In this fleeting moment
what extravagant respite
as booming surf speaks its
mystical passage across
the undreamed depths.
I come upon this railing just before sunrise one morning in March 2006 during my jittery daily stroll. The poem … the view … the sounds of that surf … I know I should feel some fleeting extravagant respite. But I don’t. It’s like being given a gift you can’t figure out how to unwrap. If anything, the experience just emphasizes the divide between the poem’s spirit and my own.
I try, really I do. I take ten deep breaths with my eyes closed and then open them to the “booming surf.” I do a few basic t’ai chi moves, with a yoga Salute to the Sun thrown in for good measure (even though the sun is in the opposite direction). Ultimately, all I can do is take a lot of pictures to try to at least capture the experience I seem incapable of having. If only I could focus on the outer scenery as ferociously as I do the inner.
March 27, 2006: Laguna Beach, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. 290 Miles. Las Vegas is a great place for an agitated depressive. Shaken, not stirred. Because the agitation you feel inside manifests all around you—that insistent drive for the next moment, born of intense dissatisfaction with this one. Just as the vibration in my solar plexus is on alert 24/7 to demand “just one last” gasp from my exhausted adrenals, so the town is always trigger-hair ready to demand just one last gasp from the slightest human fascination, compulsion, addiction, or obsession. The town truly never sleeps. Even at dawn, it tosses and turns. I feel right at home: The endless piped-in music. The insistent smell of fake flowers. The dazzling pumped-up colors of real ones. Guys polishing floors. Dealers polishing chips one by one.
Monuments to and from the past rise again—daring you to mock their pretensions. The Arc de Triomphe. Eiffel Tower. Caesar’s Palace. Luxor Pyramid.
Bob Dylan is playing here soon. Waylon Jennings is playing here soon. Wayne Newton, Don Rickles, Barry Manilow and guys I’ve never heard of are playing here soon. What, no women? I walk into The Imperial and G-l-o-r-i-a is playing right now.
Revolving doors keep opening for you. Taxis keep waiting for you. Ramps and stairways keep appearing to shuttle you back and forth across the Strip.
Guys keep handing out cards with pictures of naked women. They’ll come to you. Direct to your room. Totally nude. $49. Special. Anything you want.
Anything? What I lust for is a trick I doubt they’ve ever turned.
March 28, 2006: Las Vegas, Nevada to Zion National Park, Utah. 175 Miles. I love picking up hitchhikers. I know people think it’s dangerous. But, most of the ones I pick up are in far more desperate physical and psychological straits than I am. We exchange the usual pleasantries: Where you going? Salt Lake City. I’m going over toward Zion. Just drop me at Route 9. Can I smoke? Sure. You want one? No, quit a while ago. But you go ahead.
He then lights up and dives in without further preamble:
Hitchhiker: This guy picked me up … I’d gone in to get a cup of coffee. And he says what’s your game? And I said, I don’t gamble. And he said, “Well you’re going to gamble today.” And he stuck a .45 in my ribs and pushed me out the passenger side door and they shot him to death …
Me: [shocked] Who shot who to death?
H: The security guards shot him to death. We parked out in the open parking lot. And he’s got his gun.
D: So they saw his gun and shot him?
H: I rolled out of the car and yelled, hey this guy’s got a gun and they shot him. Just unloaded on him.
D: Unbelievable.
H: I mean nothing personal but I’ve already been shot, I don’t need to get shot again.
D: [laughing, thinking he’s kidding] When were you shot?
H: He shot me an hour earlier right below the kneecap.
D: You mean you knew this guy?
H: Well, we’d been riding together since Salt Lake.
D: And why did he shoot you the first time?
H: We’d just got gas. I started to get out and wish to hell I would have. I wouldn’t a got shot … He’s twice the size of me, stronger than hell. But he’s all hot, eating pills and smoking dope.
D: Oh I see [laughing nervously …]
H: And we didn’t need no gas until he got to Caesars and he was almost empty. In the parking lot. Got to the door and I’m thinking yeah, I know these security guys. They just gunned him down. Son of a bitch. I got my leg taped up and glued. Cops said well we’ll bag him and tag him. You know that dumb son of a bitch had $1200 in his wallet. He was just going down for the night. He had a room at the Tropicana, and he was going to stop at Caesars, the Pyramid, and the Tropicana and then he was going to leave early in the morning. He had a wake up call all ready at 5 or 6 in the morning.
D: Ended up dead.
H: Right. And this cop dug the .45 out of the corner of the car door … low velocity … the ballistic man’s been here, and he’s got all kinds of shell tricks. He’s got chambers he puts in that barrel. I knew the guy had one gun. I didn’t know he coulda had ten in a second. He had gun parts everywhere.
D: Jeez … so what were you doing in Las Vegas?
H: I spent the rest of the night there.
D: Yeah, but now???
H: Oh this time? I’m on my way home to Council Bluffs, Iowa.
D: What’s in Council Bluffs?
H: I live there.
D: You have a place to live there?
H: I’ve lived under a bridge for almost 40 years.
D: Almost 40 years? Why’d you come all the way out here?
H: I had no winter clothes. Really. But now I’ll just suffer through the winter.
D: 40 years? How old are you?
H: 80.
D: No … really? C’mon. Your life? You’re not 80.
H: [changing subject] You can follow that dirt road all the way back to the town up there. I was crossing up there one time and an old black guy says, don’t touch my pot! He’s got a rifle and another guy’s got a shotgun. Two kids got … You here to pick our pot? No I’m here to … shit.
D: Sounds like you run into some guns in your line of life.
H: You run into lots of idiots who carry guns. What are you doing out here from Vermont?
March 29, 2006: Zion National Park. It takes an impressively contrarian emotional life to feel claustrophobic about the idea of going to the Grand Canyon.
But I keep imagining my road-weary VW Camper being hemmed and heckled by loutish RVs, throngs of tourists jostling me dangerously close to the edge, and out-of-control scenic-ride planes strafing me on their way to the bottom of the Rio Grande.
Further proof that rational thought isn’t my strong suit.
So, I’ve ended up at Zion—which may be more human-sized than the Grand Canyon, but still makes you feel like you just got unceremoniously shoved into the dispassionate face of God or a reasonable facsimile.
I’ve spent two cool, drizzly days here, wandering, biking, hiking, and uttering the occasional proforma soul-wrenching scream.
You can see how some native Americans would have been pretty impressed if someone had come along and said they’d been up-close-and-personal with the God who made all this stuff. No knock on Jesus, but it’s still kind of hard for me to imagine an intermediary … you just want to worship the cliffs themselves.
March 30, 2006: Zion National Park, Utah to Sedona, Arizona. 303 Miles. I wouldn’t say I have unreasonable expectations for my stay in Sedona. My thinking goes something like this:
This place is allegedly one of the earth’s big-time power spots. Therefore, I shall be healed.
The true power of Sedona has been enshrouded in New Age babble. I am cynical about said babble and will be taught a valuable lesson in humility. Therefore, I shall be healed.
I’ve heard that viewing the sunset from the Sedona airport is a transforming experience, complete with Native American shamans banging on drums. And, while many tourists will be there
, I will hear the beat of a different drummer. Therefore I shall be healed.
I will be able to escape the maddening crowds by waking up early and taking a solitary walk to Bell Rock, which is a famous energy vortex (that’s a good thing, right?) Therefore, I shall be healed.
This morning, after my walk to Bell Rock, having checked off another box on my list of potential divine interventions, I hurry nervously back to the van and drive on.
March 31, 2006. Sedona, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona. 142 Miles. For the last few days I’ve been at another trade show; this one at a “destination” resort outside of Phoenix, where I’ve re-rendezvoused with my business partner, close friend, and partner-in-crime (just two as I remember … crimes that is), along with his wife who’s one of my oldest friends and mother of our goddaughter. In other words, we’re family … and a fairly functional one at that. So I’ve been able to relax a bit, secure in the knowledge that they’ll hustle me out of harm’s way if I start staring catatonically, ranting deliriously, or both at the same time—no mean trick.
Like back in Anaheim, I realize that a trade show isn’t all that bad a place for the borderline bipolar. Every few minutes you get to try out your latest imitation of a perfectly sane human being on someone new. If you screw up, you can just mumble an unintelligible but relatively inoffensive comment, and let someone else repair the commercial damage, if any. Next victim! Besides, everyone at this resort is clearly as deluded as I am. I mean the idea of vacationing at a place on the edge of the desert where, except when playing golf, you hunker down in air-conditioned comfort worrying about skin cancer, is easily as wondrously strange as anything that’s ever gone on in my head. Every morning at sunrise, driven out of bed in my par-for-the-course morning frenzy, I find myself virtually alone on the trails under some seriously spectacular skies. Early Sunday morning I go for a bike ride. Phoenix looks like a pretty reasonable place to live at 6 A.M. The cars are sleeping.
Still, that ever-present waxing and waning shadow in the back of my throat remains as vivid as any of the colors of those dusty desert sunrises.
April 4, 2006: Phoenix, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico (via Canyon de Chelly). 452 Miles. A lot of people have told me I have to visit Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico to get a sense of Anasazi history and culture and what the local hunter-gatherers were up to back in the B.C.s. They also said I’d be overwhelmed by its mysteries—both geological and human.
Unfortunately, I keep reading that you have to drive miles on hot, dry, rocky roads to get there—which conjures up images of me crawling, skeleton-like, in some ditch as my poor VW van goes up in flames behind me. I may be a poor man’s Hunter Thompson, but I have no desire to pose for Ralph Steadman.
So I take the less-traveled road to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona—less spectacular perhaps, but still no slouch in the shock-and-awe department.
At various times during this trip the universe has conspired to give me privacy. Often, I’ve gone to relatively well-known tourist sites, and there’ll be no one else in sight. But as soon as I leave, people appear. Same here. I’m alone, the only non-native at the bottom of the White House Trail, able to converse with the spirits in peace and quiet. But as I leave, at least a dozen people pass me, talking in loud voices, including a mother and father followed by two pouty teenage girls who also appear to be looking ferociously inside. Hearing an incongruously modern engine, I turn around to see a guide in an open-top jeep with another family, plowing through the stream, seemingly oblivious to the silence they’re shattering. On the way out, I stop at “Mummy’s Lookout.” As soon as I arrive, two old women move off the rocks … I have no idea where they disappeared. Generations of Navajos haunt this valley.
April 5-6, 2006: Gallup, New Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico. 140 Miles. As a famous man once said, “One man’s miracle is another man’s matter of fact … and vice versa.” So I tend to treat the ordinary as if it were extraordinary and the extraordinary as if it were ordinary. Some people think that all petroglyphs were drawn by ancient Native American tribes. Others think they were drawn by, or at the direction of, the kind of aliens that even Arizona can’t deport. Some might be graffiti created by wild packs of drug-crazed teenagers sometime between 1000 A.D. and 1969. This morning, a friend with some serious shamanic chops takes me to see some petroglyphs that she’s experienced as power spots, so I can dig down deep and see what I come up with.
Picture this: Two relatively normal looking 50-somethings, wearing hiking boots, jeans, and zip-up sweatshirts—no beads, sacred stones, amulets, or feathers in sight—strolling across and occasionally clambering up and down a rocky hillside. They’re catching up, telling stories, laughing—doing what old friends do.
Every once in a while, she stops: “I know it’s around here somewhere. Ah …” She proceeds to direct me to a rock that has a strange drawing on it. I walk over to said rock and instinctively start issuing your run-of-the-mill blood-curdling screams. After 30 seconds or so, I take a couple of deep breaths and follow her to the next one, continuing our conversation as if nothing’s happened. Perhaps a casual comment: “That was a good one.” We do this a half dozen times, until we’re caught up on marriages, kids, and friends … and I’m spent. Then we go back to her house where I have a cup of coffee and talk to her husband about the stock market.
From my perspective, screaming with a friend in the desert isn’t a whole lot different from going to some guy I never met, telling him all my problems, and having him give me a pill. Besides, back in the 1970s, a guy named Arthur Janov popularized “primal scream” therapy. And there are almost as many places where you can “rebirth” these days as there are maternity wards.
Still, it was quite a walk on the wild side. And while we spent a lot of the time laughing at ourselves, we were dealing with something that was bigger than the both of us.
It’s true that none of the human figures I saw in those petroglyphs looked particularly sad to me. (Although it did feel that some of them seemed to be having a hard time expressing themselves … coulda been kids doodling for all I know.) Certainly people in other ancient cultures—Egypt, Hindu, Chinese, etc.—weren’t strangers to depression. They suspected it was caused by everything from sorcery and bad humors to being forsaken by gods. One God in particular … Job was even a less happy camper than I am.
Back then, they tried the same kind of cures we do today—magical spells, hallucinogens, acupuncture, herbs, strange potions, and trepanation (that’s the drilling into your brain thing).
So, who knows what subtle changes in my brain chemistry we effected or demons we exorcised?
April 6, 2006: Albuquerque, New Mexico to Pratt, Kansas. 552 Miles. I spend 200 miles on US Route 50, which is known as “America’s Loneliest Road.” Obviously, they haven’t traveled my neural pathways. I left Vermont three weeks ago. And while I had various places to go and people to meet, and have passed through or stayed in ±20 states, my real destination wasn’t on any map. It was a place where some Taos juju, Roswell alien, California healer, Las Vegas strangeness, or beatific vision of the Goddess of Sanity (Beiwe) appearing in a Toto-esque Kansas windstorm (or some combination of these) would inspire my neurons to do the job they were made for. Although my van is blown hither and yon in those vicious Kansas whirlwinds, my mind and heart stay stubbornly true to course. The hellish smell of sulfur fertilizer says it all. Purgatory would definitely be an improvement.
April 7th, 2006: Pratt, Kansas to Marion, Illinois. 659 Miles. A year before this trip, while driving in northern Michigan, I picked up a 24-year-old flashback of a 1960s hitchhiker. He was on his way to the annual Gathering of the Rainbow Family which describes itself as “the largest non-organization of non-members in the world.” In the course of our conversation, he spoke glowingly of his base commune back in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
I’d thought back on this conversation occasionally over the last year until—through the miracle of mad mental alchemy—this, to me, obscure town on the Mississi
ppi had been transformed in my imagination into a cross between Cambridge, Berkeley and Lourdes; and was filled with people who combine the authenticity of Huck Finn with the wisdom of the Dalai Lama and the healing power of Mother Teresa.
Throughout this trip, I’ve been secretly plotting how to make an innocent detour to this Valhalla. By the time I leave Pratt, it has become an obsession. I’m certain I’ll soon be surrounded by laid-back aging hippies and their young acolytes, dancing to live music, trailed by hints of marijuana and incense. I’m convinced that my enlightened spirit and tortured heart will prove irresistible to their every healing desire. I picture a comfortable futon. Maybe a massage. Cool, healing unguents (whatever they are) gently rubbed into my third eye. At the very least, some wine, tofu, and cute girls … or, as he put it, “righteous women.”
All I know is that the ephemeral hitchhiker was clearly an incarnation of some powerful Native American medicine man, and my encounter with him was a sign that something magical will happen to me in Cape Girardeau.
Arriving on its outskirts, I blast through the commercial strip and soon reach the heart of the city where I begin slowly driving around looking for the countercultural hub of this heaven-on-earth.
But there’s nothing going on. A huge mural blocks the Mississippi. The few people wandering around look as disappointed as I am. The only real action is at two huge billiard halls and an Italian restaurant where a troublingly well-behaved 50’s-style wedding party is gathering on the street.
I check out a few hotels but can’t imagine checking into any of them. I check out a few restaurants, but can’t imagine eating in any of them.
David's Inferno Page 6