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.

Gettin' over the Hump

I'd estimate that we were about an eighth of a mile away from the lava when we watched it empty into the sea. We wanted to get closer, but I didn't realize how far Stefan was planning to go. I'm not sure if he believed he'd told me, as seemed to be the case with so many other things, or if he'd just been drawn in in the same manner that I was myself. I think we were all surprised by how far we went in terms of common sense.

The shadows were heavier and laced with sunset pink. They had already absorbed some of the lava plain's features. It wasn't really dark, but flashing lights in the distance stood out clearly. They were sawhorses, of all ridiculous things. The rope guideline was tied to them, and I found myself eager to get close to them, if for no other reason than to see if they bore Dept. of Public Works stamps. You could follow their course for as far as you could see up the mountain, but it was difficult to tell what might lay next to the most distant marks.

The air was changing along w/ the light. It was cooler, but not so much so that I put on the light rain jacket I'd brought w/ me. Earlier, Stefan had asked me if I'd thought to bring a coat. Good intentions, but obnoxiously patronizing behavior. For easy access, and to look like a Bill & Ted-style moron, I kept the jacket tied around my waist. That night, I never used it.

so then we started humping across the lava. except for but then we were hum-ping the lava. see i took a sharp piece a hardened lava and i hit it against the sheet ofd dried lava i was walking on? see? and i made this hole. and but then i unzipped my pants and dropped em n my drawers all down around my ankles see? and then i mounted the lava and started humping. sorta like prince when he humps the stage when he's doing darling nikki" in purple rain. you know, humping the ground or whatever you are standing (or R standing as Prince would put it) and/or walking around on. and i did that including yanking on my foot to get more traction like he does and pretty much that was a bad idea cuz i broke too far thru the lava sheet down to some live lava. it smelt like burnt pubic hair and extract of nightshade. and my dick burnt off and my balls and most of my pelvis and now i kinda roll more thAN WALK which makes me look sorta like the Tarman. remember? from return of the living dead? in fact i thoughta that almost right awa when they were walking me back toi the car so i could got to the e.r. cuz i noticed the lope, see? and plus i was all charred and bloody so i almost kinda looked like him that way too cept for not being a skeleton. and so when i wasn't screaming or falling down n writhing onna ground? see? well at these times i'd pretend i was the Tarman from return of the living dead, and i'd go 'more brains' and try to sound all gurgly as 'tho i had a buncha rotted mulch in my thnroat, but it really came across more like shrieky, like, say, i'd just burnt my dick off by fucking lava. see? well and but so i thought it was hilarious, buyt these kraut assholes with me didn't even crack a s,mile. and so i started thinking that maybe they haddn't even seen retun of the living dead!!!! which, how stupid is that? huh??? german people are all into death & pestilence, right, and these fuckers hadn't even see that movie which like is one of the best contemplations of the horrors of our mortality. the way of all flesh. (and i ain't tralkin about it gettin packed into the gaping clapped out cunt of one ms. l phair. nope.) see the thing is that altho' german people are all into death n' pestilence, they R snobs. they think they're betterf than other people--thus this "master race" plip plop they're all into. they've tried to distance themselves from it, sure. ytou'd do the same thing if not only the u.s. and the u.s.s.r. were occupying yr. capitola city for like decades, but the u.k. n' france too. how emnbarrassing woiuld that be? so see you'd do anything to make people think you weren't thinking germans weren't superior to everyone else. but like they're the one's who're most into ALL that "conceptual" and "performance" art. like hoiw in the movies whenever there's that sort art--like?!--well, like then, there's almost always some kraut flitting about eatin' canape at some gallery opening, isn't there? usually they're not even the artist, just some snobby asshole who's judging the work of the various charlatans who try to tell ya that soup cans (or soupcons for that matter) are fucking art. those people (the phony "artists"--more like fartists---hahahahahahahahahahahahzah--not the asshole germans, but just you wait i'll get back to their sausage suckin nature in jussa sec) well they R a disgrace cuz when yr hardearned tax dollar is being partitioned, some of it goes to something called the NEA. i just found out about it. i thought it was like NWA--you know just some "rappers" w/ a pottymouthed moniker that hadda be abbreviated thius making them seem more rebellious and mysterious. well i still don't know what it really stands for. nobody would tell me when i asked em. well this thing sucks off part a yr tax dollar like it was liz phair in one of those vaccuum tank thing so like she'd have xtra suckin power except she still wouldn't suck as much as a stanley kubrick movie or russell banks book or song offa the 2nd reputation record) well it sux yr. dollar off and then part of the federal dental dam that yr. tax dollar ejaculates into? well parta that's this nea thing and oh yeah i arreddy sed that well it sux its part of and then spits it into various organizations that support the arts. (it doesn't use a dental dam, but it still won't swallow.) like frinstance this one time? the nea gave $$$$$$$$ to this place that hadda exhibition where some art student who went to the same place i went to film school. i guess. well where he putta crucifix inna disha pee pee or something like that and people got all mad, cuz i mean wouldn't you? that's not art= i couldsa come up w/ that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! why doont the nea give me $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$???????????????????????? then i'd make some art.

and plus it's in bad taste. i mean the crucifix. that's in bad taste. the crucifix.
i mean, it's in a bad tasting medium. (and by medium, i do not refer to the artistic "form" of expression being utilized to convey meaning to its audience, but rather the fluid medium, i mean the pee pee and also not john edwards or miss cleo or madam blavatsky. weellll see i mean the crucifix is in bad taste. cuz it's in the disha pee pee. and that stuff tastes bad. (nothin like lemonade despite wht that pome sez) & see i know cuz i tried it and i don't just mean i drank some pee pee, cuzza who hazn't???? (u no u did 1nce. prince tole me.) i went to that very show and I drank the pee pee. alluva it and this "artist" got mad, and i think he should be grateful cuz all these other people swere mad and at least i'd cleaned the whole thing up. i even mad sure the crucuifix was good and clean by putting it in my mouth and bobbing my head up and down for a few minutes. it tasted bad, but was very polite about not comin' in my mouth which is good cuz i don't use a dental dam and i do swalllow which then can mean i get sick and hafta have my stomach pumpoed. like rod stewart.


that's why german people are snobs.

so they think they're above jhorror movies i bet becuz even tho they're into death n' petilence a shit, they think they're too superior.
so they didn't get my tarman joke and just kept screaming and barfing and trying to hold me up while i walked sorta like the tarman alla way down that long line of cars to where we parked earlier. so i wuz pisst that they didn't get the joke and then i remembered how tarman bites into that misfits fan's scalp thus producing all sorta arterial spraying and i wonderede how ez it would be to do that in real life--actually i wondered that b4 once or twice when i watched it. see? esp. cuz his jaws would be rotten and like how good were his teeth? they looked ok in the closeups but you never get to look at him very long prob. cuz he's 1 more prima donna asshole famous actor. like larry bud melman or thaty dog who plays scobby doo. bet he's a asshole. well anyway they make this big deal. in the movie? about how hardly no one dies w/ perfect teeth. so you had to wonder about that w/ the tarman.

so i guess it's pretty obvious what happened then. i seized stefan and tried to bite through his scalp. jusat to see how ez it was. and here's more proof that german people suck. he pushed me and i almost fell. and he said "don't do that. i know tarman does that in the movie, but it isn't that easy to do in reAL LIFE. i tried."



so he did see return of the living dead. i was wrong about that, but obviously i wasn't wrong about him being a superior fuck becuz he was telling me what to do and acting like he knew more than me. so i made sure i bled on him even more than i woulda otherwise. on the way to the hospital.



so the moral to the story is its ok to hump across lava but don't get confused or enticed by the word hiump enuff to fuck the lava or it will burn yr dick off. (i haven't done enough field work yet to say if fucking lava is bad if u r a girl, so if any enterprising female who's screwed some lava would like to send me some data i could coalate i'd think that was very neighborly of her. i realize see BTW that fucking lava might be mechanically different if u were a woman, but unless you had a strap on to fuck the lava with. but i did try shoving a long spur of lavaq up my ass figuring it would at least give me somew sense of what it would be like to fuck lava the way i presume a woman would??? and well i guess i picked a pieca poo ooo ooo, which is too brittle (insteada aah aah aah which is more solid) cuz it shattered inside my butt and then i hadda poo oo oo it out and that hurt bad.

(p.S. My fakkt-chekker tellz me that the correct terms for these types of lava are pahoepahoe, pronounced "pe-hoo-eh-hoo-eh," & a'a, pronounced "ah-ah." so you mite B able 2 understand my confusion here. I apologize fur NE inconvenience I may have caused yew...)


(p.p.s. (huh huh: "p.p.") Happy Halloween!!!)

neway back to that walk on the lava. minus the fucking part...

Whoopeee!!! It's the All Star Break!!!

Thank god... the All Star break...


It'll be nice to have a break from all this stressful mid-season play. We may have the best record in the league, but the Cubs have been looking a little crappy. Maybe they could use a break from all the stress. I know I could.


The All Star Game is fun. It has no real repercussions. You can just sit back and enjoy the baseball. Lot's to look forward to here. For one thing, I'm really amped to see Dan Uggla in action. That guy's a really exciting young player. He's got Hall of Fame written all over him!


Yep. Whadda relief. We better relax... in a couple of days, we'll have to gear up for the race to the post-season. But I think we can do it. I mean, c'mon, look at us. Every sports writer in the country has us pegged for National League champs, despite our recent shakiness.


100 years, baby, this is it. Reverse the Curse. World Champion Chicago Cubs...



Whazzat you say? The Cubs are about to play Game 3 of the NLDS tomorrow? And they lost Games 1 & 2 solidly? At Wrigley? The All Star Game is long over, carrying away so many hopeful possibilities w/ it?


OK, now you're just being asshole. It's not cool to fuck w/ me like that. Except when I consult my calendar, I see that you are right...


What the fuck? Did I sleep all the way through the stretch as well as the first half of the season? No, wait... I seem to've wounded myself. There's this large bloody gash in my head... Hmm... maybe my memory loss is the result of brain trauma. And speaking of injuries that I don't remember receiving, it seems their are some hesitation marks on my wrists. (Pussy... I never could bring myself to do it...) Please tell me it isn't true...


I must be drunk...


OK... I'm not...



It's only the second time we made it to the post-season 2 years in a row... in 100 years...


And now they've blown it?????? On the 100th anniversary. I mean, I know the odds of the Cubs winning the World Series exactly 100 years after their last Championship are ridiculously remote. (Assuming that is that cold, insentient mathematics place the same significance on the number 100 that we do, but I think that's a given, right?)


But to bring us this close, only to yank the rug out from under us again? This is getting just too fucking old. And painful.


So I guess it's time to go get drunk and hope that the sweet nepenthe of liquor takes me off to a cool, shady place, light years away from Wrigley Field and all the misery it has caused me, not to mention the misery it has caused uncountable others. Maybe all of us can just sleep, sleep peacefully--maybe all the way through the 2009 season, if we're lucky...


And if we're really, really lucky, maybe we can just sleep all the way through every baseball season for the rest our lives... Yeah, if we're really, really, really lucky...


But let's not get carried away...


Yet.

CLINCHED???

I must be drunk...

OK...  I'm not...

It's only the second time we made it to the post-season 2 years in a row... in 100 years...

Well, regardless... Let's not get carried away...

Yet.

Some Thoughts on Fire, Water, Lawn Chairs, & the Insufficiency of Language

Above you will find a picture of a face that formed eerily in my sink. Frightening, isn’t it?

I’d just poured dish soap onto some old coffee that had mostly turned to mud by that time. Earth & Water: This is the sorta fury you can expect when the elements meet.

Which reminds me of where I left off when I was telling you about Hawaii…

So but then Stefan, Niko and I gathered our gear about us and headed up the road. There were clumps of people all ahead of us, walking along the cliffs that lined the ocean. Everyone was stopping and gaping downward as they walked ahead of us. When we got closer to the cliff line, it became apparent what they were looking at.

As I write Hawaii, I am consistently frustrated by just how inadequate language is. You can say these things are amazing. You can say that the sea was frothing like an infant’s saliva, that the cliffs were colored in hundreds of eggplant shades and had the texture of an ancient person's skin. And the lowering sunlight was, no shit, like the orange you find in one of the middle layers of an open flame. Clichéd? Maybe. Exaggerated? Sorry, no. And still, still, damn unequal to what I saw when I looked down toward the water. The wind coming off the water was powerful, but beautifully warm. Not at all what I expected. The waves, in truth, boomed.

So we gawked and snapped pictures. Stefan kept looking to me for a reaction. I don't know what he saw on my face. I do know that it was exhilarating. There really are experiences in life that are thrilling in this way. Somehow, strangely, it's easy to forget feelings of this nature, but I experienced them then. All I can offer you now are these paltry words and a picture. The truth, predictably and sadly, is that you had to be there.

Anyway, the light was quickly changing, so we shouldered our packs and got moving. I often walk around the city with the very same backpack that I was carrying then—sometimes for a few miles. What's more, when I was a kid, my parents had coerced me into several backpacking trips. So I figured the hike wouldn't be very difficult. Thing is, I underestimated the distance—not badly enough that it would've killed me, but, even worse, I’d also forgotten a piece of backpacking knowledge I'd picked up as a kid: hiking on irregular terrain is a bitch. Especially with a pack throwing off yr. sense of balance. Even if this had occurred to me I think I wouldn't still've been surprised by how punishing this hike was. These walking conditions weren't just difficult—they were downright bizarre—if you're not used to hiking across lava anyway.

And the beginning of the hike was deceptively easy. Even after we'd left the road, the first stretch was easy—level and stable. It was flat and open. There wasn't a proper trail, but the ocean was on yr. right. It was pretty obvious where you had to go. There was some scrubby vegetation, but for the most part, we'd entered abnormally rocky terrain. There wasn't even dirt to speak of, just these deep chocolate brown plains of rock.

If you remain in rough alignment with the road you left behind, you hit on a display of the profundity and peculiarity of volcanic forces. In fact, it's downright funny—I mean funny “ha”—chunk of paved road, complete with yellow line, embedded in the lava. It's maybe 10 feet long—and somehow it survived one of the recent eruptions, while all the rest of the road was obliterated. It appears that the lava just jumped over it.

Very slowly, dusk was building up around us. The light was becoming blue. We noticed a large group of people spread out on the rock in front of us. There were whole families—with plenty of kids in tow. They were seated on blankets—even a couple of lawn chairs—and looked, for all the world, like they were waiting for the fireworks to start in Grant Park. Thing is, they were looking east and down—toward the sea—where an enormous, violent cloud of steam was rising out of the sea.

The mood was something like I'd expect you’d find at one of those mass UFO campouts—friendly and outgoing—as 'tho everyone wanted to acknowledge your presence and the experience you were all having together. Many a beer can was lifted in our direction. Many a friendly salute was tipped our way. We reciprocated, then got down to the business of viewing the lava flow.

Here's where fire meets water: the lava flow empties into the Pacific. And people come from all over the world to just sit and watch—esp. at dusk when the darkness allows you to see the lava more clearly, but isn't so heavy that you can no longer appreciate the texture of the ocean and its angry response to the lava.

It grew even darker, and most of us there were getting out shit together and preparing to move on. At first I was surprised to see that so many people were going the other way—back to the cars. Somehow the communal spirit had led me to think we'd all just go on together. When I realized how many of them did not have packs of any sort, it became clearer to me. Also there were the kids. It was only then that I realized how much the difficulty of the walk might, understandably deter people.

There was also the fact that what we were proposing to do was not thoroughly endorsed by the park, 'tho due to intense demand, they do allow it. There have been shelves of lava that have taken hikers with them as they've collapsed into the sea. There are rope borders surrounding the safe area, but as you go further up the side of the mountain, they become few and far between. You've moved away from the sea, but the ground is unstable in places. There are the flashing buoys the ranger mentioned, which are fairly easy to find in the dark, but there were times over the course of the night when we lost them altogether.