cop the tenth dictatum.

Surrender.

Transformation, as the song might say, was en route.

A car pulled around him, spat gravel back at the bike as it fish-tailed away to the right, its driver throwing a finger into the rear view mirror. Dark watched it roar up the rise until, just as it joined the mottle, a single headlight popped out moving towards him.

Dark picked it right away. Something in the silhouette, or the way it slopped across the road. Or the distant trademark fart. A harley. Another bloody HOGger no doubt, stuffed to breaking with self-importance. Too bad, Dark thought. It would be nice to ride with another bike. Even if it talked. He waited to let it pass, still uncertain which direction to take.

The bike rushed closer and, despite its unusual colour, the ugly rounded wind screen confirmed its maker. It was a hog alright, but she was no pig, throwing a smiling thumbs up as she swoomed by. The other rider’s face was clearly visible beneath the pink shorty helmet and with an electric jolt Dark recognised her. He’d seen her before! Many times. The thumb dropped as the other rider leaned gently into the broadly sweeping road and the kid gave an enthusiastic wolf whistle.

“ho. look’it the pipes on that eh!”

It was an admiration Dark shared, but they’d never been introduced. Well Dark could do something about that. She was the woman of his dreams after all. Dropping the clutch, he lurched into low gear, but — ever the good model of riding behaviour — he looked twice before he leaped.

tHe PoEt, prof version of course, just had to get the last word. Erudite as always.

“my god. I’d swear that was penelope. hi hoo sil-vah! ye-hah!”

80

PostScript

Abby snuggled down into the warmth of the sheets and pulled the blankets up into a collar on her neck. Ummm, she luxuriated in the afterglow, relishing the sensations, picking them over one by one, savouring each spark of satisfaction, each little niggle of reawakened desire.

She looked across the room to where Dirk Ryder — she liked the name, especially its Scottish connotations — was working at his computer. A little strange, she thought — he’d been like a boy with a new toy, screaming oh yes at the top of his lungs at the moment of truth. Which thankfully hadn’t taken too long — they’d both exploded and merged into a union of ecstasy she’d never experienced. Then, the first thing he’d said afterwards was I need a beer. Downed that, then pulled out a joint — which she declined, not from any moral or legalistic stand; she just had no wish to chance any resurrection of Betcher — and tried to play his guitar. He wasn’t very good. To say the least. But there was an earnest desperation in his effort and she could tell he’d gotten truly lost in his playing when he suddenly rushed to the computer and with a kind of glazed look started typing. He was pretty fast for three fingers, Abby thought.

And god! he was good for one. Abby’s body shook with release and remembrance once more.

Constance was right about Canadians.

Yes, Abby thought, snuggling still deeper into the warm folds of the bed. They’d ride together for a while. Maybe one day she’d even tell him about Betcher. But for now it was just good to be a woman in lust.

81

Epilogue

Notes from The Shop

So.

To say that Bim was socially challenged would be like saying Phaedrus was philosophically inclined. {Of course, that would be assuming that one had read ZatAoMM — not that our Rider, who may be our writer, can make that assumption.} [When life is a fugue, how do you know you’re not out of tune?]

But that was going to change. And soon. He hoped.

You see, Bim was not immune to the siren’s sibilant seduction, that same ‘life can change in an instant’ miracle that attracted his friends. And sure, he could daydream with the best of them about the sudden change a lotto win would bring. Fantasise a winning book too, doling out his millions to family and friends, maybe just splurging on a new car for himself. Nothing fancy. Just a good, reliable Mercedes sport coupe, or something like that.

But — unlike the others — for Bim, none of that would be the point. Whatever his daydreams, whatever lifestyle embellishments he could see come about, to Bim they’d just be by-products of the important change, fortune’s flowers celebrating the achievement of Bim’s one true passion.{Strange he hasn’t talked about this before.} [You should talk. That little trick with Mellow came zip out the blue.] {Whataya talking about? That was your story.} [?] {?} [Oh shit.]

Self-awareness.

And Bim knew it would not be ‘in an instant’, there would be no overnight success. Just hard work, struggle and a far distant pay day you could characterize as ‘the truth shall set you free’. That was Bim’s goal. The truth. Self-awareness. A full understanding of himself, stripped of all the traumas, the hurts angers fears from growing up. A mature, self-reliant individual. He used his times smoking, those times Bif and Bop shared jokes at Bim’s expense, to pursue that inner awareness, chasing every fragment of fear, finding each piece of self-delusion and working to change them all believing that it would all eventually come to a point of success, when he would in essence be a new individual, mature, self-assured, funny, witty. He’d never told a soul but that was why he’d changed his name, to symbolise the person he was going to be, to make a space in his head for this new personality. To open himself to a new way of being, a new way of living.

To be the butterfly shedding its old form in triumphant rebirth. To be transformed.

Dark stopped to reread, amazed at how easily it had flowed. Compared to his previous efforts, this had been a gusher, a torrid love affair with the stream of his thoughts. An embracing of the mistress that even embraced those external voices — the carpy little nag of the curlicue and the suavely svelte perfection of the square brackets had just flowed out of him, fully formed, comments loaded. More than that, Dark found the writing itself a marvel. He could feel his own person in the words, the way they strung together but there was an otherness to it too, a not-Dark-ness beneath the timbre and rhythm. Another voice in such close harmony the two were nearly one.

No. Realisation started from his feet, electric tendrils rushing in swirling growth towards his head. No. It was not just one voice. Dark had channelled, had been a conduit for many voices, what? deeper self? PoEt? Minstrel? The swirls reached his head and he exploded. No, not any one or two or three of those. It was the All, the We, the multitude that in the end was just one.

Delirious with the pleasure of the missing chord returned, the We rang to its non-existent edges with exultatiant joy.

The rush of realisation left Dark near breathless, heart racing. He wondered if Lily — it was okay with him if she wanted to use her stage name — had noticed, but a glance to the bed found her wormed under the blankets, sleeping, just a patch of eyes exposed. Dark giggled to himself, enjoying Minstrel’s sly innuendo but the stirrings he was feeling were for much more than just a piece of tail. There was a whole world, hell, a universe of experience to explore with her.

A straggling tendril hit home and Dark knew what the title of his book should be, had to be, where the story had to go. He turned back to the computer and for the what? umpteenth but, he just knew, the silent pool inside rang with it, final time erased the title. Giggling he began to type, feeling that resonance, the fit and completeness he’d always known would be there.

tHe PoEt & i

It rang true.

82

In Conclusion

So here I am, pure mind, floating in the darkness of a universe made out of marshmallows. I think my body’s still down there somewhere, probably still on the can. Still trying to fill that damn little jar. Jimi and Poli look after it good. At least I hope so. I don’t know what will happen when it finally expires. I guess I’ll find out. Some eternity. But those good’ol’boys have good reason to look after that body. It’s their centrepiece in the war against any law that would diminish their returns. The perfect sidebar or feature article to be wheeledchaired out whenever public opinion is in danger of coming to its senses and questioning just how rational the war on drugs really is.

Besides, one day they’re no doubt hoping I will finally piss into that little jar... and they’ll get a taste of the real mellow yellow.

The human mind and brain are phenomenal and, reality is, people are going to pursue those inner experiences whether their drug of choice is legal or not, whether there are dangers or not. And I won’t say there aren’t. There are. You might say I’m living proof of that. If you can call this living. Doesn’t matter. People will take the magic marshmallow and look to find god, spirit, mind — call it anything you want because it is essentially beyond any of these names. Beyond description or definition, just a pull from the depths, an urging that won’t go away.

Or, as Poli would say, people just like to get ripped.

To be frank, I don’t know that dulse or any other ‘mind-blowing’ drug should be legalised. I’m not really sure they should. But I also don’t see how ‘just say no’ relates in any real way to human beings and I can’t understand how funnelling trillions to crooks serves any purpose. Then again, I don’t have to know.

I’m just the mouth piece.

- end -

In conclusion, yes, my dear editor, this is my final story and resignation from our beloved rag. I know policy says I have to fill out the form myself but you’re going to have to do that for me. I’m sure you’ll get some satisfaction from the privilege. Mind your Ps and Qs. And watch those colons: oh yeah, for that space, Reason for Quitting:

Just put, they made me an offal that couldn’t excrete.

Bye Bi.

Epiface

And the whole collapsed, the lens
moved out, revealing the dark circles of a microscope. A
whitecoated technician turns, makes a note in his book, catches the
question in one co-worker’s eye, hope in the other’s. Nyah.
Didn’t work, he says with a weary shrug of his back.
Damn, theirs say, and turn away to begin plotting
the next one.

[The one after the next one of course.
They still had to do his book first.]

{Don’t complain. That was the deal.}

(What does he want to call it?)

[VideoPros(e)]

(Not the one about the transvestite.]
[The very same.]
(Another bloody winner.)
[But don’t worry. My turn’s coming.

Now, that’ll be a book.
Well maybe a film.
Settle for a poem?

Good. Let’s do Leiterman sometime.]

{Nah. better go for Leno.
At least in the shadow of his schnoze you’re human.}

{Nice mushroom cloud.}
[Shame about the top.]

Lacks punch. So sayeth the critic.

The Teachings of The Minstrel

In the beginning was the name. It came out of the darkness, removing the memories of what had been before the darkness. And the name was repeated. And repeated. Over and over. The name. The name. The name. And the name came to be real. The name replaced the darkness, and what had been before.

And with the name came ideas. Thoughts. Ideas of self. Ideas of not-self. Thoughts of good and bad. Notions of hate. Notions of love. And with the ideas came judgements. Good became good, and bad became bad. Love was accepted. Hate rejected. Self was right. Self was wrong. And out of the judgements there grew values, beliefs, attitudes. Honesty was good. The honest would inherit the world. Liars should be taken out and shot. A whole framework of ideas that created the world the name lived in. And the name was the self. And the self was the name.

But it was all a lie. It was illusion.

The Self — the deeper Self — was in the darkness, back where the name had displaced it. Almost irretrievably lost in the baggage of thoughts and ideas, judgements and beliefs. Perpetually knock knock knocking at the door to be recognized, to be admitted. But the name never heard for, to the name, there was no door, there was no deeper self than itself.

The name grew, changed its ideas, modified its world. Learnt anger and fear. Learnt sadness and joy. Was angered by anger. Hated its hate. Embraced its joy and rejected the sad. But found joy slipped through its grip while the sadness grew solid. Found self-hate easier than self-love. And the anger escalated. And the fear compounded. And its nights were a misery of knock knock knocking itself. Poor little name, afraid to answer the door it couldn't even admit was there.

And the name cursed at its gods, cursed at its fate. Cursed itself. But did nothing. For it would not accept responsibility. Would not accept that its experience was of its own creation. Of its own choosing.

Would not accept that it was the writer of its own story.

And that is the first dictatum of self-awareness.

Accept your reality.

Accept your reality.

You are the writer of your own story, even if you can't see it,
even if where your story is written seems so far away that
it can't {possibly} [Really?] be you.

It is you.

You exist in layers, in depths that reach backwards and down, forward and up to the entire universe, layers upon layers of names that each struggle to survive and exist, struggle to learn and grow. But all are you. And in your totality you are the writer of your own story, from the level that suffers and endures to levels you can't even conceive as you. You are the writer. And you are your own characters. And you are your own storyline in a universe of wonder and hope. Sadness and pain. Your own special storyline, the story of how you came to be you.

Yes, you.

Of course I mean you. Who did you think I might mean?

The other you?

The one you learned to be? The name you came to be? Ah, who cares about that? {Me!} (See what I mean?) What? You want to focus on all that stuff? [Hold on. I'm sorry but I think that's rather unfair, writing him in like that. How's the reader to know when it's really him, or just one of your little games?] {Bitch.} [If you won't abide by the rules, we'll have to give it up.] (Look. It works. So can we get on with it?) {Not that I mean to be rude.} (You mean you have to intend it?) [Who'da thought?]

Not to be personal, but
you gotta be kidding.

This is an important book on self-awareness.
We got no time for that ego shit in here.

So let it go.

[I hate to say it, but nice one — making that look like the Goldwing symbol...] (It's not intended.) {You mean you have to intend it? I thought they were all in the mind.} (What isn't?) [...and I applaud your decision to give them some idea of just what the hell is going on...]

And may it rest in peace.

{Yeah. This stuff is challenging. I know I'm having trouble with it.} (Like, that something's new?) {Bitch} [but I think it's a shame you won't figure out a way to let them know which level is talking? I mean how do you expect them to understand all this? Most of them can't even read the program, never mind deal with more than one reality at a time.] {Yeah. This is supposed to be fun.} [So play fair, or we'll give it away.] [I mean it.]

No.

Let's talk about you for a while.

Let it go.

And that is the second dictatum of self-awareness.

Let it go.

{More like a densely woven tapestry of self-confusion.} [I like that.] {The tapestry deepens.}

Let go (your name here).

Let go of (your name).

Let (your name) go.

Be nameless.

Laugh at your weakness. Laugh at your triumphs. Laugh at your pains. It's all a play and you are the player. You act out a game of exquisite irony, that to forget is to remember. Forget who you've learned you are and remember what you are. A piece of god. Part of the eternal. And to be eternal is to know the transitory nature of these experiences. The play ends but the player goes on to do it all again. Over and over to play the role and learn it to perfection. Then unlearn it. In a flashing blast of awareness or a gradual accretion, it makes no difference. You learn that you are god, part of god, a piece of god — who cares how you define it? For the truth is in that moment that is eternal, that moment you're welcomed back, the prodigal son returned. Who cares how you experience it? See past the experience to the truth that lies behind it. No definition can approach the All. No belief encompass it, no knowledge pierce its depths. It goes on and on in the endless possibilities of an endless universe. So call it what you will. Believe of it what you wish. It makes no matter. The universe thrives on belief for that is its power, and its reason for being. To bring the eternal into the now, the here and thou of our experience, and then report back. Just for the joy, no, the hunger for experience that drives existence.

And it's all done with mirrors — with beliefs that create their own image in 'reality', and eyes that only see what they believe. Value only that which agrees. Judge that which does not.

And that is the third dictatum of self-awareness.

Judge not.

Judge not.

Not that you be not judged,
but that you not be imprisoned
by your own judgements.

For that is what they are. A prison whose walls you erect, whose guards you employ, whose spotlights highlight the shadows of your own inner fears. You judge in others what you fear in yourself and in judging fear it more.

Judge yourself for crying and who pays the price? You do. In strangled emotions and tormented nights. But, judge the crooked politician and who pays the price? Not so easy to see, but you do. In anger and frustration at events beyond your control. Judge the unwed mother and who pays the price?

You.

For in your judgement you deny The All, deny the roots of your existence and so deny your deeper realities. Just as you exist at levels beyond levels, so you are the crying man, the crooked politician, the unwed mother. All at the same time. You have been and will be a drunkard, priest, tinker, sailor, addict, spry. These are all expressions of The All. None better. None worse. None ultimately judged good or bad. How could they be? Rapist. Mass murderer. They exist because The All wills them to exist. [I think we need a conference call. This is getting a bit too radical — it practically amounts to giving people a license to kill.] {James and I agree, but it's his rope. Besides. Heh, heh . Who are we to judge?} So what is there to judge?

Nothing.

Call it radical self-awareness if you like. Call it anything — grog or fob, who cares? What's in a name but a limitation on your understanding? And an inducement to judge? For you can't judge that which you can't name. Whore. Prick. Slaggard. Angel. Judging and naming have been intertwined in your awareness ever since the name first erupted out of the nameless. Your name is your prison. And names are your walls.

Destroy them.

And that is the fourth dictatum of self-awareness:

Name not.

And so, you ask, what is justice?

But a human concept — the penalty for disobeying an agreed-on or imposed code of conduct. You may do this. You must do that. You may not, you may. But, being human, justice flounders in its own exceptions. Thou shalt not steal. Except when you need to. Thou shalt not kill. Unless you must.

Or can't help it.

So don't confuse justice with judgement. Lawyers don't. {Quick. What do you call a lawyer bobitted by a shark?} [Poetic justice?] {Stubby.} [Let me know when it's time to laugh.] Nor do judges — leading to the distemper of your times that justice has gone awry: murderers get away with murder, sodomists with sodomy, politicians with policy; the simple verities of judgement — I'm right, you're wrong — in need of defibrillation. The demand for judgement is not slaked by justice.

How could it be?

Heads you're wrong, tails I'm right. Judgement rises from fear; justice from order. One closes; one opens. One strikes out; the other measures. Two spheres only peripherally related, antagonistic at their core.

So don't confuse justice with judgement.

And hold to the fifth dictatum of self-awareness.

Fear not.

Fear not.

For what is fear but your deep reaction to the loss of your deeper levels, of the all, the we split into you and not-you ? The anguish of ejection compounded with rejection. Your confusion in the face of the communal turned alien. The dank foreboding not-you is dangerous, because not-you has already hurt you. Fear spiraling from your vow to survive this hostile creation, giving birth to self-righteous anger and hate, the illusion of lack, delusions of shame and guilt, the collusion of belief.

Relax.

The split was only chimera; you, not-you just figments of the cosmic play. The name just a cheat, a device to let the All experience itself. There was no ejection, no separation. No loss of union. The all remains the all, and all that remains is for you to let go of the fear, cease the naming and judging, and accept your reality by letting it go.

Thus can you remember.

Thus can you remember

Who you are. What you are. Why you are.

And so answer the questions

Who is the writer? What is the story? and Why?

But, to speak of that, we must first address the we — that which was there before the confusion, before me and name became one.

And the same.

Trouble is, we has no address. Can you pinpoint and describe the intersection of infinity and eternity? You can. But not on any map, not in any word. The All transcends maps, baffles language. Words break down where there are no boundaries so, at most, can only point, not describe. As Chuang Tzu said, if it could be talked about, everyone would have already told his brother.

So. Just pointing:

The All has no boundaries, no centre, no form. It pervades more than invades. Unmanifest, we is the nonexistence necessarily pre-existing existence. The formless background existence bubbles out of. The unity underlying all dualities. Trialities. Quadralities. The unknown, unknowable, nothing. Still just pointing: imagine this nothing. No time. No space. No events, no cause. Can you do it? Or do you find the shadows of your own thought rippling across that, what? — vastness?, smallness? emptiness?, fullness? — trying to name it? Conceptualize it?

Make it known.

Do you find Heaven there? Styxian ferries? Blind chance or synchronicities? Astral or multidimensional planes? Galactic turnkey projects? Do tunnels of light beckon? Frigid wastes repel? Are there islands of life, or just Life? A became? Or a becoming?

Names. Words. Projections.

The ruminations of fleas trying to comprehend dog.

They can't help it. Unlike nature, mind abhors vacuum, finds it hard to accept nothing, to shrug off emptiness. So it infills, incessantly plagiarizing its own nature into gods, plundering its own assumptions to find self-evident truths. Dog exists to haven fleas. Flea serves to pester dog. What dog? Form, it follows, follows expectation. Until the microscope of mind finds its own shadow changing the landscape, comes face to face with its own uncertainty principle.

Remember. Even nothing is just another name.

Just another leap of faith.

So, still, just pointing.

Whatever you may accuse the we of, it did not invent creation. It did not will the universe into being. Rather, as seed is potential plant, so the we was latent, a nothing so absolute it could only be a something. But what? Like seed, we has no awareness of sun, no concept of earth, no notion to grow.

It just does.

Breaking the soil, sending roots to the depths, potential unfolding. Shooting upward to dance in the sun, soak in the rain. Unfurling its leaves, roots knitting still tighter weaves. At what point is it plant? Does it know it is plant? Does it sense its existence separate from earth, independent of sun? Can it exist except in relation? Apart from its growing towards extinction in seed?

When does the embryo become foetus become human?

When does it sense itself separate
from the womb growing it?

And can that be anything but illusion?

No, the we did not set out to evolve. Unleashed in the Big Bang, [Would that be a euphemism for orgasm?] {No, it'd be a eunuch for the Big Cheese.} (That doesn't even make sense!) {Sauce for the gander.} it just set out. One step, then another, constructing webs of its own essence; patterns, pathways. Learning itself through growth, through taking blind ends, dead alleys, feeling, groping about the dimness, as babies find their feet.

Hmm, that wasn't there this morning.

Latent possibilities becoming extant — matter, life, thought. Probabilities collapsing into the rules of the game. Potentials explored. Refining growth into evolution. Branching and branching, enthralled in its own diversity. Feet separating into toes, hands forming fingers. Seeing itself through multiple eyes, coming into awareness through multiple Is.

We becoming me. No me! Yes, me.

Losing itself in that awareness. Sinking into oblivion, a sea of mes, each believing itself special, unique in name and existence and not just another flowering in the expression of an unfathomable All. And therefore important; and they're right. Each name is loved with a passion. Each experience treasured. For that is its purpose, the we's raison de n'etre.

To learn itself.

For, like you, even the All cannot see its own source, cannot stand on awareness to look back at awareness. Even the we lives out of mystery, only able to see its own shadow, its own reflection. So it hungers for light, for mirrors. For experience. For a way to touch itself.

Thus, you and me.

Proxies for the we. Persona non greta. Actors, butterfly dreamers. Living, learning, feeling on a stage called reality. Lost in our roles, oblivious to our roots in the depths of the universe except for...

the nagging threads of Ariadne's promise.

The glimpses, yearnings, the feeling there must be more. These memories, hopes left there to call out in the darkness, to remind, to cajole and start each me on the return. To rebecoming the we, rejoining and rejoicing in the sharing of the lost dreams. Like Voyager, sailing the abysmal depths of space, you set out to experience and to learn what there was to learn. Then to come back.

And it is...

...yes, that's right. Time...

...to, finally, answer, you know which, questions.

You are illusion. A trick of the light. A flick of the cosmic projector, your journey to the screen only apparent. As light, or electron, only comes into physical existence when it is measured, observed, so you only come into being when perceived. As an electron exists in all time and all space prior to its observation, so you exist in all time, all space, still cradled in the womb of the we. Not separate. Never parted.

Forever one.

And, so, how can you lack? at what can you anger? when, at your deepest levels, you are not separate from the source of that lack, the cause of that anger? when you are embedded in the All, woof and weave, part and total of its self-expression, it's cosmic what if game? What if we grew a brain on two feet? What if it were hungry? What if it's neighbour stole its food? Ah, yes... interesting. Let's try... hey, what if it had a self-image? What if it were born deformed? What if it was judged ugly? Now that's intriguing... waddabout we..?

In other words:

We is the writer. You are the story. But you are we.

Thus, the sixth dictatum of self-awareness, and the first two axioms:

Give up illusion.

It's not that we don't get what we want:
it's just we don't want what we get.

You choose to be angry.
You can choose not to be.

As above creates below, inside forms outside, so illusion concocts delusion, twisting the self-image into self-swindling shame, the garrote of guilt.

Give them up.

They serve no purpose except escape, come to recognize no master except self-hate. Whatever their specific cause—falling down drunk, getting caught in a lie, refusing to live by someone else’s dictates—guilt and shame are shams. Hair shirts. Scarlet letters for all to see, most especially the one(s) you’ve ‘wronged.’ An artful dodge, they let you off the hook by keeping you dangling. Let you avoid responsibility for your actions. ‘See, I feel guilty, I am shamed, and because I feel guilty, because I feel shame, because I am punishing myself, there’s no need for you to punish me.’ If only shame and guilt were so easily sloughed off. Suborned by self-hate, they continue and continue, feeding on your innards, reducing you to automaton, flung this way and that by delusion.

Thus the seventh dictatum of self-awareness:

Give up delusion.

And the axiom:

Shame and guilt let you off the hook,
but keep you dangling.

And so to the eighth dictatum of self-awareness:

Give up collusion.

You create your own reality out of beliefs that were taught to you, absorbed as verities before you could question them. And now you collude with your teachers in maintaining those beliefs. So give up collusion. Give up creating a reality that others have taught you.

Not mine, not thine, but our will unfold the eternal.

Understand this. Free Will. Fate. There is no difference. How can there be? Like night and day, they’re but polarities bound together by movement, by growth, by change. Neither can exist of itself. Understand this. Accept your destiny—or—take arms against a sea of troubles. There is no difference. None. In the eternal unfolding of now, there is only the we expressing itself, as you, now a glistening bead of spray separating from the wave, remembering itself, now the droplet merging back.

And in between?

The illusion of free will. The delusion of fate.

Life happens now, not to spec, not to a grand plan hoary with antiquity, but as a growing, a learning, an opening to itself.

Life happens now, not to please you or me, not on demand, but as a probing, a testing, a sifting of the possible.

Life happens now, in that space before conception and deed, where there is only the unity of polarities, where free will and destiny are not just indistinguishable, but inseparable.

Yes, life happens now .

But, always, with love—the we’s love for itself. And always out of love—the we’s devotion to all its expressions, to me, to you. Yes, and always, full of love, even in the times it reaches out to squeeze and contort, to test and strengthen. For the we is love, and love is the heart and soul of its creation.

Love. The filaments of life.

Sustaining the finite with infinity. Carrying the eternal to its spark. Reaching out from within to coax and cajole, pamper and please, teach and learn.

Embracing itself.

And, so, Awakening to itself.

And that is the ninth dictatum of self-awareness.

Embrace the All, as it embraces you.

Embrace the All,
as the All embraces you.

Reach out, reach in. Unfold your arms. Open your heart. Don’t get tangled in words. However you perceive it, open to your truth. Embrace it. Feel the All embrace you back.

Feel its joy.

Feel its joy. Feel its grief.

Just like you, the All feels emotion. Just like you, the All sobs with anguish at each parting, each spark falling away. And just like you the All reverberates with joy at each awakening, for each portion suddenly remembered, abruptly recognized.

Tenderly pulls it back, embracing it,
like a mother whose child was lost then returned.

Can you feel it?

Can you understand the play?

It was The Olde Farte,
The Minstrel. Grinning.

“And that is the tenth dictatum of self-awareness,” Whitey said, reaching his hand down closer for Dark to grasp it.

“Surrender.”

“Surrender.”

Surrender to yourself. Surrender to your life.

Surrender to your place in the We.

For what else makes sense? What else can you do?

Fight yourself? Fight your life? Fight the We?

You cannot. Except in your mind, except in delusion.

Surrender.

1. Accept your reality.

It's not that we don't get what we want; it's just we don't want what we get.

2. Let it go.

If you can't beat'em, join the dots for them.

3. Judge not.

4. Name not.

5. Fear not.

6. Give up illusion. Let go of lack. Let go of anger.

You choose to be angry. You can choose not to be.

7. Give up delusion. Let go of shame. Let go of guilt.

Guilt lets you off the hook but keeps you dangling.

8. Give up collusion. Let go the straitjacket of belief.

Imitation is the sincerest form of exploitation.

9. Embrace the All.

10. Surrender.

Just a coupl'a GoB

So there we were, just a coupl'a GoB [1] from The Rump [2]. Shooting guff on the lam [3], running the backroads of the riding where a few beer and a bag of dulse aren't a problem unless you're unlucky. Real unlucky. Or followed. And that was probably the more likely for there was a pile of bush back here and fair few folk to fill it. But if you were followed it was your own damn fault anyway because, sure as shooting, them cops was sloppy and you shouldda seen'em. When you're a GoB, you watch your tail and you don't give them no excuses.

That's just one of the axioms that had fallen like swine from the lips of The Politician. He was my guide into these backhills of The Rump, my introduction to a way of life so far removed from life in the Big Cumquat, it seemed less a part of Canada than some transplant from a different planet — or bleedthrough from a different dimension. And he was a perfect guide cause he was a GoB, even if I wasn't. And he was a GoB Politician to boot. So we'll call him GoBBy. Poli GoBBy. He'd appreciate the humour in the name. And, needless to say but worth repeating, GoBBy gabbed. Loved talking and was quite loquacious in his own GoBBish way. I guess that's why he was one of the Rump's most successful politicians. Contrary to the popular perception which pictures them taciturn, GoBs love to gab. And they love gabbing about nothing more than politics. So a gabby GoB can grab a seat in the House just by gabbing. You see, when you're a GoB you vote for a GoB. That was just another of GoBBy's axioms. Like I said, they fell like swine.

Fat swine. Poli had made a plump career out of politics by giving the folks just what they wanted. Ten weeks of a government job so they could collect Unemployment for forty? No problem — there was a road crew working nearby that could use an extra flagger [4]. A flagon of beer at midnight? Sure. Just give me your vote and let me go back to sleep. Something done about those raccoons in the garbage? Ma'am, those are God's creatures too, but we'll see what we can do. Well, most of the time. There were times he took a stand and that made him popular too. GoBs love a good stand, even if they don't agree with it, and Poli's aggressive personality had earned him respect . Even a certain amount of affection. And if Poli was less than scrupulously honest, well, that didn't matter to the GoBs. He was an honest crook and he was one of theirs. Honest.

But then, should you trust me? I've already lied to you once and will probably do so again. You might say it's an occupational hazard. You see, I'm an undercover journalist and so I work for the media — the vicious leftwing backstabbing anti-establishment media establishment. But hell, it's a living — one hell of a living in fact. I work deep cover for The Bi-National Inquirer — usually just called The Bi, it's one of the better tabloids back in the Big Cumquat — meaning nothing I write ever gets printed under my own name. To protect my identity for future assignments. So, you'll understand that I can't use my real name. So let's just call me Mellow, Mellow Yellow. Poli'd appreciate the humour in that name too.

The story — at least as my editor had explained it — was the rapid emergence of a world cartel in the illegal, and therefore highly lucrative dulse trade. As if you didn't know, but my editor insists I provide full background, dulse is a sword-shaped aquatic weed that solely grows in the Bay of Fundy, way out on tide-swirled rocks that only the evolutionarily or life challenged [5] could get to. And then only at low tide. The leaves are a traditional tonic in the Rump, and many other parts of Canada's eastern provinces, with a pungent sea salt taste that's popular as an afterdinner treat — a kind of maritime version of coffee and cigars. But it's the plant's 'roots', the point of attachment to Fundy's rocks, that have turned dulse from a regional oddity to a world commodity.

The biochemistry isn't clear, but somehow in the process of anchoring themselves to boulders well enough to withstand the crushing forces of the world's most tidally active water, the tuberous roots synthesize a mind-altering substance. This property wasn't discovered until 1972, for the simple reason that, traditionally, dulse hunters never took the root, cutting the fronds a foot or so above. While, in today's environment, this does look ecologically conscious, allowing the plant to regenerate and thus ensure a sustainable harvest, the truth is the tuber was never taken because, even at low tide, it's still underwater and damn difficult to remove. But once in a blue moon, when tides are extraordinarily low, dulse knives accidentally bobbitt a bit.

By one of those happy happenstances that propel the human endeavour, one such piece of root providentially turned up in the dulse bowl of one Herr Reefer, a theoretical mathematician on sabbatical from Switzerland. Absent-minded at the best of times, Reefer was absorbed in the problem of demonstrating the fundamental unity of the universe, and didn't notice he was chewing a piece of root. Soon after, he went for a bike ride and his world came apart. Not only were there voices emanating from trees and grasses, but all seemed to be made of marshmallow — the little ones. There were two effects of this experience: first was the mathematical proof that the universe is a giant marshmallow that can be sub-divided into smaller and smaller marshmallows using the so-called Reefer Constant; and, second, was the discovery of a new and, at the time, legal key to the doors of perception.

The legality didn't last long. Once it was discovered that blanching, then drying and smoking the root gave an even better high — and didn't leave your mouth tasting like you'd been sucking seaweed — dulse use spread rapidly, becoming the drug of choice for bored professionals in Canada's major centres. When it was further discovered that dulse could be processed chemically into a cocaine-like compound that turned some yuppies into yumpies and some yumpies into the homeless, the federal government stepped in, outlawing the possession and use of dulse root or any of its derivatives in 1975. Predictably, that only increased its appeal. Despite two decades of prohibition, surveys now show that as much as 20 percent of North Americans use dulse on a regular or semi-regular basis. Like most illicit drugs, it has even spawned its own subculture, complete with specialized argot. Users call it weed or smoke; honouring its discoverer, rollies are referred to as reefers or reefs; and a person on dulse is said to be stoned (leading to the saying that a person just chewing the leaves is pebbled).

For years there had been reports that a shadowy group — based in the Rump and popularly known as the Dulsia — had taken control of almost the entire world-wide business. Even for a seasoned tabloid reporter like myself, separating fact from fiction on this crowd was a daunting task — it was blamed for everything from bodies that turned up on beaches, to sea turtles that failed to lay eggs. There was one sure fact: the Dulsia's existence was flatly denied by the Rump's local, provincial and federal politicians. The one exception was Poli GoBBy, who not only freely admitted it, but had offered The Bi an inside look at the group's workings. His only stipulation was that real names not be used and real locations not disclosed — a stipulation easily accepted by The Bi and I. (Hell, we don't even insist on real facts.) So a deal was struck, cover cooked up, expenses authorized and I was on my way to, oops, I can't say where.

What I can say is it turned out the story — at least as my editor had explained it — was all a crock. A badly made one at that.

Talk about hostile.

“You ready to order?”

“Yeah. Swine strips, crisp, and flattened chicken embryos — laid back [6], thanks.”

The waitress rolled her eyes, stabbed at her order pad, then glared at me.

“Ah — I'll have the same thanks.” She sniffed, angrily slashed X2 on the pad, then with a snap of the wrist closed it, already walking away. I called after her, “We'll need separate checks,” but all I got was a shrug. I looked at Poli who was stirring sugar into his coffee — loads of it. “People round here always that unfriendly?”

“Nah,” Poli answered, tapping the spoon on the edge of his cup. “They're just like folks anywhere. They have good days and bad days. Guess she's having a bad day.”

Well, if she was, it wasn't from overwork. It was 10:30, and the late morning crowd in the Imperial Motel and Grill consisted of Poli and I and one other table where an elderly tourist couple were arguing about the day's itinerary. Loudly. (It must have been Tuesday for she apparently thought they were in Belgium, planning a visit to La Musee Britannique. He thought it was Sunday, New Orleans, and time for the Mardi Gras. Me, I knew it was Thursday and this was the Rump, but I wasn't sure if I was any less obviously out of place.) I said as much to Poli, but he corrected me.

“Don't let appearances fool you. The House is just up the street and, if we'd been in here three hours ago, we'd have found the place packed and her run off her feet trying to keep a bunch of political types happy. And you know as well as I do the only thing makes a politician happy is showing off his power. You know the old saying, 'power without perks is like a gull without wings; it don't fly' — oh yeah, remind me, we should stop in here for lunch sometime; they grill a mean gull — well, they wrote it here. That waitress would have been treated like dirt. It won't be so bad once the GoBs start coming in — they don't have to put other people down to feel good about themselves.”

Poli stopped to take a sip of his coffee. “You worried they won't buy your cover?”

Worried? Well, yes I had to admit I was. In the cold morning light of what GoBBy assured me was the Dulsia's chief eatery, my 'cover' seemed ludicrously transparent — a dulsehead cousin from the Big Kumquat, name of Frat Rat, kind of an urban GoB trying to line up my own source on the sound business principle of eliminating the middleperson — and I felt like Props had thrown me a brown fedora and there, stuck in the band, was the card that shouted 'Press!' I was sure the waitress had seen through me — hostility's an occupational hazard too — and thought if I couldn't fool a waitress, what hope did I have to fool real GoBs? And if I couldn't fool them, would I end up on a beach, unable to lay eggs? I said as much to Poli, but he snorted derisively.

“Listen Mel… Frat, I mean. You're a reporter. You know the type of bullbleep gets spread around groups like the Dulsia. Fertile stuff for a lot more bullbleep. Don't add to it. The facts, Frat. Just the facts. That's what you're here for.” Poli stared at me, then grinned. “Besides, male turtles don't lay eggs. And that's a fact.”

The eggs came at that point, the waitress slamming them down and disappearing without a word. Didn't even ask if we wanted more coffee. Shame she was so hostile, I thought, because her derriere did have a pleasing air and she could have been attractive if she'd smiled. Poli seemed to think so too, watching her attentively for a moment before turning his attention to the eggs, murmuring “Maybe we can do something about that.”

Just the facts. Well there was one fact about Poli; he enjoyed his food. There's all kinds of eaters in the world — pickers, shovellers, pushers, players — and this GoB ate with tactile gusto, fingering his bacon, twirling his toast to sop up the yellow yolk, and dipping his home fries into a blob of ketchup. (Me, I ate with a militarily methodical precision my father, an air force pilot, had insisted on. I made a mental note to ask Poli about his upbringing.) Midway through lifting a yolk-runny bit of toast to his mouth, he stopped. “Hear that?,” he asked. Disengaging from my own battle on the home fries, I listened but there wasn't much to hear. The tourists were still arguing — they'd worked their way up to Saturday, Vancouver and a date at Marineland — and there was a radio playing in the kitchen. A country song; about some waif whaling a truck across the continent on the lookout for a dog with a broken heart. I shrugged, about to say I'd heard it before — once you've heard one country song, you've heard them all — but Poli silenced me with a finger. “No. Listen.”

The truck broke down, stranding waif in a blizzard, but dog turned up and phoned the police. Heart-rending. Reunited, dog and waif broke into the chorus. Dog and waif and waitress. It seemed lassie Miss Hostile led a double life, snarling at customers out front, then singing in the dishwater rain back in the kitchen. No doubt she had visions of some song scout scoping her talent, and scooping her off to success. Not likely. Her contralto was better than most shower stall songsters but nowhere near commercial quality, even for country. I looked over to Poli who, eyes closed, head bent, and with his finger still cocked to his lips, was listening intently. The finger dropped, the eyes opened and he smiled. “What do you say we make her day?” I shrugged, not caring if we made her minute. My eggs were getting cold. Besides, sappy happy endings give me hives.

Poli finished his breakfast first, trowelling his plate clean with a piece of toast, then settled back to watch for the waitress to come out of her studio. Holding his cup up to catch her eye, he signalled for more coffee, then winked at me as she came over. Rather too broadly, like he was on stage and the wink had to be seen a hundred feet [7] away. I wondered what he was up to.

She must have thought she was on stage too. “Anything else?” she challenged, still three feet away from the table — like we had cooties or something. “Just some more coffee, thanks,” Poli said, his tone ingratiatingly polite. “And our checks, please. Separate.” She turned to fetch the pot but Poli stopped her with a disarming “I heard your singing. You're in a band, aren't you?” I groaned inside. 'The facts, Poli. Just the facts.' I thought. 'Give it to her straight.' The waitress nodded no but hesitated turning away. Even I could see the opening was big enough to drive a truck through. Poli smoothly shifted gears, aiming to ram his next line straight down the middle. “Well, you should be,” he continued. “Seems a shame more folks don't get to hear you.”

Ever seen a flower timelapse? Seen how the bud strains, pulsates, then unsheathes; the green of the bud suddenly rampant with colour; the faint shivers the petals make as they dance in the sun? I'd like to report that's what happened to the waitress, but she'd been around the Rump more than once and wasn't buying. She looked straight at Poli. “You're just saying that.”

“You're right.”, Poli answered, “I am just saying that. But I'll tell you this. Maybe you're not good enough to sing in a band, but when you do sing you put your heart into it. You put your soul on the line. And that makes it beautiful. Truly beautiful.” I was impressed. The shift had been so smooth the truck had smucked straight into the tuck. Now the waitress flowered, a smile breaking the tension lines on her face, her whole body lifting lightly erect. I'd been right, I thought, watching this transformation. She was an attractive lady.

And after that she was a good waitress too, coming back twice to see if we wanted more coffee, stopping each time for a few chatty words with Poli. Me, she mostly ignored. Back in her studio the radio was turned up and she happily belted out hurting songs about cheating hearts, drunkard dogs and no-good, galivanting galoots that I mostly ignored, trying to figure out the point Poli had been trying to make. But all he'd say, between sips, is that life provides a lot of negative feedback and a fair amount of bullbleep. So he'd just told her the truth, which was what she needed to hear. It seemed a subtle point, so I gave it up — there's not much call for subtle in my trade.

About the time my eyes were swimming in coffee, Poli suddenly said, “Looks like it's time for the show. You ready?” and looked over to the front entrance where a sign told us to Please Wait To Be Seated. I followed his eyes with mine, twisting in the seat to look around. And saw my first real-live GoB. In the flesh. Pug nose. Low slung hat. Double-breasted suit over a black shirt and white tie. Violin case.

Don't ask me how, but my ovaries shuddered. And I suddenly remembered I have a pathological fear of beaches.

Wrong.

The GoB was the one behind the guy with the violin. You know how some people just disappear in a crowd? Even when there's not a crowd? That was this GoB — a kind of skinny Danny Devito, bowlegged enough to have been a jockey. I hadn't noticed him because he was such a runt his body had been shielded by the violin case. A powerful runt; even from my seat I could see the muscles ripple under the lumberjack shirt — I made a mental note to skip the short jokes just in case he'd earned those muscles digging turtle eggs. It turned out, by the by, that the viola fella was a member of a local group called The Fiddlers Three. They were meeting for an early lunch before flying out west for something called the International OldTyme Fiddling Contest. Poli knew them of course — he seemed to know everybody who was anybody and anybody who was nobody — and I was deathly afraid he was going to try to get them to play and then have the waitress join in on vocal. The suits were a bit of promotional schlock, something to make them stand out from the crowd. As though fiddlers need anything to make them stand out. I made a mental note to mention it to my editor — might be a good human interest story Gangstas Fiddle Kimberley.

Runt saw Poli's wave, acknowledged it but remained standing at the entrance, patently waiting. Then I saw for what. The doorway — one of those double doubles meant to shut out winter blasts — darkened, the way a storm cloud obliterates sunshine. Runt seemed to disappear, then the inner door opened and the Hulk came in, head bent to make it under the door frame. Tall? This GoB must have come from NBA country. Big? He could have been NFL. Steroids, I thought. Had to be on steroids. Then I remembered testosterone was a steroid too, and gulped. Hulk slapped Runt on the back; it was friendly, but hard enough I wondered if we hadn't better call an ambulance. Mental note: skip the tall jokes too. But Runt took it in a balancing half-stride forward, punched back, then pointed to our table.

“Take it cool,” Poli whispered, “and let me do the talking.” Damn right I was going to let him do the talking, I thought. Anyone who had to duck ceiling fans was not someone you wanted to share the wrong words with. Mental note: skip any jokes at all.

"Poli! Where you been buddy?” The voice boomed — with a boom box like that, what would you expect? — ricocheting around the room, silencing even the tourists who were back to Tuesday, Bombay instead of Brussels. Waitress' head poked out of her foxhole, sized the situation and seized the initiative, advancing with the coffee pot. I would have too. I covered my cup with my hand.

“Oh, just around,” Poli answered, standing and shaking hands. Well, it was more like Hulk shook hands and Poli just shook. “I'd like you to meet my cousin,” Poli said. “Frat Rat, Meet Deltoid Epsilon.” I stood and reached down to shake hands with Runt. “And Alphonse Omega.” I looked up, looked way way up, feeling like the mouse in bed with the proverbial elephant, and extended my hand, mentally reviewing my health coverage. But Hulk's grasp was surprisingly gentle. Guess he only shook the mickey out of friends. “Good to meet you. A cousin of Poli's?,” he said releasing, but not in time for me to stop the waitress pouring coffee into my cup. “You down here visiting?”

“He's here on business,” Poli answered for me, sitting down with a sweep of his hands to show the others should sit down too. The Runt looked at me closely, too close for comfort I thought. “Business?,” he said. “What business would that be?” But once again it was Poli who answered. Me, I busied myself with the business end of a sugar spoon, thinking I'd have some real business to attend to in a moment. “Oh, buying and selling. You know. But, tell me Alphonse, is your wife still stuffed?”

I nearly choked but Runt guffawed, “Stuffed every chance she gets,” and Hulk just grinned, colouring a little. Poli laughed back. “Yeah I guess she would be.” And they all started to trade small talk and even smaller jokes, the kind of aimless chitchat that whiles away the hours in a coffeeshop. I couldn't tell if our GoBs noticed how smoothly Poli kept the conversation away from anything to do with me. But then by then I wasn't noticing all that much. With each polite sip of coffee the pressure in my bladder compounded. I crossed my legs, finally slipped my hand down to cup my crotch, and inanely smiled and nodded as though I were following each ribald twist. I wasn't. Against the pounding in my bladder, their prattle had faded into waves of near indistinguishable babble, an ebb and flow in which I desperately tried to find a point that I could cut in and excuse myself. But you know how it is when you really want to jump into a conversation but you seem to have disappeared and your barely begun interjection is intersected and the next wave is upon you. I was going down for the third time, my vision turning brown, when I felt a sharp kick at my ankle.

I looked across to Poli who was midway through some joke, turning his face back and forth for emphasis. Swinging past me, I thought I caught a slight flick of the eyes, a veiled message. Then I knew it was a message when the kick was repeated and Poli asked “What do you think Frat?,” the eyes looking straight at me, then flicking off towards the restaurant's rear. “I think I need to pee,” I managed to say and, gratefully excusing myself, hobbled off. Moving made the pressure worse and I started to speed up. The tourists stopped their planning long enough to giggle at my half-walk, half-run past them. I didn't care. Back at my table I heard a burst of laughter, then what Runt had said to cause it registered on my brain.

"That's what I like to see. A man who thinks with his pecker.”

"Watch your step.”

That was Runt. Now there was a GoB with a talent for stating the ludicrous. Watch your step! How could you? It was blacker than a lab's belly out here, the sun still a few hours away from its path through the day. Not that we were likely to see it, not that we wanted to. We'd been lucky. We'd only had to wait three days for the right weather and tide combination — overcast with heavy morning fog, the tide waning to low at 5:00 am. With any luck, no one would see us. And that was fine with me. Protecting sources is one thing — The Bi's lawyers loved justifying their paycheques with the public's right to know — but reporters getting involved in criminal activities was something different. Especially if they were undercover. And harvesting dulse was illegal.

But, as they say, a reporter's gotta do what a reporter's gotta do.

Even if he does have an irrational fear of beaches.

I digress, but it's important to a full understanding of subsequent events. You see, the thing about beaches is that they're always located beside water. Not exactly an earth shaking revelation, I'll admit, but for me it is bowel shaking, the residue of almost drowning once. That was back in high school. It was spring and I was fooling around on the local river with a chum. We were in a canoe, fancying ourselves whitewater champs, playing chicken with the curtain of water spilling over a dam — one of those old ones where they drop in square logs to change the water level. We'd figured out that if we shot in real close to the curtain we could get far enough into the main current's central plume for an exciting buck ride down and through its standing waves. Did that three times. Each time closer. The fourth time, natch, I mean that's the point of this little anecdote, we got too close and the side of the canoe got under the curtain. Over we went.

I wasn't scared. We were still to the side of the main current and the shore wasn't that far away. I looked for my chum, saw he was alright, then turned to look for the canoe. And was pulled under.

It was just like a giant pair of hands had reached up from the bottom of the river, grabbed each of my feet and yanked. Down. The surface disappeared and I was pushed and pummelled by currents I couldn't see. It's strange, but when you're in that sort of situation, you either panic or a kind of detached mental calm takes over. For me, it was the latter and kchick kchick kchick I knew I'd been grabbed by an undertow that probably wouldn't throw me up for a hundred yards or so. And I'd be dead. Just that. Just dead. No panic, no fear. Just a very calm acceptance that this was it. And no, my life didn't flash before my eyes.

It wouldn't have had time. As abruptly as I'd been pulled under, I was shot back up to the surface to find myself off to the side of the river, but caught in a whirlpool that was dragging me back and around into the curtain.

That was when I panicked.

I just knew, absolutely knew, that if I went back into the main current, I would drown. So I started to fight for my life. Fortunately, while the whirlpool current was strong, the water was only five or four feet deep and I was able to find footholds in the bottom rocks to brace myself, feet behind, body angled forward against the surgings of the current, while I slowly worked my way out. It must have taken a good five minutes, with each sideways step a terror-filled moment of giving up the security of a solid foothold for a stone that might not be there.

It took about fifteen minutes for the adrenaline to work its way out of my system, but the panic never really left. I still find my heart pumping wildly anytime I look at whitewater, even on television. And just being near a body of water makes me tense up inside, like I'm a firing squad's guest of honour waiting for the bullet. For that matter, I can't do the laundry because I get as agitated as the water. (Well, that's what I tell my wife.) I deal with it by not dealing with it, by avoiding. I haven't been to a beach in decades and, when I can't avoid bridges over rivers, I close my eyes and think about my editor — that usually grounds me in a hurry. My shrink says I have a phobia and tells me I have to confront it. Otherwise, he says, the phobia will grow and I'll start avoiding more and more situations, finally ending up locked in my house, afraid to even answer the phone. Angorraphobia I think he called it. {Fear of fuzzy sweaters?}

I just call it survival.

But, like I said they say, a reporter's gotta do what a reporter's gotta do. If the story demands the reporter go to the beach, then he has to go — even if it's dark, and fog-bound, and not really a beach but a mud-encrusted, boulder rocky flat stretching hundreds of feet into the Bay of Fundy's maelstrom tides; one that makes you feel like you're an Egyptian and any second now those Jewish slaves are getting out on the other side. And you're psychic.

Yes, if the story demands, then the reporter has to go. But he doesn't have to like it.

And he's allowed to swear at the editor who sent him out here to the back of nowhere — what was it they called this beach? Heaven's Gate? Like it's not emblazoned on my mind! — knowing full well you have this little problem with water.

Bastard even said he wanted underwater photos.

Of me.

Use the top of that rock for balance. Yeah. It's right there beside you. But keep your weight centred so you don't slip.”

That was Hulk but my question was, What rock? It was still too dark and too foggish to see anything. Or so I thought. What I didn't know is that Hulk's eyes were said to be better than chickenhawks by guys who Robin Hood would have happily recruited. What I did know is the big guy knew this location as well as he knew his own front yard. Better probably, because front yards are really rather wasted spaces, with generally no more purpose than to set the house back from the road and to impress the neighbours with an expanse of artfully tended green — the sort of space you clip and cut and fertilize without really coming to know so, when you try to think about it, the yard remains amorphous, a memory you can't quite pin down. But this space, this beach, was different. More like a back yard, the place where you spend your time, and so you know every bush, every tree, every little twist in the ground that can trip you up. Every rock.

I just wished it was their backyard. It wasn't. Hulk and the Runt's franchise, their little piece of the Dulsia's action as Poli described it, was about 60 miles up the coast and they knew that one like the palms of their hairy hands — where in a quarter mile of rocky headland the best dulse grew, where you were wasting your time, where the rips were. Where, if you drowned, they'd never find the body. They had to know it that well. Harvesting the weed — and after Poli explained it, ah fully, shall we say, I had to agree — was dangerous, far more dangerous than I really cared to think deeply about. Especially here. And it was easy to see how a dulser's first line of defence was an intimate knowledge of the site. I could see that very well. Especially now. And I could see how the Dulsia would have had problems in the early years when laissez faire prevailed on the supply side. There were too many would be harvesters scrambling over too many sites. Too many harvesters who 'took the deep walk' on beaches they didn't know.

Nice euphemism.

Now one thing the Dulsia's good at is accounting, and it didn't take them long to figure out there was no point creating demand (as in demandez beaucoup) if supply wasn't there. It just brought in competitors. Besides, there was no accounting for nothing and the Dulsia wanted to be one lean, mean, fighting machine of a profit-oriented corporation. Just like the multinationals. So they instituted a harvester co-op and voted in the franchise system, portioning out the entire Bay of Fundy among the survivors. It was a sensible solution enforced with strict rules and a strong sense of honour. On your dulse ground, you were king. No other members could harvest there without your say so. In return, you agreed not to harvest from any other site. This beach was one of the few exceptions. But it was still by invitation only.

If you haven't figured it out, and this is one of the points of the story, all the images I had had of a shadowy hinterland of deceit and intrigue, a world of death and power were wrong. That crock I mentioned earlier. It turned out the Dulsia operates as a kind of giant AMWAY. No, there's no catalogue — who needs one when your product list is so small and, most often, your prices are scratched out on the back of a book of matches? — but what the Dulsia had learned from that mother of all there networked was the importance of motivation. Not just financial mind you, and not just competition, but the motivation of fun. For if there's one thing good ol'boys like Hulk and the Runt like, it's fun.

Think of how women act at lingerie parties {Not to be sexist.} and multiply that by about a factor of ten, throw in a mortal threat for good measure and hope for the best. That's your basic GoB's sense of sporting fun. They live for it, even die for it — and that's a fact the Dulsia knows and takes advantage of; reserving half a dozen dulse grounds around the Bay for their annual Mr. Harvest competition. Half a dozen of the most productive sites you could find. The most lethal too, with names the harvesters spoke only in awe, the way skiers speak of their favourite triple black diamond runs — the kind that start with the advisory you use this run at your own risk. Yeah, as though that's going to stop them. You might as well tell people that cigarettes kill. Or bungies are known to snap. It just goads them to fly down the run, light the next fag, make the next jump. Enter the Mr Harvest competition. Why? Just the sheer hellforit fun of engaging in what is, after all, a basically silly activity. Racing the tides for what? Prestige, a shot at the limelight? A fistful of loonies? As motivation, not one of them made any sense to me, but that's why we were here.

For the fun of it.

Knocking at Heaven's Gate.

Knock knock knocking at the knees, where I could feel the water knip knip knipping. {Dylan must be turning in his grave.} [Is he dead?] {So they say. He was seen with Elvis mucking out a pig farm in Pontypool.} [That's certainly not a living.] {So they say.}

I reached out with my hand and, sure enough, found the boulder, about shoulder-height. Thank god for those eyes! Perforce, they inspired more confidence than what Hulk playfully called his 'book larning' — the hours he and the Runt had spent poring over maps of the site and accounts from previous competitors. These were mandatory accounts and, in theory, with each passing year, with each new volume, the odds of success grew higher — a good example of the group's penchant for protecting the bottom line. (And the pretext for my presence. I was to write the report.) In theory. It was the half dozen or so missing volumes that disturbed me.

The water-smoothed stone was coated in a wet, cold-slimy algae that did nothing to calm my nerves. It felt like, if I put any weight on it, my hand would slip off, while my feet, well they seemed to hover on the edge of a Chevy Chase that would pitch me, face first, into the water. I'd like to say I wasn't terrified but I was and, with each swollen lap of water, memories of my close encounter with death spasmed up my body, aimed squarely at my head. You know how it is when you almost choke on your own fear? How the almost choking is even more frightening than the fear that started it, and so the terror compounds and the choking increases and you're into a riptide vortex of escalating panic?

Well, it wasn't as bad as all that. But I was close.

I digress, but sometimes digression, used with discretion, is good for the digestion — not that I had anything to worry about there, not after… But I digress. The Mr Harvest competition only has finals every four years. But GoBs think they're worth the wait. (That's what we were in, by the way, the finals — Poli really meant it when he said these guys were the best.) Six competing teams, six beaches and six months. Each team gets a one month crack at a one-time crack at each beach. Success is measured in pounds converted into dollars — American of course — and the team with the fullest competition bag at the end of the season takes the trophy — and the goods. That's right. The goods.

Mellow yellow.

I digress but this is a digressive digression… There was a third criteria used in the selection of the competition grounds, apart from productivity and intrinsic fun. And that was quality. I mean, quality weed. Mellow yellow. The best of the best, with a TPHZ [8] rating of YBB (see sidebar). The stuff of barn-door profit margins. Enough to set a GoB up for life. All you had to do was risk your neck six times for what would eventually turn out to be just a few handfuls of a golden yellow powder. But it was worth far more than its weight in gold. In fact it was the kind of stuff only presidents can afford.

Too bad they can't afford to inhale it.

TPHZ Level(m/gm) | Trade Designation
1 — 5 | MAWSSW [9]
5 — 10 | Fundy Bronze
10 — 15 | Yo High Silver
15 — 20 | Avocado Gold
20 — 25 | Yellow Belly Bliss

The yellow was characteristic of TPHZ, and the deeper the tone, the deeper the stone. By another peculiarity, TPHZ concentrations and the resulting yellow tone actually increased if the dulse were, first, biologically processed, then taken in liquid form. There were devotees who claimed these 'golden showers' could bring a man to god. If that was where he wanted to go. Runt told me that's why they called this Heaven's Gate, because it produced the very best dulse, the mellowest yellow. But he was laughing when he said it, and I figured the name had more to do with the vicious nature of its tidal surges, and the half dozen or so GoBs who'd shuffled off this mortal roil here.

I digress again, but you might be thinking that it's too easy a contest to rig, that unscrupulous contestants could just chuck a bunch of dulse from their own franchise into the competition bag. Maybe even try a couple of runs at a beach, just to get the point totals up. It's not likely. For one thing, due to a genetic peculiarity, which Poli did try to explain but I couldn't understand, dulse from different sites has a slightly different chemical structure — kind of a fingerprint that identifies the source beach for a piece of dulse as unerringly as a human fingerprint can point the finger at a light-fingered culprit. The identification process was developed by Sonya, Herr Reefer's second-wife, not coincidentally the biochemist who first identified the psychoactive ingredient in dulse to be TPHZ. Also not co-incidentally, she was the second person ever known to be stoned. Which may explain her interest in the topic. But, unlike her husband's immortalization, Madam Reefer's contribution seems to have been lost, and there is no one I know of refers to a joint as a sony. Her name isn't even attached to the identification process which, because of its expense, length and prior requirement for three levels of biological processing, is only used on a random basis. Or when the yellow doesn't seem properly mellow.

I digress again, but my editor, bless him, did say to provide full background… Even so, and even with the immense honour and pride that GoBs take in their title, some potential for cheating remains. The Dulsia keeps it squeaky clean with liberal doses of procedure and technology. The very best technology — they can afford it — including competition bags that are anything if not foolproof. Each bag is made of a special lightweight but incredibly tough fabric [10], and they come with a computer-controlled locking system that only allows one opening per competition month, and that automatically closes after six hours — one tide cycle. If that isn't enough, there are officials who oversee the competition and in particular frisk the competitors before they start into the water. They'd even frisked me. Believe me: they were thorough. Still, it has to be admitted, theoretically there's always the chance of cheating. But, I'll tell you, if any group has ever made a sport honest, it was this bunch of crooks.

But I digress.

But then, wouldn't you? Digress I mean. After all, the recollection of how you almost drowned a second time is not the type of memory you hold close to your face — even if it did change your life for the better. And being forced to write about it just adds insult to perjury. By the Bi, that's the type of writing my editor would usually cross out as too cryptic.

Well, fuck him. {No thanks.}

For, if there's anything Heaven's Gate wasn't, it was cryptic. It stank of its own power, reeked of death. Teased nostrils with the bitter whiff of embalming salt.

Or am I being mellowdramatic?

Not a bit. Of all Fundy's dulse grounds, Heaven's Gate is the toughest, a decapitated snake's head of tangled tide-broken rock, severed from its peninsular body by half a mile of rubble. At high tide you wouldn't know it was there — the head and its crushed jugular covered completely in 20 to 30 feet of water. It was only at lowest ebb the crown could rise from its encumbering crypt to reveal itself. And challenge the dulse-hunters, daring them with a mere two hours of opportunity, when the tide was low and stable enough men could clamber its rocks, stand up to its erratic currents, and go down for the bobbitt.

But first you had to get out there, a slip sliding task that took the worst part of an hour. Or the shortest part of a lifetime if you weren't careful. Which the Hulk was. Not satisfied with book larning, he'd insisted on a scout the day before — a surreptitious sixty-six.six minute (stop-watch timed) snake's spine slink to a slew of sea-sculptured stone overseeing the site. (Perfectly legal under the Mr Harvest rules: as long as you didn't actually go in the water.) (Which was fine with me.) With a general's precision, he'd shown me his planned route, mapping imaginary markers on one palm while pointing with his other out to their concrete reality. “We'll go in down there at Hanlon's Point, bear to the left over to Rocky's Balls — see, that pair of boulders — cut right until just before the Gallows, where we'll hang back to the left to straddle The Terminator.” Runt cut in with a smirking “Should we warn him about the Tempest?” but Hulk shrugged it off. “Not if we splash through Finnegan's Wake… I think that's where Ulysses and son went wrong. You can't get through The Tempest but I think we can manage Finnegan's.”

To which Runt muttered, “Better than he did I hope.”

The Hulk went on, squinting and sketching, calmly recalling the names of another half dozen waypoints. Death's Door. Tricky Dicky. Kirk's Folly. And, you know, it all made perfect sense. As long as you kept your eyes on the palm. Take them away though, look out at the lobster stones thrown into the boiling water of a rising tide and everything changed. This was madness! Try to calm yourself by looking back at the palm and guess what? The map had disappeared. Only lifelines left. Truncated. So I asked the kind of insightful question any reporter worth his salt-petre would pose; even a clandestine aquaphobe reconsidering the wisdom of his high school guidance counsellor.

"Ah, considering all the complicating factors of limited time, tidal patterns, earth-moon interactions and butterflies flapping their wings in Cincinnati, juxtaposed of course with the vagaries of auguring cracks on the shells of washed-up turtles, and, ah… assuming — and I admit this may or not be a valid assumption — ah, a certain inherent bodily need for continuation… ah…

“So why not USE A BOAT!?”

Runt just snorted. That was another of his talents — a peculiar grrrrnt dripping with phlegmy derision I'd come to know rather too intimately. Runt didn't like me and didn't want me along, points he'd made clear the moment I returned from the washroom back at the Imperial Motel and Grill. (I'd gathered from a few of Runt's comments that Hulk had thought it would be a lark to take me on their competition run, but Runt had been appalled, in fact had almost walked. He claimed he only stayed because they agreed that if I turned out to be dead weight, then, fine, they'd leave me for dead meat. Poli brokered the deal. I guess that's what politicians are for.)

“It's been tried,” Hulk gravelled. “Trouble is, with all that rock and the tide going crazy it's a good way to make driftwood.” Runt laughed, shaking his head to an inner joke. “There was even a fellow tried to make like the ark. Seems he figured if he anchored over the Gate, when the tide went out he'd beach ever so gently, and could clean up before the tide came back in.” Runt snickered and arched an eye at me — he was enjoying the telling of this tale. “I guess he was thinking with his pecker. The anchor dragged and caught, the boat flipped, and was bucketed between the rocks like a pinball. They found some pieces of it. They never found him.” Runt spit. “Amateur.”

I looked over to Hulk, staggered at Runt's calm recitation, but he was back to making maps on his palm, muttering the way point mantra. Like firefighters or marines, death was just a fact of life to these GoBs, and if I did turn out dead weight — I had no doubt — I would be dead meat. Just another anecdote. Struggling for journalistic objectivity, I asked Runt how, if they never found the body, they knew someone had tried.

“Pigs. See the town down there by the point? Big RCMP office there and they know about the Gate. They see a craft or any kind of action out here, the paddy boat's on its way. Not that they could help you if you get into trouble. Crossing takes twenty three minutes in good weather. You can drown a dozen times before they get here. The moral of the story…,” Runt paused, very effectively, for dramatic effect, “a boat's a quick ticket to hell or jail. Take your pick.”

"It's a quick ticket to disqualification too,” the Hulk cut in, motioning it was time to slink back. The contest rules, he explained, were very strict. The dulse had to be harvested in the traditional, decades-honoured way, by hand and on foot. Besides, he went on, biting the words, boats were for chicken-shit amateurs, for quick-buck priss-heads. His vehemence was surprising, and ripped the stuffing from my nurtured-in-eternal-hope mental image of a gentle giant. This was his passion and it boiled down to this: dulsing was a way of life in which everyone had to pull their own weight. And, if you're going to be Mr Harvest, you want to be able to hold your head high.

No pun intended. [None taken.]

But I digress.

"Time!”

Runt again, spitting it out like some foreign object, more demand than query. But I was prepared. Not only was my personal computer-linkable combination calculator/wrist chronometer/GPS locator accurate to within a millionth of a second and water-resistant to 100 feet — about 100 feet more than me — it glowed an attractive dawn pink in the dark. In a more collected mind, I might have noticed how closely the colour matched the eastern sky out past the Gate. But I didn't. I just made it up. Just now. A little after three, I replied, emphasizing the little more than the after.

“Running slow,” the Hulk grimaced. “Most we'll have is an hour.” “Yeah, well what'd expect dragging a sea anchor?” Runt muttered. Just loud enough for me to hear. Hulk shook his head. “No. It was my mistake. Should have done The Tempest. Those currents in Finnegan's almost earned their name.”

I could have kissed him for that. Finnegan's had been more than a rude wake up. Ever seen the whirlpool below Niagara Falls? Well, contain that in a 50 foot neolithic amphitheatre, and place openings at either end. Gaps in the wall of rock really. Water comes in one gap, not straight in, mind you, but angled, so it has to churn circles before finding its way out the other. On palm it looks easy; an almost straight line from one gap to the next. But it's against the current coming out to get in, let the backwash carry you to your exit, then back to slogging it out against the current coming in.

It helps if you have the presence of mind to follow instructions.

I didn't, and instead locked into the past tense, into the memory of fighting the currents back in high school; angling into them, judging safety by a constant pressure against my chest. No way I was letting go to float to the far gap. So, once into the breach, I took the long way round, against the current, struggling for every inch — like some grunt soldier at Vimy Ridge. Oblivious to Runt's “Hey!” which quickly became pounding streams of profanity. Oblivious too to the Hulk trying to scream me into letting go. “Get into the backwash!” he yelled from an eddy by the far gap, which he and the Runt had reached in just minutes. My body screamed back No way! Apparently so did my mouth. Runt yelled “Fuck you!” and started shrieking at Hulk about they had a deal, gesticulating like the Minister for Silly Semaphore. Curiously, from my point of view, there was a certain unreality to it all — it could have been a cartoon, just a coupl'a scavengers arguing over a corpse, their voices retreated into occasional bi-syllabic balloons. Dead weight, dead meat. Dead right!

Curiouser, the pair reminded me of a ventriloquist act I'd once seen in India. (I was there digging dirt on a Georgia garu's garden of earthly delights. Never found any, so I just made it up. My editor loved it.) Anyways, Big Vent's little shtick sat on a stick, about four feet high, so Little Vent — a right dapper little twit with a smarmy pom accent — could see eye to eye with Big Vent. Except he didn't. They disagreed on everything. They had a wonderfully caustic routine about colonial subjugation, which Little Vent kept misunderstanding as controlling your colon — something my editor's big on too:

The routine finally ended when Little Vent, making a face to demonstrate his point, said it was time for afternoon tea and 'scrunchits.' Whereupon he jumped down off his stick, said he was glad he'd packed his lunch, and disappeared off the stage. Leaving the audience so open-mouthed you could hear the crap drop. Sp-link Sp-lash. They only broke into thunderous applause after Big Vent and stick, acting out the eternal question, ponderously pitched forward; smashing his face to splinters on the stage floor as a disembodied voice cursed, “bloody frigging mongeese”.

Okay. I guess it loses something in the translation. But it gave my mind something to concentrate on at a time I didn't want to focus on objective reality.

And, boy, did I object to this reality.

Runt's semaphore ended with a sweeping uppercut to single finger. He was not a happy scamper. Hulk mostly looked confused, torn, half-turning to follow the departing Runt out the far gap, half-turning to yell a pleading “Let go!” Which I couldn't, even though I was tiring from the constant attack. Wouldn't, even as I knew I was essentially authorizing my own execution. Most importantly, didn't. Hulk's arm swept down in open-palmed futility, triggering the completion of his turn to follow Runt. With his height and bulk, Hulk was able to grab fingerhholds on either side of the rocky gap to pull himself through, and a part of me thought there goes the last human being I'll ever see. I blinked away a tear, or maybe it was just a drop of seawater. In any case, that was enough for Hulk to disappear.

Just like that. One second there, the next gone.

The next, history repeated itself, my life story flickering across the gaps of a mind letting go. Born on a mountain down in Tennessee. I felt my legs begin to buckle. They all became retarded. Muscles going numb. Folks said Red, better move away from there. One foot then the other losing its hold. A four hour trip. Giant arms sweeping across my chest, flipping me bacards. He's my best friend. Gasping as the water bit my face. Does whatever a writer can. Wishing I'd had the foresight to write my own obituary. Good evening, it's been a day of tragedy. Leaving it to be discovered in my empty motel room. Bi Guy Says Bye. One of North America's foremost tabloid stars drowned today.

It took us a good fifteen minutes to catch up to the Runt, Hulk practically lugging me like a sack, not once letting go the grip he'd used to drag me under back in the Wake. And if the Runt hadn't come to the harvest zone, where the only way forward was back, I don't think we would have caught up. Ever. He wasn't happy to see me either, even if he did have the ten gallon bag.

“Here, make yourself useful,” he snarled, and threw the competition bag at me. “Slip the strap across one shoulder, then loop it around the other wrist,” he ordered, adding a menacing, “Don't even think you might lose it.”

He turned to Hulk, “Let's do it,” and started splashing across the shallows, which for him were almost up to his shoulders.

It was the moment I'd been waiting for. The harvest. While Poli had explained the technique in assiduous detail, it's one of those things you have to see to believe. Not that I'd be able to see much of it. Dulse only roots at a high tide depth of at least 33 feet, so, even at lowest ebb, the nearest tubers were still seven, eight feet under water, concentrated in holes and cracks in the rock. Easy to find — their surface shimmying fronds could be followed to their source — but not easy to get at. You had to dive, pulling yourself down the fronds, hand-over-hand, into an utter void of muddy seawater, blind feeling for the root to cut it off as close to its host rock as you could. All this while you were being buffeted by errant currents that could smash you into the rocks or tie you to a watery ending in a knot of fronds, and the clock was ticking away the ebb and the mad scramble to escape the next rising tide.

It was a job for two men. One to dive and the other to anchor; one to go for broke, the other to salvage if the breaks didn't go the right way. As you've probably guessed, Runt was the diver, Hulk the steadfast bulwark playing out the safety rope, their vastly different physiques the reason they were considered one of the best dulse teams ever. Like a pelican to Runt's tail-slapping otter, Hulk stood his ground in the shifting waters and caught the baubles Runt threw up, paring the fist-sized tubers — I swear they glistened like turtle eggs in the faint dawn light — of their fronds before handing them to me to drop in the bag. And, yes, you can be sure I damn sure made sure I didn't drop any outside. {You sure?} [As sure as sure can be.] {How many sures could a would sure sure if a would sure could sure sures?} [Sixty-nine.]

It was a bit like watching a well-oiled pump jack. Runt could hold his breathe almost a minute, and each burst to the surface dragged another two or three tubers into the light of rapidly blooming day. And each such outburst also brought a bigger, more triumphant smile — working their way forward from one patch of fronds to the next, the boys were on track for a damn good haul. Immersed in his work, Runt even seemed to have forgotten his anger at me. Every fourth or fifth re-appearance would bring a gasping “Time?” and a grunt of satisfaction at my answer as he disappeared again.

Everything was just going snickers. Which of course is exactly the time you have to watch out for the kicker. In life as much as fiction.

Runt had just surfaced with five, count'em, tubers, when “This is the RCMP!” bullhorned through the wreeking gulls. “Stay where you are!” Being a writer, I don't know if a picture really is worth a thousand words but, I'll tell you, a picture right at that instant would have said at least one word on three faces.

Shit!

Nothing more though, because there wasn't time. For a big man, Hulk could move like the chickens and his arm had pushed me underwater before I could get out the exclamation. I gulped raw terror along with sea water and panicked, gargling screams and thrashing at my assailant. I felt split, pulled down by a millstone, tugged forward off my feet. Current threw my back against a rock, then another tug pulled me off. My head broke surface backwards, water splashing over my face and into my nose, my mouth, my eyes. I'd hardly caught a breathe before the millstone again pulled me down, almost ripping off my shoulder, dislocated for sure. Hot pain seared cold flesh as realization shot in: the fucking bag — it's going to drown me! I tried a desperate watusi, wriggling, jerking, jack-knifing, but I just seemed to get more and more entangled. Shit no, it's dulse fronds! Spider webbing to pin my legs, strait-jacket my arms. No! It's the bag! With a mind of its own, taking a chokehold….

Peace. No more pain. Finally letting go. Silence. Panic gone. Timeless. Spaceless. Changeless. Thank you lord.

“Down there! Look that's him.” Silence broken. Faint. “Naw. That's just tideweed. No way he could have made it.” Louder. Pain come back. Shoulder hurts. Uuuuk, mouth tastes like sea. Footsteps, shlunnk schunnk, boots in wet sand. Look up, spit out sand. How'd that weed get in there? Look way up. Two. Way way up. Big one. Little one. Two survived. What about third? Me third. Me Mellow. “Frat! U'kay?” No. Frat Rat. Dulse. Harvesting, cops, under, drowning, bag!!!

Vomit, retching, puking seawater, god that hurts. Wits coming back. One. Two. Three, four… about right. Feel like I'm lying on top of a turtle. Can I lay eggs? “Frat, here, let me help you up.” Oh god, dizzy, Hulk, Runt swimming, No! We're not swimming, we made it. “I don't believe it. Heh heh, I just bloody don't believe it.” Don't believe what? Hulk look down, follow. Bag. Bag? Bag!! Still attached! I don't believe it either. Look up, smile woozily at Hulk, and he smiles back, before whooping up and down the beach.

Hell, even the Runt smiled.

Poli swigged at his beer, finally broke the silence my description of almost sleeping with the turtles had left. “Listen Mell…” he started, tried again, “Frat…”, rolled his eyes in frustration, finally spit the question I knew would come. Eventually. “Say, just what the hell's your real name anyway? I mean your real name, none of this bullshit cover stuff.” Took another swig, lowering the beer to nest it, out of sight, between his legs.

Give credit where credit is due, I thought; knowing from experience how most people are practically insulted at not knowing your real name, the one you were given at birth. As though that's somehow more real than any other. So they ask. But Poli'd held off longer than most. And I did have a stack of names I could have pulled out in response, in fact, a whole collection of life histories I could rote convincingly. Tools of the trade if you like. But Poli had these incredibly penetrating eyes, a kind of psychic WD 40, which he used to advantage — as when he got Hulk and the Runt to take me along. Under their power, I swear, I couldn't help myself even though, compliant with The Bi's policy covering deep cover operatives, even my editor wasn't privy. Yeah, I fessed up, dragging it out of the bit of brain where you bury garbage and nasty memories. It took a moment — I'd buried it pretty deeply. And — like I figured — Poli guffawed, slapping his knees with both hands, then snatching back at the wheel to miss a side-trip into the ditch. It wasn't the first time.

“Bjarnas Bertrand Bumstead! Bet you got rubble-assed about that,” he snorted.

Copping a swig from my own beer, I grimaced at the memories running amok, gritted, “Rubble-ass, Blarney Bert, B.B. Bum and every other asinine derivative stinking school kids can think of.”

“Well listen, Barney,” Poli continued, getting back to the topic. “You let your imagination get away with you. Not that I don't understand why — Deltoid's generally pretty moody and irritable and god knows he just gets worse at competition time. But even Delt, never mind Alphonse, wouldn't have left you for dead.” There was a pause for a tooth-glinting smile straight at me. “For one thing, I don't care what you've heard, GoBs just don't do that.” And a throwaway as he turned his attention back to the road. “Besides, the boys knew our plan.”

“Look, if you don't mind, that name's just between you and me,” I gritted, “okay?” Then — something about that throwaway triggering the ever-curious journalist — had to ask, “What plan?” {Dum de dum dum dumbbbbb — like Ogopogo rising from the depths, a plot finally heaves into sight.} [Is that the mythical monster lives in Okeefenokee swamp?] {Noooo. In Lake Okanagan. B.C.} [That old?] {Har har.}

Poli took his eyes off the road, fixed them back on me. A long moment — as though evaluating the next move in a tightly-fought game of chess. He seemed about to reply, but glanced at the rear view, grimaced, then to each of the side mirrors in quick turn. His grip on the wheel tightened and I started turning to look. “Don't,” he hissed, his own eyes straight ahead. “Don't look back. It's probably nothing anyway.”

Well. I'll tell you — for nothing — it had a most substantial effect. Poli's ever-easy demeanour had stiffened with tension lines while his eyes danced back and forth to the rear view. His nonchalant driving, wandering anywhere within the bounds of the pavement, was gone too — his knuckles on the wheel turned frost white keeping the little Suzuki four wheeler dead straight. Now two and two may be four, but toeing the line and playing it fine could only equal one thing. So it didn't matter if I couldn't look-see. I knew what to expect.

Pigs. Of course. Cops. The Fuzz. Probably an unmarked car. Following Poli, the Honourable Member for The Rump? Or following me, the Honourary Mr Harvest? (The boys had insisted on the title and I'd accepted, even planned to use it as my by-line. Just once. Just to piss my editor off. It had been offered, but I'd refused any more substantial reward. I was glad of that now. The most any sniffer-dog could find on me would be a perfectly legal souvenir bag of fronds.) Either was a concern. While I was clean, I didn't know if Poli was — had no way of knowing — but the cops, and courts, are all too prone to guilt by association.

In any case, it didn't matter. Whatever it was must have turned off. Poli relaxed, letting the Suzuki resume its wandering. Cocked an eye into a half-embarrassed little shrug, the kind that says 'well, you can't be too careful', and took another swig of beer. “You ever thought about legalization?” he suddenly asked, then added, superflorously I thought, “For dulse, I mean.”

I shook my head, negative, having never smoked tobacco, much less dulse. Or done any other drugs. Not that I was morally against them or afraid of their illegality. It's just that, when you can't even go to the beach because of this little personality disorder, you don't take many chances. Period. I'd just heard too many horror stories about mind-blowing drugs.

“Not surprised, really,” Poli continued. “Most people don't. They seem to think it doesn't affect them… you know, no smokie, no worry. Which a lot of vested interests like just fine. Cops, politicians, the pushers, they don't want a lot of people really thinking about our approach to drugs. Because they know. The whole criminalization trip, the busts, the prisons, they don't work. Why? Because people like getting stoned and that's just the facts, ma'am.” He paused, settling back into the seat, murmured “just the facts” into his bottle, then glanced for any reactions. But I had none, just the recognition Poli had brought out the soap box. He was tabling the hidden agenda.

“I mean you look back in history, you look around the world and people like getting ripped. Spaced. High. Blasted. Fritzed. Zapped. Hell, there's almost as many words for altered states of consciousness as there are for fucking. And you know what that says.” Emphasizing each word. “People just like to get stoned. And, yeah, there is a percentage of the population gets hung up, strung out and messed up by their drug of choice, even dulse, but prohibition doesn't work. It doesn't stop them wanting, it doesn't stop them using. It just jacks up prices and forces users into the back allies. So big brother state throws people in jail, gives them criminal records, spends millions, millions trying to control 'the dulse problem'. Doesn't work. You know, they bust a shipment of weed down to the Big Cumquat. There's half a dozen gets through. So they hire another few dozen Mounties and put them in airports, throw up taxes to pay for it. So now they manage to grab two loads but a baker's dozen get through. So they shift their focus back to the user, throw more people into gigantic jails they have to build and staff with millions more tax dollars, which they finally can't afford so they privatize them. And guess who ends up running the jails? Front companies for the drug cartels, that's who!” Poli snorted derisively. “Talk about taking your profits at both ends.”

He shook his head, almost sadly I thought. “It just doesn't make any sense. You won't stamp it out, and even if you managed to completely cut off dulse, then people'd just find another way to get high. Smoking banana peels, chugging nutmeg, shooting cabbage, I mean who knows? So, given it doesn't make any sense, why not legalize it? Governments already push nicotine and alcohol and god knows there's more problems with them than dulse. So why not legalize it but control it, sell it in government run stores, the government gets extra taxes, they reduce crime, they save all that money.”

Poli took a moment to correct an alarming veer towards the ditch. Came real close to a mailbox, too close to read the name. The Suzuki leashed, he checked the mirrors, raised his beer and polished it down. Dropped the bottle behind the seat where it clinked against another. He sighed, rubbed a big hand across his head. Shrugged with bemusement. “And you know I never thought I'd see it but that's finally beginning to sink in. There's a lot of politicians, even a few police, beginning to rethink the approach and question its wisdom.”

Let's cut to the plot, I thought, and said so in not quite so few words. “So you're looking for someone with journalistic expertise, persuasive writing skills and an established nom de plume to work out a pro-legalization campaign. Someone whose talents can help you shift the tide of public opinion towards ending the stupidity of our current drug laws. That's where I come in, right? That's why, when you offered The Bi the inside dope on the Dulsia, it was on condition I got the assignment, right?”

“Fuck no,” Poli snorted. “That'd just kill the profit margins. Who wants a return of five or six percent when you can scoop five or six hundred? No. We need someone to help us keep it illegal. We want someone with the brains for Reefer Madness, an example to stiffen the backbone of those spineless dolts who'd kill the golden turtle. That's where you come in.”

Oh.

“It's just ahead,” Poli said, eyeing me intently. “Now you remember what I told you, and follow my lead.” Sure, Sure, I thought, a little miffed. Hell! In my career I'd covered bloody royalty, traded quips with comics and grilled Nobel winners. [Personally, I prefer them poached.] Even been trod on by Trudeau. {You and another 23 million Johnny Canucks.} I didn't need a lecture, or reminder, of how to handle myself among the rich and famous, the powerful and ugly. So, given that background, even if he was the head of a multi-million dollar drug syndicate, meeting El Grandé Poohbah, der Fundy Fuhrer — the Dulsia's CEO in plain English — wasn't even something I'd bother writing home to mother about.

Even if she hadn't disowned me and slashed return to sender across my letter of apology. But that's A Whole Other Story — and I wouldn't want to digress — so, maybe another time. [Looks like he's setting up for a sequel as well.] {Must be contagious. It'll be you next.}

Poli must have sensed my irritation for he kept staring at me, then his eyes suddenly flicked backwards, face stiffening again. Turning before Poli could order me not to, I caught the briefest glimpse of a large black car, parked in black shadows on the narrow gravel shoulder, black trench coated driver slump sleeping behind the wheel, collar up, black fedora down over the face. {Observant little shit.} A little odd, I thought, daytime sleeping on a tree fringed highway to the backside of bushy nowhere, smack in the middle of The Rump. But it didn't strike me as significant. [Nah.]

It did Poli.

The Suzuki suddenly flew right, hard right, almost pitching me into Poli's lap. I looked over the dash to find ourselves about to punch through a wall of leaves, but a sharp left pull at the wheel parted the green sea, and we were scooting down a puddle-pocked track, some abandoned backwoods trail. What the fuc… Poli jammed the brakes to a scruddering stop, almost dumping me into the glove compartment. SkeeeRuuunnnch. Poli threw it into reverse, snap crackle popped the clutch, madly painting the surrounding leaves in earth tones. Nearly completing the impression of my face on the dash. We burst backwards out of the trees just as I managed to get myself upright. Whack. Poli jammed the brakes, stalling the engine and trigger-lifting the front wheels off the ground. Flinging me into the back of the seat. Goddamn it, that hurt! Birds sang. Angelic pigs flew. And Poli sat there, glaring past me at the black car, maybe twenty-five yards away.

Trenchie didn't move. Fact, I was sure I heard his snoring. Maybe not. My heart was pounding that loud.

Poli? Well if you think of all those old gunfighter movies, you know, where hero and villain eye each other off, slomo sec after surreal moment, glaring, daring, taunting the other into a chickenshit blink, then you know what this wasn't. Without Trenchie to return fire, Poli's glare was about as useful as balls on a priest — even less I suppose, given some recent scandals. The glare wilted in seconds and Poli shrugged, dispensing another of those dopey 'well you can't be too careful' grins as he fired the motor. Yeah right. But you can be too paranoid. I'll tell you, I was starting to entertain some serious questions about this guy's balance.

Maybe he'd been in politics too long.

By then we were grind flop spin lunging back down the track, branches ra-ta-ta-ting the Suzi's sides. Must be the back entry, I thought, throwing up an arm to keep my head from hitting the roof. A secret passage to the drug lord's lair, his hacienda of illicit wealth.

Made perfect sense to me.

I looked in the trees, straining for a glimpse of cameras and security trips, or the fleet shadows of goons cradling Russian-made submachine guns. I'd have to talk to one of them, I thought — it'd make for a good sidebar, Why Muthahs Buy Red. Yeah — and talk to the security head too, for a piece on high technology, When Money's No Object. Yeah — and… I was so busy glimpsing the possibilities, I missed the burst into actuality, the breath-taking first view of my-soon-to-be host's grand manor.

Except it wasn't.

Expecting something completely different, I had to shuffle the mental filters before I recognized what it was. A hunting camp, fifty years if a day old, perched on the edge of an abrupt slope down to what I assumed would be a river. A roughplank, fifteen by forty low sloper was crowded against the trees on one side of a small clearing by half a century of junk — a couple of hood-gaping cars hunched on their axles, an old tractor listing to its flat tire, a couple of incomplete stoves, and half a dozen woodpiles anchoring other mounds of rusting something or others. Except for a faint wisp of smoke spitting from a crooked chimney pipe, it had the look and taste of abandonment.

Poli hissed “Remember!” and motioned me out, ploughing his way through the debris to the edge of the slope. Still adjusting the filters — was this a joke? remote safehouse? or just an artfully belying fake overlying an elaborate underground complex? — I followed, picking my way through boot high grass.

“I love this place,” Poli grinned as I came up, throwing a grand sweeping arm to indicate near to 180 degrees of red gravel-bluffed valley, blue seamed with riffling meanders writing some message to the heavens. It was, I had to admit, quite breathtaking, and my opinion of the site soared from dump to landfill. “See down there,” Poli pointed to the river a good 40 feet below. [As opposed to what? A bad 40 feet?] {Repent! Repent ye damned Imperials!} “That's one of the best salmon pools in the whole bloody Rump. And there ain't no rich yanks allowed.” Poli grinned again. “Jimi's pretty particular about his company. We'll go down later, but I think we'd better say hi first.”

The screen door had shut on better days — ripped and rusted, the screen loose in places, half the bottom bulged like it was always opened with a swift kick from the darkness inside. Poli banged more than knocked, shouted “Hello! Jimi, you there?” Was answered by a flurry of high pitched barking and a scurry of something white crashing into the metal mesh, ballooning it outwards, ripping an inch or so free of the frame. I jerked backwards, an involuntary reaction, but the screen held and bounced the dog away. The growling doubled, launching another attack, another bulging blur of bare fanged white. Another inch torn free. But the screen tossed it back again. Now the dog was enraged, snarling viciously behind the obscuring veil, hunching to spring for the jugular. I stepped further back. Voluntarily this time. Suddenly

"Ootl!!”

I didn't recognize the language, Danish or one of those Scandinavian countries?, but it was the kind of voice could stop a doberman. Cold. Thick with menace and a sheer Don't even think about it! tone. Growls turned to a pathetic ur uring whimper and the dog belly-slunk backwards, turning its head to look into the room where someone was approaching. I pulled myself erect, trying to force my heart into a calmer rhythm. I was finally going to meet the fabled Jimi, lord of all the dulsers, the genius who'd convinced a bunch of crankily independent GoBs to work together, then, back before there were charts and competition reports, won the Mr Harvest title seven years straight. The guy who'd…

God! Seen better days himself!

Between 25 and 30 thousand of them, judging by the face squinting through the screen. Wrinkled, storm worn, sun cancerous — had to be eighty-something at least. Small too, five six, if that, painfully slight. He didn't seem to hear too well — even this close, Poli had to raise his voice. “Jimi. It's me. Poli. Can we come in?” And I guess he didn't see too well either. It was a moment before his watery eyes showed any sign of recognition. Then, maybe Poli's voice finally breaching the brain circuits, the eyes flashed alive and he swung the door open.

The dog growled.

I tried to hang back but Poli shoved me in, made the introductions. “Jimi. Barney. Barn. Jimi.” Still half-blind in the dim light, I missed the handshake, connecting instead with Jimi's elbow. He cackled and gripped at my elbow in return, pushed, pulled, push push pull, an oldtimer's version of high fives I figured. He seemed extraordinarily pleased — maybe we were blood brothers now — and gurgled something like “Ood o met ou.” “Good to meet you,” Poli translated. “KoOn ih.” “Come on in.” The dog growled again, low in the throat. “Oh, excuse me,” Poli laughed. “That's Total. But I think you've already met.”

Correction — just almost met; but it was only now, with my eyes finishing their adjustment from outside, that I actually got a good look at the mutt. Yikes! It looked like a cross between a poodle and a scotch terrier, with the poodle's comic gangly body on the other breed's stumpy legs. The head, though, was all blocky terrier: though it wasn't all there. The left side of the skull was completely stove in, missing an eye, and the ear hung in shreds. “He got hit by a truck. Out on the road,” Poli explained. “Jimi didn't have the heart to put him down. So now he calls him Total.” And laughed. “I guess we'd better have some tea. Hey Jimi!” he raised his voice and made drinking motions. “Tea?”

“s, t,” Jimi replied, pointing over to the cupboards. “Ut ta ettl on.” He started shuffling towards the table in the centre of the shack's open plan main room, rhythmically cackling at some inner joke, “Oli ut ta ettl on. Oli ut ta ettle on. wal ha t,” leaving me alone by the door. Total growled. Bugger this, I thought and went to sit at the table — deflecting wide around the dog, and figuring this part of the story was a total bust. No problem, really, I'd just fake it, then try freelancing an article on Alzheimer's. What to do When the Lights Go Out.

At the table, Jimi offered a roll-yer-own cigarette — which I declined. Thank you very much — so he lit it himself and then sat there, fag dangling from the edge of a dopey grin, waiting I figured for me to start the interview. Great. So, Mr Drug Lord, how much did you say you make? Ots, you say. Really? But don't you think this place is a little too lavish, too ostentatious, that it might attract unwanted attention. You don't say. Now that's an interesting point.

Frustrated, I turned to look around. The decorative style of the main room, combining kitchen, dining and living areas in a single functional space, was spartan. A row of unpainted cabinets against the wall by the door defined the kitchen, which opened to the dining lounge featuring a round formica table from the 40s, complemented with half a dozen metaltube, woodslat chairs in varying stains of shitbrown and red. Dining area in turn led to vistas of the living space, tastefully dominated by a single delegged couch; vomit green, wear spots gleaming in a trickle of light from one of four small windows on the valley-side wall.

Opposite, in a concise statement of contrapuntal architecture, a long partition wall opened to four rooms. Master bedroom, guest quarters and watercloset were all obvious through their open doors. Oddly, the door at the far end was not just shut, but…

“Tea's on!” Poli sang out, bearing three mugs. “Here Jimi. It's your favourite.” And handing one to me, stage whispered, “Remember! Follow my lead.”

The tea was a pale yellow, reminiscent of chamomile, with darker bits of leaves mottling the mug's bottom. Dutifully following Poli's lead, I bent down, wafting a sniff with a wave of my hand. Yes, there was a hint of chamomile, but it was masked by a slightly acrid pungency I couldn't quite place… whiff again… Lapsang Souchong was the closest I could come, very weak and made with bad water — except I couldn't see Jimi having swampy water with that river just down below. Naive, eh? But, lifting his own mug for a slurp, Poli indicated with a movement of his eye that it would be some form of insult to local mores if I didn't drink it. So I did. We all did, draining our mugs to a cascade of toasts, cheers and hosannas. The Queen. Her Escort. {Nice little car that.} Even a toast to the drug pigs, Poli's, “bless their authoritarian little snouts”. Jimi's “men.”

I was too polite to say the tea tasted like piss.

Total saw ghosts.

Well, some such spectre shot from that neutron star of a brain: packed to twice its normal density by the crushing weight of gravity locking eighteen wheels to bitumen; his head in between; th th thup th thup thup, th th thup th thup thup; neurons squeezed, jammed, forced into God only knows how many extra synaptic connections; so that synapse a fires but triggers neurons b, z, q and u rather than just b, for a wildfire round of pass the message transmogrifying a's original message, fly in the corner, into a mutated alien abductee escapee; or maybe a jackal and hide'n go seek; then perhaps his fantasy bitch sporting leather collar and garters; sending Total lunging into the kitchen, snarling at the couch, chasing a piece of tail into the can; beating a fast retreat out, run run running from the braying nightmare of a truck bearing down. And down.

Who am I to judge, but letting him live was no act of mercy. [So, tell me, what do you think about euthanasia?] {Oh, I think they're pretty much the same as kids anywhere else.}

Total showed signs of short term memory loss too: recent data seemingly sucked screaming into that black hole of stripped and twisted neurons, never to be seen or heard from again. So his whole world was perpetually new, a raw landscape scraped bare under the grinding mass of glacier wheels, just the toughest oldest features still somehow familiar; like his master's voice, but not mine; not me at all. I ceased to exist each time doofus turned away; then sprang back into being, new and unwelcome, each swing of that lone good eye back to the table (where I sat sipping tea and waving off refills, determined to avoid a repeat of the scene in the Imperial Motel and Grill. In retrospect, I needn't have worried.). In that dog's world, I was — truly — out of sight out of mind. Then, in sight and in mind, a dangerous new presence. Fleabag lion? tinpot robot? scarecrow? God only knows how that dog saw me, but it was certainly as a threat — each rediscovery bringing the dog snicking across the floor, the wary hunter growling deep in the throat, his good eye cocked and loaded. Until…

Ootl!”

Jimi would call him off and bug-a-lugs would slink to the corner for another few rounds with the beastly fly. Until, ding-a-ling, he caught another glimpse of me. Then the performance would repeat.

Tootl!”

Not that I was doing much better. It was only in retrospect I realized that, barking at Total, Jimi's speech was improving — his diction sharpening, the voice more and more resonant with command, more clearly speaking English. More like that first voice I'd heard from outside the door. Even stranger, for an experienced journalist like myself, trained in the skills of acute observation, {Does that mean he studies babes?} [No. In fact I suspect he's latent.] {The only thing latent about this character are his brains.} I totally missed the subtle changes happening to Jimi each time I turned away. {See what I mean.} Failed to note how decrepitude was falling away like flakes of dandruff; his face and body growing younger, stronger, becoming more the man I'd been expecting.

Total!”

All I can say in my own defence is that each change was so insignificant of itself they never crossed perception's thresholds. Besides, I was rather busy appreciating Poli's changes. Which weren't subtle at all. No surprise there.

Now Poli's a big guy, sure not as enormous as the Hulk, but massive enough he had to squeeze into his little Suzuki. A little odd, but I'd pegged that as an affectation, a politician's way of showing he was just one of the little folks. However, you'd think when a guy has trouble squeezing into a fifteen by forty foot shack, then you'd have to figure out something was up.

Specifically, me. That I was high as a skeet.

But — again, this is all hindsight — when sleep and panic attacks are your only experience with altered states of consciousness, then you should be forgiven if the transition sneaks right past. To put it another way, altered states normally make the abnormal normal, so how can you discriminate? I mean, doesn't everybody suddenly balloon to house size? They do in dreams. Right? And don't most people abruptly shrink to the size of a cockroach? The panic victim does. And doesn't everyone have a toon eye that sproi-oings out of its socket for a closeup look at your face?

Jimi did.

Now that was interesting — examining that eye as it, bobbing slightly in the exhalations of my breath, examined me. The iris glowed with at least a dozen shades of blue, set off by bloodshot whites and pupils so densely black they threatened to engulf me. There was some speck down in there, way back at the retina, some kind of reversed and upside down image. I peered in, grabbing at the edges of the pupil to force them wider, shoved my head inside for a better look.

That's when it blinked.

Which is quite a trick when the eyelids are four feet away at the end of a rubberized occipital nerve. But I didn't have time to appreciate Jimi's skills in the matter. You see, when the eye blinked shut it didn't open, so the effect was rather like a creepy crawly caught in the snap of a venus fly trap. Or a patron of Madame Guillotine's. {Boudoir?} [No. Boo hoo.] My crown was cleanly separated from my body and sent tumbling inwards, rolling head over neck stump, call it down, towards that speck on the retina.

It was a long way and, after the novelty of falling bodiless through the inside of a living, osmosing optic device wore off, generally quite boring. So I had plenty of time to finally put it together. Fact one: this was not normal. I was pretty sure of that now. Fact two: people may be decapitated in the blink of an eye but not, by-the-by, by the blink. Even in The Bi. Fact three: a million angels may intercourse in the eye of a needle, but even an anorexic pin can't disappear inside an eye — never mind a head as large as mine. So, my conclusion, I was stoned, ripped out of my skull, as it were. Pie-faced. {Does that mean he has 3.14 ad infinitum faces?} [No. Reductio absurdum, it means he's off on a tangent.] {Arc. Arc.} (Seal it. Now!) How? Well that was crystal cle… well, actually, crystal yellow. Poli had laced the tea! With Jimi's conniv… oh god no… Poli's plan, the whole fucking scheme splashed into full awareness, starting with a tinkle of memory — that mention in my background notes of biological processing for dulse — that became a golden shower. It was with more than Jimi's connivance!

The fuckers had peed the tea.

But, quicker than you could mimic a self-satisfied 'ah, but my dear Watson, it was so alimentary' [I told you the butler did it.], I hit, smack a little dab'll do you in the middle of the retinal speck. {I guess he made a specktacle of himself.}And, faster than I could register it was my own image, trailing veins and all, I sailed through — feeling just the teensiest resistance of flimsy membrane stre,e,tching, breaking — to find myself heading (sorry) [I should hope so too.] into the depths of a curving, multi-branching tunnel. The occipital nerve, what else?, alive with whizzing light and pulsing tingles .

Another eternity falling, reminding me of that scene in 2001 where Dave, having dumped HAL, is himself shot down the bowels of a strange black obelisk. Tunnel. Eye. Tunnel. Eye. Tunnel vision. As near as I could ever figure out, the scene was symbolic, a mythopoetic rendering of a greater sentience's sewage treatment process trying to clean up humanity. But the only time I ever saw the film — it was a midnight special in 70 mil and stereo — I'd been out drinking with a mate first, and vertigo from that scene set us both to chundering into popcorn bags, then sleeping it off in the lobby. So it's possible I missed something important. (I think it was soon after that my friend's wife divorced him.)

About this time, I began to experience the strangest sensations, these random little jolts of electricity, which I first dismissed as nothing more extraordinary than a close encounter with the odd nerve. But I had to discard that dismissal as, the damnedest thing, I realized the tingles weren't tickling my cranium. Now it's not something I was particularly expert in, but I had done a few stories on amputees who reported they could feel their missing parts, as real and as itchy as if they were really there. Phantom limbs, they're called. While my stories were nothing too deep — just your garden variety, 'lookada-poor-sod' yarns they use for fillers in The Bi, like my interview with one of the last surviving eunuchs of the Chinese Imperial court (although I didn't have the balls to ask him about ghostly appendages), even so, I'd never, ever, heard of anybody reporting a phantom body.

And, the damndest thing, that body didn't feel like mine. At all. Looking down I grasped why.

Ever seen the Michelin Man?

Or the Dilsbury Dough Boy?

Well, that was me. Sort of.

Except I wasn't nascent bread and I had no tread. I was… I reached down to check, giving my rotund little belly a good pinch… marshmallow. Soft, squishy marshmallow. Sorry but I couldn't help breaking into hysterical laughter. It was just too damn funny.

Mallow Yellow.

My editor'd probably think it was a typo.

But I didn't get to finish the laugh as — just like that — the next phase of my incredible journey began. My portly, twinkle-toed body was elongating, smoothening, Santa's gut fading away. While the general evolutionary trend seemed clear enough — the fins and tail suggested the genera ichthya — fish — all my reserves of high school biology weren't enough to identify the species. It was only when I heard myself let loose a sniggering high-pitched chigger that I realised I had the genera wrong.

Just call me Flipper.

Then I noticed my world was morphing right along with my body. The veined red burrow of the occipital was breaking out with rounded blocks of what looked like white stone. Although there was no coherent pattern to their placement, no neatly mason-stacked rows, it was still impressive, like the lower tunnels of an obsessive-compulsive dungeon keeper. And I felt I was 'seeing' through to the essence of creation, to the bedrock that underlies the myriad forms of the cosmos. Wrong. I bounced off one of the walls. It was marshmallow. Of course.

Herr Reefer was right.

The world, the whole bleeding universe was made of marshmallows.

The little ones.

And if I hadn't seen it for myself, I'd have always pooh-poohed Herr Reefer's mathematics as just too damn abstract to have any bearing on reality.

Not that I was totally certain this was reality.

But it was the only one I had at the moment and… oh god! I suddenly remembered where dolphins live. In the…

I'd hardly thought the word when I was flashing through it.

Now I know the universe loves a joke but this was fucking ridiculous. Here I am, an aquaphobe of the 99th percentile, still fresh from my close encounter at Finnegan's Wake and you'd think life would have the decency to go a little easy. You know, pamper me a little. Something like a soft patter-pat on the back and a mother-warm voice, 'there there, it's alright Jarney'. But no. That's not the cosmic style. Instead, it dumps me in my mortal element with a tittering 'sink or swim kid.' I could feel the dead cold panic sitting along my dorsal.

But as soon as I felt it, I was bursting out of the water, doing a triple luganous into a cascade of sky, cloud, distant beach, then back into the water, clean as a diver's wet dream.

Then out again into the same whirligig of air, just long enough to register I was closer to land. In again. And out, switching to a floating back roll that put the world inside out, horizon span-spinning upside down into vision, rolling through a round sky and a crescent moon of beach, now closer, where I could see a person sitting at the water line. A woman.

And damn it was fun! The panic had gone, replaced with the exhilarant catharsis of a mammalian brain deep in the throes of play. I was diddling in my mortal element, untouched by the fear and panic that had shaped, no truncated my life! And I could finally understand what it was attracted GoBs to dulsing

Absorption. Total immersion in the moment. Freedom from doubts and fears. It's all in the mind, I realised, flinging upwards. All in the mind, splitting back into the gray green depths.

All in the mind — my panic, fear, racing heart. All those years of wretchedness had been myself trampling myself into the dark, putrescent dung of my mind. Which of course begged the query worth more than a few thou smackeroo.

Why?

Why would I do this to myself?

I burst out, back into the sky, feeling the magic marshmallow once again do its thing. I looked down to the changing dorsal and had to laugh at the answer.

Reee reeee raaa.

“It's all in the mind!” I shouted, racing upwards, exulting at the stream of air past feathers. “It's all in the mind!” Flicking wingtips to cartwheel into a swooping kamikaze back toward the beach, the woman in my sights. Shouting again, “It's all in the mind.” For some reason I was desperate she understood, as though if I couldn't share the realization it wouldn't be real, it would disappear. And it seemed to be disappearing, the world was going inexplicably dark and I was caught in some temporal warp that stretched the distance between her and I so that my dive brought me no closer, hanging there in a perpetual plunge into the cavernous twilight, shouting and watching her face for understanding, which faded from curious to blank and, just as the darkness went full, to open-mouthed terror.

It's all in the mind.”

They say no one can hear you scream in space. Well — let me be the first to tell you — it's the same in the lower intestine.

At least I assumed that's where I was. My last memory of the light was the gaping cavern of the woman's mouth suddenly warping into streaking colours, then the darkness double dipped and, after a moment of erratic jostling, I was cocooned in what felt remarkably just like a sea of warm marshmallows. It was a forgiving medium, buoyant and alive with languid riffles, parting smoothly, flowing so easily around me it was hard to tell where I began and ended, indeed if I had any shape at all, any discreteness beyond a clucking gaggle of self-deluded marshmallows in the great migration of life.

Another glimpse at the underlying unity of the universe?

It would have been pleasant, except for the rather gamey smell bathing me, and it would have been peaceful, except for a constant, rough rumbling interspersed with rabid growls that I felt as much as heard. (It took a few moments but I managed to peg my location from those clues.) It was hard to separate those tremors from the gently rhythmic squeezing that seemed to be pushing me along, although, in the unrelieved darkness, I wasn't absolutely sure. Interesting… I'd never realized how much we depend on vision for our sense of motion. More proof that it was all in the mind?

Of course. And, I had to chuckle, it all made sense. In the mind, life had this certain grandiloquent justice, where what went around came around and what went in went out. In the end. Clearly I was immersed in a mytho-poetic rendering of my own psyche, a faithful illustration of that insight about what my fear and panic actually were, with overtones of that scene from 2001. Hell I thought, given the malleability of the marshmallow world, whatever scene I could imagine would exist. Had to exist. Somewhere. So, it made real sense, I probably had company. I whispered, because no one could have heard me scream.

Dave? You there? You…”

He wasn't. Dave I mean. I mean he wasn't there. Well at least he didn't answer. Then again, maybe I just missed him in the excitement.

In chaos theory, a system can sit at the edge of chaotic behaviour, and all it needs is a little shove to hurl it over the precipice. The little shove was my whisper. It's pitiful vibrations had kindled those background rumbles and squeezes into full blown earthquakes. I was shoved and buffeted and thrust forward towards a blazing crack of light the movements had opened. But I was okay. I'd seen the truth. It was all in the bowels of the mind. The whole scene was an illusion, a delusion. And I'd let it go. I wasn't going to collude with myself anymore to keep myself stuck in the muck.

Shit no.

Memory gets a little vague here. The crack had opened to a blinding orifice and the light pouring in carried glimpses, phantasms of other scenes. Long white hallways. White shadows talking around me. Two of them. Poli's face, half there, worried. Opening a locked door. Jimi's winking eye. A gleaming white throne that I opened my arms to embrace. Hell I embraced them all, even the yammering furball. I was incredibly happy, hurtling towards the growing light, finally free to accept life just the way it was.

Ah. The magic moments of realization, and how quickly they go to ground once the bladder starts insisting it's full. I desperately tried to hold unto my understandings as 'objective reality' came bursting out of the light.

Poli's big arms lifted me off the floor, then pointed to a hand written note taped to the top of the toilet. I had to squint to read it.

If it's yellow, let it mellow.
If it's brown, flush it down.

Now there was cryptic I thought. And about as succinct a statement of my realizations as I could imagine. There was a little jar sitting on top of the toilet tank. Poli was pointing at it, gesturing obscenely I vaguely thought, then I realized what he was trying to tell me to do.

But I couldn't. It just wouldn't come. And with a sinking feeling, I watched the tunnel opening. Oh oh I thought. Here we go again.

In Conclusion

So here I am, pure mind, floating in the darkness of a universe made out of marshmallows. I think my body's still down there somewhere, probably still on the can. Still trying to fill that damn little jar. Jimi and Poli look after it good. At least I hope so. I don't know what will happen when it finally expires. I guess I'll find out. Some eternity. But those good'ol'boys have good reason to look after that body. It's their centrepiece in the war against any law that would diminish their returns. The perfect sidebar or feature article to be wheeledchaired out whenever public opinion is in danger of coming to its senses and questioning just how rational the war on drugs really is.

Besides, one day they're no doubt hoping I will finally piss into that little jar… and they'll get a taste of the real mellow yellow.

The human mind and brain are phenomenal and, reality is, people are going to pursue those inner experiences whether their drug of choice is legal or not, whether there are dangers or not. And I won't say there aren't. There are. You might say I'm living proof of that. If you can call this living. Doesn't matter. People will take the magic marshmallow and look to find god, spirit, mind — call it anything you want because it is essentially beyond any of these names. Beyond description or definition, just a pull from the depths, an urging that won't go away.

Or, as Poli would say, people just like to get ripped.

To be frank, I don't know that dulse or any other 'mind-blowing' drug should be legalised. I'm not really sure they should. But I also don't see how 'just say no' relates in any real way to human beings and I can't understand how funnelling trillions to crooks serves any purpose. Then again, I don't have to know.

I'm just the mouth piece.

- end -

In conclusion, yes, my dear editor, this is my final story and resignation from our beloved rag. I know policy says I have to fill out the form myself but you're going to have to do that for me. I'm sure you'll get some satisfaction from the privilege. Mind your Ps and Qs. And watch those colons: oh yeah, for that space, Reason for Quitting:

Just put, they made me an offal that couldn't excrete.

Bye Bi.

[1] ...

Good'ol Boys [back]

[2] ...

Reluctantly unidentified maritime province or place [back]

[3] ...

law avoiding manoeuvres [back]

[4] ...

ALT constructive avoidance specialist; BPC… flagman [back]

[5] ...

BPC 'human monkeys' and 'suicidal maniacs' [back]

[6] ...

bacon and eggs, over easy [back]

[7] ...

by policy, The Bi does not use the metric system, ostensibly on the grounds that it's a commie plot to disrupt society. The real reason is that most of our readers and all of our editorial board just don't get it.[back]

[8] ...

tetraprohydrozac, n. (tet-ra-pro-hi-drone-sac) an alkaloid chemically related to psilocybin, the active ingredient found in magic mushrooms, lending some support to the theory that dulse is the genetic descendent of an ancient fungus that invaded the Bay of Fundy and prospered in conditions that would support no other plant life. See mushrooms, magic, dulse, Canadian Maritimes. Also, listings in American Franchise Monthly, "Dulse: Prospects for Sustainable Development."[back]

[9] ...

Might As Well Suck Seaweed (maw-su-wed) [back]

[10] ...

dulp, woven with fibres taken from the sword-shaped fronds of the dulse plant, a point of commercial interest from many who argue that dulse cultivation is more environmentally friendly than synthetics. While some experiments in commercial cultivation have looked promising, the potential is limited by the plant's illegality. Federal scientists are working to develop a de-TPHZ-ed plant that could bring employment and stability to a depressed Maritime region. [back]

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch

Damn! Tricked again. It was just a fade to black fade up. One of those especially cheesy ones. You know, with the face of the bad guy leering down on the down, the face of the good guy cheering up on the up — what happened in between now recounted; and the girl swoons at the bravery exhibited on her behalf. A cheap out, a kind of dramatic commercial break. Handy things to have around when you’re short of budget and low on imagination. Or shooting for television.

“Abby! Abby!”

Another tacky effect. Cheap too. Pulling the focus so concerned face swims in and out of blur — straight from the forties, that one. Now cut to details in the sea of soft dreams, and vignette memories from the interlude. Concatenation. Frantic voices, a distant siren, pounding feet. Orders to stand back. Pain, such pain in the chest, spasms of electricity, bursts of lightning fusing into glaring white, a tunnel, backlighting and so revealing dark splotches on the soul. A voice, female — that was Becky, wasn’t it? — echoing. Strain to hear, pull sense out of the voice. Hold onto it. There were three questions. Which is the story? Who is the writer? and How do you get a salami on wurst at 3 a.m. if you don’t live in New York City?

“Abby! Abby!. Come on girl. You can do it. Hold on. Don’t let go. Please Abby, don’t let go.”

Well the first question was easy enough. It was the story of a woman in crisis, taking her first steps towards a new life. As for the writer, well that was easy too. That was her skulking over there behind the camera. But that last wasn’t right. She’d read that in MAD magazine — whatever that was. Besides, just what the hell is a salami on wurst? It sounded revolting. Hold on. Even the voices were swimming, fusing and melding into each other. That other voice. That was Dicky, wasn’t it? But what was Dicky doing here? He should have been home with Edie. That was the deal after all. Abby got the bacon and Dicky cooked it. That was the way of the world.

“I’m sorry Mr. Fuego. But there’s nothing we can do. She has to pull out of this on her own.”

Can’t. Can’t pull out. Too many voices. Too many hands, reaching out, waving in her face. Becky’s hands. Grab them. She had to grab them. Becky! Becky! I’m trying! Don’t give up. Please don’t give up. But the hands were melting, becoming incandescent, bones inside luminous bags of dripping flesh. God, it was a fade to white! Please Dicky. Please don’t let go. They’re slipping. Dicky! Your fingers are slipping away! For Edie’s sake. Please.

Then the whiteness was complete.

That’s it!, she thought. Could there be any doubt? The pressure was gone. Disappeared. She felt relieved, lighter, as though she’d let go of something. For days, like a slowly growing abscess, there’d been this thought nudging forward into her awareness — certainly ever since she got out of the hospital, but maybe even before. Her hospital stay had been three days of hell waiting to hear the results of the tests — a real scare — but the tests came back normal. Just a quirk the doctors concluded, just a quirk that almost took her life. And who in Hell has the mental focus to detect a subconscious thought? But, it must have been there, because the first time Dicky kissed her on the way home in the cab, she’d pulled back, oddly ill at ease and with a sense of pressure in her head. Within a few days the pressure had increased and the thought was just there, but fuzzy, and no amount of worrying it back and forth would bring it into focus. The pressure in her head had scared her a little — was it part of the attack? another quirk? — but she was scared even more by a nagging feeling there was something important in the thought, something that would change her life. Completely.

But now that it was here, Abby wondered whatever she had found to fear in it. Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch. That was certainly it, but it was just nonsense. Dog-eared doggerel. Nothing to fear in that. Except…

Snap! She snapped out of her reverie and snapped. “Would you put her to bed?” Damn that Dicky. Edie had him wrapped around her little finger and got away with murder. He wouldn’t put his foot down either, just kept threatening “You just wait until your mother gets home”. Not that it did much good and Edie just kept getting worse. Well, Abby wouldn’t have allowed it, that was for darn certain. Justice delayed was justice denied.

“Good,” said Dicky. “You can make sure justice isn’t delayed by spending some quality time with your daughter.” Oh, God, she thought with a sigh, here we go again. The same old argument. The same old tired story. Dicky wanted Abby to take a stronger role in their daughter’s life, to start spending some ‘quality time’ with her — as though time were something that could be spent. Something that could be hoarded. He just had no idea what it was like to struggle at a career in the fickle world of tv soap where producers would script you out of existence in the blink of an eye, then set the stage for another actress with the old plastic surgery and amnesia routine. Then to come home and find supper not cooked and the living room a mess and the brat screaming. Really screaming. Then your beloved looks at you and says “Here. She’s all yours.” before thrusting the noisemaker into your bosom. And then not getting any because he says he has a headache. Yeah, right. She’d heard that excuse more than once. Well, she’d like some quality time herself. Some quality fucking time. But no, he wants a romantic dinner and sweet words on the pillow. Then he looks at me as though it’s my fault men and women are different about sex and says, “I’ve seen you looking at other men”. Well, it’s not my fault I need sex, Abby growled to herself. I just do, and who’s not going to look when you got nothing at home? And who’s not going to wish? But there’s no harm in that because it’s just looking, it’s just wishing. It’s not real. And thank God for that! Because if wishes were real, she’d be in trouble.

Real trouble.

It had started when a cute little blonde started on script. He had nice buns, a wide smile, and an engaging personality. He used them well — pretty clearly, he was screwing his way to the top, and had made it clear he considered Abby in his path. The little hussy wouldn’t take no for an answer, pursuing her relentlessly with small favours, pressing his body against hers whenever that brought them together. Lord he was good looking, so what’s a frustrated girl to do? I mean, I didn’t go looking for it, she justified it to herself. It just happened. I mean I can live with that — I don’t suppose it’s even worth telling Dicky about; it would just upset him when what happened really means very little. But now Jhikl’s asked me to spend a week in the Caribbean with him. He’s Danish, or one of those Scamndinavian countries. And I want to go. In fact, I’m obsessed with going but I can’t. I mean that’s something entirely different, going off for a week of sun and sex with another man. That’s premedicated, well, something like that. I mean it stinks. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.

And with that, she forced the wish away. Unlike the Rider who, if anything, suffered from too much self-analysis, too much introspection, Abby was a thorough non-introvert (which is not necessarily the same as an extrovert). For instance, she was totally unaware of the old-fashioned values she had just demonstrated, and, for that matter, her old-fashioned double-standard. To Abby, those were just the way things were — part of the reality she had to deal with. And when one found one’s feelings at odds with the way things were, then one called on one’s will power to shut them down, to deny.

But what happens when the undeniable meets the ultimate denial? Abby was about to find that out. By co-incidence, but no coincidence, so was the Rider.

All she wanted was to be happy. Was that so much to ask, Abby wondered? She stared out over the beach to the water, purposely looking away from Jhikl’s lithely tanned body adorning the towel beside her. Trophy stud, she thought to herself. A real trophy stud that more than one other woman had cast covetous glances at. Then looked at Abby, sizing up the mismatch between young stud and older actress, wondering how easily they could insinuate themselves into that gap and him into their gaps. It was that kind of a world — dog eat pussy — and lap dogs like Jhikl were a favourite delicacy.

Well, they could have him as far as Abby was concerned. Take him away and take him to bed and take advantage of him. The trip hadn’t turned out at all like she’d hoped. And wished. And now she could see nothing but trouble ahead. Just for wanting to be happy.

Jhikl stirred beside her, murmuring “wassamatta honey?” in that sultry voice that used to stir her. His hand slipped across her belly, resting lightly on the stretch marks that still showed, years after Edie’s birth, and even after extensive reconstructive surgery. He said they were a turn-on but Abby knew better. No doubt, he’d tell his next step up the ladder her flat, unmarked tum was perfect, and probably hint how he’d left an older woman because of her stretch marks. Probably joke about how ugly they were. Bitch, Abby thought. She’d hooked up with a power- and money-hungry bitch. One who’d bend to blackmail. There’d already been a few hints of that. She shoved the hand away.

“What’s wrong, sweets?” Beside her, Abby could feel Jhikl rising, lifting his upper body and supporting it with one hand behind. She felt the other hand move across her shoulder, then lightly stroke her earlobe, a caress that only yesterday would have sent her into waves of pleasure. But now she flinched away, a movement that translated into her standing up and staring off down the beach.

If it were a postcard, it would have sold a million copies. Metres and metres of wide white sand, froth-laced waves hemming an azure sea, ozone-depleted sky brimming with fluff-formed cloud. No — a greeting card, that’s what it should have been. From the Romantic Visions series. In the foreground the woman stands while behind her the man reaches out, arms linking the gulf between water and sky. Faded in text, ‘When we met, the stars held their breath. So I hold mine waiting for your return.’ The mandatory fake handwriting in black ink, the kind meant to suggest the sender has sought the personal touch, given it a lot of thought. Open the card and the illusion continues. ‘Missing you. Missing you. Missing You.’ All that was missing, Abby sniffed to herself, was a sappy ‘Forever yours.’ But the tableau was posed, the emotions fake. Actor and actress already thinking of their next gig. Crew already breaking down the set.

She felt and heard Jhikl stand behind her, trunks rustling, sand compacting under his feet. Then felt his arms try to slip around her waist, knowing they’d next reach up to cup her breasts — her pendulous, breastfed-one-too-many-children tits as her agent called them, explaining why Abby was passed over for all the younger roles — then knead and mash them out of duty, out of some misplaced idea that all Abby ever needed was a good pound of round in the rump. The touch turned her cold and she knocked downwards and backwards with her arms, displacing his, a trick she’d learned in her one cop series. God, she couldn’t even remember what the title was now. “Abby. What’d you do that for?” But Abby wasn’t there to listen, had simply walked away, frothing with an anger she couldn’t fathom. “Abby! What’s the matter, hon? Do you want to talk about this?”

It was amazing how quickly even a shouted voice died in this broad expanse. And amazing how thoughts still managed to reverberate. Abby kept trudging across the sand, aimlessly aimed at the beach, mentally watching Jhikl’s receding form, seeing his consternation, his awkward indecision to pick up the towel or not, reading his lips, the lips that had given so much pleasure. “Abby! Come on baby. What’s bugging you? Abby! You got to talk about these things. You just can’t let them fester inside.” Then she was too far away to see his lips and the sounds of the ocean closed around her.

Talk about what?, she thought. An inner chasm of emptiness? A feeling that made no sense? A jabbing pain that had no physical cause? Only yesterday she’d been happy, thought she’d been happy. But when she’d woke that morning, it was into a suffocating sense of doom. Impending fate. Dangling participle doom.

Destiny.

She’d lain on the bed, the idea reverberating in her head. Destiny. Destiny’s day. And the panic had seized her, roared upwards, consumed her. She’d fought it. There was no reason, she’d told herself. No cause. It was just another morning, just another waking. Then she’d felt Jhikl stir beside her, turned to him, saw the soft lines of his face, the weight-lifted sculpturing of his chest. One leg casually scissored over the other, a hint of member under the artful swathe of sheet across his middle. He just never stopped — even asleep, the pose was one you’d find in a boyie magazine. Yesterday it had thrilled her and she’d plied his member awake, taking him in a jill rabbit burst of ecstasy, 20 seconds of high riding, hip grinding thrust that had propelled her into groaning orgasm. Today she found it revolting.

Destiny. Destiny’s day.

She couldn’t shake the thought.

She kicked at a washed-up condom, missed, took her time, hooking it with her toes and flinging it out into the waves. Then walked on.

Men!, she thought bitterly. They were either whimpering nags or spineless yes ma’ams. Take Jhikl for example — God please take him! She hoped he wasn’t there when she got back to the hotel, that he’d figured it out and had taken himself off. — now he was a real yes ma’am. Was it good for you too? Yes ma’am. Did you enjoy that? Yes ma’am. You don’t mind if I drop off to sleep now? Yes ma’am, no, yes, I mean no ma’am. But don’t you want to spurt? It’s okay ma’am. You mean you don’t mind at all that I’m done in 20 seconds when it takes you an hour to ejaculate? No, ma’am. Don’t you feel cheated? No ma’am. Oh come on, admit it. Don’t you just hate that I can cum with just a twick of your bic but you have to work at it? No ma’am. You really don’t mind? No ma’am. So tell me. When was the last time you spurt? In the shower this morning ma’am. Oh! That’s why you were so long. And I thought you were just getting clean. It’s a big job, ma’am. Yes, I can see that.

Then there was Dickie. Dear sweet nagging Dickie. She looked out over the ocean, seeing not just the thousands of kilometres of their physical separation, but the psychological gulf. The lies she’d told to be here. The lie that was her marriage. The years of constant fighting. Saw that she’d never tried to understand his point of view. Never tried at all. Maybe that was why, in public, he was another yes ma’am but in the privacy of their home he became a nag, a minstrel of misery — she liked that turn of phrase — and, everytime he did, Abby got her back up. And the misery went on.

did you hear about the miracle baby?,
it had a vagina and a brain.

Abby shook her head sadly. God, where had she heard that? And why had it flipped through her mind?

a woman’s definition of foreplay —
a four course meal and a burp.

Go away, Abby thought. That was one of Dickie’s jokes, one of the ones she’d sometimes overhear when he was out in the kitchen drinking tea with his buddies. They seemed to collect these bad jokes and trade them like playing cards. Giggle, giggle. Hey! Did you hear about

the woman who woke one morning with a cobra in bed beside her?
she didn’t know if she was coming or going.

yeah, and the undertaker couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

but did you hear what happened to the snake?
it was arrested for impersonating a man.

Abby shook her head again, harder this time. This was weird. More than weird. Abby had always prided herself on her mental sobriety, her — what Becky called — ‘straight-laced’ mind. Her seriousness, her no-nonsense approach. But now jokes — bad jokes — just kept cascading through her head, like she was standing outside the kitchen eavesdropping. No, it was like she was in the kitchen, she was part of it. In there like a french tickler as Dickie would say. In all the way. She got them, understood them, somehow shared the bitterness behind them.

what about the woman who wore a strap-on inside out?
she was arrested for the same thing.

so, hear about the woman who advertised for a man?
wanted: domestic god. must be able to cook and sew.
premature ejaculator preferred.

Wanted. Domestic god. Yeah, that’s what she had always craved, wanted Dickie to be. A servant with a dildo. No, not even that. Just a self-propelled vibrator. Exactly what she’d found in Jhikl. Had had. And found wanting. Not a flesh and blood human being. Not a person with wants and needs like hers. Like Dickie. She started sobbing, letting go in a shameful rush of sadness and tears. Domestic god. The phrase seemed to mock her, reverberating in her mind, then coming from the clouds, from the waves, from the sand. Domestic god. Domestic God.

Domestic GOD.

Then it stopped. Completely. Even the surf went silent, the waves now mute, the wind dumb. It was preternaturally hushed — you could have heard a prick spurt, was how Abby described it later. Gazing around at this mad world, she could feel but not hear her own stilted breathing. Couldn’t even hear the rush of blood in her veins as she rose, slowly, legs tingling from her long squat, ears screaming for sound the way waterlogged lungs screech for air. The way her eyes squealed ‘No More! No More!’, for they saw too much; saw the sun touch the ocean, unleashing a single pulse of golden light that shot forward to touch the clouds and cause them to boil. God, they’d finally spent some decent money on effects, a part of her said. Then realized she was wrong. It was the clouds from The Ten Commandments recycled. They parted, no — they formed, no — they vaporized. Leaving words. Words in the sky that shook her, terrified her. Words she read and heard as voice over — a male voice; cultured, resonant, strong, precise; each syllable perfectly spaced and enunciated — rolled from the clouds.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

It repeated.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

And once more.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

Sound returned as Abby collapsed, folding down on her legs, breasts crushing against her thighs. How long she stayed like that she didn’t know. She came to in the dark, to find a dog licking her face, the mongrel whining, shaking with fear and anticipation. She shooed it away and stood, shaking the sand off her legs. And started back.

Now she knew where she was going.

So, is that a ten litre bra, or
are ya just enjoying the show?

"Gentlemen & Ladies!!!” The M.C.’s voice rang through the stage curtain. “The JackRabbit Club is proud to present, for the first time anywhere…”

God, she was nervous. Sure, she’d rehearsed, spent weeks perfecting the routine, honing it with promptu and impromptu performances at home and at work, forcing it on Dickie and Becky. Even Edie. Once — but Edie had told Dickie, and Dickie had told Abby to keep their daughter out of it. And, sure, she’d taken the time to perfect her costume, working out the makeup, even put on weight for the role. But it wasn’t enough. She was sure of that, certain she was going to bomb, be booed off the stage.

“…the incomparably scintillating…”

Deep breathe — god, her chest felt constricted — come on girl, you can do it. Another deep breathe, practise the mantra — relaxing relaxing relaxing. Ready. Here goes.

“…Schtudmeister himself! Ladies and gentlemen! — Betcher David!!!”

Betcher David. Betcher David. Betcher David. The name echoed away into a scattering of polite applause. The curtain felt heavy, could she pull it aside? Managed. Walk into the spot light. Throw the first line.

You know, I was talking to the missus last night,
well actually, she was talking to me, I mean in between
you know and falling off to sleep, and she said something.

She said behind every successful woman, there’s a good man.

Well, I thought about that, I mean she was asleep so there
wasn’t really much else to do, and I figured out she had it wrong.

It’s not that there’s a man behind, but there’s a man
inside every woman.

I mean, why do you think they’re called feemales?

Silence. Not even a snicker. Abby shaded her eyes from the spotlight, trying to judge her audience. But all she could see were backlit shapes, waiting, expectant. Was that Becky near the front? Couldn’t make out the face. Try the next line.

Whasamatter? Yeah, you with the twin derringers.
You wantta put them away? They’re making me nervous.

Last time a woman looked at me like that
I ended up married,
with children.

Silence. Not even a snigger. God, she thought, this is so different from working to camera. Screw up there and you don’t read about it for months. Screw up here though…

Anyways, now you think about being that man.

I mean what’s it like? Here you are inside some cigar chomping,
oestrogen-laced power maniac and all you want to do is
get out the frillies and settle back into a nice evening
of flipping through the family photographs, you know,
a little wine,
a little indulgence in memories,
a few caresses and maybe, just maybe, you’ll…

well, you know.

Nothing. Maybe Dickie was right. He’d said it would never work, that there was no market for male impersonators.

You do know, don’t you?

Damn. I told my agent not to book me into any more
girl scout conventions.

And I thought it was just a case of clit envy.

So anyways, you’re imagining you’re that man.
Do you get your needs acknowledged?

Nooo.

I mean do you get treated to flowers?

Nooo.

Do you get little presents that say ‘hey babe, I love you’?

Nooo.

You don’t. You get ignored.
You get treated just like a husband.

A giggle!

God, was that a laugh I heard?

Quick, somebody call a doctor.
I think one of these stiffs is alive.

Four giggles! And a guffaw! For a line that wasn’t even hers — not that any of them really were. Maybe he wasn’t right, maybe Dickie’s reaction was less than impartial. He did seem threatened by it, by the routine, by the cross-dressing for the part. What was it he said? If you play the man, what role do I have?

So I asks myself, lying there thinking
while the missus snores beside me,
‘So which came first, the husband or the inner guy?’

And I get the answer.
Right in between a ugghuh and a aggggghhh from the missus.

It was the egg came first.

Three, four, ten tables were laughing. This was better than working to camera. There if you succeed you don’t read about it for months. Here though…

Hey. Come on. Stop it.
What do you think this is — a comedy routine?

This is a serious discussion on male/feemale differences.
Now look, I know it’s illogical but
it's just the way the male mind works.
You input A and B and you don’t get C, you get 333.

Well, OK, sometimes you get testosterone.

Thank God for Becky. She’d supported Abby all the way, hadn’t laughed or made rude comments, hadn’t dismissed the voice on the beach.

Now, I want you to think about that.

The egg came first.

And doesn’t that tell us a lot about the

so-called war between the sexes?

Had even helped, fed her lines, suggested the chicily demure outfit she was wearing — a femalish suit with ruffed shirt and pink rose stuck into the lapel. Said don’t wear pumps — women get uncomfortable around a man who’s taller than them.

Not that it’s much of a war.

Isn’t it kind of like Iraq going up against the States —
you know, surplus scuzz bombs
against computer-guided, laser assisted, bombastic genius,
reen berets?

Jock straps against falsies?

And it was Becky who’d said she knew the Jackrabbit’s manager and would try to line up a gig. Becky who’d made tonight possible.

The egg came first.

Now I know there’s a lot of women say
it’s not their fault feemales come at the drop of a zipper
but males can’t get no satisfaction
without pumping for an hour.

That’s just evolution they say —
women are so fertile the brakes had to be put on somewhere
and, if the shoe fits, men should wear it.

And Becky who’d encouraged her to follow her instincts and develop the routine around male/female differences, around the dissatisfaction she’d found herself facing on the beach. And whatever did happen to Jhikl? He’d just disappeared from the face of the Earth, gone, like his function was finished and he’d been written out of the script.

I mean who needs condoms?
No spurt. No hurt.

She’d seen it happen to better characters.

And you wonder why men don’t like Mutha Nature.

Maybe Dickie would be written out too. Hell. Maybe Abby herself would get to meet the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky. The one that spoke on the beach. The one that fed her the lines.

So tell me.

Is that a ten litre bra?
Or ya just enjoying the show?

The one that had turned her world upside down, inside out, and back to front.

Well, fuck him. Fuck Dickie and fuck the whole lot of snivelling insecure pricks if they couldn’t take a joke. Fuck’em all.

Abby was not in a good mood. The latest edition of The Bi-National Enquirer had started a row between her and Dickie that she was sure meant the end of their marriage. But — as she wished she’d told him — frankly my dear, she couldn’t give a damn if some slick-clit, illiterate pair of boobs on the hoof had had the temerity to ask Dickie, “And what does Mrs. David think of all this?” — meaning his success, David’s that is, Betcher David’s incredible ride to superstardom. And then the engorged labia to actually publish his answer, Dickie’s that is, under the headline ‘Who wears the skirts?’ with a mocked up shot of Dickie in one of them, a nice little number actually, alongside the now almost iconic image of Betcher David strutting his ‘stuff’ in front of a flag-draped fireplace — complete with wine glass in hand and a cum hither look Jhikl would have envied. Nothing much more than commercial photography really, but commercial photography can be damned good. And the patch up job on Dickie’s skirt showed it was meant to be known it was not meant to be a real photograph — a few too many lost lawsuits had made The Bi a little more cautious about things like that. And Abby could understand Dickie’s resentment. For sure there’d be more lewd reportage but, sorry Dickie, that was kind of her stock in trade. That divide between male and female where the snide and the crude, the rude and the sublime reside. That gulf where we struggle with our own inner dualities. Yes. Vive! la difference! cause it put the bread on the table honey.

Besides — Dickie baby — if the skirt fits, wear it.

For Abby now had no doubt that Dickie had a female inside him, just as she had Betcher David. A female Dickie wouldn’t admit to: angry, brassy, loud, controlling; the personification of all the traits he buried below his surface image of the emotional and intuitive male. And not just Dickie, but all men kept this shadow self, this invasion of their opposite polarity, hidden, out of sight, denied. And all women too kept their own males in check. Each sex locked into a parody of its totality, afraid to express the aspects they’d been taught weren’t part of their gender. Their proper role. Each sex, she now saw, belittled and demeaned by the labels and their judgements. Each isolated from the other by revulsion at the sight of its own shameful shadow. But, like moths to flame, or tongue to sore tooth, or any of dozens such cliches, the abhorred attracts, fascinates.

That was the vein Abby’d tapped, the motherlode of internal strife that had propelled Betcher to stardom, and taken him from nightclubs to talk radio, then talk tv where her previous work as an actress was uncovered. Fawned over. There was talk of guest spots on sit coms, evening soaps, a movie — even a porno, David Does Dallas. Dickie had insisted she scotch that. And she’d had to learn to do stand up sitting down, put up with put downs, and pretend friendship with yet another faceless host. Oprah and Leno, Letterman and King, they’d merged into a composite image of tasteless vacuity that, in the end, cared less for her message than the chance to skewer the messenger. Did your father dress you funny? What made you come out of the kitchen? And what do you recommend for stuffing? (Really dry bread crumbs, home-made, and lots of good-old sage became her stock reply to the latter.) It had been irritating at times but Abby had understood, seen it all for what it was — the caverning maws of The Biz had opened; swallowing Betcher to feed, ruminate, finally fart him out when his twenty minutes were done.

And all it had taken was a voice on a beach. A voice that was no longer there.

It didn’t need to be. It hadn’t happened the first time Abby dressed and walked into the limelight — that had been an actress putting on a role. But somewhere in the weeks and months after, sometime among the thousand strides across the divide, a whole other side of her personality had opened and a completion had been made. Betcher David became real. From then on, the voice was inside, more like her own thoughts than external source. Part of her, free at least, basking in the attention. Sharing himself, and in that sharing s/he’d found a new Abby; more complete, more replete, without the sense of inner vacuum that had sucked her steps across the sand. She’d come to live, hell to be her own version of eclectic kitchen kitsch. In the kitchen and of it, but out of it and apart.

And that — no matter how much Dickie protested it was the dirty ditties among the dishes, the gritty gibes at the garborator that grated — was his real problem. Abby had broken free, shattering the implicit promise that, til death us do part, she would be a role, a figurehead, a comfortable familiarity. Wife. Breadwinner. Absent mother. The bastard that, joined in the communion of shared frustrations, Dickie could rail against among his mates. Now the bastard was a bitch, and it was his mates who did the railing. Riding Dickie unmercifully. She’d seen them just yesterday prancing around the kitchen table in a mocking parody of the male thrust — giggly chanting And does he do this? Thrust. Thrust. And does he do that? Thrust. Thrust — while Dickie sat at the table, face buried in his hands, writhing with shame. It was vicious and cruel in the way of grade schoolers; ribald comeuppance, a taking down by his peers of a member who’d let his partner break the rules. Break free. And yes, Abby had felt some sympathy, but she’d seen through to the truth. Dickie chose to be ashamed. Dickie chose to submit to these ancient rites. Dickie chose his prison.

Abby chose different. And that was where their marriage diverged.

“How can you do this to me?,” he had shouted, throwing The Bi down on the table where it had fluttered and died like an angry yellow eye. “How can you do this to Edie?” Abby’d been fascinated by the anger, had never seen Dickie express it so openly, so, so femininely, channelling it instead into the barbed bitching and bitter jibes of the masculine. Fascinated, but repelled. If only he could see how close he was to breakthrough, how near his own voice was. And so Abby had shouted back, trying to pry his understanding out of the ruts and the rituals, “How can you do this to yourself? Who cares what some rag vag prints? Who cares what your friends insinuate? Don’t give them the power for god’s sake Dickie. Don’t give it away!” She’d walked over to the table, picked up the tabloid and viciously torn it to shreds, her own anger rising. “That’s all this is worth. Cat litter! And if you take all this shit, then you’re not worth a damn thing more. Cat litter!”

And that was when he had gone silent. Coldly silent. Frigid. Then turned and walked out. Back in character.

Arrrrgggggggggggghhhh, Abby threw the pieces of the paper in the air, then stalked through their fluttering descent out to the living room of their new condominium, (tastefully decorated in tones of earth and sky, and recently featured in American Living) and sat on the tan leather couch, mentally cataloguing the noises she could hear in the bedroom — a drawer slamming, a closet door swept shut, a heavy zipper’s closing. She could see it all as clearly as reading a radio script. Footsteps in the hall, approaching, passing behind her, the schwclick of deadbolts on the front door. The moment of no return. A voice, his voice. “I’ll be picking Edie up from school. Don’t try to take her.” If there was a pause, a fraction’s opening for Abby to come to her senses and beg him not to leave, it wasn’t taken. There was nothing to say. Then the door had shut. And she was alone.

But complete. And all of a sudden she wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

There was a price, and part of it had just walked out the door. The other part stayed right with her, and she was only beginning to realize what it was. Burying her face in her hands, she sobbed, “Goddamn you Dickie! Goddamn you!,” blaming him for the feelings that beat on her like heavy rain. Pain. Hurt. Shame. Hopelessness. Blaming him, but at the same time knowing what they were, whose they were. They were Betcher’s feelings. No, they were hers, Betcher was her, she was Betcher and, now she saw, her rapprochement with her other side did not allow her to pick and choose which feelings she could acknowledge. No matter how much she tried to bury him, push the feelings away, Betcher came through loud and clear. He didn’t want to lose his daughter. He didn’t want to lose his home. He didn’t want to lose. Weep, whimper, curse, sob — she’d been in a storm once when the rain became sleet and the sleet became snow, became hail, became rain so fast you didn’t know what was hitting you. That was how she experienced her feelings now — the control, the years of denial were swept away and Abby was flooded, racked, wrenched and torn as the too long denied claimed its birthright. Her awareness. Her acknowledgement. But too fast — like too many fireworks to appreciate each rocket, each feeling’s impact was lost in the next, rendered almost meaningless in the overall gestalt. Except one that finally rocketed through and dominated. Anger. Anger she took out on the only person she could. Because she couldn’t take it out on the one person she should.

“Fuck you Dickie. It’s all a joke. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” She was ranting, frothing, barrelling from curse to worse, ricochetting between screams and slapping the phone off the wall, schwooping magazines off the coffee table, throwing Dickie’s photo at the fireplace. “A fucking joke!” Kicking his vase when it was down. “A joke!” Hitting a thundering crescendo with flailing forearm chops to the piano keys.

Then the anger was gone. Dissipated. Expressed, however poorly targeted.

Drained, Abby stumbled over to the bay-style window, but barely registered the sweeping metropolis her alter ego had conquered to afford this commanding view. Had no feeling for the symbolism of that vista — blocked to one side by her building’s condo companion, she could look to the other and see miles of city buildings falling away to malls and suburbs. All filled with people. Filled with one-sided folks who didn’t know any better. The root of her pain burst through.

“Why me?” It was barely a whisper, but in her head it reverberated every bit as much as the voice on the beach had. Surely the people down there heard. Surely they stopped and looked up to find the source of that anguished cry. “Why me? I was happy, or at least as happy as I expected to be. Why did you come to me? Why did you open me up to this?”

She was wandering, aimless, now. Racked with sorrow and inner pain. The world seemed darker, more limited. Less alive. More like destiny’s beach than success’ reach. Her vision narrowed, and she found herself staring at the leadlighted french doors to the balcony, watching them swing open at the end of a long tunnel. She walked out, or was she pulled?, into a constricted maze of plants and expensive deck furniture. Just a few weeks ago, this had been a bare and oversized concrete oblong. A vagrant marvel at its transformation — Dickie’s project; his point of contact with the earth so many floors below: the roots she’d lost contact with — flitted past. And she felt a nudge from behind. Then another. And another.

Swinging the tunnel around, expecting to find Dickie, or maybe Edie, there was nothing. Just another nudge. But this one from the front, now pushing her backwards. Towards the railing. The nudge came with a low bzzzzz. Another. Another low bzzzz. Like a symphony reaching its crescendo, a hundred bzzzzs joined in, the sound — amplified by the tunnel’s raucous echo — pushing her backwards like a piledriver. Somewhere she’d read that plants could communicate and she felt that now, felt their condemnation, their anger at her upset of their brave new world. ‘Get a grip on it girl,’ she said to herself. ‘Plants don’t talk. That’s as silly as talking insects.’ But the feeling wouldn’t go away, she felt it as a pressure on all but her front, like contractions in the birth canal pushing her towards the railing. She swung the tunnel, looking out. How many floors up?, she thought. How certain it would be, just that one fractional moment of decision and then letting life take its course. The one course it had. Birth into death. The one path it could never avoid. Why not?, she thought. Why not give it away. Let it go.

The phone rang. One of those electronic buzzes that are replacing the old fashioned drinnnggg. Or had it been ringing incessantly for the past few moments? Was that the bzzzzz she’d been hearing? Abby couldn’t tell, but some inner force pushed her away from the rail, battled its way back to the balcony doors. She stepped through, almost fell on her face as the plants’ forceful condemnation suddenly stopped. Crawled to the phone, found it under bits of broken vase. Hoisted herself up and around to sit on the floor, back against the couch. Forced a hoarse whisper. “Hello.”

“Abby! Is that you?” It was Becky, her voice near panic. “Thank god I got you. I just had this overwhelming feeling I needed to call. I can’t explain it, but are you all right? Why didn’t you answer the phone right away? What’s wrong?”

But Abby couldn’t talk. She felt like a bung had been jammed down her throat. She gasped, choking, clawed to pull air past the obstruction. Becky’s voice almost screamed, “Abby! Talk to me!”

Then implored, “Abigail… please!”

The pleas seemed to do it. [Old manners die hard.] {And old manors for that matter.} With a pluppp, the bung let go. Her first words were a hardly intelligible “Dickie’s gone. He’s left me,” but they sharpened into a flood that built and built, the whole story coming out, nurtured with that’s okays and let it gos from Becky. And not a judgement, no hint of condemnation. No puzzled shake of the head. Thank God for Becky, Abby thought. She was exactly what Abby needed. A friend who just let her be Abby. Or Betcher. Let her be someone who felt and heard plants. Heard voices on the beach. The flood dwindled, and Abby found herself sitting on the island of Beckie’s voice.

“There’s a book I’d like you to read. You don’t have to buy it, I’ll loan you my copy. A friend of mine actually wrote it, but that’s not why I’m recommending it. I think it may help, give you a way of looking at your situation.

It’s called…

Paparazzi!

Abby bolted the gauntlet of staccato flashes, shielding her face with Betcher’s arms, and ducked into the limo, crunching down into the rear seat. “Driver! Get us the hell out of here!” she ordered.

Damn that Jhikl!

‘Look. That’s just the price of being a star,’ Betcher thought to her. ‘You can’t change the world, so let it go.’ ‘But I can’t stand the unfairness,’ Abby gnashed her teeth, hating the voice of reason. ‘The hide of that prick!’ But reason wouldn’t leave. ‘Oh, he’s got a hide alright, and yes he does have a prick. And he’s got a damn good ghostwriter too. All in all, a sound recipe for a successful lick and tell. But you don’t have to buy into it.’

“But there’s millions reading that trash,” Abby griped, forgetting to hold her tongue. “Pardon ma’am?” the driver asked. “Nothing!” she spat. “Keep your eyes on the road and your nose out of it.” “Yes, ma’am.” ‘And you…,” she turned on Betcher, careful this time to hold it inside, ‘Don’t give me that SAS!’

‘If I don’t, who will?’ Betcher queried, laughing lightly. ‘Better me than The Minstrel, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What?’ she snorted mentally. ‘Better a non-existent fictional character than a bloody figment of my imagination? Hodson’s choice if you ask me. Besides, you know bloody well that book doesn’t exist.’

She turned away, determined not to listen. They’d had this argument too many times.

The Teachings of The Bloody Minstrel. Betcher had lapped it up, reading Becky’s copy of the book at least half a dozen times before returning it. Memorized the dictatums. Meditated on their meaning. Tried to apply them to his life. Which was Abby’s life. Which, after 333 lectures on SAS — Self-Awareness Shit! — had totally pissed her off. {You’da thought she’d be shitted off.} [I’m surprised you had the intestinal fortitude for that pun.] Countering a constant semi-conscious colloquy of oh, but don’t you sees and the eighth dictatum would suggest thats was worse than having a conscience. In fact, they’d almost come to blows. Once. Then Betcher reminded Abby what that would mean, and suggested she might contemplate the first and second dictata. {Shouldn’t that be dictati?} [As in, dictati, ergo stalin?] Fuck you, she’d replied and would have left if she could have. Betcher smugly suggested she consider the applicability of the 13th Corollary.

Blow it out my ass, she’d retorted petulantly.

And that was the worst of it. Armed with SAS, Betcher had become a frigging prig, a been-there-done-that-got-the-point blow-hard who reduced her to childish frustration. Full of hot air, allusions and quotations from Chairman Minstrel. Almost twenty-four hours a bloody day! Even invading her dreams, fabricating a faceless, obsessive-compulsive alter-ego to demonstrate his ruminations, or the applicability of the sixth and seventh dictata. Alter-boy seemed to have an affinity for animals. Bor-ing. She’d have given anything for a good wet dream.

Or the blissful slide into the darkness between dreams, when the self — or selves, as the case history may be — disappeared.

Then, Betcher had insisted on buying his own copy, their copy, of The Teachings, but he/she/they couldn’t find it. Not in any book store. Not in any library. Not anywhere. That’s strange, said Becky. No problem, said Betcher. Citing Minstrel’s citation that we create our own reality, he simply set alter-boy to writing. Betcher wanted a reality where the book existed, even if it was only in Abby’s dreams. What Abby wanted was a reality where bloody Jhikl and his goddamned book didn’t exist.

He hadn’t been written out of the script at all. He’d just been writing his own.

Already three weeks on the best seller list, Abby Dear Betcher had rocketed Jhikl to international prominence. Not too surprising. His long blonde hair and sculpted-to-instant-wide-on physique had coupled with his smarmy poise and PR’d image of a carefree surfer (Hah!) to quicken the pulse for thousands of women. And Quicken the bottom-lines of more than one boyie magazine. He’d become the All-American heroine and the focus of more myths than Joseph Campbell could collate. According to The Bi-National Enquirer, he’d been mobbed in New York, rooted at least 30 virgins to exhaustion in Virginia, and routed an invasion of alien body snatchers in Sutherland, Maine. And that was an off day. So frequent were these stories — and so outlandish — The Bi, in an uncharacteristic fit of journalistic fervour, had even assigned a crack team to check them all out. Until the rag’s multi-national owner reminded its editor that another of its subsidiaries had published A.D.B. The team was disbursed to report on ESP, mongoloid UFOs and an upcoming total eclipse of the sun in NB said to signal the start of the latest and newest, all the rage, New Age.

But Abby, if any woman, knew a man doesn’t live on good buns alone. The fuel in Jhikl’s rise had been jealousy and rage. Not his, though it was there, but the envy of a million women and the spite of a million more; ignited and channelled by a loose network of Old Gal CEOs and MBAs calling themselves Real Wimmen. Real women indeed. Incensed by the legislative success of the men’s liberation movement, Real Wimmen waged clandestine campaigns against employment equity and equal rights, and had turned on Abby for her alleged betrayal of their sex: Betcher’s jibes at their complacency, his ridicule of their power, her jokes about men having to sleep their way to the top wearing blinders.

However, consummate media guerrillas, they’d waited until the fourteenth minute, when public and media interest were declining, to launch their campaign. It was a textbook example of the Nixon/Kissenger Doctrine: discredit them on the way down and they won’t even rate a whatever happened to? The nation-wide release of A.D.B. had been the first salvo, backed up with same-week gigs for Jhikl on every talk show Real Wimmen owned. Week two followed with a fax-cast flurry of Abby/Betcher jokes (Did you hear she did herself to get pregnant? It was in psycho.), swamped open lines, rumours, ‘She’s on drugs.’, innuendo, aspersions. ‘She really is a cross-dresser. Probably queer.’ {How droll. A thespian lesbian.} Outright lies. ‘Yeah, I’ve slept with her. Who hasn’t?’ By week three, the campaign had gone public and media outlets slavered to get Abby in their sights, paying outrageous sums to deliver Jhikl’s simple and consistently repeated message: ‘She’s schiz. A multiple personality. They should be locking her up, not letting her poison audiences.’

Quaint technique, Abby grudgingly admitted — running the flashback scenes as reflections in the window of the limo. Jumping out of the passing streetscape, their highlights intermingled with Betcher’s shadowed reflection, reminding her she was still in costume. Four levels of reality in one, she thought. That’s what Betcher would say The Minstrel would say. The world’s a looking glass and Alice never lived here at all. She just watched. Oh look, there’s Opah — funny I didn’t think she’d have any highlights. Oh, and look, there’s the sheets burning Betcher’s effigy down in Alabama. Looks good on him. And — oh my god — there’s a restaurant sells liverwurst on rye! What the hell was that question?

“Driver. Stop! Stop!”

She was back in the car a moment later, her question unanswered. It wasn’t New York and they’d refused to serve Betcher. Add that to the cancelled bookings — Real Wimmen was going to pay! She’d find a way.

‘You know, Axiom 19 states: if you can’t beat’em, join the dots for them,’ Betcher patiently counselled from the window. ‘Screw off,’ she thought, and powered it down, vanishing the reflection. Cryptic bloody bastard. What the hell does that mean? ‘Just that as long as you fight on their terms, there’s no way you can win. So don’t,’ Betcher answered from no where. ‘Turn it around. Confirm everything. If they ask, Are you on drugs? answer Why? do you have some? If they ask if you’ve stopped beating your Dickie? say No! Why should I? When they inquire Are you schiz? answer Yes. No! Maybe. In short, Abby dear, as they want to create reality, let them. They may not like what they get.’

“Don’t you dare call me that!” Abby snarled, her anger rising. “Pardon Ma’am?” the driver asked over his shoulder. “I’m not talking to you!” The driver threw up his hands. “Yes, Ma’am. But can I ask, since we’re almost there, if you’d like to go in through the garage. You’d avoid them that way,” he finished, pointing ahead where Abby could see a paparazzi phalanx running to form up at the front entrance to her condo. Her own Praetorian Guard. Cameras ready. A few eager mongeese already shooting. The flashes jammed her eyes with hatred, and she understood how the later emperors must have feared their guards’ ‘Hail Ceasar!’ hurrahs hiding the knives. Her penned emotions started boiling.

“Ma’am?” the driver repeated. “No,” Abby replied. Slowly. Coldly. “I’ll get out at the front door.” The flashes intensified as the car swept into the semi-circular driveway and then to a stop. Grasping the door, Abby swung it open and…

Fifteen seconds. Quiet on the set. Two, you’re medium wide. In ten. Two, loosen it up. Seven. Three, ready on the curtain. Five. That’s good Three. Four. Two, steady it up. Three. Cue applause. Two. Two, ready to move. One. Up on Two. Cue the music…

…and cue Joanie.

Wasn’t it Andrea Warhol said the way things are going everybody’s going to be famous for fifteen minutes?

Roll prompter. Two, start your tighten.

Well, what if you’re greedy? What if that’s not enough? Maybe you want half an hour. An hour. What do you do? Bite a dog? Chew tobacco? Vote Republican? Well, tonight, someone who’s solved that problem.

Two, that’s good. Hold it.

Ready on Three. He’ll come through the curtain.

In fact this lady, well this ‘person’, well I don’t really know what to call him, says ‘if you got the time, i got the personality.’ Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome please

Three!

for Betcher David and

Three don’t move yet! Wait on hi.. yi yi!

The Usual Crowd!

God look at that outfit! Two! To the audience! Who is it tonight? Take it. Little Beau Pete? Looks more like Julia Ceasar on dulse. Back to Three, start your pull. Well the audience likes it. That’s good Three, hold that two shot. Ready on Two…

Ah… Betcher?

[Smiling] No, Betcher couldn’t make it. Something about a rectal exam. But I could and I just have to tell you how happy I am to be here tonight Bobbi.

Two. Three hold your shot.

Ah, that’s Joanie.

No [Slight pause] Jo Knee couldn’t come either. She’s just lashed her hare.

Back to Three.

Two, medium shot on him…
errrr...

her hair?

It? Steady. And Two.

[Offhand] Yeah, you know, one of those wild ones from Australia. Says G’day, wanna boink? Doesn’t do much for me but hey it keeps her occupied.[Look around]

Three, medium Joanie.

Oh, hare!

Stay with it Two.

[Fast] What is an airport in Chicago! [Hopeful] Did I win? [Sag] No? [Resigned Shrug] [Move Around] [Openmouthed] Ooooh, Bobbi! What a lovely house you have! [Check for dust] A little spartan… did you decorate it yourself? Oh yes, ni-i-ice chair. Do you mind if I sit down? [Engaging Smile]

House? Take Three. I think it’s part of the act.

Please do.

Nice springs. [Brightly] Early Salvation Army?

Two, gimme a two.

[Embarrassed] Oh, excuse me. I’m forgetting my manners. We haven’t been introduced. I’m She Ra, and you’re Bobbi of course.

Take it.

Ah, Joanie.

[Taken aback] Funny. I could of sworn I said Jo Knee couldn’t come. [Concerned] A little Alzheimers in the family dear? [Brightly] Hey, that’s okay… best thing about Alzheimers is never having to remember you’re sorry.

Oh god. The network won’t like that.

Who cares? The audience does.

[Look around] Wow! [Wide eyes] That’s amazing. You have a laugh track in your own house! Girl, you really are insecure. But hey [Stage Wink] that’s okay. [Stage Nudge] Best thing bout insecurity is never doubting you’re sorry. Isn’t that right Bobbi? [Big smile]

Three!

Joanie!

[Exasperated] Look, you can call Jo Knee all you want but she won’t come. We have a very strict rotation and it’s not her.. AGgGHh rUMh AgFAah HRRAAAAAA BLLHHAGGHA

Two! Quick!

God what’s happening. Stay on it Two! Don’t let her out of camera. Somebody call 911. No, no, it’s just part of the act. Act? God, I wish we’d rehearsed this. Well, it looks like Little Beau Pete just lost his sheet. Three. Get Joanie’s reaction. Dig the duds underneath. Three! Where’d he manage to hide that sword?

Betcher?

Two!

[Statement] No. Hu!

Who?

[Forceful] Hu nKra. I am Hu nKra!

Three.

Sounds like a bad cough. You should get it che…

[Imperious] Silence! You may call me Lord Hu!

Thre.. Two

Hu?

[Doubly imperious] Lord Hu! And who are you?

Joanie, ah you got that, Joanie Carlsberg. You’re on The TonitE Show.

[Scanning] How can that be? [Perplexed] It’s afternoon! [Anger] Witch! By what black magic have you transported me here?

[Brandish Sword]

Oh oh. Wow, that’s
a big humswinger.

Hey. No magic. It’s just tape delay. Please sit down.

[Scanning] [Menacing Scowl]

Two, stay with him.

Three! I didn’t tell you to move. Ahh… just a question:
are we insured for sword play? Go
to Three.

Look, why don’t you just sit down. Here’s a nice Salvation Army cha…

[Shouting] Army!?

Two! Now! Widen it!

[Drawing erect] Are those your knights? Must I fight them to prove my valour! Very well! [ReBrandish Weapon] Draw your weapons you single-eyed spawn of hell!

What the hell’s going on? Oh god. He’s stalking for Two. Two hold your ground! Three! get Two! What about Joanie? Fuck Joanie. {Okay.} We got Jonestown right on network tv. Second thought Two, you’d better back off, keep the camera between you and the maniac.

[Cold anger] So!, you feint with me! Scoundrel! You’ll pay for toying with a warrior! [Charge!]

Three! Shit he hit the camera! Take Two. Where’s security? Somebody make sure we get the overnights. Shit he hit Two again.

Two! Two! Get off the lights!

[Triumphant] Aiy… not so tough as yee thought?

Two? Two?! Floor,
what’s happened to Two?
Three. Take Three.

[Mocking] Aiy… as yee seed yee shall reap.

Floor here. Sal on
Two fell off the
stage.

[Turning] [Challenging] Now!
Demon! Would ye too taste my steel?
[Charge] Agggggghhhh!!!!

Shit now he’s going
for Three! Floor, get on Two. Get security the fuck out there. Three! Back up! Back up!

Aggghhhh! Hyack. Blaaaaggg. Hurrrmmpp. Gackkkk….

Two! Get on him.

What the fuck’s going on? Talk about in-your face.
God look at those molars. Shit his breath is steaming up the lens.
Two! Reminds me: What’s blue and doesn’t fit?
Uggn, not that one. It’s sick.

agHHgGgghhHhhh…………..

What? Like, this isn’t?

Betcher?

Stay on it, Two.

[Cheerful] You betcha.

Widen it…

No. I’m Joanie. You’re Betcher. I hope. Do you know where you are?

That’s good.

Oh oh. [Sinking] It happened again didn’t it?

Three. Get around in
front…

Something certainly happened.

[Nervous] Who was on first?

I don’t care if
you’re in Two’s shot. Just bloody well do it.

No. Hu was on second.

[Straight] Who?

Hu.

Oh. [Still straight] So who was on first?

Take Three.

No. Hu was on sec.. Hang on here — deja hu! I think I’ve seen this skit before.

[Giggling] Of course you have. I mean there’s really only four basic jokes, and everyone’s been ripping them off ever since God first told them to Eve in the garden.

Just four?

Yeah. [Sudden Thoughtful.] Seems a shame she didn’t get them but, hey, people have been banished for less. [Throwaway] I’m just thankful God didn’t rib Adam first.

Listen, can we sit down and get serious for a moment.

Take Two.

[Puzzled.] You want that putz? I mean, no disrespect to Sirius, but she is a bit of a dog.

Back to Three.

I mean… forget it.

[Precise] So who, meaning who not Hu, was on first?

Two, gimme a two.

Sh.. he.. said his name was She Ra.

And take it.

[Confused] She Ra? That’s a new one. [Moving on] So who was on third?

Three on Joanie.

No. Hu was… no, you were. I mean you are. What did you mean that’s a new one?

[Offhand] Personality… they just pop out all the time. I can’t keep up with them.

That must be a problem.

Well… [Noncommittal] sometimes. Like they say, multiple personality is always having to go back to say you’re sorry. But don’t get me wrong. There are advantages.

Like?

Well [Searching] say I’m at a boring cocktail party, I get Hu nKra to come out and liven things up.

He does that alright. But tell me, when did it start?

[Straight] What?

The personalities. You started out as a cross dresser right?

[Dead straight] No. I was quite happy.

Ahhh…

{Lean forward} [Confidential] Having two personalities meant I was never lonely. And I always had someone to argue with. That’s important you know. It’s like isometric exercise, you know where you develop muscles by opposition. Abby and I had some of the best arguments.

Then…

Then Hu nKra showed up, one night, just out of the blue. We were both pretty embarrassed when we found out — we hate reading about our selves in the tabloids. Fortunately, we were able to settle out of court… [Muttered Aside] I never knew tv cameras were that expensive.

Speaking of which…

[Interject] But hey! [Laughing] As long as the tabs spell the names right, who cares? [Pause] Nice laugh track. [Resume] And after a while we figured out it was okay anyways. I mean, there is precedent — the mother, the son and the unruly ghost.

Oh…

[Yawning] Listen, do you mind if I lay down?

Why?…

[Explanatory] Well, you remind me of my shrink and I have some of the best naps when I see her.

Naps?…

Oh oh.

[Lightly] Yeah. It’s pretty restful when I can deke out the back door. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.

Cameras ready…

Ahhh… Who?

for anything.

{Waving down} No not Hu. He’s had his fling already.

Floor. Signal a break.

Promise?

You can say that again.

Ok… [Puzzled] But why? I really don’t like repeating myself cause I’m never sure if it’s really myself repeating myself. [Concerned] I’m not repeating myself am I?

In ten. Nine…

No…

[Relieved] Good. Cause I really don’t like repeating myself. Anyways, as I said, I’d like you to meet AgahHRackByLLyteebby.

Seven. Ready Black.

Six. Wrap it Floor.

Five…

Hang on there Betcher… we’re going to have to go to a commercial break. Folks, when we come back, hgghhggh, Who knows? Stay tuned!

Two. One.

Go to black.

{And don’t never come back.}

It had worked — like a charm. Damn him. Betcher’s cynical honesty had stymied the media. Accustomed to ritualistic no comments and categorical denials, a cheerful you betcha, sure’nuff, whatever you say gutted their questions, left them shadowboxing on the febrile veneer of their claimed moral outrage. But — Punch and Judy without Judy — the play was so patently ridiculous the jokes turned on the media. So the script was hastily thrown away and the media reverted to its only other mode, canonizing Betcher and The Usual Crowd with the ferocity they’d first crowned Abby. Love on the rebound could be no less forgiving. (Best of all, there’d been nothing Real Wimmin could do. Like fighting a martial artist, it had been their own force turned against them that won the day.)

Just like Betcher had predicted.

Betcher. Betcher. Bloody Betcher. God! she’d gotten tired of him. Tired of his smartass smile in the morning mirror, sick of his silly charades, fed up with his taking over everything from setting the alarm to ordering meals… shit, she hated vegetarian! Weary of feeling she was sleeping ten to a bed and she was the one shortsheeted, forced to the edge, and finally off. Her. Abby! Abifuckingail! The original personality. The real one. Who’d created Betcher in the first fucking place. Not that you’d know it anymore. He’d been letting her out less and less, especially in the act, claiming she didn’t have the skill to play the roles, the chutzpah to pull it off. Smoothly, too suavely, assuring her, let me take care of it all. Look at how well I’ve done so far…

Which made her feel like throwing up. Or was that just another side-effect of the estafanil?

Now that had been a trick, she gloated, privately, getting the prescription without him realizing just what it was for. And he said she couldn’t act! Hah! Thinking and talking in code for weeks, telling the shrink it was pms depression she needed help with, chemical help, “you know one of those new super-duper brain pills”, meaning the prozac cousins, promising instant change, a better mind for just a coupla bucks a pop, a more pleasing personality. Guarding that what she really wanted was a few less personalities, one less in particular. Scotching suggestions for prozac, zoloft, paxil, effexor, citing friends who’d tried each uselessly, or media reports of strange side-effects such as men growing clitties. (She could cite scores of these, mostly gleaned from her old friend The Bi-National Enquirer)

She’d arched an eyebrow in interest at the mention of estafanil. Lied through her teeth. “Oh, I’ve never heard of that.” Listened carefully, very thoughtfully to the description. Chemically unrelated to prozac class SSRIs, it was originally tested and marketed for schizophrenia. Kind of a super-duper triple-whammy with discernible effect on serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake and a very marked effect on dopamine levels.

“Interesting,” Abby murmured. “And you say it’s been found helpful in pms depression?” Well, that’s the thing with these new drugs, the shrink explained, full of useful knowledge and the prescription pad. All of these brain chemicals are involved in so many aspects of personality and the body, doctors just keep finding different disorders they seem to help with. Did you know prozac’s even being used for constipation?

“Creative or physical?” Abby joked, then sprang the trap. “Well, why don’t we give it a try? The estafanil. It can’t hurt…” me, she kept the thought unfinished. And had to choke off laughing at, which dictatum was it in Betcher’s bloody Teachings? Oh yeah…

And that is the eighth dictatum of self-awareness:

Give up collusion.

And what a strangled piece of loopy logic that had been, she tittered to herself. You create your own reality out of beliefs that were taught to you, absorbed as verities before you could question them. And now you collude with your teachers in maintaining those beliefs. So give up collusion. Give up creating a reality that others have taught you. Hah! Only Betcher could have swallowed that shit whole. Sure, Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch, she’d created her reality. She’d created the act. Created Betcher. And, yeah, look where it got her… caught, trapped in her own Francinestein. But it wasn’t her beliefs that had kept her trapped. No way Houdini. It had been the prick himself, with bloody Jhikl’s help of course, that had gagged and bound her, thrown her to the wolves, and turned away with a chuckle to hobnob on the television.

“God, I feel so sick…” Betcher’s voice in her mind was noticeably weaker, distant, throat-rough, like he was on day four of a five-day hangover. Which he was in a way. Except for the side-effects, the estafanil had worked like a charm, and much quicker than the shrink had said to expect. In fact, it was hardly a week before she knew it was working; Betcher started complaining about the side-effects. “Shut up,” she’d told him, her own teeth gritted from the headaches. Snarling, “You never felt my pms. You don’t know what it was like. Fact I’m rather glad to have you sharing this. For a change.”

For all its venom, the anger was more put on than real, a caution Abby felt necessary. No way she was going to let her real anger up. Not yet, not before it was too late for Betcher to take drastic measures if he figured out her plan.

“Well, I can’t understand how you could have felt like this when I never felt a thing.” Betcher had moaned. “Well, la Dee da,” Abby jibed back, drawing the syllables with derision. “You’re not a woman. You think because we share the same body you’d feel everything I do?” And when Betcher had no reply, when he didn’t jump and trample all over such a patently dumb argument, Abby had known his faculties were already slipping. He was losing his grip on her. It was going to work.

And — she couldn’t help the, dangerous, snigger — without a body, it couldn’t be called murder.

Could it now?

“Why?”

Betcher’s whine oozed wearily through the few remaining cracks, his voice faint, pained with the effort of being heard. But still cunning, aimed for effect, trying to twist the pain into sympathy. Desperately probing for any weakness that might allow a full frontal assault. Any weakness would do. “Why mother? Why did you do this to me?

Mother! Mo-th-er!!!”

It wasn’t working. Chuckling, Abby turned the page of her book. A Rub on the Wild Side was the fictional autobiography of Constance Clitoris, the first person, ever, to ride a motorcycle around the world — backwards — and Abby was thoroughly enjoying it. She found the humour subtly dry — far removed from Betcher’s bombastic bash’em — and the situations judiciously surreal. Like that description of a rear entry driveshaft, incorporating, as Constance put it, American efficiency, German chutzpah and Japanese creativity. Installed, it chugged and it lugged, then expired with a splat of viscous liquid. But not before Constance, an avid birder, had added another entry to her lifetime list, complete with footnotes and annotations on breeding and comportment, tongue style, diligence and a rating from one to ten. Abby couldn’t help laughing when she found Constance generally rated Scandinavians near the bottom of the list. Was intrigued to find Canadians consistently on top. {Of course.}

Betcher changed to a wheedle and probed again. “Mother, please talk to me…”

Enough was enough! “Oh would you pu-lease put a twist cap in it,” Abby gritted, snapping the book shut. Directing her attention inwards. Letting sarcasm express her anger. Digging. Poking. “Lord, the way you carry on, a person’d think you were being crucified.”

Needling back. “Besides, I’m not your mother.”

Emboldened he’d finally gotten her attention, Betcher pressed his advantage, modulating the wheedle down to an aggrieved sulk. “But why? Why are you abandoning me? What did I do?”

Abby laughed, scornfully. It was time, she decided, to take the gloves off. “What did you do? What didn’t you do? Listen you bastard. I made you. I brought you into the world. I fed you and clothed you. I got the gigs. I worked out the lines. Without me, Betcher David’d just be one more cross-dressing hump-and-clitillate working the dives for a couple of bucks shoved down your falsie. And a quick fiver in the back corner, tissues included. That’s all you’d be. But you got too cocky. You got too big for your condom. You thought you’d blow me off and swallow the glory, hog it to yourself. And sure you dressed it all up in that self-awareness shit — as though you actually were a self, spouting Minstrel’s nonsense like it actually had some meaning. Yeah, you could outargue me any day of the millennium, but that didn’t make you right. It didn’t justify what you tried to do.” Abby was almost shouting. “You tried to kill me!”

Betcher had no immediate reply — he’d pulled himself back to escape the force of Abby’s tirade. Moving back into Abby’s awareness, he briefly considered matching her anger, but discarded it — he just didn’t have the strength — in favour of his most reasoned and patient voice. The shrink. “So now you’re trying to kill me. But Abby, do you really think two wrongs make a right.”

It also didn’t work. “Wrong,” Abby gloated. “I’m not trying. I’m succeeding. You’re dead. You’re kaput. And you know the best part, Betcher dear? You’re going to meet your maker and she doesn’t give a fuck. That’s right, Betcher baby. Saint Michelle’s going to meet you at those big pearly gates and say, ‘Funny we don’t seem to have a record of your birth. What exactly did you say your name was?’ Then turn you away because you don’t exist. You never did. And you never will.”

“So, Mister Betcher David,” she finished triumphantly. Twisting the dagger. “Is that a ten litre condom or did someone just prick your balloon?”

She waited, ready. Primed to chop, slash, rebut any comeback. Ready for the kill. But there was no reply.

Then, feebly, barely audible over the washboard roar of adrenaline drenched blood, a child’s soft voice. Singing. Kind of. Daisy daisy. Flat, listless, practically tuneless… tell me your answer dooo. Fading perceptibly… the days are long, the schlong is gong, tel me yur ansr…

With a final gurgle, Betcher disappeared.

Just the way shit flushes down a toilet.

“So, what do you think?”

Abby rubbed her head tiredly, pulling back from making yet another choice. There were too many consequences. One choice led to too many, too damn many choices. She wanted somebody to make the choices for her, just let her get on the road, disappear, let the gaping wound formerly known as Betcher begin to close.

Ironic, she missed him, in a way. She felt like part of her was missing, like she’d woken to find her name, memories and feelings had disappeared. Gone. Leaving this sense of lobotomised incompleteness, a just half-there feeling that had to be subdued and boarded over or it would fill itself with guilt. And she didn’t want to live with that. Didn’t want the doubts guilt would fertilise.

“If it was me I think I’d go for that GoldWing. There’s just something about those machines that…” The saleswoman paused then shook her head sadly. “Ah, there’s no point even thinking about it.”

Abby walked back over to the bike for another look but it still left her cold. It was too… what? bulky? squat? Just too damn big with those fairings and bags. Just about every other bike in the big showroom left her feeling the same. Except for one, this cute little Virago clone, jammed against the far corner, all pink except for black leather saddlebags. Her eyes kept going back to it — drawn like a stick man as Betcher’d say, if he could — but her mind kept pulling away, too much in agreement with the saleswoman’s nasal contempt. ‘Brggggh, that’s a guy’s bike,’ she’d said, dismissing it. ‘You want a real machine, something that says something about you.’ Brgggh indeed, Abby had thought. But what did she want her bike to say? That she’d thrown the shackles of everyday life, turfed the hubby and brat, murdered her alter-ego, then gone chasing an eclipse of the sun up in Canada? Abby wasn’t sure she really wanted to make that statement. Even if it was true. Besides, that cute little machine… she felt like it was calling her name.

“No I don’t like that one,” Abby finally responded. “I just don’t like it. I want the pink one.”

The saleslady stiffened, clearly surprised, perhaps even a bit affronted her advice had been rejected. But she was a professional and quickly controlled it.

“Fine,” she said and called out, “Jo. Get the papers for a transfer. We’ve finally sold the Harley.

What a backwater, Abby grumbled to herself. She stepped out the hotel door straight into a blaze of sun thrown off the post office window across the street. The glare caused her to misjudge the step down to the sidewalk and her foot hit with a thud that shot up to her teeth. It did nothing to improve her mood.

Shielding her eyes, she looked up and down Hickston’s alleged main street. Nothing special. She’d seen half a dozen just like it the last few days of riding — crowded to narrow by mostly two-story clapboards painted in a dozen bright colours. Sometimes on the same building. Shops defined by plate glass, inset entrances and hinged signs dangling in the fetid air over the sidewalks. No neon. Picturesque — she’d give the old maritime architecture that — but the travel agent hadn’t mentioned time travel as a prerequisite for getting here. She’d gotten so used to being recognized as the woman behind Betcher David, so accustomed to just ignoring the startled looks and catcalls, that she found it unnerving how the locals clearly had no idea who she was. Not a glimmer of recognition anywhere. Even using her stage name to register hadn’t seemed to register with the hotel manager. Did they even have tv here?, she wondered. CNN? Time? Newsweek? Sure it was a different country but Betcher had had a dozen fan clubs up here in Canada.

Had had.

The past tense hit her like a sled.

But she pushed it away — a trick she’d gotten really good at — and looked around for someone who could help her. The street was empty, barren, except for one old man leaning back into a bench outside the post office. Abby had to squint against the glare to see him. He looked to be sleeping, soaking up the sun while it was still there. No, not sleeping... she saw an arm swat lazily at the air, fall loosely back to his lap.

Apart from him though, and the putative fly he was sharing the bench with, Abby wondered if everyone else had already gone out to their chosen spot for the eclipse. She looked at her watch — 1:20, a little more than two hours left until totality at 3:33. She’d liked that word, it’s tone of absoluteness, of complete erasure. It was what she wanted with Betcher, whose ghost somehow still managed to mount the battlements of her memory. Totality.

Stepping down from the curve, she suddenly pulled back, heart racing, feeling she’d almost been hit by a car! But the street was empty. ‘Don’t be silly, girl,’ she scolded herself and started crossing, but the whole way she had this agonizing sense the street was busy with traffic. Like there was just a curtain between her and a whole other world and that curtain had gotten bare enough in spots to see through. ‘It’s empty. It’s empty,’ she repeated to herself. ‘It’s the bloody rump of the universe and it’s empty.’ Reassuringly, she saw the old guy swat another fly.

Or maybe he just had a tic.

He didn’t move as she approached so she had time for a good look. A little portly but militantly neat. She could see the bristles along the lower edge of his mustache had been trimmed to a precise length, just enough to leave the line of his upper lip visible. A good sign she thought. Faculties all there.

“Excuse me.” One eye half opened, just enough to examine her against the backlight of the sun. Just enough to give Abby the sudden willies. She felt naked, like that half eye could see through her, see down to the depths of Betcher and Dickie and Edie. To the pain. The guilt she was still fending off.

“Excuse me,” she had to repeat when there was no further motion. “Can you tell me where there’s a good place I can watch the eclipse?”

The other eye opened to match the first, stayed that way and Abby’s discomfort increased. She could feel prickles run up the back side of her calves, and was about to turn away, thinking she’d been wrong, this was an inbred, when he finally spoke.

“Eclipse?” The voice was weak, more under the breathe than spoken and the tone was questioning. Like not only was today’s eclipse news, but the concept itself was novel. “Oh, the eclipse. Well,” and now the eyes opened wide, straight into Abby’s. “I think there’s a lot of folk gone up to Armoury Hill for that. Big picnic. Fireworks. Lot of noise I expect.” He paused, letting the eyes sink in. “But you don’t look like a lady wants to be in a crowd.”

He let the statement hang there for Abby to confirm or deny. She did neither, suddenly uncertain inside. Crowds were good because they usually meant she didn’t have to think much and right now that seemed a good prescription. Easier than riding, than being alone, pushing her feelings away. But Betcher had been too much like a lover, too much a brother, too much herself not to be grieved — to be sobbed over and cried out for in the wrenching loneliness the end of any such relationship brings. But she hadn’t sobbed. Hadn’t cried out. Had fought grief to an agonizing draw.

But no truce.

The old man shook his head slowly side to side. “No I don’t think you’re the kind for a crowd,” he went on, watching Abby intently. “I know the place ... go down this road bout two mile then go east on the old Horan Gorge Road. When you run out of road, park your car and follow the bit of trail that’s there, oh bout half a mile. You’ll come to a beach I reckon’s good a place as any for an eclipse.”

He stopped, watching Abby’s face for understanding or confusion. But she had the directions pat and was just about to thank him when he concluded, “There’s not many go there so it’s a good place for working things out too.”

“Does it have a name?” Abby asked. “Well nothing official I don’t think.” the old guy replied. “But there are those round here call it Heaven’s Gate.”

“Don’t ask me why.”

Abby stopped to wipe sweat off her forehead and pull her tee shirt off its clinging dependence on her upper body. The old guy wasn’t much for distance, she thought. Bout half a mile? More like a mile, a bloody country mile in a township laid out by drunken surveyors. The path had been little used, an old track overgrown with shrubs and invaded by branches she had to push out of the way. And there’d been enough uphill near the start to get her breathing hard and taking short rests. She’d kept looking at her watch, afraid she was going to be late, stuck on a goose stinking chase when the eclipse came on. As her breathing slowed, she could hear the creaking busyness of the woods around her. Then a low rolling smoash, followed by another several seconds later. She pushed on, listening as the sound grew louder, saw blue through the weave of green ahead. Then, pushing a final overhanging branch up and out of the way like a curtain, she was there.

Her little gasp of wonder just slipped out.

It was picture pluperfect, a 100 metre elliptic of rock sandy beach tucked between darkly forested headlands. The location scouts had done their job well for this scene, and she could see where the director would be setting up the camera for the long sweeping shots into the heroine, the background swatches of scenery that would be used to frame the character’s inner turmoil.

She was impressed.

The stage had been well set.

Abby watched the dolphin — or was it a porpoise? — envying its utter freedom. Wishing she could be as removed from the cares, the regrets of her life. She checked her watch, but the flurry of seconds that dogged her path to the beach had slowed to a near surreal manana. Hardly a minute had passed since her last check, still fifteen minutes to go but already she was feeling it a bust. Being here. Sitting here, waiting for the sun to disappear and take her cares with her. The past hour had dragged her through a morass of feelings — confusion, anger at herself, regret, resentment. They’d centred on Betcher of course, on the raw guilt she’d finally been unable to bury. She’d killed him and it was murder even if there was no body. She’d choked a part of herself to the death. And laughed, chortled, twisted his last minutes into an agony of rejection.

Holding back the pain, she waited, resigned to the inevitable. There’d be no totality for her feelings, she knew. No exoneration. And when it was over, she’d get back on the bike and ride off, as burdened as ever.

Betcher’s ghost would see to that.

Abby shook her head, certain she’d now parted company with reality. Somewhere back there. That damned dolphin had entered the water with hardly a splick of water, but something somewhere between a dolphin and a giant seagull had fountained back out, reee reeeing upwards, pulling her eyes with it to the sun. She lost the bird in the glare, slipped her eclipse glasses on, saw the nick on the sun’s waist.

It was starting. And, reee reee reeee, damn if that bird didn’t seem to be talking to her!

The moon’s fattening crescent had backspaced the sun to a final glinting wink. It was like lights down at the theatre, that uncanny passage between worlds, the last minute gibbers of sound falling to the silence of expectation as the first actor waits, feeling the challenge, how long can you hold it?, before the hush just screams for breaching. Waiting it out, letting it build, letting the first nervous scuffles creak. Still waiting it out. Letting the tension twine tighter, holding the audience in that limbo til they’re sure there’s some mistake, some glitch in the program. Til they’re stealing anxious glances, wondering who’s brave enough to demand release.

Exactly the moment, the actor judges, to lob the grenade and let all hell break loose.

“Ree reee reea!” The seagull had abruptly appeared out of the faltering light, just yards overhead, throwing its strident call at her, a grating “Rhee reeeh rheah!” that suddenly commingled, coalesced to syllables. Human. Abby panicked as the voice echoed across the stygian beach. It was the voice of retribution, karma. The circle come full. It was...

“Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.”

Betcher!

And with the boom of the voice Abby was back at the first beach, watching the clouds split, the words that had changed her life clicsh appear, clic clicsh spasmodic, clicsh letter by clicsh letter, cli cli clicsh like a three fingered writer on an old Underwood clicsh bashing at the clicsh sky’s blank sheet.

Eclectic Kitchen Kitsch.

Oh god, Abby thought, as the words slowly faded. That was where it all started, where Betcher had first exsinuated himself into her awareness. Her stomach churned painfully. Where she’d started down the path to Betcher’s murder.

Cli clic cli clisch.

The typist suddenly found a rhythm, began pounding out the story, describing the scenes better than Abby could herself — the heart attack, her agonizing ennui, the fights with Dickie. Her embarrassment the first time she’d tried on a jockstrap, and liked it. The breakup. Edie’s loss. She shook her head, not wanting to read anymore, to get to the ending. Because she knew the butler didn’t do it. She did.

But cli cli clicsh the story wouldn’t stop. The kickoff gigs. Bad jokes. Betcher’s, at first, comforting presence. The scenes and details were piling on top of each other, jumbling into a stenographic blur. It was too much. With a sob, Abby hurled herself at the past, determined to stop it. Change it. Prevent the denouement.

But the past was a tornado of whizzing keys, actions and reactions that tore at her hands and twirled her helplessly about. She was bawling now, in agony as her last shards of hope were ripped to a few shrieking tatters of desperation.

And in that moment of utter despair, charged with the strength of a person hanging off a cliff, she managed to grab a key, pull it to a halt, just microseconds from the start of that awful, final sentence.

‘Then she killed him.’

Abby shook with the effort, squirmed her body between the key and sky. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “God I’m so sorry.” And she meant it too, she knew that. Meant it more throughly than she’d ever managed behind the facade of self-control she’d built against her feelings. And that was all it was. A facade. A Potemkin village of happy peasants waving to the passing Czarina. Ensconced in her coach, she’d only fooled herself.

But that could change she swore. Could. Would. She’d seen the movie set, the false fronts. Had gone past them. Now she just needed a little rewrite, a minor adjustment to that last line of the script.

Just one word.

The light was swelling all around her and a sudden beam hit her cheek, refracted into blazing rainbows on her tears. She had to look away, past her cheek, then past the corona dying in the widening sliver of sun, to the sky. And there he was. Large as life. Large as the sky in fact.

Betcher. Smiling sadly.

His smile was filled with compassion, Abby could feel it, like some angel looking down from heaven. Her heart filled with hope, her breathing stopped. It was a smile that could grant absolution, could forgive. “Please,” Abby whispered. But Betcher only shook his head in a sad, gentle no.

And with a sob wrenched past the Czarina’s crumbling ruins Abby knew he was right. The tale was the tale. Her actions were her own. Damn his dictatums, she had to accept her reality and let it go. She’d killed him. There was no undoing it, no going back. That was the deck she had to play with. She had to stop judging herself for it, destroying herself with guilt-ridden names and fear. They accomplished nothing except to keep her locked up in the past, unable to move forward.

Betcher’s features were fading into the wash of increasing light, but Abby was sure she saw him nod with pleased agreement. With a sigh of relief, Abby let the key strike him from existence, finally, fully, accepting her responsibility.

Abby felt a cold spot on her hand, looked to find a dog snuffling it’s nose, whimpering for attention. Sobbing gently with her release, she reached and pulled the dog to her, encircling it with her arms in a desperate hug as the moon cleared the sun and sailed blithely on.

PostScript

Abby snuggled down into the warmth of the sheets and pulled the blankets up into a collar on her neck. Ummm, she luxuriated in the afterglow, relishing the sensations, picking them over one by one, savouring each spark of satisfaction, each little niggle of reawakened desire.

She looked across the room to where Dirk Ryder — she liked the name, especially its Scottish connotations — was working at his computer. A little strange, she thought — he’d been like a boy with a new toy, screaming oh yes at the top of his lungs at the moment of truth. Which thankfully hadn’t taken too long — they’d both exploded and merged into a union of ecstasy she’d never experienced. Then, the first thing he’d said afterwards was I need a beer. Downed that, then pulled out a joint — which she declined, not from any moral or legalistic stand; she just had no wish to chance any resurrection of Betcher — and tried to play his guitar. He wasn’t very good. To say the least. But there was an earnest desperation in his effort and she could tell he’d gotten truly lost in his playing when he suddenly rushed to the computer and with a kind of glazed look started typing. He was pretty fast for three fingers, Abby thought.

And god! he was good for one. Abby’s body shook with release and remembrance once more.

Constance was right about Canadians.

Yes, Abby thought, snuggling still deeper into the warm folds of the bed. They’d ride together for a while. Maybe one day she’d even tell him about Betcher. But for now it was just good to be a woman in lust.

the writer comments

And that was how the bike came to be called tHe PoEt, such moments, he knew, being exactly the stuff of fodder {say that five times real fast} needed for the book. The font and case variation were a trick The Bard suggested after one of its few intercultural exchanges into cyberspace. Who and how he met with there I have no understanding of, but then I have almost no understanding of The Bard to begin with. As far as I know, the Bard’s a virus that entered my notebook on its virgin encounter with the cyberworld, but I am assured by experts that the person doesn’t yet exist who could find The Bard’s program on my laptop, much less write it. The Bard, they say — and they do seem to mean this and are not just humouring my assertion that it exists — is several orders of magnitude more advanced than my laptop (which is just a 386 running at 20 MHZ with a 20 MB 19 ms HD and 1 MB of RAM) {Is that Imperial or metric?} should be able to support.

My gut feeling, or bum vibes if you like, is that The Bard is an alien but nevertheless fully realized fusion of software and one of my minor neuroses. Not one of my favourite ones either. My story, and I’m sticking by it, goes that it was kidnapped at birth, accounting for many of my abduction dreams and, for that matter, my painful relations with my birth mother. Since, it’s been taught, or learned (I’m not sure which) the most advanced methods of survival and now neither freud nor gates could dislodge it. If it wasn’t so damn reasonable, and right most of the time, it might have become an irritant. Well — truth — it is an irritant, but one hell of a fine editor. And he certainly knows me better than The X ever did, or is that just my own illusion? Why am I out here hitting reality in the face?

Now there’s a question tHe PoEt would answer, would love to answer, at some length too. He (if I can give it a gender because — if his claims are correct — he has been she dozens of times since his preferred lifetime as a warrior. I say preferred because that’s the persona he most likes to identify with when he’s about, when he’s not cogitating on the cogs and whistles of his more mechanical side. I have a few times suspected tHe PoEt’s actually just another of The Minstrel’s many persona, one he doesn’t publicly acknowledge, and, thinking that, i suspect that this is his shadow personality, the rough and tough, the — dare I say it? — masculine side he cannot allow into the light of his preferred persona. But here i am psychoanalysing a couple figments of my imagination as though they were real. Course i do know they can’t be — real that is. After all, if I didn’t, I’d be insane, wouldn’t I? And I’m not.) {And each and every day, I’m getting better in every way.} likes to think he knows me inside out, knows how I tick and why I tick, even knows my darkest secrets as his ultimate power over me. I don’t begrudge him the illusion, and it is at times interesting to hear him pontificate on me. (For instance, I’m sure you’d enjoy his explanation of why I sometimes refer to myself in the third person. Yes, I am the writer, or at least I think I am.) Between him and The Bard, I don’t get away with very much. But the last laugh is always mine because I’m the master personality and so I always know more than he does. I just can’t express it as well.

So just what am I doing out here, hitting reality in the face like this?

And that was how The Rider met tHe PoEt. It was, once again, exactly the stuff of fodder for the book. Trouble was, it didn’t turn out the way it was intended. The first intercourse between Rider and PoEt was to delve into the very fundamentals of existence, to slalom on the deeper and finer meanings of life. Not to degenerate into a wrestling style grudge match. Something had gone wrong. But what? It was as though the book — and its characters — had a mind of their own.

Not that that was unusual or unheard of either. Whatever dark recesses creativity springs from, it does have a mind of its own. And it’s a cruel mistress, one that often comes unbidden — bringing with it a feeling only comparable with the wild joy felt at the moment of sexual climax, the joy of life itself at the immediacy of conception — but just as often doesn’t come at all. When it does come, plots twist and turn in unexpected ways; characters surprise and delight their ‘creators’; words take on their own momentum and the script or novel or poem or song seems to write itself, the painting seems to paint itself. But, when it doesn’t come, words are anvils that must be lifted into place, every doubt is amplified in the awful silence, and nothing will be written. That’s the creative rack where the true cruelty of the mistress is revealed. For what rat, caught between food slot heaven and electric floor hell, will not compulsively seek the pleasure despite the pain the seeking brings? And, the rats that those of us caught on her rack are, we chase our tails, rabidly sniffing after the very most central part of life’s sweet mystery — which is the ineffable itself, the black hole that opens when consciousness tries to look at itself.

Somewhere in that blackness, somehow something happens and awareness is born, [created? conceived? happens?] and someway this awareness takes on identity. And while that identity can seem so solid — you can think you have it pegged, you can dress yourself up as you — at its core the enigma remains. And somehow, life flows in and out of that mystery and creates miracles. And one of those miracles, the one that pulls the mistress’ rats across the threshold, is that wondrous act of the darkness we call the human psyche — the act of spontaneous creation; for its devotees a drug more powerful than ambition, will, even sanity. Drawn on irresistibly, the pain warps them, bends their bodies and splits their minds. Lowrey drank himself to death. Ning Nong shot himself. Poe went crazy. They all suckled at the mistress’ teat too long and too hard. And paid the price. Willingly — as they say, you want the pleasure, you pay the price, and thanks, it’s a business doing pleasure with you.

But the pleasure, ah, the pleasure!

And the closer you came to the core, the more you bathed in the velvet splendour of those birthing energies, the greater the pleasure to be found. So dogs to their tails. Rats to the rack. Writers to their keyboards. Each to his or her own instrument of torture. And the more you allowed those energies to express themselves, the more you lost your identity and the closer you came to pure awareness, and the source of that so-sweet scent.

And you would do anything, anything at all to keep it close. What’s that old saying? Reality is what happens to you while you’re busy chasing other plans? Something like that.

But if this was reality, the writer thought, let me off. Even stranger things were happening with the book. Words he didn’t remember writing appeared on the computer screen. And words he did remember writing disappeared. Or maybe it was just his imagination. I mean, it only happened, or seemed to happen, when the computer was turned off, when he’d put it away for the night, or for the day, or for a smoke and a cup of coffee. Then when he powered up and read back through poet&i01.txt, there were these changes. Or what he thought were changes. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he was just losing it, maybe the stress and change of the past few months were catching up. Maybe he was no longer capable of recognizing reality when it hit him in the face. Maybe it was all the dulse he’d been smoking. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. There were too damn many maybes.

The next thing you knew, he thought, his characters would be turning against him.

Preface

And I bet you thought a preface went at the preface to the story. But why not a preface at the start of Part II? Or the start of Part III for that matter? I mean, think of it. Isn’t all of life nothing but preface? Nothing but events that open unto events; flowers that open to seed which, unfurled to plant, finally open back to flower and the cycle goes on? The rhythms of night and day, moon and sun, the rhythms of death? Today just the preface to tomorrow? Our lives just a ripple on the swell of generations in the unending sea of time — whatever that is? And the spells of desperation we encounter but prologue to the next in the unending pains of life? One joy but antecedent to another? So, if all is preface, why not place a preface anywhere? Why this preference for a preface at the preface? Why not place the preface profitably for the reader, where it can help make sense of the nonsensical?

For it is nonsensical, this life business — no matter how you see it. A cosmic fluke from a chemical soup, now drowning in its own chemicals? Children of a beneficent but paternal and insecure deity? Eternal entities absorbed in the classroom of life? No matter our view, it is only our self-importance convinces us that, somehow on the grand scale of things, it matters, even just a whit, whether we live or die, individually and collectively. It’s a flimsy structure to base a personality or a civilization on and, no matter how studiously it’s ignored, the basic farce remains that — ticks on a tiger’s testicle — we titillate more than mutilate. And that’s why I like satire that pokes fun at self-importance, especially my own. That’s why I read MAD for so many years. That’s why I like Doonesbury, and read the Saturday comics religiously. {Does that mean he’s Jewish?} [Heaven only knows.] They point out that the core of life is nonsensical, a stand up routine by the cleverest of comics, the cosmic clown itself. And its foil? The fertile fields of self-absorbed foppery — self-importance, the very ground of humour. So life is not to be taken seriously, with self-importance, but with Joy! at the absurdity that it is, that we are.

Yet our insignificance should not be taken lightly as we still cause the beast’s endless scratchings — the hind legs humping uselessly forward, then the great mouth descending to gnarl and growl blasts of putrid air while fangs feed on our foolish immobility, our mire in the cosmic play. And that’s the point, for, in the great scheme of things, the play’s the thing — not the players, for there is only one player — and the tiger is no less a role than the tick. No more important. No more critical to the show. Each is just one of the uncountable expressions of a universe that is alive, is ordered and is intelligent but has chosen to hide itself from itself; to fragment and dive into the muck so it can experience its own liberation into the light of self-awareness.

The universe is alive, it is ordered, and it is intelligent. To me, these are pragmatic facts, for — although I don’t know how it lives — I have felt its order and I have known its intelligence. Still, life’s mystery remains as deep as ever — the clown remains hidden in its many guises. And I am happy to accept that as, whatever the universe may be, my territory is here and now. It’s not out-there, but in-here, among the debris and bric-a-brac of self-importance, that self-awareness can be found, and the punch line understood. Our significance is in our insignificance. Our tickness is our salvation.

Each day opens to a classroom that has no walls but our beliefs, no curriculum save the traps we create for ourselves — for self-importance to snare itself in words, names and games, in careers and roles and slavish minuets of ignorance, of form without substance, of illusion. But, look about with awareness, and the traps are not traps but goads to liberation, prods to push us forward. And we pass or fail with our willingness to accept that it is life provides our lessons, but we who choose to learn. Or not.

the writer comments

You’ve probably gathered by now that I don’t acknowledge the little guy any more than I absolutely have to. It just encourages him. Yeah, the Inner Critic — you know, that voice that always carps at you over your mental shoulder, able to recite your every sin and all too willing to point out all your shortcomings of thought and being. You know, you’ve seen the sitcom a dozen times; the kid brother from hell, a kind of Leave it to Cleaver, with Wack the Knife as theme song. Yeah. You’ve got one of them too. The thing with my critic is that the kid’s not just in my mind but in the laptop as well. I’m of two minds for how the latter comes about. I sometimes think he’s like a separate circuit in my brain, with its own wires down to my hands and so they type without me knowing. (I’ve once or twice had the same suspicion about The Bard but he says I’m wrong. I guess the question is, Would you trust a computer?) Then I sometimes think the kid’s just a fractured part of my electronic friend’s circuitry. Or maybe his kind are replicating, writer help us all. But then I guess that makes me of three minds about the kid and that makes for quite a discussion. But I won’t bother with it because, no matter how it comes about, the point is the little prick exists.

I really wish he didn’t. Imagine an internalized mother/father/brother/sister/ teacher/tailor/tinker/spy with a malicious sense of humour and you’ll have some idea of what he puts me through. Was it the wolffe in the three little pigs said you can’t go home again? Hell, with the inner critic around, you can never leave home. You carry it with you, labouring under all the taunts, jeers and exhortations to perfection you ever heard; growing up but not growing wiser, still letting mother/father/brother/sister/lover run your life, rule your emotions; not recognizing that it’s all just huff and puff, and the best thing is just to let the bloody house blow down. {Talk about mixing metaphors. I sure hope you’re following a recipe.} See what I mean. Of course, catch 22 fly balls in a row and do you get praise? Fat chance. Baby bro never learned a thing about positive reinforcement. Negativity’s his bag, but he’s no mule skinner flaying recalcitrant beasts. The skinner shouts to make them go. Critic just wants to stop you. Dead. Paralyse you with fear. Prove you’re just the schmuck he thinks you are.

So why do I let him get away with it? I could ask you the same question, and probably get the same answer. I don’t know any better. And, Catch 69, he’s part of me, so deeply penetrated into my self-image I can’t tell where he begins and I end; and so — his slithering tongue slaking itself on my every exposed nerve — we end up lost in an orgy of self-recrimination and self-serving defenses. Lost in fear and guilt. {Ah, but the pleasure! Yes, the pleasure.} And ultimately lost in indecisiveness, prone to anxiety and panic attacks. Breakdowns are made of such partnerships between the self-hating and self-insecure. I should know. I had one. And — to change the subject before his head swells too much — let me tell you, the circumstances that led up to it, my breakdown, were just like someone was writing me, just like I’m a character in someone else’s book. And I’m not his favourite character by any means. {Care for some deep fried petards? I’m sure you’ll like the recipe.} My life, I suspect, is only semi-factional. But, when I have to ask Who is the writer?, then I wonder if there isn’t some line that’s been crossed without awareness. That’s why I’m more than a little preoccupied with the Big I — my old friend, the Insanity Question.

Preface

(cont’d)

Bet you thought I wouldn’t do it. But why not continue a preface? Why this insistence that a prologue be self-contained? As though anything, including a human, can be so limited? Why not — if all is nought but preface — perforce face the truth and portion the foreword? Why not revisit to revise and rebuild, expand and explain, forward the case as needed?

No answer? Not even from the bobsey twins? Then, let’s get on with it.

The universe is alive, ordered and intelligent — even if ultimately built on mystery, these are pragmatic ‘facts’. And, in my experience, it has meaning. Meaning the cosmos means business. Means richness. Means poverty. Means meaning. In fact, there is nothing but meaning because the universe not only means to exist, it exists to mean. Unlike most of us, who seek to salve the incompleteness of our existence, the gnawing sense that there must be more — if only we could find the meaning — the universe does not stand on mountain tops screaming “Why?”. It has no such need because it is complete. Because it is self-contained and self-aware it is meaningful. Meaning is a problem only for the incomplete, for the un-self-aware.

But all is belief — even our supposed incompleteness, which is, bottom line, just an artful disguise, an artifice of the willing suspension of disbelief. We can’t prove we’re incomplete, just the same as the universe only believes it has fragmented, become the myriad of life we witness, and the many myriad more we’re blind to. Even the universe cannot prove it has become you and I; that we are not merely dreams, just butterfly thoughts, testicular ticks — no more substantial, but no less unreal. Imagine good cop/bad cop giving the universe the third degree. Can you prove you think? Can you even prove you exist? Or are you, like Rider, questioning the very foundations of your existence, looking for meaning in something, anything that will give you solidity? Or do you seek not-doing, like Bim? Or are you like Abby? — who avoids any hint of meaning, who seeks nothing from life but the certainty of not-thinking. Or Mellow Yellow who seeks the story but has no interest in the meaning? The universe would have to answer both “yes” and “no” to all of the above, for it is, simultaneously, both the ultimate personality and the ultimate case of multiple personality.

It’s like one of those kicker endings to a play where the butler turns out to be the billionaire, serving the plenitudes of an imaginary master — the role, perfection, the illusion so complete even the butler has been sucked in, and so he is as surprised at the twist as you. Now twist it further and realize he is also the writer, but the twist is not his. The twist is in the audience. Then the lights go up and the real illusion is revealed. There was no play. There is no theatre. Even the audience turns out to be delusion.

So we are all billionaire butler writers, bonded in servitude to imaginary fans.

“But,” you demand, “where does that leave meaning, especially if, as you claim, the universe is nothing but meaning?” And I answer, to demand meaning negates it, limits it to the possibilities of our own limited comprehension. Coats it in concrete, stultifies. Abrogates our responsibility to live it; to be audience and writer, butler and billionaire. Meaning is revealed in its own time, in its own strange and wondrous ways. In all the confusion of the moment, how can we expect to even guess what the meaning is? How can we evaluate the import of this or that event, this or that coincidence? We cannot. All we can do is accept that there is meaning and live by our best sense of what that meaning may be. But not think that we have found it; not limit it with our minds.

“Then,” you demand, “what is the meaning of this book?” And I answer, I don’t know. Yet. It flowers as I work. I sit at my computer and throw thoughts like i ching sticks, find their juxtapositions, the quadragrams and hexagrams they compose. But I refuse to consult the text. Then I sit at my computer and find how the shapes fit together, how they build images and thoughts, characters and plots. But shun shaping their incipient meaning. Then I sit at my computer, flesh them with words, and “Surely then there must be meaning!” you say. And I answer, yes, there is, but which meaning do you mean? The meaning of the words? Their deeper meanings? The meaning of the book? Now? And in a thousand years? My meaning in writing? The meaning in my act of writing? The Mistress’ meaning? Your meaning? The meaning in your act of reading? Life’s meaning? Art’s meaning? God’s meaning?

Do you get my drift?

There is nothing but meaning; levels and levels that reduce and expand, amplify and clarify each other. So a preface presages a prelude. So a flower means to seed. So a man fathers an infant, and the child mothers a father. The meaning is in the process, and in the process becomes the meaning. So I am content, as I write, to accept that there is meaning and that it will be revealed in the writing. And, yes, I will probably be as surprised as you.

Like I said, I’m really just the secretary.

And, like a secretary, I can’t pick and choose which paragraphs to transcribe, which meanings to mean. While I can edit the Mistress’ words, fill in the etceteras, and add the salutary standards, I can’t edit her intentions. In the same way, I can’t pick and choose my emotions which, like meaning, are part of our connection to the absolute, our portion of the totality. Except out of ignorance. Except out of denial. But see that to deny any portion of the totality is to deny it’s totality. To deny anger is to deny love. Deny fear and you deny courage. Deny yourself and you deny the universe. Deny the devil his due and you deny god her deserts.

And — one of the job’s disadvantages — you get fired. No severance. No dole. No nothing.

another comment from the writer

By definition, jokes and satire are inherently politically incorrect. They poke and they prod, and they upset — exactly the attributes that raise the ire of the modern PC Police. But today’s commissars of the laugh challenged are only following ancient tradition. The PC P were a fact of life even in classical Greece, the culture that dug the wellsprings of western humour. (Not that the Greeks were the first people ever to tell a joke — that honour probably belongs to some unknown Cro Mag regaling his mates with primitive ethnic jokes (Question: How many Neanderthal does it take to start a fire? Answer: Duh, fire? What dat?) — and they weren’t even necessarily the very first to write them down. But what they did have was a great P.R. machine — Plato & Plato, Aristophanes & Associates Inc. Now this was a group that knew how to put a good spinaret on any yarn — just take a look at the Socrates coverup — so good their clients have not only remained famous for centuries, but are still required reading in any Foundations of Western Drama course; drama, of course, including both the tragic and comic genres, which the Greeks saw as indelibly linked.) And any playwright worth his hemlock soon learned to hide his critiques in humour and satire, where it could be argued that ‘it was just a joke’ — meaning it was nothing to get all fired up about. That the PC P knew it was more than just a joke, but couldn’t do much about it, just made the subterfuge all that more delicious.

They even pointed to it, rubbed it in the PC P’s collective face — witness their centuries-worn dictum that ‘comedy is tragedy viewed from a distance’. Trite, but any dictum that lasts longer than 15 minutes has to have a kernel of truth in it. And the comic/tragic one does — a seed we don’t even have to Shirley MacLaine to retrieve. Just watch the tube any night of the week. Where does the humour in most sitcoms derive? From our having a greater level of awareness than the characters we’re watching. We laugh because we can see how absurd the situation is while the subjects can’t. Blinded by the scriptwriter, they react as though the situation is not absurd at all. So Earl loses the baby, dashes around like a lizard with his head cut off, but we giggle. So precocious brat assaults petty thieves while his parents learn to count on more than two fingers, and we pack the theatres for the sequel. {So schmuckhead rides a talking bike and the book becomes a best seller.} In real life, Earl would be appearing in court, trying to justify why the state shouldn’t take little gottaluvme into its care, while the kid’s parents would have their asses sued off by the crooks. {And the book would be remaindered at bus terminals and airports where people are desperate for cheap, disposable pulp.} It’s our point of view that allows the comic to exist.

But, equally, it’s our point of view allows the tragic to exist. Take the very same situations but share the character’s view. Suddenly, the tragic is there, even in yet one more insecure teen discovering an infestation of big weekend coming up zits. Interestingly, with only a little practise, this particular perceptual shift becomes easier, but its opposite — from tragic to comic — remains difficult, especially where it concerns events in our own lives. It’s not just that most of us have trouble laughing at ourselves — we do — but also that we are more wedded to our sense of the tragic, defending its honour with a pugnacious belligerence we wouldn’t dream of applying to the defence of our sense of humour. So adversity makes us strong; our struggles build character; heartache and pain bring out the noble. Not laughter. In fact, we tend to look down on those ‘who’ve had it too easy’, who’ve never struggled through the drudgery of an honest day’s work, who’ve never known pain. And, having bought into the tragedy, we like it. It’s comfortable. It’s secure. Life may be the shits but it’s our shit and the known is always preferred to the unknown.

So my breakdown. I wallowed in it. Revelled in my misery. Loved my tears even as I stood on my mountain top, cursing my fate. And never saw how the chains were my own. How the dragons that terrorized my nights were nothing but my own self-hatred. Nothing but the inner critic.

Never saw how funny it was. A grown man afraid to go to the bank, unable to insure his car because he was scared he might panic and this stranger might see it. Like it mattered. A man who shook with fear just to call up the passport office and explain how his passport had been laundered by his ex-wife. Like it mattered. A man who cut himself off from his friends because, inside, he thought he didn’t deserve their support. Didn’t deserve to be loved. A man who turned to his dragons, suffered their flames and was grateful because his pain justified his self-hate, and his self-hate justified his pain. Only in agony did he feel whole, feel happy.

The Greeks left out the corollary: tragedy is comedy viewed inside out, something I only learned when I found I couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying. Couldn’t tell if I was I, or if I was the cosmic clown laughing at my own sitcom — All In The Psyche, NEW! This fall on Reality TV.

{Now there’s an oxymoron.} [What?] {Reality TV.}

more ruminations from the writer

A writer friend of mine says one is nothing, two’s a fluke and three’s a pattern. Now, if there’s one thing I doubly hate, it’s being predictable, so there’s no preface to justify with absurdities here. The same writer friend, by the way, says four or more is a list, so I guess — it being Part Four and all — this book is developing a list.

To starboard.

The right hemisphere of the brain that is. You may have heard of research on the structure of the brain that shows it has two sides. The left side — dominant in most people — is connected with the logical, the empirical, the conscious mind. This is the seat of speech and mathematical computation. {So when it screws up a calculation, does that make it a Pentium?} On the other hand — literally, as each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body; so the left governs the right hand, and the right the left — the right hemisphere is connected to the intuitive and non-rational, the emotions. The unconscious mind.

The two halves are connected with the original information superhighway, a thick bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum, and fascinating things happen when this pathway is cut, either through accident or through surgical intervention. In fact, the differing roles of the two hemispheres were studied by surgeons severing the corpus of epilepsy patients in an effort to prevent the spread of grand mal seizures from one side to the other. These ‘hemispherically-challenged’ patients, the surgeons discovered, literally didn’t know what the other hand was doing. If their visual field was restricted so that the left hand was out of the right eye’s sight (remember, the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere, while the right eye sees for the left hemisphere) they had no conscious awareness of it. The left hand simply ceased to exist as far as the speechifying left brain was concerned. But not to function. Still under the control of the right brain, that hand was able to draw, select among objects and finger snap the rhythm to Ravel’s Bolero. (even though it couldn’t count to ten.)

Now, on the surface, much of this research seems of interest mainly to bored surgeons and the type of people who read Psychology Today, but the left/right dichotomy has — and has had — a number of interesting implications for the human species, and our everyday experience. In his seminal book, The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Brain, Julian Jaynes theorizes that, in early humans, consciousness was largely centred in the right side of the brain. As a result, in modern terms, these proto-people lived unconsciously with little sense of personal identity. It must have been a magical existence, except there was no capacity to conceive of magic because magic, in the sense of something unexplainable, is a perception of the left brain. The right has no need to explain. So when early humans heard the ‘voices’ of the gods directing their lives and experienced visual ‘hallucinations’, it was all, simply put, reality. Much of our myth, Jaynes argues, stems from this period before left-brain consciousness took over — engendering both a sense of personal identity, the ego, and defining the world, along with sanity, in ways that were consistent with its own nature: rational, logical, empirical.

Forget the wheel, forget the Renaissance, and forget the Industrial Revolution. [Now, there‛s a pattern. In fact, if you look closely, you’ll see that there’s a pattern to the pattern, kind of a superpattern patterned on the writer’s avowed dislike of patterns — which, really, is just another pattern.] In all of human history, that change is the watershed for, by allowing people to perceive themselves as separate agents, it set the species on the path to dominance of its physical environment, and provided the tools of reason and intellect to consummate that control. Now, it’s a truism that nothing succeeds like success and with every step forward, with every piece of progress cemented into the path of human development, the pre-eminence of the left-brain increased. Justifiably so. Or so the left brain thought. Trouble was, and still is, the old right-brain consciousness did not go gently into that good night, but chose guerrilla warfare instead, parrying, thrusting, constantly undermining the fortifications of the ego, trying to put the young upstart in its place.

But, rather than respond in kind, the ego chooses trench warfare, raising its defences higher, strengthening its boundaries and razing broad sweeps of no-man’s land around its core positions — a kind of scorched earth policy that reduces the world to black and white; sane and insane; more to the point, right and left. Remember, the devil sits at the left hand of God? It’s no chance placement. Controlled as it is by the right hemisphere, the left is traditionally regarded as evil, and associated with darkness — for example, just being left-handed was enough to get a middle-ages woman burned as a witch. I’d like to point out that period has been rather unjustly termed The Dark Ages, and the period that followed is often misnomered The Age of Reason. Like the Greeks, the ego has great PR, and this subterfuge masks the reality that the great witch hunts, religious wars and Spanish Inquisition [I like how you worked that in.] {Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!} came out of the ego’s tendency to see in others what it most fears in itself, and its intolerant insistence that ‘if you’re not with me, you’re agin me’.

Although burning witches is now generally prohibited, and the devil’s largely relegated to bit parts in schlocky horror picture shows, that old prejudice remains. As venomous as ever. For instance, consider the so-called dichotomy between the political left and political right, with the left, in rightist propaganda, portrayed as the anti-thesis of the rational, efficient right. However, the left not only uses the same code words to describe itself, but believes them just as much! Scientific socialism. A more ordered society. Right thinking. The dichotomy is more apparent than real, more projection than substance. The classic case was the characterization of the Soviet Union as an ‘evil’ empire by the Reagan and Bush administrations when, in psychological reality, the trademarks of that evil — repression, fear, control, denial, righteous self-justification — are attributes of the left hemisphere, the ego, the conscious mind, which of course is the political right. The real attributes of the right, which of course is the left, are the opposite. The left is intuitive, feminine, embracing, non-denying. Seen like this, it’s clear the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the left. It was just a more malignant example of the ego’s objectified struggle for dominance; in other words, just another form of left brain government.

What’s also clear… [Clear! Left equals right equals right equals left? The only way to figure this stuff out is to go into your local fun house mirror maze and try to rub your head and pat your tummy while you watch the reflections. It still probably wouldn’t work, but at least you’d get a giggle out of it.] {Spoken like a true left-chipper.} (Ummm, may I go on please?) (Thank you.) What’s also clear is… (Damn!) {Whasamater? Lose your train of thought?} [Never mind — you can pick it up later. I mean, it’s not as though continuity’s been particularly important thus far.]

ruminations continued

What’s also clear is that the fundamental problem is the insecurity gnawing at the roots of the ego’s self-importance — its awareness that it is not only not all there is but is, if anything, just a small part of a much larger whole. But that just feeds the delusion. In order to create, then consolidate its position as king shit, the ego has to deny the validity of all else. Vehemently. It cannot accept the existence of the unconscious and the existence of the many realities that each human incorporates. To the ego there can be only one reality. It’s own. So all else must not only be unreal, but dangerous.

But the truth is exactly the reverse. What’s really dangerous is the pretence and sheer negativity of the ego when confronted with a challenge to its supremacy. Threatened, the ego is not a friendly guy and — bearing in mind the ego creates its own reality, attracting the circumstances that justify its perilous claim to power — the nature of the beast is that it’s almost always menaced. One way or another. You can get an idea of the inner struggle, the endless jockeying for survival involved by looking at it’s physicalization in the endless wars and deadly chores of nationalism’s various forms. Their deadly toll. Egos swamped by their own inner conflicts use jingoistic chauvinism to bolster their psychic self-defence — waving the flag emblazoned with their externalized identity, their righteous self-justification that “I’m ‘American’, ‘black’, ‘Islamic’ so I’m okay. Because ‘Unca Sam wants me’, ‘black is beautiful’, ‘Allah is good’.” These ‘nations’ of the like minded may or may not correspond with political boundaries but they all derive their power from the ego’s objectified struggle to keep its ‘other’ personalities suppressed. So nationalism doesn’t allow for subset races, minorities, other beliefs to exist as equals in the confederation. They have to be denigrated and oppressed to safeguard the position of the impostor right. Which of course is the left. (But I know you’ve got all that straight.) [Right to front as it were.]

It’s a sobering thought — when you consider the millions and millions of lives killed, wasted and ruined in the name of these nations — that, individually, we’re each of us astride that same volcano. Struggling — hard — to avert disaster.

Of course, nationalism is not restricted to the political, racial and religious spheres, nor are its consequences always so catastrophic. For example, did you hear the one about the HOGger who got lost in a blizzard? They found him by following his oil slick. Now, as far as this type of bad taste target the out group joke goes, that’s more of a polite groaner than anything else — even if it’s true. But tell it to a HOGger and you’re likely to meet an icy silence, if not a kick in the groin. HOGism takes itself as seriously as any other nationalism, perhaps even more so because riding a HOG is, allegedly, something you choose, not something you’re born to. (Even if you were born to be wild, how you express that, again allegedly, is a matter of choice. Hell, there are some express it in accounting.) So you have a lot more to defend, a greater investment by the ego in justifying its choice. So HOGgers are compelled to ignore all but others of their breed. So the technological and creative dominance of Japanese bikes becomes a threat to the self-image of the HOG nation, to be countered with tee-shirts, big belt buckles and yearly pilgrimages to the birth place of their Maker.

Look around one of these hogarees and another truism jumps out. No nation is an ism unto itself and, with the Hog, there is an interesting blending of brand and country. Flags everywhere. On fenders. On dirty jeans. On biceps flexing to take down anyone who dares challenge their fervour. In their homage to Harley and Davidson, HOGgers also deify their bikes’ yankee roots, harking nostalgically to a time when America ruled the world. That it doesn’t anymore — that America’s national will has been subverted to global markets, the debacle of Vietnam and the loss of its technological superiority — strikes directly at the HOGger’s self-esteem, feeding the insecurity that drives the ego to refuge in external identifications. My country: love it or leave it. My bike: worship it or die. The more threatened the ego, the more important its crutches.

This is not to imply that HOGgers are, by definition, immature egos. That would be tantamount to libel, and far from the truth. There are bikers who simply ride Harleys, whose self-images are not intertwined with their machines. And there are those who ride Goldwings, or Ninjas, or scooters whose egos are every bit as tied to their bike as the most fervent of HOGgers. And there are those whose identification of choice is a Mustang or Porsche or huge house in the country. Or a label on their suit. Or a particular brand of scotch. The dynamics are the same. In fact, it’s doubtful that our market economy could exist without the driving force of ego identifications and insecurities. Seen like this, the consumptive twins of marketing and advertising serve two purposes — yes, to foster brand awareness and loyalty, but also to reinforce the ego’s insecurities, and thus perpetuate the system. In the end there is only product and the temporary salve it delivers to the embattled ego.

And doesn’t that put a different light on the triumph of the right over the so-called left? Communism’s failure was not one of ideology. It just didn’t deliver the goods.

(Of course the mature ego, no longer striving to be king shit but existing as a necessary aspect of the overall person, does not need nationalism as its proxy defence. Nor endless consumption. If human society ever comes to the point of being mostly populated by mature egos, nationalism as the divisive force it is today will lose its punch. So too the market economy.)

Now all this would be of interest only to political scientists, and the type of people who read Hansard for inspiration [The Proceedings of Congress if you’re American.], except for the light it casts on the Big I. Perhaps insanity is not insanity, but a sane response to the cleavage of the ego from its roots in the unconscious, an attempt to bridge the devastation of no man’s land and bring about a truce, an integration of the left and right. But one that’s gone wrong, got caught in the crossfire, forever locked into a cartoon arcade rifle game. Turning to the right. Bing! Turning to the left. Bam! To the centre. Wham! Bang! {Thanks man.}

And that throws an interesting light on the activities of what could be termed the professionally insane — the writers, artisans and channelers who venture the dark wastelands hunting for trophies, for the promise implicit in the siren songs of the mistress. Music, poetry, sculpture — ironically even scientific inspiration — the greatest works of a society built on reason come from its nemesis, from its deserters bringing the trojan horse into the very centre of the castle. Not out of malice, mind you, but as an attempt at healing the psychic chasm on a social as well as individual level. But it’s a difficult feat, as unwelcome from the collective ego’s point of view as from the individual’s, and insanity — that twirling turkey target tableau — is always just around the corner. It’s the same old Catch 69. Open the door and stand in danger. But slam it shut and fasten the bolts and you cut yourself off from the mistress.

Hell. Maybe this was a preface after all. So call me ol’predictable. Just spell it right. I mean left. I think. {There 4 u b?}

Epilogue

(Well? Why not? See earlier discussion on prefaci.)

Of course, there are varying forms of insanity, and self-destructiveness is not restricted to the mistress’ acolytes. In fact, it could be argued that self-abuse — whether spurred by self-hate, material ambition or spiritual greed — is the norm of the human condition. It would be an easy argument to win, given all the examples that could be cited: hair shirts, jogging, penile implants, to instance a few. In fact, the argument could continue, self-abuse has been elevated to high art in almost every culture, every era, and sanctified in the name of — just for example — god, evil, beauty, culture, corporate profit; its greatest practitioners held up as models and archetypes, blueprints for sculpting a ‘worthy’ person on the pedestal of a worthless beast. So go and freeze your butt in Tibet. Cinch your girdle tighter. Work a ninety hour week. Self-abuse is good for you.

Especially in matters of the spirit.

If it wasn’t so crazy it’d be insane. Friend ego perpetually whacking itself across the head to drive out the inner devils? {But it feels so good when I don’t stop.} Squeezing itself like a zit to find inner peace? {Out! Out damn flaw!} Biting off its dick to spite its balls? {No — I’ll let that one pass.} [Thank you.] I mean, think about it. No! Don’t think, because that’s exactly the problem. The whole charade is based on an artificial construct, the name, this misidentification of thought and subjective inner states with objective reality, concluding, in all its rationality, it’s just not good enough! A pig that could be an angel, it needs to change. And so it sets out into the mystic, rooting in the ruts of the arcane, the profound and the holy for the scent of that most magical mushroom. Grace among the truffles. {Finally! Duffles of truffles!} Cosmic consciousness. Self-transcendence. And if the truffles don’t work, well there’s always the ten foot pole. [Don’t touch it.]

You might as well try to mould water with a sieve.

Try this experiment. Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself, What is this thing wants to change? Where is this ‘self’? When you’ve answered those questions, grab the bloody thing and squeeze your hand down into a fist. Tight. You don’t want it to get away. Then, guarding with your other hand, open your fist, just slightly, for a peek. What do you see? Nothing? Then open your fist a little further for a good look. What do you see now? Still nothing? Then open your fingers completely and answer this:

Where has your fist gone?

The same place the self has. Into the abstraction of thoughts, the stream of consciousness. An action confused with a thing; cognito, ergo sum. A state misnomered a statement; crybabo, ergo bum. Warehoused memories misconstrued as the structure itself; memento, ergo slum.

Inventory mistaken for essence.

Try this mind game. A dark room, pitch, suddenly bursts into light, falls back to night. But you carry the image of a baby on your retina. It dwindles. Then another flash, another image, a toddler. It fades. Another, now quicker, another again. You see image after image; toddler to preschooler to angst-struck teenager to whimpering death: each glimpse now melting into the next, and you forget there ever was a darkness, there ever was a source of light. You are at the movies, sucked into the screenplay, the illusion of movement and change. The illusion of you: that’s me, you say, up there on the screen. That’s me. That’s me!

But it isn’t.

To the extent that you exist, you are the light. You are the source of the movie, the illusion machine in a warehouse stuffed with rotting memories. And, certainly, you can rifle your wares on a long winter night, refurbish, restock and repress as you like, re-illumine each mental moment: the warmth of the breast and its devastating loss, half a dozen first kisses and a baby crowning, granddad’s last hracking grasp. What you can’t do is turn it around, stand on memory and look back at the light. A projector can’t even cast its own shadow.

Never mind decide to change itself.

more commentary from the writer

It’s said Prince Sidhartha only finally became Buddha after seven years of desperate inner struggle; wandering the forests, fasting to delirium, meditating til his buttocks hurt. His goal was to pierce the veils of what Indian tradition calls maya (commonly translated as illusion), which refers to the concept all of reality is nothing but mind stuff. But, as even the idea of maya is itself nothing but mind stuff, the term might better be transliterated as delusion and/or collusion. Still mind stuff, but at least the finger is now pointing the right way: not out-there, an imposition, but in-here, an externalization. Mind tells us the sun rose this morning. But what is sun? what is rose? what is morning? Is arose by any other name still a rising? Or something different?

Of course it’s something different. Look at the multi-petalled red flower in your garden and call it brgoramu. Would you give it to your partner on Valentine’s Day? What if you called it weed? Would you smoke it? Mind views the world through language and ideas, coercing reality into their stiff grammar — to the point there’s no direct perception of whatever reality is really out there. Mind mediates all. Does the sun go around the earth? Or earth around the sun? Our daily experience says former, we can watch it, but modern mind says latter, we can measure it. But is either anything more than mindstuff? Perspective? Comfortable delusion? Seen from the far edge of our galaxy, Earth and sun are partners in a cosmic tango, a genteel dyad sailing the winds of infinity, and the question of who’s leading is, simply, irrelevant. Fred&Ginger overwhelm abstraction.

So we moderns can’t look down our schnozi at the ancients who believed earth kept the beat.

Now perhaps you can see Sid’s problem, and how it relates to the Big I. He’d set himself the task of escaping illusion using the illusion machine itself. Try as he could, strive as he would, deny each vale in turn — there was always another veil to pull aside. Like chasing monsters in nightmares, there was always another to pick up the baton and beat him over the head. Seeking release only entangled him further in the gnarled branches of mind. Looking for the atman, the eternal self, all he could catch was the flickering of his own mind’s I.

You’ve heard of the proverbial three-chord band? Well this was a one note symphony: me me me meee. I! want release. I! want to escape maya, ideas, desires. I! want freedom from identification and attachment. I! want to help others escape their suffering. I! Captain I! demand it. {Ici, said the blind man.} [Isi, said the yes ma’am.] (Icy eye. Cut it out, said the writer.) {You started it.} So, even if his goal could not be faulted, even if his motivation was thoroughly compassionate, even if he’d given up a kingdom for these hoarse nights [on Broadway?] — he had — it made no difference. He was caught in the web of mind and the more he struggled the more firmly it bound him.

Now Sid wasn’t stupid, just a little slow. {Bhuddists don’t believe in things like death edicts, do they?} [No. They figure it’d only come back to haunt them.] It only took seven years poking at the demon in his eyes before he finally threw up his hands, and said ‘bugger this shit.’ He just let it all go, had a real meal, then sat down under a bodhi tree. Not a special one, mind you — even in a swim suit, it wouldn’t make the cover of Om and Edens — just an ordinary fig that happened to be in the neighbourhood when Sid dropped I. {Sd?} Which of course is what happened. Sid sat there all night, no doubt anticipating his first good crap in eons, until, as the morning star swept the heavens clear of night, anuttara samyak sambodhi — unexcelled complete awakening, as he called it — stole his mind.

And the rest as they say is history. Which I won’t bore you with, except to note that when he was later asked by a student what he had gained from his ass, he replied, “Just so, Sabhuti, I obtained not the least thing. And for this reason it is called unexcelled complete awakening.”

In other words, nothing special.

Sabhuti’s response is not recorded.

the writer comments

That the mind\soul\spirit/body problem has bedeviled western thinking since well before Descartes’ Latin ruminations testifies to its irrational importance. Clearly, it matters to a great many people whether humans are more or less divine. Galactic flukes, or flakes of dandruff off the godhead. It certainly mattered to Descartes. While generally credited as a founder of the scientific method, his spiritual beliefs led him to postulate the pineal gland sheltering an immaterial but cogitative leprechaun playing on puppet strings to the brain and body. [And he wasn’t even Irish.] {Cognac ergo francais?} The pineal, he asserted, was the seat of the soul.

For many of his descendants in science, that’s one of those slightly embarrassing, unfortunately out in the open, family secrets, like Uncle George got off wearing tutus. The power of the scientific method is precisely its reductionist approach, reducing nature to observable bits and pieces in order to study them. While not quite ‘the whole is no more than the sum of its parts’, reductionism tends to force its practitioners into a leap of faith that puts them squarely in the body camp: what can’t be observed cannot exist, so there can be no immaterial forces or agents, no souls or minds to act on physical systems. No spirit. There can only be the brain.

Certainly, it can be argued that current evidence supports that notion. While Descartes worked with scalpels to dissect dead — presumably already vacated — brains, today’s technicians can monitor neuronal activity in living brains, identify motor, emotional and language areas on the fly, add or subtract neurotransmitters, zap a synaptic gap here or there. Excise a problematic bit. And all this technology and all its legions of technicians still can’t find the bloody leprechaun. So — manifestly — it’s not there, and those human-defining characteristics of emotions and thoughts end up reduced to the chemical artifacts of a brain evolved to sniff out rotting meat on the African savannah. (At least, that’s the current fad: previous fashions reduced the brain to a telephone switchboard, then to a computer. Reductionism tends to adopt its metaphors from the front pages of Popular Mechanics and Life.)

To the reductionist brain, the mind/body question ends there even though, logically, a current negative finding does not necessarily preclude a future positive. The current negative not only supports the reductionist’s original leap of faith, highly reassuring, but nicely fits with the assertion that both sides of the question cannot be true. So one must be false. {And we know which one that is.} [Do we really?] Which seems logical and has the comforting certainty of common sense… until you consider quantum mechanics.

Here, common sense and the logical proposition break down. Light, for example, can be either a wave or a particle, depending on the experimental setup. Look for a wave and that’s what you’ll find. Try to pinpoint a particle and the results will show a particle. Although they seem contradictory, even mutually exclusive, the two views or aspects are complementary and neither is of itself sufficient to describe the nature of light. Nor can we arbitrarily fuse them into a wavicle or parve that exists when we aren’t looking. All we can say is that, under certain conditions of observation, light has the properties of a wave, under other conditions, the characteristics of a particle. The nature of unobserved light remains a mystery.

Matter itself exhibits the same complementary duality. Electrons — once thought to be hard little building blocks of matter — can behave as either wave or particle, again depending on the experimental setup, on what we’re looking for. Proton waves, neutron waves, every previously-thought-solid particle alter-egos as a wave function: leading the lay mind to fog out, trying to conceptualize how waves of matter can create the everyday experience that ‘I touch the table and it touches back’. Solid. Impenetrable. And, sure as hell, not waving.

The reductionist brain fogs out too, trying to rationalize how the deeper it explores into the bits and pieces of objective nature, the more seamless, indivisible and subjective the world/universe becomes: energy and matter joyfully twined in a perpetual dance of mutual unfoldment; annihilation and rebirth; form and the formless. Receding like a desert chimera, the reductionist’s goal of dispassionately describing the most basic units of matter was first forced to acknowledge the observer, then to insert the subjective I as active participant in the creation and unfolding of the world. Finally, to wonder if mind/soul/spirit was not just participant but the necessary condition for any existence. The reason. Physics, the hardest of the hard sciences, now often sounds as steeped in the spiritual as any mystic or seer.

So, returning to the, so-called, mind/body problem, Descartes’ error wasn’t his postulating the little fella; reductionism’s error is not studying neuronal pathways. The error in both cases is demanding reality acquiesce to true/false logic — a little like Portia insisting Shylock take his pound of flesh bloodless.

It can’t be done. Of course mind and brain are interwoven. Of course mind works through brain, and brain works on mind. And, yes, neurotransmitters do affect mood — quite profitably, if you listen to prozac — but mind, social factors and mood affect neurotransmitters in turn. {So which came first? The joke or the chicken crossing the road?} The quantum realm tells us reality’s a teasing tart playing to our fantasies and desires, our preconceptions. Set out to find brain and you will; seek the mind and you’ll succeed.

But the tart won’t be pigeonholed: of itself, neither brain nor mind is sufficient to describe the nature of a human being. Sure, right here, right now, at this particular intersection of eternity and infinity we are biological creatures, but we exist beyond here, beyond now. We exist in the timeless depths of the we. We are as light, sometimes wave, sometimes particle, always mysterious.

the writer speculates

Yet another writer friend says the beginning of the end is also the end of the beginning, and so beginning and end cascade into and through the other; like 69 or the twin fish, each framed by and framing the other. (She's prone, too, to placing a preface wherever the hell she likes, and damn the Critic’s torpedoes.) I find an interesting resonance in that with Einstein’s answer to the question, if he had it all, meaning life, to do over again, what would he do, to what would he devote his being? Studying the mystery of light he responded, meaning not just its dual nature, its shimmering refusal to accept just one form, but its equally mysterious weavings through the fabric of space and time.

Now, it's a familiar fact that light takes about 8½ minutes to cross the space separating Earth from the sun. That's a simple mathematical function of the distance between those bodies and the absolute speed of light in a vacuum, which is another familiar fact, some 297 thousand kilometres per second, the famous c in e = mc². But familiarity here inbreeds ignorance, and a bastardization of the complexities of Einstein's theories.

For instance, the speed of light is not an absolute absolute, but only a relative absolute. In a vacuum, as one example, no matter what the velocity of any given object, light always travels at 297 thousand km/sec in relation to it. [My italics.] So (temporarily ignoring the roughly 3% decrease in light's velocity travelling through air), grandpa chugging down the freeway at 80 km/hr could, if he had the inclination and the equipment, measure the velocity of a passing photon, and would find it was c. No matter which way it was going. [Mine again.] Not c +/- (80 km/hr) — as common sense and all those math problems about trains leaving Pontypool in varying directions would indicate. To confound the issue even more, grandpa's great³ grandson, tooling down the hyperspatial expressway at just a little over the posted maximum of 80% c, would still find a photon leaves him in the cosmic dust. And if he had the equipment, a more likely scenario, he could measure its velocity too. He'd get the same result as the old guy, 297 thousand km/sec faster than his own. (My italics.) [Mine too.] In fact, if a passing temporal anomaly temporarily placed gramps and descendent in the same co-contemporal vicinity, all other factors held constant, but batteries not included, both could simultaneously measure the speed of that smartass photon as c faster than their own.

Two points: first, never bet against light in a horse race — wine's a much better way to blow your life savings; and, second… no — hold that thought for a moment.

On the face of it, these examples suggest that light is somehow able to measure the velocity of any object, and then boost or drop its own to maintain its relative absolute velocity. Now, excluding the question of why it would want to? as unanswerable, and leaving aside the inevitable objections of anthropomorphizing an inanimate energy, I have to point out the explanation doesn't make sense: light just doesn't have the time to make those calculations and adjustments. It doesn't have any time at all. You see, for a photon, that 8½ minute journey from old Sol to us doesn't happen. Zipping along at the speed of light, by definition, the photon is subject to the relativistic effects Einsteinian theory predicts. As velocity increases, time slows down, to the moment when, at c, the moment ceases to exist: either time stops or the moment becomes so momentously huge the concept of moment loses all meaning. Take your pick. The point is, to the photon, the moment of departure and the moment of arrival are one and the same. Which means it travels no distance, because distance equals velocity times time, and anything multiplied by zero equals zero. Hence, the photon travels nowhere in no time. (And that's as true for a photon on the interGalactic Express as for our examplary (sic) [Indeed.] friend doing the Sol milkrun.)

Now for that second point: c is not a velocity, but a universal constant underlying the relationship between any awareness, embedded in space and time, and the undulating fabric of space/time itself.

I suppose I should explain.

Even if temporarily displaced into a co-contemporaneous reality, gramps and the speed freak still inhabit different temporal frames. For gramps, time passes much as we all experience it everyday. If he were to pick up a passing hitchhiker and ask the time of day, the answer would be what he'd expect. A little past 4. However, while grand³ also experiences time much as we all do, if his tractor beam managed to snag and reel in a roadside thumber, not only would they not agree it was a little past 4, they wouldn't agree on what epoch it was. [Plasticene?] Stranger still, they wouldn't even agree on where they were — somewhere en route to Pile o' Bones, Saskatchewan, or somewhere t'other side of Sirius. [The latter. Definitely.] Their respective values for c at the start of the encounter have locked them into different space/times. And even Scotty’s best ‘thas’all aye can do Capin’ tractor beam could not nullify that difference.

Another example might help to clarify the situation — the so called 'cosmologic red shift', the phenomenon of light from very distant galaxies being shifted downwards in frequency towards the red. Towards longer wavelengths. Given that those galaxies are known to be receding from the earth at immensely huge speeds, the apparent effect seems the same as the Doppler shift of an approaching/passing/receding train's reeeee aaaaaa ahhhhhhhhhghghghgh. And, on the surface, the comparison seems valid: between the start of any sound wave and its ending, the movement of the approaching train shortens the audible wavelength, and so the ear registers a higher frequency. As the train recedes, the train's movement lengthens the audible wavelength, and so the sound is heard as lower. The effect depends on the position of the observer relative to the train. Observer a at a hundred metres from the track will hear a less pronounced frequency shift than observer b, standing one metre from the track, because the train's movement relative to a is much smaller than its movement relative to b. (Observer c, standing directly in the train's path, would experience the most profound impact.)

Does this square with the red shift? No, just the opposite. ]An inverse square?[ {Typecal. {sic}} [Look who's back.] (I was wondering what had happened to him.) [Well, you know what he's like… he can't write and carp at the same time.] The more distant the receding galaxy, the more pronounced the cosmic red shift.

To understand what's happening, think back to roasting marshmallows over a childhood fire. As the marshie begins heating, apart from taking its first steps towards a delectable golden brown, it starts expanding. Now, the marshmallow is not getting bigger the way a child grows year to year. Rather, the core is liquefying and that molten mallow takes more space than it did back when it was fresh from the bag. It’s similar for the universe. The galaxies aren’t fleeing each other's bad gas; the space in between them is actually stretching. Kind of like super-duper-goo. That stretching's been going on ever since the ‘moment’ of the big bang.

Except there never was such a moment. While much has been written about the first three minutes of the universe, in which it burst into existence from non-existence, then evolved from a glutinous soup of energy into a crazy dance of elementary particles and then into the first atoms which merged into the first simple molecules, you could as meaningfully call it the first three zillion years. There was no time per se because all those original particles shared the common property of c. So any dancing they did had to have been in 0/0 time — the same lethargic polka that smartass photon is still doing today. Time in any way similar to how we experience it only came into existence with the emergence of atoms and molecules that no longer shared c. That’s our heritage, the stuff of which we’re made, and why we seem so locked into the waltz of temporal existence. But that timeless, spaceless dance of creation is still there, perpetually grabbing new partners and pulling them in.

And there’s the nub. There’s fairly recent research in particle physics that shows two particles can share faster than light communication, which was a supposed theoretical impossible. But the universe is far stranger than any theory can predict. Of course particles can communicate faster than light. In the particle world there is only here, only now, and where there’s no time and no distance there are no barriers. Every particle birthed in the beginning is still in touch with every other, even though we can measure the space between them as growing at many times the speed of light. And every new particle rebirths that same beginning, recreates the timeless here, the spaceless now of what should more properly be called the Big Orgasm.

And we are part of it. We are not alone in our temporal aberration. We are bathed in that infinite now, cut off from it only through the abstraction of c, through our concepts of time and space, beginning and ending — the placental walls of our minds that sometimes, somehow break down, fall apart, dissolve back to the fathomless eternity we sprang out of.

And there be God. Buddha. Mind. Source. Whatever you want to call it.

[So, tell me, what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?] (Nothing, but it does explain why bears shit in the woods.) {Why?} (Because they’re there.)