The Transfiguaration of Dr. David Burns

I'm sure you've all been wondering why I haven't been updating. ('Cuz I know that's really, really important to you.) See, you're just getting spoiled 'cuz I was on a roll there for a while there, crankin' out entries like there was no tomorrow. (Come to think of it, there wasn't a tomorrow, which means we aren't here, I guess.)


I had a couple of situations come up. The first was a half-biz/half pleasure trip to NYC, which maybe I'll get into later. ('Tho I don't wanna take away from my trip to Hawaii... two fucking years ago. So we'll see.) The other, well, is more bittersweet...

Welp. The day is finally here. After 11 years in the same ancient, crumbling building in the south Loop, I am moving my office.

I got no choice, as Robert DeNiro mooed in Raging Bull. (‘Tho he was talkin’ ‘bout the prospect of eating an overcooked steak.) The building will be demolished some time later this year. Rather considerately, my landlords have made me aware of this fact and requested that I vacate the premises before I meet w/ a wrecking ball.

Wrecking ball, how do you do?

Why Steve Forceman, P.I.! I’ve heard so much about you…

SMASH!

Dreadfully sorry about pulverizing your spine there!

Gurgle… Gleeargh!… Think nothin’ of it…

SMASH!

To be fair, my landlords are sorta like me n’ Bob DeNiro: they got no choice. It’s a situation you find all over the South Loop. Lead paint lurks. Structural instability looms large. This building has so many problems that rehabbing it would be a real labor of love. And love doesn’t make the world go ‘round. Money does. Landlord gotta eat too.

It’s sad. I have a lot of memories of the shit that’s happened in the building. Most of them are mundane—like that time the I brought a strange man up here for a nooner, and he turned out to be a large chinchilla—but y’know, that’s the stuff that really haunts you sometimes.

Truth be told ‘tho, I’ve know this was coming for such a long time that I can’t claim to be too aggrieved. For the most part, I’ve made my peace and am ready to relocate my place of business in the historic Pittsfield building—once, briefly, the tallest building in the world. My new office looks out on this bizarre art deco nightmare of an atrium. Most of my neighbors are jewelers or hair stylists. It’s got some character.

Still, while I’ve more or less accepted the change, I’m pissed off about all of the time I lost in moving. The whole process capsized whatever order I had established in my life. It’s set me back in my work and in various personal areas.

Waaah! Boo hoo! I know. Get over it. But the chaos is there, and it’s gotta be dealt with. And fortunately, I know exactly how to deal w/ it, ‘cuz I learned some relevant nifty tricks the last time I moved my office, which was located in this crappy building in Wicker Park.

In that case, I sought a change of scenery, but if I’d known where the move would initially lead me, I prob. woulda hesitated. It took me months to re-establish some sorta order in my life. But see, it all worked out OK, and in fact, I became a better & stronger person, entirely ready to and capable of dealing w/ this sorta shit.

And here’s how: Virtually everyone who encountered my personal chaos helped me out by pointing out how irrational it was for me to allow it to get to me.

See, around that time, a certain cross-section of my circle of acquaintances—the ones who tell you about every book, CD and movie ever profiled on NPR, but rarely read, listen to or go see any of ‘em, ‘cuz, like, who has that kinda time?—well alla them were into this book called Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by this genius named Mr. Burns. Woops! I mean Doctor Burns. Sorry!

If, say, you are like me and don’t really listen to NPR too much because you’ve always got music playing, or if by some other bitter set of circumstances, the Dr. Burns/ NPR boat sailed before you cleared the gangway—you might want to know something before you run out and buy Feeling Good: the book is less hip now. Still, it’s highly respected, I guess, and everyone I know who’s in therapy sez his/her shrink swears by it to some degree as part, if not all, of a therapeutic approach.

Now. I’m gonna pause for a moment to say that if you already know allllll about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—and you prob. do, since like everyone I know but me is in therapy, and alllllllllllll of their shrinks dig the book, as I said—you can skip the next coupla paragraphs. If ya don’t, and ya care, here is my succinct, if maybe grossly oversimplified summary of the principles of CBT: you think stuff, which leads you to have feelings. (Not the other way around.) You think, apparently, in words, and a lotta the ones you direct toward yourself are mean n’ nasty and lead you to have, as they said in the 60s, “hang-ups,” which, as they said in the 60s, can be a “bummer.” Like maybe you say to yourself: “I am a big smelly bowel movement. I suck.”

Now the next precept of CBT is that these mean, nasty thoughts are irrational, so if you can just find the errors in their logic, you can charge ‘em like some Socratic Rambo—or would that be a Ramboian Socrates?—and shoot ‘em w/ yr. Bop Gun. Take that! BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA!!!: “I am not a big smelly BM, ‘cuz logic dictates that shit is not sentient, and I am—sentient, I mean—and therefore I can’t be shit. And plus I don’t stink. I know ‘cuz I sniff myself a lot to be sure, and I smell just like rosewater and the crystal clear saliva of Lindsay Lohan after a night of only light drinking. And but I also don’t suck. I blow.”

Ha! Thus CBT slays BM!

I’m sure you can all see what an incredibly powerful tool this is! Just don’t start entertaining notions (illogical ones, no doubt) that you seem to feel before you think, or that at the very least, you think too fast and in too high of a volume to pluck alla the nasty thoughts from whatever personal cyclone you may be weathering so that you can quarantine ‘em and go at ‘em w/ both boors: BOOM POW!

And refrain from telling yr. shrink, as one of my friends did, that he often seemed to think in images or sounds, ‘cuz if you do, even if you are as generally honest as he is, yr. shrink may brand you uncooperative, (as did his,) and then continue to take yr. money while doing nothing but telling you what a big smelly BM you are. Woops! We’ve come full circle. OK, so don’t do that…

Anyhoo, if you follow the rules, yr. naughty thoughts, (which, BTW, can be classified in various ways, like f’rinstance, “all-or-nothing thinking” or something like that, thus allowing you to select the appropriate weapon—auto, or semi-auto, recoilless, w/ a silencer, etc. Then you know what kinda glock to use in ushering yr. irrational thoughts into the Great Beyond.) Then you will be happy. Period. It’s that easy!

Whasssat you say? You already do that—I mean, argue w/ yr. mental demons and irrational thoughts? That you thought that that was just a normal method used by human beings for prob. pretty much forever to deal w/ their shit. And that sometimes it works, but that at other times, it just don’t. And that no matter how much you tell yourself, everything is cool, you sorta still feel like everything sorta sucks. Like, you can see how irrational yr. thoughts are, but somehow that just isn’t making yr. bad feelings go away? Well, are you in therapy? Maybe you’re just a little clumsy, and need a little professional help… Woops! Did my words make you feel bad?

So see, all my friends who’d read or been force fed Dr. Burns tried to help me see how I didn’t need to get stressed out by the time I’d lost in moving. From a CBT perspective, which is said to be the most effective method of psychotherapy available, BTW, an understanding of how irrational this pattern of thinking is should allow me to dispel it and replace it w/ a healthier pattern, e.g., “I am just as valid and entitled as everyone else and so deserve a newer spiffier office. And plus I will work more effectively in a new place cuz it won’t have all the pain-in-the-ass probs. my current office has. And I’ll be the best lil’ P.I., (not to mention the best lil’ human being) I can be!” And various other such Stewart Smalley-isms.

And then everything shoulda been hunky dory. Except it wasn’t. Feeling Good was not good enough. (Not for me & my Bobby McGee, anywaze. Actually I can’t speak for my Bobby McGhee. He dropped some bad ‘cid back in ’73, causing him to believe that I had a big donkey dick w/ which I wanted to fuck him—repeatedly. ‘Matter of fact, I did wanna fuck him—repeatedly. His smelly hippy flat-assed Spin Doctor-lookin’ self was just too enticing, like clouds gilt by sunlight and CO2.

But my dick’s teeny tiny. ‘Matter of fact, that’s where Roger Waters got some of the lyrics to “Comfortably Numb.” He overheard me soliciting the feral, semiconscious lovemaking of my Bobby McGhee, thusly:

“It’s OK. You may feel my little pin dick. There’ll be no more pain, dear. But you may feel start to spurt. IIIII-high have begun to comfortably come. Prematurely. In my BVDs. Woops. That’s embarrassing.”

Welp, Bobby tol’ me to fuck off. I said I already sorta had. He didn’t find that funny, pushed right past me, and drove off in our yak-smellin’ VW bus, leaving me stranded at the post-Dead show tail-gater in Topeka.

I never saw him again, nor heard him sing the blues. And to top it all off, Roger Waters steals my amorous poetry and makes, like, zillions of dollars w/ it. (Granted, he changed the words a little, but the, uh, thrust was still there.) And I never saw dime one. I tried to get ahold of him dozens of times, but Mr. Hollywood wouldn’t return my calls, natch. And like I’m gonna be able to afford a lawyer who can so much as scratch that impenetrable Wall Rogers and other celebs like him have around ‘em. Ha!

OK, so I guess I lied. I am not a better & stronger person, nor am I more capable of dealing w/ adversity thanks to Dr. Burns’s wisdom. Despite all of the Socratic cunning I’ve managed to muster, the amount of time I’ve lost in moving still pisses me off. There were some things I would’ve liked to’ve accomplished before the first month of 2007 was over. Not that any them were that urgent, but y’know there’s that psychological factor that travels w/ the passing of a calendar year.

Stupid to let your self be affected by something so arbitrary, but it does make you aware… Dust in the wind, baby. Time is seriously fucking limited. You don’t have much of it in the narrow span that is yr. life—and all that Percy Bysshe Shelley and/or Pink Floyd jazz. And what are doing w/ yr. time? Haha! You’re reading this blog! Mmmf snicker…

I know all you Eastern and quasi-wannabe-Eastern hippie types w/ yr. inscrutable wisdom would say that one gets the most from life when one accepts time, appreciates the present, doesn’t itemize it and worry over its passage into the past, doesn’t consider the ever-dwindling future.

And then you all go smoke yr. grain-fed, free range, kosher cow’s turd cigarettes. (With no additives, by the way, thus insuring the presence of lotsa little dead bugs n’ stuff inside yr. doobie & making it taste far less good than the brand name dung cigarettes that are derived from anemic, factory bound cows, who are fed nothing but other cows (who’ve become too sick to shit) and laxatives to make ‘em shit a lot (thus makin’ ‘em more productive n’ shit) into a trough alla time in which third world laborers are asked to stand, not just knee-deep in it, as it were, and work 23.78 hour long days @ 3 cents/hr., rolling scat into spliffs, w/ no health care, no day care, (which is fine w/ them, because their kids are workin’ right alongside ‘em—just one big happy family as the malapro-aphorism goes—as they must, ‘cuz they all owe their souls and the souls of 7 times 7 generations to the Company Store,) all of ‘em prone to diseases like typhus, bubonic plague, gout, cholera, carpal tunnel syndrome, the bends, the vapors, and anal warts, from working in such unsanitary conditions—all so you can have yr. Camel-Dung Lights, you wretched hippie-crite!)

OK, but this current move: Even when I am starting to make some headway, and it looks like I’ll be able to get back to biz as usual, unforeseen shit keeps coming up. So that what efforts I have made to establish order keep dissipatin’ like steam in the bathroom after a shower, when it’s a really cold day, and yr. willy’s all shriveled up, so you fondle it gently w/ yr. warm hand, snugly cupped, as you watch the condensation fade from the bathroom mirror, and you can see it, yr. Willy, teeny tiny and glistening w/ moisture, and you get all hot thinkin’ about what a fox you are, and how even you’d like to knock a piece of you off, but then you’d be missing a piece of yourself, & that’d prob. hurt, and like hook-handed Moulty of the 60s garage band The Barbarians, you’d only be able to dream of being “The Complete Man” thereafter. Whatta bummer.

Anyway, here I am, installed in my new office. And it sure is swell. It’s like paradise. Amidst the ceiling beams, cherubs do caper emitting trills, achingly beautiful, from reed flutes—heavenly airs that sound suspiciously like the main riff from “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel. Sunlight gathers in placid golden pools, like fresh urine in the navel of the Elder Beauty Goddess, a fat, clapped-out liver-spotted skank, after you’ve rained yr. love down upon her. (You stand to one side, sneering w/ exaltation—yes, sneering w/ exaltation—it’s possible—picture 2004 Cubs disappointment Corey Patterson just after he’s hit a game-winning “dinger”—as you zip up. And you wonder after the meaning of it all. Why must you piss on Beauty to show yr. love for her? What does that say about Beauty, you, humanity? And why does Beauty have to wear a visor turned backwards? Why must she be such a trend-hopper? (And the trends of several years ago at that?)

But my new place: whatta heaven! It’s like Valhalla minus the obnoxious, drunken Vikings, whoring and feasting and brawling around the clock, like the denizens of some Elysian frat house. (Talk about the Greek system! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!!! ) (And yeah, I know that I’m mixing mythologies here, but Greek, Norse. Whassa difference?) Except Vikings are sorta the raison d’eteet of Valhalla, so w/o them, it’d be kinda like Vegas w/o gambling or Flint, Michigan w/o urban decay, & like, what the hell would that be like? A vacuum? A quantum singularity? As cool of a place as a singularity might be to visit, Ida think I’d wanna live there. And I think my new office is prob. nicer than that. Even ‘tho I’m not gonna be living here. (Unless something really bad happens.)

Nevertheless, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 37 years on this earth, it’s that even Valhalla must be unpacked. And here’s one of those ironies that are just more pungent than a bad yeast infection: I’m unpacking my books, and sure enough, right beneath Infinite Jest, is a copy of Feeling Good. Can’t believe I actually let some asshole talk me into buying it. Or maybe some NPR-spawned CBT acolyte just palmed the fucker off on me, ‘cuz they were sure it was gonna fix their life and so, like, why couldn’t it fix mine as well? After all, my problems couldn’t be nearly as complex and oppressive as theirs, right?

Everybody’s an armchair detective. They all look at yr. data—don’t even need all of it—just like that cokehead fuck Sherlock Holmes. They observe and then solve you. That’s if you get their attention. AND yr. problems aren’t too depressing. They’re not gonna have much to tell ya if yr. problems are like, say, cancer or something. I hurl my copy of Feeling Good at the wall, its pages blousing out like the sails of some defunct armada. I’d run it through my shredder, if it wouldn’t take too much effort to rip out the pages.

Fuck you, Dr. Burns, and all the people you’ve brainwashed. Things aren’t always that simple, pal.

And fuck you too, David Foster Wallace, and that stupid sexy doo-rag you’re wearing on the back of my paperback Infinite Jest. I may envy yr. success and talent in writing—2 things I will never have, ‘tho I scrawl n’ type away. I wrote oodles and oodles of tons of pages yesterday, allowing emotional and cerebral chaos to further swallow me up. (Not to mention the barbiturates I swallowed.)

Go on chaos! Carry me away. But of course, you can’t always count on chaos—that being its raison d’eteet, after all.

Anyhoo… David Foster Wallace. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, sweetie—or sweaty—or whatever. What I envy you for is not yr. talent n’ success. Nope. I envy you for how fucking hot you obviously are, given the doo-rag-pic. I long to pull the damp rag from thine head, to watch thine oily, mottled tresses stream down thine be-stubbled throat. The apple there, left by Eve, I shall lick. Thy nutsack I shall clutch, gently stroking its loose skin, feeling it tighten in my hand—as ‘tho it had a life of its own—feeling its heaviness and heat. It is the House of thine Paternity.

Ah! But if only I could engulf those seeds w/ my body—becoming larger, until a great brood of lovelies, each w/ his—for there shall be no freakish she-children here!—own doo-rag—some green, some checked red, some bearing the ancient glyphs of long-forgotten civilizations, some portraying games of hangman, and some depicting terribly arousing erotic matter.

Tainted by my own imperfections, their Wallace blood will, nevertheless, cause them to rise up and march across the wounded earth to enact their destiny. And yours.

Meanwhile I’ll finish unpacking.

The Greek Way to the Middle Way to Enlightenment

At some point, Stefan's son showed up. He was a pretty kid w/ thoughtful brown eyes, blond hair and a thin, stubbly growth above his upper lip. His speech was slow and quiet, probably in part because his grasp of English was less firm than his father's. I'd studied German in high school and college, so I said some simple stuff to him. ("How are you," "Whassup!" and "In terms of semiotic film criticism, do you believe that the individual frames of a motion picture serve an analogous function to that of the letters found in a specific word, the words found in a specific sentence, or neither?")

He became more animated and started enthusiastically spouting all kindsa shit auf Deutsch, and pretty soon I understood how he must've been feeling since he reached the U.S., 'cuz I was virtually lost. My mind would latch onto an individual word, and that word would be long gone already. It was even more confusing than listening to someone speaking in a language you don't understand at all. Then you don’t feel obliged to sort anything out. You can just kinda listen, fascinated by the unfamiliar sounds. Or, at the very least, you can just ignore them.

When he found out I wrote fiction, the kid went really ape shit, furiously spewing out Teutonic consonants, as though he were a living Howitzer. Apparently, he was writing a novel of his own, and he was now bombarding me with a complex plot summary.

By this time, my eyes were bulging, and my mind had assumed the form of sputtering static on an unused broadcasting frequency. In that state I was surprised to find that I could understand enough German to get that Stefan was telling him to slow down and be a little more realistic. I obviously wasn't understanding alla that.

And it might be worth making a somewhat judgmental observation here: Stefan often assumed this kind of fussy, scolding tone when he dealt w/ Niko. He was constantly correcting the kid, pointing things out to him, and becoming impatient w/ his lack of interest in some things that a kid very well might find boring. I never saw him become openly angry w/ Niko, and his comments were rarely outright criticisms, but they were, uh, patronizing. It led me to suspect that the kid wasn't just soft-spoken because of a language gap or general shyness—‘tho I do think these were contributing factors. In part, I began to think was that he just kept his mouth shut around his dad to avoid further bitching and roundabout brow beating.

But maybe that's just the way I saw it.

So conversation drifts into Stefan's uncertainty that, after setting up his camp, he's gonna have time to come pick up Niko for the evening hike to the lava. He seems philosophical, and we move onto subjects like jet lag and time zones. Germany's exactly 12 hours askew from Hawaii, so Stefan laughs off my sympathy by pointing out that at least they don't have to reset their watches like I do.

Niko is asking me questions about this novel I've been writing in between the professional obligations, like the investigation of cheating spouses, con schemes and the occasional missing person. And here's where Akiko dragged me into her Machiavellian plotting. Get this:

One minute, she's putzing around, washing dishes. The next, a #1 Best Divine Lightning Bolt whacks her on her enlightened head. I actually heard the crack of thunder, and I think that for just a moment, I saw Mighty Jove hisself lurking in a storm cloud over by the spice rack. And in case you're wondering about the mismatching of Eastern/Western living/dead religions (as opposed to a living dead religion—Wow, that'd be fucked up—dig if u will a picture of a church full of rottin' cadavers. Mulch mouthed undead priest oozing around on at the pulpit sez, "Let us now bow our heads... Let us now eat our heads..." N' at the end of the service, all the zombie folk turn to one another & say, "Pieces to you, brother/sister..." HAWHAWHAAW! I knew readin' all those EC comics was good for somethin'... And if you think I'm unfairly singling out Catholicism here, just consider all that Eucharist shit. They started it.)

But so in case you're wonderin' 'bout that, well see the thing is that Buddhism supposedly allows you to incorporate other religious shit into it. I think. Anyway aren't there 'sposed to be all these Hindu gods n' demons & shit that some Buddhists recognize. And plus like Richard Gere told Lisa Simpson she could observe Xmas even 'tho she wuzza Buddhist, on The Simpsons, I mean. And besides, you prob. don't know it, but Jove is a Buddhist. But he's nowhere near as devout of a Buddhist as Siddhartha Gautama was a devout Hellinocist (or whatever). Matter of fact, every incarnation of the Buddha since has been a devout Hellinocist.

Which is why that "noble" refugee and spiritual teacher the Dalai Lama is suspect. He wrote a book n' stuff, and by this time he's probably made music videos w/ Madonna, (who's using his higher profile and surplus public goodwill to try n' save her own foundering career—in matters of celebrity, one palsied hand washes the other—) and has his own game and reality shows and several movies wherein he's an action hero blowin' away a buncha Arabs n' drug dealers or a wacky, clumsy guy tripping over things or all naked takin' a shower while some insane killer guy spies on him through a peephole and maybe jerks off, which is fucked up on various levels and let's hope that the Dalai Lama has the good sense to avoid porn 'cuz that would really be getting outta hand, I'm sure you'd agree. And plus he's got a shoot 'em up action game w/ all sortsa levels—I keep gettin stuck on level 17, which pisses me off, 'cuz I've made about 1,009 calls to the hint line, & those 1-900 calls on my phone bill have pretty much broken me, and I know for a fact that the next level after level 17 is Nirvana.

And he's also gotta a theme park w/ golf courses and cool rides and a chain of fast food restaurants, which worst of all, serve Buddha Burgers—What the fuck is next?

And so you can see whatta sellout the Dalai Lama is, so no wonder he's renounced the Helliocism that every incarnation of the Buddha and of all the spiritual teachers of Buddhism have held in such reverence since the time of Siddhartha. And he didn't even renounce it as such—he really just kinda let it go, as in lapsing. Lazy, greedy bastard. Some Buddhist.

Anyhoo, so there was Jove sniggering behind one hand as he and his thunder cloud receded into the kitchen wall. And I seemed to be the only 1 who saw the fucker.

And thennnnn Akiko gets this light bulb over her head that apparently, also, only I can see. (And to those of you who feel that my imagery is getting a little incoherent, I might pose this question: What powers a light bulb, hmmm? Well? I'm waitin'...

That's right, you bastards, sheepishly kick the dirt, avoid my gaze: Electricity! And what's a lightning bolt? Don't know? Cat gotcha tongue? Electricity. So next time you open yr. mouth to "helpfully" point out a "mistake" I've made, save us all a lotta trouble by using that ugly maw to slurp on a big juicy starfish dick, and yes starfish have dicks and don't even ask me how I know unless you want to further compound yr. humiliation...)

And she turns her face toward me, and it's positively a-beam—and not w/ Enlightenment neither—& I'm not even sure what's coming, but instinct is leading me to shake my head, except I'm not shaking my head, because I seem to be paralyzed. (And I suspect the Hand of Jove mighta been at work there too—last time I slaughter a hog and roast little bits of its fat for that asshole.)

And she looks at me & sez, "Steve has a car!" She turns to Stefan. "Stefan, maybe Steve could take Niko up to the volcano, so he can get a look at it and then meet you somewhere near the lava flow! Then you wouldn't hafta worry about getting’ back to pick up Niko. How ‘bout them apples? Huh? How ‘bout ‘em?"

She's on a roll. Her head snaps around w/ a cartoon boinging noise. "And Steve!" she nearly shrieks, and I swear she's starting to froth at the mouth. Maybe this is divine enlightenment after all. Or insanity. Or rabies. "I'm sure you'd like to see the lava too!"

Ha! It's a win-win scenario! Everyone profits! Except for humble Akiko who has to be content w/ the halo around her head. (Not to mention her feelings of absolute power.)

And except for me, because while I really did want to see the lava, I was still whacked from yesterday's odyssey. My plans for the day had been something along the lines of sitting on a beach somewhere and maybe reading a book. Then maybe I'd check out Hilo, do a little relaxed lookin' around after this Wendell fellow, maybe get some food and a drink or two before, etc. And now I was being drafted for service in the German Army. (And hey, since when do we allow these fuckers to conscript people anyway? I thought we were gonna keep 'em under lock and key for a few more decades or so until we were sure that weren't gonna fuck the whole world up again.)

(Come to think of it, and I don't mean to be insensitive here, but the word Axis was comin' to mind amidst all these German and Japanese people and their plots. All I needed was some Italian to come along and confirm the whole thing. And then it occurred to me that the guy I was workin' for was Italian. Fuck I really was in trouble.

Ha ha, but no, really, Apologies to persons of Axis-power-descent.)

"Yeah, I'd like to see the lava..." A “but” was comin' here. (Which I'm having trouble picturing—a butt cummin’—but whatever.) Buuuutttt Akiko weaved w/ the skill and grace of Rumble in the Jungle-era Ali.

"Then you can make plans to take Niko up to meet Stefan, and in the meantime, he can go set up his campsite!"

And I woulda said, "Get bent," or at least, "Uh, I'm kinda tired from the trip. Sorry." But noooo.... I tell myself I was too frazzled to argue or something like that, but the truth is that Akiko's eyes started makin' these throbbing circles like the ones that cobra's eyes made in that cartoon of Riki-tiki-tavi. (Tell me that shit wasn't scary. And BTW, they got mongeese all over the Big Island, but we’ll get to that later.) And I got all limp. And flaccid. And well, you get the picture.

I was even offered another out that I did not take:

Stefan seemed uncertain, maybe a little regretful that it'd come to this, "Only if you want to do this," he says. But he sounds like he's expecting me to do it—that what's really being said here is something along the lines, "Ach, dude, I'm really sorry you have to do this, but hey thanks for responding to that pistol of guilt n' obligation that’s bein’ held to yr. head!"

No, I'd like to say that I'd asserted myself, or even that I assented outta the goodness of my heart, (Which I hope is partially true. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between yr. own possible kindness & yr. own possible acquiescence.) I'd even like to say that I went along because I wanted to see the lava, and although I'd been planning on resting some today & maybe hitting the lava somewhere down the road, it seemed like a good opportunity to travel w/ someone who knew more about this lava-hunting jazz than I did. But I can't be sure. And I guess it doesn't matter at this point. For whatever reason, with both eagerness & reservation, I agreed to deliver the kid, and then to go look for the lava.

So now Stefan displayed where his son got that tendency to suddenly leap into effusiveness. He broke out a map of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. He'd procured it from the park itself when he'd made an earlier visit to check out Crater Rim Drive, which like its name implies, circles the crater, allowing you these glimpses of this constantly mutating volcanic landscape. I won't go into it at the moment, but I made the drive several times while I was there—or rather parts of it. It's easy to spend so much time pulling off & gawking at yet another incredible piece of chaotic terrain that pretty soon, daylight is fading, and you’re realizing that maybe you'll have to come back again to see the rest. (Good news: an admission to the park covers you for as many repeat visits as you wanna make for a full week. Just remember to bring yr. crappy little ditto receipt that quickly shrivels into a dirty, sun-bleached ball in yr. rental car—at least if you're me.)

Anyway, Stefan, who turned out to be a meteorologist, of all fucked up things, (fucked up, particularly for me at that moment, as you can just imagine how ecstatic someone of that profession might get over a volcanic climate—thank god the fucker wasn't a geologist. I'd probably still be scrubbing the semen outta my hair,) launched into this dizzying set of scenarios for how we might meet, interspersed w/ Fun Fax re: the park, the volcanoes, etc., etc., etc... as well as anecdotes about his previous visit. (Stefan, it turns out, is one of those people who not only goes looking for park rangers to lecture him about the various natural features of the park, but who watches those crappy little video loops they have set up at "visitor's stations” around the parks.)

"It's just incredible!" he kept squealing, as he nearly sprang offa his bench, "Simply incredible!"

When I'd arrived for breakfast, my brain had already been a bit clouded from my trip. Following Niko's Germanic plot summary, Akiko's Daedelian maneuvering, and Stefan's, I felt completely lost and very far from home. And the day—not to mention the trip—was just beginning.

Play Bllzyx!!!

This is not an "official entry."

By which, I mean to say, that this is not the high qwality product you are used to consuming herebouts.

That's becuz I M drunk n' don't have the presence of mind or bladder to give U what you so sorely need. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy am I drunk U ask?

That's a good question, & I'm glad you asked it, 'tho by askin' it you revealed yourself to be a soulless being from some netherworld that might lie on the south side of Chicago.

I am drunk, because I blew off 37 clients in order to watch 2daze baseball game between yr. 2007 ChiCubs & some rinky dink outfit in Ohio somewhere or other. (I also blew 37 other clients, but what goes on in a public mens room between me n' consentin' adults is none of yr. biz.)

Now. It being Opening Day n' all, I could be drunk in various states, e.g., I could be Mean Drunk, if both the W.Sox n' the Cards won on the same day. And/or I could be sloppy depressed drunk if the Cubs/Tigers/Rays had all lost and the WSux/Cards/Yanks had all won. And I coulda been suicidal drunk AKA dead if the Cubs'd lost n' my mother had called on the phone. (I have the shotgun out, but so far the phone is mercifully, beautifully quiet.) Or I could be happy/lovey drunk if the Cubs/Tigers/Rays had won and someone had found my G spot. Or I could be Lovey Howell drunk if Thurston Howell had performed cunnilingus on me, but that woulda required some surgical &/or occult transformations that are best left undreamt of.

As it turns out, I am equivocally drunk, which is not a bad scenario, all the way around. I'm sure myself and my acquaintances would all agree. Because altho the Cubs/Tigers/Rays all lost miserably, the Blight Sux also ate a big ol' lump uh somethin' or other that you find disguting. (Please supply a horrifically morbid image of yr. own. I M blotto, remember?)

Still N all, I feel obliged to say something about Opening Day, like, say, maybe "Barf!" My friends expect it of me, since, 'tho I am interested in other sports, I am obsessed w/ baseball to a disturbing, pathological degree. During the 2003 NLCS, at the moment of the infamous Bartman Ball non-play, I ate one of my fingers. Then I went out and slaughtered a goat. Then I fuckt it. Then I made sacrifices to both Pan & Hades, cuz' both Greek deities were up close n' personal w/ goats. (I prob. fucked up and shoulda made sacrficies to divinities who hate goats, but, as I'm sure you will agree, sometimes mythoanthropological archetypes get a trifle confusin'.)

So baseball. Yeah, All those other sports are fun and all. But come on. And if you have a soul, you might have a favorite other team, because you have the misfortune of living in, say, Tampa--but you have to root for the Cubs.

I know, they always suck. Sometimes, they fool you, but they always suck. But you always pull for them. Because you are a human being, right? Well, aren't you?

So we have established 2 things: I have to make some sorta comment on today's Season-birthing game, ('tho it suckt,) and that you care what that comment is, deeply and abidingly. I know you do. Really.

Well, for posterity, we should prob. acknowledge the Larger Context of today's game, that being the 2 Very Important stories flyin' in Cubland: Big Z (Carlos Zambrono to you philistines out there--)the most coveted young pitcher in next year's free agent market has indefinitely extended his deadline for negotiating a contract past this season, and the Tribune Co. has said it will sell the franchise after this season.

There. I said it. Gonna be a different scenario next year, I'm sure you will agree. So bear all that in mind as I present my very visceral, ephemeral reactions to today's game. (Don't get greedy--I won't do this every game. Neither my liver nor my pocket book can take it, and besideswhich, it'd cheapen shit, and nobody wants cheap shit, right? This is an Opening Day special.)

Um. Big Z sucked ass. He looked like a quavering lil rodent out there. Not that he doesn't have that problem a lot, when he's off. At least he looked like a feisty rodent. I'm pretty sure he deserves the rumored $80mil/5 year deal. Abidingly. After all, he'll prob. just give it all to starving people in the third world, figuring the millions he's raked in already are more than enough. Probably.

That vaunted bullpen? They looked just as good. In the Bizarro universe.

Cezar Izturis? The guy whose sooper dooper D made up for his universally acknowledged shittiness at the plate. Well, he looked just like character actor Walter Brennan out there. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm not sure. Thanks for embarrassing me by asking that question.

Wow! Perennial firecracker manager Lou Piniella does a spoton impression of recently departed ever-snoozing chief Dusty Baker, doesn't he? Nice to know that he's not gonna shock the players too much, isn't it?

Hmm. If the Cubs ever manage to sign Adam Dunn, who held a personal home run derby against us today, he, Cubs GM Jim Hendry and Cubs 3B Aramis Ramirez could prob. induce the Great Chicago Donut Famine of 2007 or '08 or whenever. I bet.

Radio score-caller whatzizface is doin' just fine in the shoes of recently departed score-caller Andy Mazur. Just so long as he neither tries to fit into my stiletto or step on my blue suede shoes.

Aaron Harang is a damned, damned fine pitcher. I feel sorry for him that he's stuck slummin' his entire career away in a craphole like Cincinatti.


Welp. That's about it. I'm sure I'll have something to say about yr. '07 Cubs down the stretch, but in the meantime, I leave you w/ this:

"I had long ceased to be interested in her contortions; except for the part of me that was in her I was as cool as a cucumber and remote as the Dog Star. It was like a long-distance death message concerning someone whom you had forgotten a long time ago. All I was waiting for was to feel that incredibly aborted explosion of wet stairs which drop back to the floor of the womb like dead snails."

I stole that from Henry Miller. It's a lot more interesting than today's game.

See you at the ball park!!!

The Most Important Meal of the Century

Well, anyhoo, there I was, sitting down to my #1 First Breakfast at Akiko's #1 Best etc. etc. Akiko was still at work, so I wondered if I'd muddled up the breakfast schedule. See, on Mon./Weds./Fri., & on the weekends, breakfast was served at 7:30. On Tues., Thurs., breakfast was at 7, allowing Akiko to make her tai chi class in town. It was 7 on a Weds., so as you can see, I'd fucked up the days. I apologized for being early.

With a smile, she said, “You're fine. In fact, you're perfect."

She asked me if I wanted some coffee, the answer being an emphatic "yes." I was wide awake, but was still in need of a boost. Also, Kona coffee was supposed to be some of the finest on the planet. Being as I was only a couple hours away from Kona, and the beans would probably be very fresh, I was expecting something pretty spectacular. And it was very good. Not exactly transcendent, maybe, but very good is good enough.

Akiko sells her very own brand of Kona beans, which she has named "Buddha Buzz."
Cute name, that Buddha Buzz. Akiko's pretty proud of it and of the beans. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to buy any, as I was flat broke by the end of my trip. After hearing about the coffee plantations I drove past when I was on the west side of the island and about the less than stunning coffee I'd sampled at Akiko's a female acquaintance of mine picked up a bag of the stuff. It was very expensive, which makes me regret not having picked some up at a much more affordable price while I was there.

And while we’re considering my regrets over missed Hawaiian opportunities, here’s one more: Akiko’s literature states that the profits she brings in w/ her coffee support “the ongoing construction of the Temple of Gratitude to Honor the Ancestors.” I wish I'd thought to stop and look at the temple. That is one of the many, many things that slipped my mind in the midst of the chaos of my trip. So I can't speak to how far its construction has gone, but given the energy and ingenuity that Akiko brings to the things she does, I’m guessing it’s coming along just fine.

Enough about the coffee though. On to the krauts.

Akiko & I made w/ some morning chatter. She asked how I’d slept. I asked her about the dozen or so cats that lurked about the place, coming and going as they pleased. Each of them had a name and a story—and, of course, a unique personality. She asked when was I supposed to hear about my luggage, and I said that the young guy from the airport had told me I’d get a call today.

Before too long, the door opened, and there was a tall thin guy, somewhere in his 40s. His hair was brown and wavy. His tan was vigorous, rather than cosmetic. He wore thick glasses w/ plastic rims. He had a naturally cheerful face and in fact, exuded a downright boyish enthusiasm most of the time. He had a tendency to give this nervous little hop, when he was particularly excited about something.

Akiko introduced us to each other. He was amused by the slight variation in our names. (Steven/Stefan.) His English was very good.

Akiko did a fine job of hostessing. She did a lotta the talking for us at first, drawing us out by asking us questions, supplying information about each person to the other. Both Akiko and Stefan were more interested in my hobbies (writing, painting, music,) than in my profession, which was unusual. Ordinarily when people find out what I do, they start asking me a lotta questions—and are usually disappointed w/ the surprisingly mundane realities of the job.

As for Stefan, well, he definitely had some interesting shit goin' on, and most of it came out less through Akiko's urgings than it did through a conversation the two of them shared. Seems Stefan's 16-year-old son Niko had joined Akiko for meditation on more than one morning, and he had enjoyed it. (One last time, I feel compelled to say that I may be misspelling his name and would like to offer him my apologies if I am.) Akiko was telling Stefan about a monastery in the area that, if I'm remembering things correctly, she herself had studied at. Given the interest Niko had shown in Buddhist meditation, maybe he should visit the place. And if he and the senior monk hit it off, Niko could take up residence there and after a few years, maybe become a monk himself! Woo hoo!

Thing is that, as father and son only had 3 days left on the island, Stefan was gonna hafta get his ass in gear and haul the kid up there before it was too late! Gasp!

It was clear that I'd stumbled into a negotiation that was already in progress—actually, let's come right out and call it an argument—polite, passive-aggressive, but an argument nonetheless. Akiko was trying to help out by sharing her knowledge of and genuine love for the Big Island, Buddhism, and a belief in an orderly universe. She was really enthusiastic about the scenario she'd developed, but in this case, her enthusiasm seemed less infectious than it was imposing. It appeared that Stefan was trying to imply that he was not interested in following through on Akiko's plan, in the same way that you tell someone you'll try to make it to their party, when you really have no intention of showing up. It seemed that this had been his tactic for some time, and that his desire to avoid any sorta confrontation was eroding along w/ his patience.

Akiko felt this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for Niko. Who knew when or if he would return to the Big Island? In fact, she thought that maybe he'd come to the Big Island because he was supposed to find Buddhism and this monastery—that it was somehow meant to be. I could see how Stefan might be hesitant to just jump into this situation. Hawaii's a long way from Germany—besides which, the kid was young, impressionable, and like all kids, probably somewhat fickle. My impression was that this was Niko's first encounter w/ Buddhism, and after a little more than a week, was he ready to relocate to the other side of the world and become a Buddhist monk? You've heard of a whirlwind courtship? This was a whirlwind freakin' conversion!

Stefan also had at least one personal reason for his reluctance: the volcano. Turns out he was planning to hike all the way up Mauna Loa. I had some trouble grasping the finer points of his plan, probably due to the ESL factor, but it was something along the lines of this: Stefan was going to drive over to Volcano National Park around 50 miles away. He was gonna set up a campsite and spend the night there. The next day he was going to hike about half way up the mountain, stopping several times to rest along the way.

That's how most people acclimate themselves to the gradual decrease in the amount of oxygen. If you don't take some measures, you can get altitude sickness, which is a bad scene, esp. if you don't get back down fast. As in a you-might-die-type bad scene, in an extreme instance. People sometimes cough up blood and all kinds of unpleasant shit.

At the halfway point, Stefan was planning on spending the night in one of the cabins the park service provides for people who want to hike up. After a night there, you are pretty well acclimated, though you still have a way to hike yet.

But, before he began climbing, he was also going out to see live lava flowing. After he set up camp today, he was gonna hike over to the Kilauea Caldera, the enormous crater around The Big Island's most active volcano. It was a long haul over a field of dried lava, which is difficult terrain, but at the end of it, you’d be able to watch the stuff glowing in the nighttime darkness.

Sounded pretty fuckin' cool. I'd been thinking about climbing some mountains while I was there. And I'd definitely been planning on hitting the lava myself at some point. I mean, c'mon, it's freakin' flowing lava. At this juncture, I had no idea how difficult these activities were.

Now if Stefan took Niko to the monastery, it would fuck up his plans. And he was upfront about his unwillingness to accept that change. I think he found it easier to assert his more selfish objections than his concern for Niko, because doing so did not come so close to a potentially volatile exchange. I’m pretty sure I heard him grinding his teeth, presumably choking back orders for her to back the fuck off and let him do the parenting.

And whether or not she understood the other reasons the guy might’ve had for objecting to her scheme, it was his personal plans that finally made her lay off.

She said, "If you feel climbing the mountain is something you need to do, then you should. That's important. You are supposed to do it."

Stefan nodded about 3,000 times over the course of this short speech, while staring at the floor and irritably saying, "Yes, yes, yes, yes..."

"And if Niko is supposed to go to the temple to study, then he will come back here in the future."

Veins bulging in his forehead: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yessssssss..."

And as the tension slowly seeped out of the room, we settled into breakfast. Awkwardly.

Fortunately, the food was very good. The pineapple was incredible—the best I've ever had. It was hardly acidic at all, but not too sweet. The bananas were grown right there in Akiko’s garden and were also remarkable.

Akiko bakes almost all of the bread she serves. While I was there, we had a few different varieties. There was an excellent wheat bread—substantial, but not too heavy. For a few days, there was bread that had been made in part from taro, a tropical plant that has roots that are sorta like sweet potatoes. Taro has a subtler taste, to my palette, and gives the bread an unusual tint—sorta a faint purplish brown. Akiko toasted both wheat and taro breads and passed them around w/ butter. It kicked ass.

On some days, squares of moist, sweet corn bread were substituted for regular bread. No complaints. It was probably the best cornbread I ever had. Then, most coveted by me of all—so much so that Akiko made them more than once—there was banana French toast. It was warm earthy, tender—all of it made w/ fresh homegrown bananas.

I’ve never been a great lover of papayas, but those that Akiko served were damn good. We had them every day, and I always scarfed down a half—not usually more than that, but that has less to do w/ my enjoyment of them than it does w/ the amount of food, all of it ranging from very good to transcendent, that made up my breakfast. The flavor was very different than any papaya I've had on the mainland—less sweet, more pleasantly light.

But as if all of that wasn't enough, Akiko also served each of us these heaping bowls of rice, nuts and grains. The rice was perfectly cooked. You were invited to add sugar or milk to yr. bowl. I tried it various ways—just sugar, just milk, some of both and plain. Each variation was delicious. The rice was lightly sweetened already and quite moist, but I think I enjoyed it most w/ a very small amount of sugar.

More on the way, yo, including real wrath of god type stuff like lava. And Wal-Mart. Stay tuned!