Situational Ethics

The last time you found yourself walking down Michigan Avenue—for whatever cursed reason—you might have noticed them roaming among the general hoi polloi of tourists, street performers and homeless people. They are a small, loose, local herd. Often they are made up of matronly types with armloads of designer bags, but not always. Whoever they are, what brings them together is the luxury furs they wear, sometimes down to the ankles, and sometimes with matching accessories. Once, I sighted a man wearing a ridiculous silver hairpiece. It blended in so well that I thought it was part of the fur coat that cascaded over his shoulders and down to his shoelaces. So thorough was this covering, that for just a moment, I mistook him for some beast-man—an unfortunate yeti that had wandered onto the Magnificent Mile.

I have no knowledge of the varieties of fur that undulate past me on Michigan Avenue. I only see a range of glamorous hues from silver to caramel to jet to cinnamon, but I understand that many sorts of wildlife find their ways onto the fluent, elegant soma of the discerning consumer of outerwear—from rabbits to raccoons, from sables to minks, from foxes to seals to various points down the line. (One can only speculate as to the fortunes of cold-blooded fauna like snakes and alligators.)

Fur-bearing hide: that substance generated by the elaborate slaughter and ritualistic flaying of certain creatures to make warm, stylish attire. It has to stop. You know it, and I know it. It is a human imperative, because we, as human beings, are the only creatures given the ability to grasp moral complexities and the facility to understand how we might best resolve them in a way that supports the Greater Good.

I believe the practice of killing animals and then harvesting their skin and hair to make luxury items not only should end, but must end. Before I begin my appeal to you, the reader, let me clarify my motivations for making it: I don't care about animals, no matter how cute or furry. In fact, I prefer homely, disagreeable animals, like cockroaches and squirrels that could give a rat's ass about human beings. They exist in their natural state just as they would without us, and that's the way it should be. How can one have respect for a dog or cow when they are so hell bent on winning your approval, or your care, at least? At heart, relationships between humans and animals are unnatural which is one of many reasons that the manufacture of fur garments should stop. All of the minks, rabbits, raccoons and their kindred that are farmed for this purpose have become indolent and do not live according to their true nature. (Seals do, but we must apply a methodical ethical approach here. Otherwise, we are no better than animals ourselves.)

Inter-species congress also weakens humans, as it encourages withdrawal from more and complex—and sometimes difficult—social relations with other men and women. Humans turn animals into proxies for their emotional needs—a warmth not provided by fur—“love,” a feeling that no animal can feel as we do, no matter how unhealthy we make both them and ourselves through coddling and over-feeding. Sickening as this phenomenon may be, transforming animals into emasculated puppets, or pets, isn’t much different from making elaborate clothing from them.

Unhealthy interactions with animals aside, a much more important reason for doing away with the luxury fur industry lies in the environmental precipice over which we are currently leaning. We find ourselves fighting for some sort of balanced footing, and the use of animal pelts in the construction of coats and stoles may not seem to be of great importance, but it is, in fact a major chink in the planet’s natural coat of mail: the diversity of global eco-systems.

One organism interacts with another, and the consequences spiral out, pulling in ever more life. Motivated by need, life fosters life, keeping even inanimate matter like air, soil and water alive. Alive to feed all and in so doing to complete the great organic cycle.

Science has delineated much of this cycle, but we are ever surprised by the damage caused by the depletion of even a single species to the larger environment it inhabits. As the new popularity of fur garments grows, it is foreseeable that our desire, if not our need, may outstrip nature’s power to replenish any raw materials involved. Our hunger may consume nearly all of the farmed species involved. Then we will be forced to turn to nature for more specimens, and eventually this supply may be exhausted as well, leading to disastrous consequences for various ecosystems.

These animals consume populations of other animals and of plants, keeping them from unhealthy growth. They are themselves consumed, maintaining the numbers of larger predatory animals. To remove an essential link from a chain like this can only lead to ruin. I might not be able to see all of the consequences of these animals’ extinction, but on Michigan Avenue, where this discussion began, I can see at least one nightmarish consequence looming large: with the absence of raw goods, the fur industry itself will collapse.

Think of the jobs lost, of the financial consequences. I abjure the fur industry to modify its practices, to greatly decrease the volume of product it is currently generating, despite soaring consumption of its wares. The danger is real, and not just to ecosystems around the globe, but to the industry itself. It has lit the candle of supply and demand—so clearly a recapitulation of nature's own cycles of need—at both ends. Supply will be lost in the disproportionate destruction of animals, and demand will be lost in the loss of fur consumers.

Like the makers of fur garments, their wearers, too, endanger themselves, albeit through an inverted mechanism. Again, we find reflections—we are lost in a House of Mirrors, wherein the human bearers of fur threaten themselves through over-proliferation. The depletion of furs intensifies, not just through the growing hungers of existing consumers, but also, and perhaps more disastrously, through a swelling of their numbers. It is an escalating trend, as can be seen in the fur flowing over Michigan Ave. And one can only speculate as to what might happen to fur enthusiasts if new pelts become unavailable.

Clearly, pointing out their plight to them will do no good. Anyone so committed to wearing such bizarre and reviled clothing will not relinquish it without a vicious, possibly mortal, struggle. Assaulted and spit upon in the open streets, publicly splattered with blood or red paint, the fur wearers’ chutzpah is titanic and pathological. They keep their furs. And now, as trends have shifted, they have thrown off any pretense to shame, liberated their favorite garments from mothballs—and their demonstration of courage has won new converts to the practice of wearing fur. So now, as long-standing fur-bearers openly wear and demand more wardrobe items, they bring newer enthusiasts with them, forming a vast swarm with an ever-growing hunger.

Again, we are human beings, and it is a moral imperative that we maintain the Greater Good. We must then, somehow, find a way to save luxury fur enthusiasts from themselves.

Fortunately, the wheel has been invented for us, and we need not re-invent it. I would suggest an exploration of time-tested methods used to address similar problems. Throughout the United States, federal, state, and county authorities have employed various tactics to control wildlife populations. The re-establishment of natural predators in depleted areas and incentives for increased hunting by humans have met with some success, but it is absurd to suggest them here. The hunting of another human being is murder, and while that might be an amusing satirical notion, it leads us nowhere. And of course, the natural predators faced by humans—and there are virtually none, as we are now the alpha-carnivores of our world—are too large and indiscriminately dangerous to be reintroduced to Michigan Avenue.

A more humane—and less ludicrous—solution is called for—and does exist in the practice of trapping. The efficacy of trapping need not be considered. It has been used by humans across cultural and millennial divides to successfully subdue game or of unwanted “pest” animals, and as a human endeavor that has existed in some form in virtually every area of the world for thousands of years, it has certainly stood the test of time.

The ethics of trapping may be more troubling for some. Thankfully, its moral complications are not nearly as thorny as those provided by the practice of wearing furs. Over the last several decades, the operation of animal traps has served as a flashpoint in the ongoing struggle between hunters and animal rights activists. The latter have cited numerous consequences of the placement and design of traps, and of the laws governing these matters. They have pointed to studies like the USDA in 1992, which claimed that up to 45% of coyotes caught in certain foot traps were moderately to severely wounded, due to broken legs, prolonged exposure and other incidental factors. On the other side of the coin of husbandry, fur trappers have pointed to investigations which bear obvious significance, including one that indicated that during the five year period after 1998, when foot traps were banned in Southern California, coyote attacks on humans rose from 4-10 per year—more than a 100% increase.

At times, this debate has grown quite tense, but faced with the impending luxury fur crisis, all of us have no choice, but to set our idealistic concerns aside and yield to practical necessity. We must agree on this one approach, as it has proven so successful over the years, in terms of numbers, if not of simple answers. Sadly, there are none when faced with an issue of such gravity.

Having accepted the necessity of trapping, we must now arrive at some general agreement as to how we will trap and what with—obviously, the particulars of such a complex operation will call for considerable plotting. The second question is far easier to answer than the first: foot traps are the most sensible choice, as they are extremely effective tools when dealing with large animals. They consist of an interlocking set of jaws that are left open on the ground. When an animal steps into these jaws, it triggers a small catch. The jaws abruptly close, clutching one of the animal’s appendages.

Much has been made of the occasional accident that occurs when an inappropriate animal—not the sought after species—wanders into the trap and is unintentionally held or hurt. But when one considers the efficiency of these devices, it becomes clear that their benefits far outweigh their costs. Foot traps are not just productive, but simple to use as well. They can be easily baited—perhaps with edible or drinkable matter found appetizing to most targets, such as frappucino. Baiting with false fur garments is also possible, assuming that genuine products are absolutely avoided—our basic motivation is to reduce the need for authentic pelts. Quality replacements would be easily mistaken for real furs without close examination, and our only intention is to cause the fur-bearer to approach.

What happens then? We are dealing with human beings, not animals, so it is important to note that there is some small danger of injury, when the trap closes. If traps are set up correctly, however, the possibility of injury is minimized. Additionally, fewer trap models contain softer jaws that should further diminish problems, while other, more conscientiously designed mechanisms, like the “coon catcher,” can help ensure that the wrong sort of animal is not caught in the trap.

Once the fur-bearer is trapped, he or she must be subdued, removed from the trap, and then taken to a remote facility for processing. What happens there would depend on the choices made by the community and its representatives. If the fur-bearer is to be returned to his or her environment, he or she should be anesthetized, so that any fur items may be removed. Electronic “tagging” of disrobed fur-bearers for continued study may be pursued in areas where the goal is to study and attempt to modify their behavior.

Sadly, given the magnitude of the danger presented by fur-bearers to the global environment, and given the pity each of us must feel when viewing them, stumbling at the verge of extinction, the best solution is probably the simplest: humane euthanasia. We reach a grim conclusion here of course, but we can be comforted by the fact that we could always maintain the spirit of the fur-bearers and of the meaning they bore for us by having them stuffed and mounted. Personally, I wouldn’t mind having the head of one of those matronly types, with grotesque, death-distended lips, staring down at me from above my mantle, like a departed deer, meeting my eyes with her own glassy orbs, as she never would, if she were stepping on my toes on Michigan Avenue. It is a tragedy. God bless the rich… And the people who want to look like them.

People Passing through Me

It’s that time again. The one where I tell you about all the great music I discovered this year and about the various epiphanies I’ve had concerning music w/ which I am already familiar. Unfortunately, there were considerable financial restraints placed on me, so I wasn't able to buy as much music as I usually would. Not that I would’ve even had any idea of what to buy, for the most part. (Aside from the old standards, of course. Improbably, there are still a few Charles Mingus, Bill Hicks and Spacemen 3 records I don’t have!)

There was an even more intense leeching of my energy and personal freedom, so taking the time to find new music—taking the time to even listen to music—was frequently out of the question. I was nearly dead, musically, which, for all intents and purposes, made me dead emotionally, which, for all intents and purposes, kinda makes it seem like I should've been dead altogether. Dontcha think? I mean, what’s the point of living, if you don’t feel anything?

To be fair to myself, it’s not all aging. Whereas I often use music as a life preserver to get me through my personal ration of dismal, agonizing shit—(not sayin’ I’m special—I know you’ve got yr. own shit and yr. own ways of dealing w/ it)—here, music became a luxury at best. For one thing, I spent a great deal of time w/ people to whom music means almost nothing—who, in fact, often find music of almost any sort to be annoying.

It didn’t help that I bought a new home this year. In the process, I had to deal w/ realtors, loan officers, lawyers, inspectors, contractors and their ilk. Some of those people were nice. To some, I am extraordinarily grateful even. Others were just the degenerate sows they are made out to be. But that's to be expected and had no effect on my relationship to music.

What surprised me was the people I already knew in a non-professional friendly capacity, and who helped me out both before and after I bought the place. They were the worst people I dealt with, making situations that were stressful worse, and developments that should've been happy bleak. What's more, there's nothing worse than feeling beholden to people treat you like shit and have no use for music.

A lotta times, I’m not sure that music would’ve been equal to the situations I encountered anyway. There was rarely an opportunity to even try to find comfort in music. That pains me, 'tho circumstances seem to’ve improved, emotionally and musically. Truth be told, I feel as inert as a darkened, dried up eraser that lies at the end of an old pencil—shredding little threads and specks of myself—blunt and rigid enough to be completely pointless. Ha ha. Get it? Pointless. So in interest of letting you laugh yr. ass off at that funny gag—or even better, at the overwrought metaphor wherein it lies, I’ll shut up and get to the music…

The List:

Come to Daddy – Aphex Twin: Containing a lift from "Skull" by the Misfits. Solid noise.

Revolution – Mudhoney: A cover of a Spacemen 3 song. It was recorded as part of a split-single. Mudhoney, predictably, took this as an opportunity to poke fun at Spacemen 3’s reputation as junkies. The gag did not go over well w/ Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3.

Che – Suicide: Speaking of covers... Last year’s playlist included Spacemen 3 covering “Che...”

Chittam Irangaayo – The Ruins: No covers here—‘tho the Ruins do play a wicked Black Sabbath medley. One night, this song came on the iPod when it was on random play. I was walking home, alone, and...

Pro Life – Bill Hicks: Bill Hicks has influenced what I think and write. This track appeared on the iPod on during the same walk—a very good night for shuffle play as…

What a Botheration – Lee “Scratch” Perry: …This song came on next! I love the tinny organ. It sounds like a refugee from a skating rink. And I always like the way Scratch says this piece.

New Rock – Buffalo Daughter: Again, on the iPod... on the same night!

Uphill – Can: Yes... the same night! The final song in a suite, and this one I hadn't heard in a while. Here, I really felt it.

Holly-wuud – Miles Davis: Lately I'm really into Miles's darker, thicker 70s stuff. Many people wring their hands over the idea that he was no longer playing "jazz" at this point... As he himself once said: "So What?"

Countdown – John Coltrane: I was at a restaurant w/ some people whom I often find depressing. Giant Steps came on, and it was like a cold beer in the Sahara to me.

Hurricane Heart Attack – The Warlocks: The Warlocks' Phoenix was one of a very few new albums I picked up this year. Good solid rock n' roll, played w/ imagination.

You’re the Dream Unicorn – The Blood Brothers: I've already said that the Blood Brothers have given it a new spirit. The decaying oldster badly needed this gift. Picture Grampaw from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and we will be on the same page. And hey! Blood! Remember how he slurps the blood from that foxy chick's finger during the dinner scene?

Put a Little Love in Your Heart – Leonard Nimoy: HA! Hahaha!!! Ahooo... ahuh... huuhh... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

New Genius (Brother) – Gorillaz: The Gorillaz songs are ingeniously produced sound worlds. There's a lot of upbeat energy, but the Gorillaz don't punk out—they also acknowledge the other, more painful side of experience

St. Ides Heaven – Elliott Smith: Elliott Smith always seems to be talking to you. That is both comforting, as you might feel that you aren't alone, and claustrophobic, and he's so damn close, and just won't go away.

Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction: This summer, I was I walking between my old place and the home I had just bought. On my headphones, two simple chords sounded on a guitar, the steel drum fired itself up, and I felt kind of alive.

Revolution – Spacemen 3: Here is the original. Accept no substitutes. Except Mudhoney's.

Voodoo Child (Slight Return) – The Jimi Hendrix Experience: This year, I spent a lot of time listening to Electric Ladyland, the Experience's last album because I'd picked out one of the dorkier tracks, "1983... A Merman I Should Turn to Be..." as something my guitar teacher and I might play. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, it's 14 minutes long, and didn't fit on this list.

A summing up: I said above that I'm not sure whether music was equal to my problems this year; maybe because I was looking to the wrong music for solace or strength. In order to find what I needed, it may be true that I needed to actively explore, rather than just clutch at the familiar and the comfortable. Sometimes, when life sucks, it is necessary to rest—to mourn and heal. However, at other moments, it is more helpful to act and move.

For me, the music of Richard James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin, has provided both comfort and invigoration. His ambient electronic stuff is beautiful, but it presses sound into weird shapes, and when he moves outside of ambient territory, the shapes get even weirder. And louder. Here, James sounds like he's angry—maybe at all of the unimaginative imitations of his sound. But maybe he's just restless. He's always on the move, providing glimpses of the places electronic music might go. And in 2008, when I very often couldn't connect to "music," I could feel a connection to this spirit.

This is not to say that many of the songs on this list, aren't simple, traditional music. Lee "Scratch" Perry, The Gorillaz, Elliott Smith, Coltrane and Mudhoney are each very approachable, while "Jane Says" and "Voodoo Child" are inescapable rock standards. Still, I think that some of this stuff is a little darker than the usual moon in June clichés. Elliott says he's high on amphetamines, and Jane, no matter how bright and sunny her song, is a junkie. Then you have a cosmic vision of death in "Voodoo Child" and a nightmare of ghostliness and paranoia in "New Genius."

Elsewhere on the list the songs start to disintegrate, or, at least, become more difficult to hum along w/ or bop yr. head to. You can certainly thrash it around to "You're the Dream Unicorn," which, despite its fury, shows off the perverse humor of the Blood Brothers in the ridiculous refrain that gives the song its title. And Spacemen 3's take on "Revolution" is, for all its embarrassing, muddled earnestness, an ominous, asymmetrical drone that ultimately explodes in howling noise. And that's how I find myself looking elsewhere.

One thing that all of this music says to me is that there is absolutely no reason to quit, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It's worth it to try and make something real, heartfelt and new—something that isn't entirely formulaic, and won't just be recognized w/ impatient nods and a reflexive barfing out of money, at best.

The crime committed against humanity that is Leonard Nimoy's "Put a Little More Love in Your Heart" might be better forgotten, but maybe it perfectly illustrates part of the experience I had and am continuing to have. Songs became insufficient. Songs began to seem frivolous. At times, by virtue of their gross oversimplification, songs became downright insulting. Against that backdrop, Mr. Spock is doing what so much popular music does; he's just doing it more thoroughly.

Whether it's intentional, whether he's that much of a visionary, which I doubt, Nimoy captures exactly how crass and ludicrous this stuff can be—something that is not just irrelevant to, but that mocks real emotion. All that bad taste, all that insipidness, all that falseness that you can find all over yr. radio dial, in commercials, on CDs, in TV theme songs. Leonard's doing it to the 9s here, isn't he? Fortunately, he's so awful at it that it's also really, really funny.

Despite Leonard's provocation, I am not done w/ songs. I do think it's worth looking further for new ways to make them. I'm not ready to let Jane's Addiction or Mudhoney go—I wholeheartedly love this music—but for the first time in years, I feel really, actively engaged by the idea of really looking to see what the hell else may be going on out there.

Buffalo Daughter offer a sorta model for how music might be able to stay familiar while becoming strange at the same time. The sonic swirl of "New Rock" is alive, has a beat and melody, but creates its own brightly lit place, where song structure and instrumentation take unexpected turns. Can it be cultural? I'm hesitant to generalize, but many Japanese bands seem to approach the making of music w/o some of the preconceptions their Western colleagues have. Look at the Ruins, who roll out weird, unpredictable stuff that, improbably, remains musical. The melody's haunting, the beat kicks, and it's all put forward by two dudes w/ drums and a bass guitar.

So here's where I find myself, and aside from everything else, I still believe that good music is being made, and that it can make your life better. And I look forward to discovering it, if I can. It's just a feeling. It may go nowhere, but at the end of a very bad year, it gives me some hope. What more can you ask of a mix tape?

A Protean Shake

I am proud to say that I was the first one to spot lava up close and personal. I looked down to check my footing, and there was one of those ubiquitous lines. This was a small one, maybe 2' long and 2" thick, and it was about 4" away from where my foot had come to a rest.

It took me a moment to stop staring. We'd spread out, and no one was very near to me. The wind had picked up and was loud, but I managed to get Niko's attention. He gazed at the ground, and then we exchanged one of those grins people share in movies when they've just stumbled onto hidden gold. Niko flagged down his father. As Stefan approached, I looked past him and saw a single radiant line stretching across the horizon behind him. After he was done gaping at the lava, I pointed out this long, glowing strip.

Stefan giggled and squirmed.

Where there'd been only vague glimpses of the lava before, it was showing up everywhere now. We noticed puffs of steam escaping from the ground. We climbed up over a steep rise to check it out, and there was this fucking pool of lava. It must've been ten feet or more across, though its shape was changing all the time. In some places, a mineral crust dissolved, exposing fluid lava, in dozens of blacksmith colors. In others, the hot lava cooled, taking on the color and texture of charcoal, beneath which spots of bright orange still glowed. Cinders floated everywhere above the pool, and a wall of heat projected out from its center. Stefan and Niko’s faces were transfixed and looked as ‘tho they were lit by a campfire.

Lava moves in these funny ways. It crawls like mercury, slowly rising, or sometimes it slithers like thick mud dripping off of a wall. Tendrils were unrolling from the edges of the pool. They'd crawl toward you, but you didn't have to move much. Outside of the main mass, the lava would immediately cool and after a moment, you'd be left with a solid black fragment.

Then there are the colors that are difficult to describe. To say that there are shades of orange, yellow and white, (very little blue to my eye,) while true, is clumsily phrased and poorly visualized. Again, my grasp of language is insufficient. I could make a list of shades from pale gold to angry brownish red, but I doubt that would do much good. Though it's liquescent, lava dances like fire, with color and form always changing. The intensity of the light varies too, so that some colors leap out at you suddenly, while others mellow and fade.

And in this case at least, pictures are not worth a thousand words—not the least because I am a lousy photographer and was packing a pretty rudimentary digital camera. I will spare you the sight of my handful of blurry pictures, not just because you can't find any sort of shape in them, but also because the colors are dulled to the point of lethargy. (There is one exception that I'll insert later, along w/ some thoughts regarding it.)

Earlier, we’d seen a few other people wandering around the field, but we'd lost track of them by now. There was no way of knowing how far any of them had gone or in what direction, with one exception: a young couple made up of a stout, pale young woman with dishwater blond hair and striking blue eyes, and a short, handsome young man with very dark skin and black hair cut in a sorta Prince Valiant bob—only messier n' wavier n' w/o the bangs. The woman's name was Natalie. The young man was less communicative and did not introduce himself, nor accept introductions from any of us. His name came up a few times, but only when Natalie was addressing him. It was an unusual name, and none of us ever heard it very clearly, so we remained uncertain as to what it really was. He seemed very protective of Natalie in an insecure sorta needy way, like he was worried that if she had contact w/ anyone else, she'd be gone in a sec.

Natalie and her (?)husband(?)boyfriend(?)pal(?) had seemed enthusiastic enough when we'd passed them earlier, but more recently we'd seen them dragging along unhappily. Natalie, esp., seemed beat. Both of them were wearing shorts, by the way, which qualifies them as officially insane. Or stupid. Or both. I'm dumb as a post, and even I realized it'd prob. be smarter to wear long pants. By the end of the night, I’d guess their legs looked like they’d had some sorta bizarre accident, involving barbed wire, charcoal dust and broken glass. They also wore plain old regular tennis shoes, which is just what I’d been planning to wear until I’d listened to Stefan’s well-warranted recommendations. Aside from protecting you from serious battery and scraping, I now have this vision of small pebbles of lava falling in between my shoes and socks as you I across the lava fields. Sorta like those freezing little chunks of snow do in the winter.

Anyway, Natalie and her companion were nearby when we found the lava and seeing us squinting at something on the ground, they came a-runnin'. Another guy, who we hadn't seen before, showed up at more or less the same time. We didn't notice him. We were too busy gawking at the lava.

He called out to us 'tho, and ever-exuberant Stefan began talking w/ him. Ever-dreamy (well usually anyway) Steve Forceman, P.I. remained transfixed by the lava. But behind me, I picked up the gist of the conversation: This fellow was telling Stefan how he'd been making the hike alone. It was only in the last 15-20 minutes that he'd really begun to question the wisdom of this course. He was relieved then when he saw us from a distance. At the same time, he was confused. Why were we all staring so intently into the space in front of us, when something truly amazing was right at our heels?

I turned to look, and sure enough, another pool of lava had appeared behind us. It was at least as big as the first one. Sparks were dancing in the moonlight above it, and we all moved in closer.

If the lava made any noise, I did not hear it. The wind was too heavy, kicking around the hot, dry air and humming in yr. ears. The lava was amazing, but we had been looking at it long enough that sheer wonder had become something calmer, if no less profound. It was funny: someone moved first. I'm not sure who, 'tho I know it wasn't me. Abruptly everyone was brandishing his/her camera like a buffalo gun. Having taken in a part of the lava fields, we were now all looking to put it across to others. For the wages of humanity are tourism, especially when something is profound.

Following suit, I started clicking off lil' digital images for my own personal posterity (if such a thing exists) and to use in boring the people back home. (Thank god the slideshow is staging a comeback! Who sez computers aren't a good thing?) I surmised, correctly—that I prob. wasn't gonna end up w/ much other than some blurry blobs and tracers of light. It was hard to be sure what I was even taking a picture, given the irregularity of the light.

The new guy offered me his sooper-dooper digicam w/ all sortsa features for the recording of both still and moving images. He seemed a little pushy. And loud. But it was a nice gesture that I accepted. You really could see a lotta details through the lens that the brightness of the lava otherwise made indistinct. It was very small stuff: rivulets and sharp curves and little bands of heat and light. I thanked the guy and returned his camera to him. Given the iris-narrowin' effect of the lava, everything else seemed very dark—sorta like when you look at a bright light in a dark room. You lose yr. night vision. So this was the first really good look I got at this guy who introduced himself as Mark.

I am suspicious by nature. Well, sort of. More like naive by nature and suspicious because I have reaped the harvest of my naïveté. Or something. I been burnt a lot, I mean, cuz I am stupid. So my eye was still kinda jaundiced despite this guy's manifest good nature. (Wow, is this the polar opposite of an experience I had later during this trip…) I was saddling him w/ a sorta commedia dell’arte hippie-indigent masque, for which I am now sorry. Maybe, you know, like one of those bean paste squirtin’ possible Jesus freak types even.

For one thing—sorta like that whole what-if-this-person-is-gay type issue that so many people have out there—even if Mark was a granola-munchin' self-righteous hippie wuss, who cares, so long as he was cool? For another, it is again a gross oversimplification—of another human being in this case—and that’s no way to run a railroad. Esp. the B&O Railroad…

Lovin' the Rubble (Sadly NOT about a Betty-Barney 3-Way)

The blueness of the light was deepening, saturating the other visible colors. We turned directly away from the ocean, and headed up the mountain. Surrounded by all of this lava, I was surprised to see tufts of hardy plants lining Kilauea. The mountain isn't steep, but its gradual slope is difficult thanks to the lava underfoot. Here it's mostly new stuff. The blacks are rich and vivid, and the rock is thinner and more brittle. It breaks off in to sharp, angular pieces. It’s hard to believe they are drawn from the long, smooth sheets you're walking on, until you stop and tap the ground below you and hear its crisp hollowness. The bending of the terrain is like the curving of human limbs and torsos, which adds to a feeling that the ground beneath you is alive. It's funny, because the ground is not esp. fertile—the soil, such as it is, is not rich.

Some of that organic feeling is doubtlessly drawn from our almost mythic view of lava. It's earth that takes on burning, moving shapes. It flows like blood. It's easy to project all kinds of anthropormorphia onto it. Some of it may come from the warmth of the newer, thinner sheets. It's like skin.

There is this weird vitality in the Kilauea lava field. I felt it. While I am imaginative to a fault, I am also a rationalist. I spend a lot of time in the ether, but I recognize that I'm stuck with the facts, much as they bore me at times. But this is one place where I felt something that could never be quantified.

And that's sorta cool, but hard to explain. I won't try. I'll just tell you what happened, Sloth.

In many places, the sheets of lava have broken into larger pieces, which lay at all sorts of crazy angles between the ground and sky. There are enormous angular gouges between these smooth but steep planes. You spend a lot of time hopping across the gouges—several feet at a time—and footing at both starting and landing points can be uncertain. Often, you have to struggle for your balance at the end of a leap. Even a small pack like mine did not help, as it drew further on yr. sense of equilibrium, not to mention adding the impact each time you landed. All of the leaping and landing on hard surfaces took a toll on my various joints even more quickly than it normally would have.

So we weren’t so much hiking as we were hopping. Painfully and awkwardly. I rarely fell, but when I did, it sucked. In one case, I miscalculated my landing and found the toe of one boot jammed pretty snugly into 6" crack. With some awkwardness, I'm sure I could've extracted myself, but I was grateful to have a couple of my companions help pull my loose. At the end of several other leaps, the slopes of the broken plates were so extreme that I had to catch my balance with an outstretched hand. By the end of the hike, I'd stopped wishing for gloves. My palms were pretty thoroughly raw and stinging.

As if all of this flagellation wasn’t bad enough, I had a more specific disturbing experience as I went springing across sheets of lava. At one point, when a little warm, shadowy sunlight was still hitting us from the very edge of the horizon, Stefan and were hopping and talking. Abruptly, he stopped and stood a broken section of the lava plain. I stopped, puzzled and just looking at him. He grasped his belt and started loosening it.

I’m not sure if I looked stunned or horrified. He waved a hand at me and sing-songed, “Excuuuse me…”

I was relieved that he was dismissing me, but still confused till I heard the familiar splatting of piss on a hard surface. Usually it would be piss on concrete or asphalt. Here, it was piss on lava.

Behind me was laughter, and there, a little way off, was Niko, his back to me, pissing as well. Surrounded by krauts, comforted only by the thoughts that I was not the first to end up in this situation, that they had dicks, rather than guns in their hands, and that I didn’t have to look at said dicks. (I was, however, somewhat disturbed by this father-son synchronized pissing.)

When Niko had finished, shook and zipped, I asked him what was so funny.

“Home, I have a friend who paints and draws. He likes to put a guy in the corner.”

“Of the picture?”

Blank look, a smile, and a slow shake of the head.

“Bild Das Bild”

“Oh.” Eager nodding now. “Yes. Und das Mensch?”

“Yeah.”

“Er… ah…”

My turn to do the blank look/smile/slow shake of the head spiel.

“Uh… pisses…” a quick look at Stefan, but no admonishment was coming… “behind the other things in das Bild!” Hysterical laughter.

We started moving again.

“Oh?” Still not entirely sure why the kid is bringing this up.

“You, uh…”

What feels like a half-hour long—but prob. wasn’t—attempt at bilingual communication finally leads us through a territory we’d fumbled through, in search of Kafka, and Niko tells me that as I’d stood there, sandwiched between my 2 pissing companions, I had reminded him of this dude in the background of his friends’ pictures. Whatta honor!

An aside: much as I, Steve Forceman, figure of action—if not a full-on action figure am always armed w/ the appropriate gear, it quickly became clear that my acquisition of gear had been somewhat haphazard—not to mention entirely insufficient in some areas. Not only did my companions bear the classic handheld electric torches we all know and love from those times when there’s a black out, (‘tho they mostly left theirs in their packs,) they also had these silly-ass lamps strapped to their heads. Yep. Silly-ass. Until you realize how many open wounds they might’ve saved you as you hopped across the lava, trying to hold a fucking flashlight in one of yr. hands.)

Ha! But I wasn’t the only naïve moron on this fool’s errand! My companion, Mr. Utility Belt himself, must’ve noticed something that I’d observed myself: it was becoming warmer as we travelled, in part due to our level of exertion, but also to a growing warmth. Somewhat sheepishly, he asked me how much water I’d brought.

“Ummm… 2 liters.”

“Oh. Then we should be fine—if I may have some of your water.”

“OK.”

“I was stupid. I thought 1/2 liter would be enough. I left the rest back at the Jeep.”

Dumbass.

Despite all of my bitching, I know that I was very, very lucky throughout almost all of my trip. For example: Aside from my own travel plans, I hadn't given much thought to the calendar. As it happened, we were hiking to the lava flow on the night of a full moon. For almost the entire hike, it never got really dark, even after the dusk failed. We only used our flashlights near the end, when we were negotiating some of the more tricky cracks in the lava fields. We didn't really need them otherwise, and they detracted from the absolute beauty of the moonlight.

It was unearthly, breathtaking: plains of raw black rock, stretched far into the space in front of us, bathed in pale blue light. They seemed to glimmer like calm water at night. It might have felt aquatic, but there was the wind, growing noticeably warmer as we moved. Despite the thudding of our footsteps and the cracking of rolling pieces of lava, here was a hushed feeling of outright awe like you were in this spirit place. We all became quiet. There wasn't anything to say.

The moon was bright, as I said, but it was dark enough that we noticed something that the sunlight had hidden: a little way in front of us, further up the slope of Kilauea, was a capillary network of bright twisting orange-gold lines. They varied in thickness from what appeared to be very narrow cracks to open holes. It was difficult to tell much about the ground around them—not only was it dark, and were we still some distance from the lines, but the brilliance of the lights made your irises close down so that they didn't do much to cut the darkness around the lines.

The lava grew even darker beneath us and the thumping of our footsteps grew more resonant. It was clear that we were standing on crust that was very new and very thin. To say that I'd been distracted by the wonders around me would be a gross understatement. I'd been bewitched. But the wind was growing very warm and dry, drawing even more sweat from me after the walk. Stefan advised me to touch my boot sole. Its temperature was moving past warmth and becoming very nearly hot. The ground was thumping ever more hollowly beneath us.

My enchantment faded. I wasn't freaking out, but it did occur to me that there might be some danger signs here. I considered the ambiguity of our course. Just where the fuck were we going and how far? Had we stopped outside the area that park directions urge you to inhabit? There were no clear boundaries now. We'd lost the rope a ways back. We were getting closer to the fiery lines.

I asked Stefan how much further we were going. He mistook this for a statement of weariness. I was tired of course, and sore, and the walk back was sounding pretty brutal. Come to think of it, had I left the interior lights on? I'd had some trouble figuring out the Neon's headlight controls and had flashed the dome light on at least once in the process. I pictured us returning, exhausted to a car with a dead battery.

But still, no, that wasn't why I'd asked him about our plans. I was just wondering how close were we trying to get to the lava, and like, were we past the point of stupidity here? I wouldn't know, and although he had access to more lava trivia than I did, I wasn't sure that Stefan would know much about our proximity to the point of stupidity either. What’s more, he was starting to remind me of some lava-mad Captain Ahab, or at the very least, Quint from Jaws. Even if he knew that we’d left the rational world behind, I’m not sure he would have cared. Or said anything.

It was finally beginning to sink in that I was in the vicinity not just of unstable ground, but also of molten lava. If the ground beneath you gave, might you actually fall into a pool of the stuff? And if so, how fast would you burn? I pictured an exposed knee bone, blackened flesh. And like what would be the best way to season someone who's been lava roasted? Hmmm???

But these images arose more from curiosity than they did from fear—'tho there was some of that there too. I was more enticed than worried, and when Stefan said they could slow down to accommodate me, I said that was OK. Looking at those cracks of light, I was eager to see more.