Gibbering Madness

2012-10-01T15:52:00.002-04:00

Writing to continue when the Person from Porlock leaves.

Ghana - Up the Ankobra River

2012-02-04T14:23:00.002-05:00

Casting off the Shackles

2011-07-11T13:19:00.002-04:00

Rest assured, I will continue the blog and finish the third instalment of the Viner story.

Being back 'home' has left me confused and lethargic. I struggle through my days in a near state of delirium and am being viewed increasingly as an eccentric in my rigid corporate environment.

The pressure to restrain my rather outgoing personality is causing great distress, cracks are appearing and odd comments occasionally burst forth causing discord and confusion in the office.

Tomorrow I face a sort of star chamber inquisition where I must justify my presence in the office to a table of superiors who, in a way I can not quite fathom, have become a sort of omnipresent spectral force chewing away at my will.

A breaking point has been reached. Change is in the air.

This very day fate intervened and I managed to find a cheap ticket abroad, departing very soon - before the end of the month. Sitting in my cubicle, struggling to write my "value added report" an impulse came over me and I pulled out my credit card and purchased the ticket.

The fact that I actually HAVE a credit card is distressing enough. I am totally unprepared for travel. Money is going to be very tight. I'm taking a bold leap into the maw of madness, but I feel like Atlas after a visit from the Death Star.

Tomorrow, emboldened and impaired from lack of sleep I will stand before my masters, denounce the meeting as a witch hunt, tender my resignation, and shrug off my chains.

Sweet freedom!

My plans are not at all well thought out. Far from it, this is a blind impulse born of sheer desperation, but I feel damn good about it.

As for this blog, I have barely scratched the surface of what I have wanted to tell. I have purposely refrained from starting the big stories, the grand events that have shaped me into the creature I am today. There is more, so much more that it will get to the point that anyone believing this to be a work of non-fiction will be considered quite mad.

Stay tuned. This may very well end up being my career.

God knows I'm no good for anything else.

A State of Mind

2010-12-14T18:40:00.006-05:00

I am in awe today.

The Blackberry is leading me on merry adventures, through twisting office passages, up barren stairwells, and through mazes of cubicles. I pass the Minions, pecking away at their computers, gossiping lightly or taking nourishment out of steaming styrofoam cartons of gruel.

My disguise is nearly complete. I have managed to find a black cashmere trench coat from Holt Renfrew at a local Salvation Army for $14.99. Now I can walk confidently; one of them. As I approach the secretaries, a look of uncertain fear can be seen in their eyes, an expectation of an important meeting they had no knowledge of. Relief floods them when reveal I am only there to attend to their printer. They can relax. I am not important after all. But I look the part. As someone who was once mistaken for a homeless person by homeless people, I am now mistaken for an executive. Fluidity, adaptation. Be the role.

I am free.

Free to move around without attracting attention, silently walking among what can only be described as chaos built on unfathomable layers of human folly.

I plunge into the passages of the underground, walking between towers. Crowds of tunnel dwellers move nimbly through the brightly lit, marble labyrinth or sit, eating slop ladled out by smiling uniformed attendants from colourful establishments.

Christmas shoppers struggle with their bags of wrapped trinkets, chatting lightly in anticipation of material elevation. Stern businessmen stand in groups facing each other, contemplating abstract numbers with grim consternation. Enormous flashing televisions bark an endless stream of nonsense from the walls thrumming out a deep baritone over the constant staccato of insect chatter.

As one tower underbelly transitions into another, a brief respite from idle luxury materializes in the form of a subway entrance. The floor is covered in streaks of grime and puddles of melted, salty snow that has slid from high, fashionable boots. Bearded men wearing strange hats and necklaces play guitars while briskly walking people offhandedly toss change into the empty cases without stopping to listen. Silver airtight doors are constantly nudged open as the unceasing mass sweeps through to the bowels of yet another tower, identical apart from a new shade of marble.

I am ushered along, in amidst the flow. There is no need to navigate, every time I try, I find myself alone in a dead end or cul-de-sac where well dressed people sit on benches enjoying a brief rest from the swarming, endless line of walkers.

I am carried along to my destination, keys cards flash out to unlock the elevator, and doors. I nod to the secretary, and enter a huge room of cubicles. Strange green shoots grow from pots on ledges. I can’t identify the species. Curious, I stop, reach out and touch one. Fake. Plastic, wiped down occasionally by uniformed late night cleaners to remove the dust that would shatter the illusion. What can grow under this harsh, unnatural fluorescent lighting?

Rows of them, tapping at their keyboards, secured in their cubicles adorned with teddy bears and photographs. I pass, some lift their heads, most are too involved. In the kitchen I find my printer and set to work.

The Blackberry gives a buzz, and I turn onward to another destination. Another walk through the tunnels, more doors to beep open with my card. Another office.

I am in awe today.

I am a stranger here.

I have returned only to continue to travel.

Toil

2010-12-07T11:45:00.008-05:00

There have been an astonishing lack of entries lately, please forgive me and allow me to present my feeble explanation. Shortly after posting the last entry, I rode the train of broken faces and crushed spirits to my blackberry job, only to find that my computer had been disconnected from the network. Apparently spending all day writing blog entries is frowned upon at this institution, as well as some kind of violation of network security. This development forced me to endure a day of tedium, strolling listlessly around downtown, and waiting in vein for a printer to break.

Indignation rose in me. This was a clear violation of my sovereignty, and my God given right to loaf at work. I resolved to rectify the situation. The next day I brought along my laptop. Entering the building, I proceeded to my now useless desk, collected my key cards and Blackberry and made my way to the nearest Starbucks where I sat all day, surfing the net, playing strategy games and drinking endless cups of coffee. This has become my new daily routine, I'm at 'work' at the moment.

The absence of the pain of sitting in an office all day sapped the inspiration that fueled my writings. I was comfortable, and could escape the office environment and play video games.

The friendly staff at Starbucks got accustomed to my presence in ‘my office’ and kept me well fed with free samples of coffee cake and whipped mochas. Life was grand, but the blog has suffered, that is, until that faithful day when events took a turn for the worse.

“We are pawns of the Gods” the ancient Greeks had proclaimed, and so it seemed to me when one day the Blackberry finally rang. My peace was about to be shattered.

I took a moment to stare at the cruel and discourteous thing with surprise and trepidation. What was this? A broken printer? Would I lose my seat at Starbucks if I went and attended to it? Hesitantly, I answered.

It was my boss.

The clamour of the Starbucks environment could be clearly heard in the background. I tried to sound breathlessly busy and professional, but I knew deep down I wasn't fooling anybody. The hammer is about to fall, I thought. After a cheerful greeting, my boss addressed the point of his call.

“I just wanted to tell you that you’re doing fine work there, and we are going to be offering you your own site, along with the appropriate benefits and full time wages”

Shock.

Horror.

A Job.

This wouldn’t do at all.

Granted, the girls at the office are very pretty and flirtatious (when I bother to be there which is very seldom), but they wear big sunglasses, and anybody that follows fashion gets little respect from me. There is no way I can see myself living this life.

Now, I’m not complaining. It’s an easy, well paying job in a bad economy and I am thoroughly uneducated, unqualified and all but useless in the Western World. I’m aware that I should feel lucky. But the only way to really live is on the keen edge between life and death. And so, after saving a bit of dosh, I plan to quit and fling myself again out into the void.

I gave myself a piece of advice a long time ago, which I have yet to really adhere to. “If it starts to feel like home, it’s time to leave”, and I am rapidly approaching that point now.

The long and the short of it is that I am once again in a disturbed enough frame of mind to inspire some new writing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the staff has just presented me with a sample of their “Holiday Turkey Sandwich” which I will now turn my attention to.

Crossing the Veil

2010-09-17T10:51:00.014-04:00

My bunk was soaked with seawater. I reluctantly crawled in, pulling the thin, damp sheet over my body and recoiling as I felt the cold, soaked mattress against my skin. Everything below decks was damp, and encrusted with a thin layer of salt. Fleeing cockroaches could be caught with the eye on every surface. We had been at sea for weeks, and the vessel was taking on water. Only the ceaseless exertion of the electric bilge pump kept us afloat, our lives hung on its twelve volt little engine; made in China and available at your local Wal-Mart for $12.99.

During the day I had hauled my mattress out into the cockpit and tied it down where it could receive the blessing of the sun, and dry out. I had done this already; allow it to bake in the equatorial heat, only to be met with chilling damp as I flung my tired body down after my first night watch. The Captain had observed my previous attempt, saying nothing. Today his strained patience for my ignorance ran dry.

“It’s not going to work” He barked sharply, with an annoyed, flinty glance in my direction.

I stopped what I was doing, I had long ago learned to submit and listen to The Captain. His word was irrefutable law. He held my life in his grasp with his superior knowledge and assumed the role of God-King in our unstable, fifty-four foot little world.

“The salt in the mattress will just draw in more moisture as soon as the sun goes down, if you want it dry, you have to get the salt out of it, what you are trying to do is useless” He explained impatiently, annoyed that I hadn’t figured it out after my first attempt had failed.

I had been corrected sharply, and felt a bit foolish that I hadn’t thought it through myself, but I was surprised at how damp the mattress became, so quickly after night fell and the temperature plunged dramatically. I risked his anger with a foolish question.

“How do I get the salt out?” I winced as soon as I asked, knowing the answer half way through my question and compounding my diminished standing in The Captain’s eyes.

He smirked, “Fresh water”. It was useless. We could spare little water, and certainly could not afford enough to soak a mattress. I abandoned hope, and hauled the mattress back to my stateroom, depositing it, dejected, back on the bunk.

The ship carried two tanks of fresh water, each a hundred fifty gallons. As the potential to be at sea for months existed, none could be spared for anything but drinking. There was to be no showers and no washing, these were impossible luxuries when our lives depended on a limited supply of fresh water.

The tanks were ancient, as old as the vessel, and had spent a good amount of time on the sea floor after the ship had gone down in a hurricane. The inside of the tanks were covered in rust, but under decent conditions the water ran reasonably fresh. These were not decent conditions. The wild seas we had survived imposed a constant, violent thrashing on the vessel which had miraculously endured so far. The rust had worked its way loose and into our reservoir of salvation, fouling the water to such a degree it was undrinkable under any reasonable condition of basic survival. I could only bring myself to reluctantly drain it into my throat when I had reached a near crazed point of water starvation.

I had finished my first watch of the night. The weather was calm for once, offering a respite from my usual desperate struggle to navigate through the surging seas. I spent my time sitting in the cockpit, alternating my view between the breathlessly engrossing view of the stars, and the mystic glow of the bio-luminescence that curled into little wisps in the wake of our passing. When the third hour stuck, I went below, did my log entry, and stuck my head in The Captain's stateroom.

"Captain, time" I said softly. We had long grown accustomed to the schedule by now, but a gentle nudge was still required to rouse our exhausted bodies from slumber. The Captain shook himself awake, and pulled himself out of his bunk, climbing the companionway to take my place on watch. I stumbled my way to my berth in the dark belly of the heaving ship and threw myself into the salty, wet bed.

I lay there, tossed around on my bunk by the relentless pounding of the vessel as she was driven by the howling wind, cutting through the mid-Atlantic sea. The roar of the water could be heard through the sweating hull; beads of moisture running down, and being absorbed by my cursed mattress. I had three hours to sleep before I was woken by the gruff voice of The Captain for my second night watch.

We were heeled over to the starboard and from my position on the port-side I would often be furiously hurled from my bunk as I slept. I would wake suddenly, hanging four feet in the air, with just enough time to realize my position, and brace myself for the inevitable plunge to the floor.

The crashing motion and penetrating rumble of the passing water rendered sleep difficult, but weariness can overcome all distractions. I began to sink into sleep.

Somehow, a hidden process that is normally beyond awareness was revealed to me this night. I was fully conscious as I began to drift away, my mind alert, able to fully analyse this mysterious transition between worlds.

I lay, braced against the movement of my bunk, sinking deeper towards full sleep. As I descended, the movement lessened and the rushing clamour of the water began to sound as if I were hearing it from a distance. Fully aware, I was amazed by the sensation of approaching sanctuary from the hellish world that held me. I continued until I hung, floating alone in an endless void of pitch black.

There was nothing, only stillness and peace. I was conscious of nothing but my own thoughts which I had full control of. I had to explore this further. Turning back, I slowly crept tentatively towards ‘reality’. It began again, almost undetectable on the edge of my senses. I could barely hear the crashing sea and feel the lurching of the vessel. I continued all the way back and again felt the full intensity of sensation, even to the point of cracking an eye open to reassure myself that the world was still there.

I preferred the blackness, so carefully and easily I returned to the void, again, fully aware of all physical stimuli melting away as I made my descent. I floated for awhile, enjoying the peace. This was amazing. I felt nothing at all. There is a deep mystery here I thought, with the blunt realization that there is more to reality than the physical world. I continued to practice, making the journey a number of times.

I was in awe of what I was doing, and felt it was time to explore more. I could not sink any deeper; the black void was at the very limit. Something else was required. I knew what to do, but I could not understand it, it was beyond my power of reason.

Bracing myself, I warbled over the barrier.

With a flash of sudden, astonishing intensity, a world of full, vibrant colour created itself around me.

Tubal Cain

2010-08-20T10:04:00.007-04:00

I had long suspected it, but I'd never found any proof. There had to be mysterious shortcuts along the endless trudge up the Ziggurat. Secret handshakes or whispered, cryptic passwords were the only way I could bring myself to explain some of the vapid characters I had encountered in my odd brushes with high society. On this day, the sun was to rise like any other, but today I was to discover a secret.

It was a happy time, and I was occupied with the best job I ever had. My work was graphic design, and my duty was to arrange a single event poster on a daily basis. It required, at the very maximum, ten minutes of light toil. The rest of the day could be spent wandering the underground pathways of downtown Toronto, and flirting with the pretty blond girl who worked at the coffee shop below my place of employment.

I was satisfied. Life was good, I had enough to easily fend off all material needs, which have always been few. Had I continued in this way I may have inadvertently slipped into the Minion lifestyle, and ended up a carbon copy, indistinguishable from the business casual standardization that so stunts the natural growth of the spirit that resides deep within us.

My work was finished. I had grandly presented my poster to the reception of showering praise from my boss. How I managed to produce a poster every single day was an overwhelming mystery to him, and he never grew weary of expressing his gratitude. Another day gone by, and a job well done. I walked out to a radiant summer evening, and proceeded to my destination on foot. The Toronto bus station.

I enjoy bus stations in all countries of the world. There is something about the prospect of cheap travel that attracts the more colourful personalities of those that walk among us. And the Toronto bus station is no exception to this prevailing axiom.

My friend Megan had found gainful employment in the bar that served the thirsty travellers. Megan was a beautiful girl, of Ukrainian decent, touched with the slightest dash of Mongol. A product of the great swath Genghis and his boys had cut across Asia and Eastern Europe. I would often joke that, far back in her lineage, lurked a Mongol barbarian, whose recessed genes had reemerged, and that was the explanation for her feral instability and voracious forbidden appetites. She was a party girl, and her life revolved around alcohol. I had done my best to gently lead her into the Minion fold, but she defended enduringly with a feisty resistance. We had dated for some time in high school, she had left me wounded and heartbroken, but the lacerations had eventually healed and we had managed to maintain a solid friendship.

Passing the surrounding band of homeless, I entered the building, the sudden intake of air swirling torn bits of paper into sullied recesses. I climbed to the second floor up the majestic old staircase, a throwback to the days of yore, when bus travel occupied a more exalted position on the social pyramid.

Megan was busy slinging booze to the howling demands of the encircling ring of disheveled patrons. She took the time to greet me, professionally dispensed a beer and I sat down on a stool to wait for a lull in the enthusiastic drinking.

The character beside me was drunk, that much was clear. His clothing was ruffled from long travel, and a stained yellow cap perched atop his head from which hung curls of greasy, matted hair. He turned and engaged me in conversation.

After a few inquiries about his destination, we turned our attention to the eternal Canadian pastime of complaining about the government. Taxes were too high, inflation out of control, dollar was too low, NAFTA had ruined the country, it was damn hard to get ahead these days, we both agreed.

"You know what you should do?" His voice took on a whispered, conspiratorial tone, cocking an eye over the mouth of his beer glass.

"My uncle works for CSIS, financial division"

I replied that I had no idea that CSIS, the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service, had a financial division.

"Oh, they do, they do!" He exclaimed, raising his voice, pleased to correct my ignorance. "And you wouldn't BELIEVE what goes on in there"

"What?" I asked.

"Oh I can't tell you!" He gibbered. "But what you should do is this" His voice dropped to a whisper again.

He presented the name of a common and very large banking institution in Canada.

"You gotta go in there, go in there..any branch" The effects of the alcohol forcing a drooling stutter. "Go in there and ask for....Excelsior Class Bonds"

I replied I would surely try it, and spent a few moments trying to disengage from this deranged lunatic when thankfully, Megan returned. I turned my attention to her, and the odd fellow, after finishing his beer announced he had to catch his bus and walked off.

"Don't forget!" He called to me over his shoulder.

Ignoring this sage advice, I proceeded to write off the entire incident as the drunken ramblings of an unkempt madman.

One morning, weeks later, I awoke early having some mundane business at the bank to attend to. Waking early was unusual for me, but the fact that I wasn't required to be at work until one in the afternoon, relieved some of the distress that this usually caused. Upon rising, Excelsior Class Bonds came unbidden to my mind.

I went to my computer, called up the bank's website and did a search. I found several classes of bonds, but nothing named Excelsior. What was I doing considering taking financial advice from a demented alcoholic in a seedy bus station watering hole? I got dressed for work and made my way to the bank, mentally chuckling at myself on the way.

On impulse, at the teller, once my business was concluded, I hesitantly ventured that I was interested in their "Excelsior Class Bonds".

The teller motioned to the location of the investment manager, sitting in her cubicle; the eternal habitat of the Minion. Upon entering and sitting at her desk, she inquired if she could help me, splitting her attention between her computer and I, which she was feverishly tapping away on.

"Yes, I'm interested in your Excelsior Class Bonds" I ventured hesitantly, preparing myself to be dismissed and my ignorance of high finance exposed.

The clattering of her keyboard ceased immediately, she stiffened, correcting any slight imperfections in her posture and her eyes flashed to me as she paused in stunned appraisal. A moment passed as her eyes hung on me. "Minimum ten thousand dollar investment..." I said haughtily, gaining a bit of confidence and repeating what the bus station lunatic had told me.

I had her rapt attention now. She apologized profusely, and informed that that she could not help me at this particular branch, I had to inquire at the main branch downtown. She proceeded to call up my file and shocked my by saying "In the meantime, let me upgrade your credit card."

I handed over my card, reserved by the bank and reluctantly given to extreme credit risks such as myself.

"Hmm" she clucked. "I'd advise you to apply for a platinum card, we have the applications here or you can do it online, in the meanwhile, let's raise the limit on this"

She raised me immediately from a thousand dollar limit, giving me an additional seven thousand dollars in credit, the maximum the card would allow.

I walked out of the bank that day, in shock and full of amazement.

Although I have never followed up on it at the main branch, I posses the security of knowing that I hold one of the passwords that will launch me directly upward into the privileged class, should I ever choose to employ it.

I doubt I’ll ever need it. Heights make me dizzy, and the Ziggurat looks just fine from my lounging position here at the bottom.

In Good Company

2010-08-18T09:56:00.015-04:00

"Yeah, I know them. They're Gooks! GOOKS!"

I cringed, sheepishly looking over at the table of Koreans beside us. Barry was a very large man, and even when he wasn't drunk and bellowing, his normal speaking voice could probably be heard clear across the bay in Puerto Galera proper. The horrid scowl he was aiming in the direction of the Koreans didn't improve the already tense atmosphere.

It was New Years. I was staying in a beautiful little resort a couple kilometres outside the town of Puerto Galera in the Philippines. At my table was an eclectic mix of individuals, all of them at least 20 years my senior.

Greg, a hardened New Zealand Navy cook stared at his plate, saying nothing.

Greg lived in a house on the resort grounds with his Filipina wife. He spent every other month at sea and, when back, usually polished off a bottle of vodka before noon on a daily basis. That was just to warm him up.

"I spent a lot of time in Russia" He would explain with a toothy grin when questioned about his drinking prowess. I had heard the story; he had been stationed in some god forsaken place in Siberia with no company but a few Russians who couldn't speak English, and an endless supply of vodka.

"GOOKS! GOOKS!" The Koreans didn't react, I was sure that most of them could speak English, and even if they didn't, it was well known as a derogatory way to address them.

"It means 'Post Office'" Barry said, glancing our way with a grin.

It didn't. But I was not going to contradict Barry, and incur the attention of his unpredictable wrath. He had spent time in Korea, Songtan in fact, with the US Military. But, not as much time as I had. I knew their language far better than he.

As I had been a fixture in Songtan for the past few years, it was a pivotal area of our friendship. In his more sober moments, usually in the morning, we would sit and recall fond memories of the place. He had been there almost two decades before I, but it had changed little it seemed, as we exchanged stories of our exploits up and down Aragorn Alley and The Strip.

"Barry..." The Colonel said softly, trying in vein to quell his growing senseless anger.

The Colonel was famous in these parts. An elderly, dignified Filipino war veteran, he had single handedly stopped the rebellion against Marcos. Being a crack pilot, he had strafed the hordes of angry Filipinos gathering outside the palace, killing an unknown number, and sending the rest fleeing for their lives. It was an experience he wasn't proud of, but he was a soldier, and defending the corrupt Marcos had been his job. He was a war hero, and men of his stature were held in very high regard here, even though Marcos is universally hated to this day.

The Colonel was also a figure of infamy in Puerto Galera. He was well known for getting drunk, pulling out his .45 pistol, and shooting people.

"He's shot 5 people here in the last 4 years!" Greg had exclaimed, beaming. "Don't worry, he caught them creeping around here at night, this place is one of the safest places you can stay in the Philippines, EVERYBODY knows The Colonel!”

And so it seemed, but that had not stopped the assassination that had taken place a few months ago.

"It was right over there" Greg had said, motioning with his chin as we were sitting in the dining area one beautiful morning. The man had come in, and ordered a beer and light meal. Upon finishing, he got up, walked to the order desk, and shot the owner's brother in the head. After firing two more shots to make sure the man was dead he turned and politely addressed the horrified diners. He apologized profusely for the inconvenience, and urged the diners to finish their meals. Then he paid up, and casually sauntered down the kilometre of unpaved dusty jungle track that connected to the main road.

"No, you're safe here" Greg had reassured me after noting my expression upon hearing this. "I've got my 9mm, The Colonel is a crack shot with his .45, and Barry! Barry is armed to the teeth, and everybody around here knows it!"

Yes, I was in good company.

"Gooks! I know them! Suck your dick for two bucks!"

Barry had completely destroyed the pleasant dining atmosphere by now. Greg, tired of this behaviour, had gotten up and walked off, joining his family at another table. The Colonel slumped in his chair, and I remained silent. It was uncomfortable, but I didn't want to abandon the table just yet. Despite his off moments, which were frequent, I enjoyed Barry's company.

"I know Gooks! I know...SOJU!" His deafening voice taking on a sly tone.

A couple of the Koreans looked over.

"Yeah, now I got their attention! Soju! Soju!" He continued, cracking a wide grin. The Koreans smiled back.

Barry had the uncanny ability to carry an impossibly fearsome scowl at one moment, then suddenly transform his face into an impishly disarming grin. It was something to behold, and it had worked on the Koreans, temporarily relieving the tension.

I picked at my food. The evening had started off well. All the guests had gathered in the restaurant for the banquet that the staff had prepared. Spirits were high, and the Filipinos joined the residents while The Colonel stood up and made a speech. After the applause Barry had leapt up and cut into the lechon pig, presenting it to The Colonel. "The Colonel gets the first taste! He's the Patriarch!" He shouted to the cheering diners.

But now, the party was nearly over. Several of the guests had already fled back to their rooms. Barry was impossible to ignore, and he had single handedly ruined New Years.

I took advantage of the momentary lull, and abandoning my plate, returned to my room. As I sat at my laptop, I could hear Barry engaging in a loud argument with Adella, Greg's sister in law. I really liked Barry, he was great company when he was sober, but famous for this type of behaviour when drunk. I felt like a bit of a traitor for abandoning him.

"He has no friends - except us" Greg had told me later. "He does that all the time, until everybody leaves and he ends up drinking alone"

I thought about Barry in my room; a sad, lonely old man, emotionally crippled by his experience in Vietnam. He lived alone in the Philippines, moving from one place to another when those around him made it clear his presence was intolerable. He was a tragic figure.

It was starting to approach midnight, and the firecrackers that had been going off in town became a constant roar. I walked out of my room through the darkness, passing the open air restaurant. Barry was there, sullenly sitting alone, drinking in the now fully abandoned restaurant. I made my way to the beach, lit a cigarette and watched as the first streaks of colour exploded up from the other side of the bay. Smoke was rising from the town, and cheers could be heard above the constant sound of the firecrackers.

"Don't look there, look here!"

Barry had come up behind me, and pointed in the direction of the small isthmus that connected our island to the mainland.

"They do this every year, and spend a lot of money - wait for it!"

Just then a barrage of light split the darkness. Fire roared up into the sky and burst into colour.

Barry went wild with delight; he began to prance around screaming "I love you FIlipinos! I Love you!" I watched his huge silhouette against the back drop of exploding colour.

It was a fantastic show, made all the better by the brushfire that almost immediately sprang up on the hills.

"It's burning, it's burning!" Barry screamed with abandon.

The show continued, and in cadence the flames rose to a height of thirty or more feet.

"Watch out! Shit's coming down! Shit's coming down!" Barry was laughing hysterically. We were being bombarded with the expended, burning casings. I flung my arms up to shield my head and began to laugh uncontrollably.

We stood there and watched the crescendo, the sky lit up with a frenzy of explosions, smoke rising in a pillar from the town, our connection to the mainland cut off by wild brush fires, all the while being peppered from above by burning bits of cardboard. Barry screamed with delight "All for us! All for us!"

It was a moment I'll remember forever, Barry had been transformed as if the fire had burned the bitterness and anger from his very soul. I felt renewed, charged with pure energy. It seemed, somehow, like my entire life led up to witnessing this very instant in time. I became profoundly aware that there was a pure spirit deep down in every one of us, and no matter what was done to shroud it; it would forever burn with the intensity of that moment.

Finally, it was over. I walked back through the darkness to my room, overcome with emotion and in deep thought. Reaching my door I looked up and saw that for several miles up and down the coast, the flames of wild fires were licking the sky.

Business Casual

2010-08-17T12:49:00.004-04:00

It’s an interesting life, and the adventure continues.

I am working downtown, in the very heart of Minionization. Deadpan eyes surround me, dressed smartly in business casual. My job is to be electronically tethered to a Blackberry, following its commands through a rat maze of offices until I reach my destination; a printer that needs to be attended to. I catch snippets of mundane conversation which I try my best to tune out. When it gets to be too much, I close my eyes and daydream about what I was doing a couple of months ago – swimming with whale sharks in azure, calming blue water. Silurian blue.

I was walking home the other evening when an ambulance pulled up to the sidewalk in front of me. With an air of casual joviality the paramedics lazily climbed out and, chatting lightly, made their way to the object of the call; a half dead homeless person blocking the entrance to a mall. A security guard barking into a radio hung over the sprawled figure. People walked by, going about their business, unconcerned.

This morning, coming to work the subway pulled up to Rosedale station, which is hardly ever used. Rosedale is the home of the Elite Minions, rich, luxury car driving folks with no need to lower themselves to the crude shoving that subway travel entails. As we pulled up, I saw somebody on the ground, thinking it unusual that a homeless person would be sleeping at this particular station. As we got closer I noticed the uniform – business casual. People looked on with concern, and several rushed out of the subway cars to lend assistance. The subway driver eventually appeared, and an announcement rattled through the speakers that our journey was to be delayed because of a medical emergency.

I started thinking about the discrepancy between the two incidents. Both were human, and both needed medical attention. What exactly was the reason for this? If it had been a homeless person sprawled at Rosedale station, the subway would not have stopped, and people would not have lent a hand. Some might have looked on, with curiosity, but nobody would have helped. Why is one life valued so much more than the other?

Some people might say the homeless are hopeless, drunks, drug addicts or crazy, this might very well be true, but why would that reduce the feeling of empathy upon seeing one?

Could it be the answer is economics? The woman’s uniform presented her as being more valuable to the system, and therefore in greater need of attention. Perhaps we should start donating business casual clothing to the homeless.

My lunch is over. The Blackberry has been sending me alerts, but I have discovered that if I simply reply with a text saying “Issue Resolved”, it stops bothering me.

A Well Timed Blessing

2010-06-10T15:32:00.004-04:00

Late one night, at a friend’s house I was ushered to go home. I know when I have overstayed my welcome, and being a layabout, I had no business to attend to the next day. My friend Rob, however, worked in the corporate world.

I have always been fascinated by the corporate world, but utterly incapable of functioning within it. What I find most interesting is how people adapt themselves and their personalities in congruence with our economic system. When I go to a store, and walk to the checkout counter I am greeted with a friendly smile. This friendly smile is a job requirement, and not genuine. The clerk at check out is told to smile, in order to emotionally manipulate the buyer, make them feel welcome, and come back again. This showing of false emotion, which becomes habitual, is something I find most distressing. I can’t imagine a check-out clerk being that happy, I certainly wouldn’t be working at that job.

It seems to me that in order to be more successful, and to rise higher in the system, more sacrifices of the natural state of humanity must be made. The interview process is a dance of lies. You are judged by how convincingly your scripted answers match up to the scripted questions. Working in an office, I would see nothing but deranged personalities all around me. Marketable personalities gushing nonsense. I knew there were real people in there somewhere, but their development had been stunted in accordance with the system in which they had to survive and flourish.

I was put off by the light chit chat, always prompted by the three major stories featured in the free papers that people read on the way to work. Expressing any sort of opinion outside this realm seemed to be frowned upon. Whenever I managed to get a job in an office, I learned to keep quiet, lest I build up a reputation of unorthodoxy.

Rob, however, was a master operating in this environment. I found his abilities remarkable. I was in awe of the way he could beam out his fake smile, and engage his fellow minions in the ritual of daily, nonsensical chatter. More than this, he was somehow able to manage to take, on average, three sick days a month. How he got away with this was beyond me. He had the aberrant ability to appear excited and interested in company meetings, and conducted his presentations with a dashing aplomb.

It was late, and I had to get out and let him sleep. Being an unsuccessful, uneducated and unemployable deviation from standardized humanity, I had always travelled by bicycle. I could not afford a car, and no matter what the snow load, would be forced to brave the extreme elements. I found biking, in any what the weather, to be a cathartic engagement. The act steady rhythmic pedaling always cleared my thoughts and with my eyes fixated on the road I would often fall into a trance.

It was in this state of mind that I received a rude comment shouted from a car behind me. Sometimes I am not sure what posses me to do things. Without thinking, I swung my bike around, and pedaled back toward the offending vehicle. I was not upset, or angry in anyway, it was a reflexive, unconscious action.

Seeing that the rear window was open, I rode up and stuck my head in, still mounted on my bike. In the car were four very large, aggressive looking black men.

All eyes were on me, even the fellow in the passenger seat had twisted his head, and was peering at me from behind the headrest. I fixed them with a stern glare, saying nothing. There were a little taken aback, not used to being challenged in this way. I could see that they didn’t know quite what to expect. Did I have a gun? Was I crazy? Tension was building up.

I remained silent, and just kept glaring. It was a standoff. Not knowing what would inspire the courage to motivate a lone man to put himself in this position, they remained still, but tense, ready for anything.

A long moment, passed. Tension was building to incredible levels. Something had to give. Any instant, violence was going to explode, bursting forth from that car. Something had to be done. I had no plan, but for some reason, I had absolutely no fear. I was still in the strange unthinking fugue that hard pedaling always granted me.

At the last moment, at the peak of unbearable pressure, finally I spoke, softly but firmly.

“Jesus loves you”

The looming threat of violence suddenly vanished, replaced by total confusion. The alteration of energy was immediately apparent, although nothing at all had changed. I still had my head in the window, and they sat, unmoving, staring at me. But the threat of brutality was gone, dispersed instantly upon the utterance of my magical phrase.

They had just been ready to spring into action, and now their target had morphed into something entirely different. They were faced with a glaring contradiction and had no idea of how to resolve it.

Knowing that I was safe I pulled my head out of the window and pedaled off, marveling at the power of ideas and perception.

Charity Case

2010-06-04T04:30:00.003-04:00

The apartment was barren. Gone were our appliances and furniture. The dust that had collected behind them stirred up in the wake of our footsteps. The stereo, of course, remained unmolested.

Two, easy chairs lingered, set up haphazardly in front of the system. Beer bottles lay strewn about the floor. The phone was disconnected – unplugged but still functioning. We never answered it. When it rang, we would stare at it with paranoid suspicion until it stopped. Our attempt to get an outgoing line only was met with incredulity by the operator upon request. “We don’t……have those anymore sir” she said in bewilderment.

Our doorbell was broken, the only contact we had with the outside world was to be had when somebody actually made the effort to come by. They were required to find a small object lying about on the ground, and throw it repeatedly at our second story window. It was a vein hope that we would be lucid enough to notice, or even hear, over the loud music that would play all night. Surprisingly, some people still actually undertook the effort.

The shelves were empty, a bag of rice and a few boullion cubes were all we had for sustenance. We were broke, and it was obviously our last month in the apartment. Like a fool, I had quit the best job I ever had in my life. And this was the disastrous result.

In the early afternoons we would wake, collect the beer bottles, and look for something else to sell. Our desperate need for beer had to be fulfilled. The thought of sitting there, throughout the evenings, with our mental faculties fully intact was unbearable.

We had somehow always managed to be successful, but on this day another crisis arose. We were out of food, the rice bag was empty. Something had to be done. We sat and pondered. Money was left unconsidered, that was for beer. No, we had to find another way.

“The food bank!” Lee suddenly looked up at me, his eyes glinting with delight. It was a fine idea. I was glad to have a man at my back like Lee. He had saved us for another day, maybe several.

Excitedly, we looked up the address in the phone book, and began to prepare. “Well, we’re not really poor”, I said to him with a hint of reluctance in my voice. Lee dismissed my hesitation with a beleaguered wave. “All that’s needed is a bit of careful preparation, dress poor.” he explained. I went upstairs to find something to wear.

We emerged from our rooms, appraised each other and burst out in wild laughter. I had adorned myself in an old pink ladies hat and scarf, tattered jeans, and three old cotton checkered jackets, each one of them fully stripped of buttons. I wore socks on my hands as gloves and had put on one of my old pairs of broken glasses. One of the lenses had been shattered, and one arm, twisted beyond use, jutted out from the side of my head. Lee was dressed in a similar fashion. We looked ridiculous, far worse than any street person I had ever seen. We were ready.

It was a cold winter’s day. We must have been an odd sight, pedaling down the road to the food bank, on bicycles easily worth over a thousand dollars each. It was a good distance, but the socks functioned better than I had hoped, and kept my hands from going completely numb. But the button-less jackets couldn’t be closed, and my torso was taking the brunt of the merciless, frigid air, driven by the harsh unrelenting wind.

Finally we arrived. We looked up at The Food Bank. Here was our salvation. A reconverted old factory warehouse, with crumbling bricks and broken windows, it towered above us, framed by the gray and sunless sky. We carefully locked our bikes up out of sight, worried that if we were spotted, our precious food would be confiscated. We had no idea what to expect, we had never been to the food bank. I was only vaguely aware that places like this existed.

We paused long enough to scrape up some dirt from underneath the snow and smeared it on our faces, completing our disguises.

Seeing a loading dock, we entered the warehouse and were greeted with a welcome sight. The place was enormous, and there was row after row of canned and dried goods, neatly stacked and arranged. The warehouse seemed abandoned, dead silence hung in the air. We looked at each other in delight. “I guess we just take what we want...” I ventured. My voice echoing through the stillness.

Noticing some empty boxes from the loading dock, we began to fill up on supplies, shouting out to each other in excitement when a favoured item was discovered. I began to praise that such a wonderful service existed. We hauled our bounty up on our shoulders and began to walk back toward the entrance.

As we were just about to exit the building, a door opened and a man walked out. He saw us and stopped dead in his tracks. We froze as well. We studied each other for a long moment. I could see him recoil slightly from our wretched appearance.

“What are you doing here?” He asked harshly.

Something was wrong, but what?

“We’re visiting the food bank” I responded, thinking that such a conclusion should by blindingly obvious.

The man, still guarded, but slightly relieved, told us that a process had to be followed. We were to go to the waiting area, on the other side of the building at the proper entrance. There we were to register, show identification, have proof of address and receive our ration. Dismayed, but not undaunted, we left our boxes and trudged out. The previously open door slammed behind us, and we heard the distinct sound of the lock engaging.

Steeling ourselves to the fraud we were about to commit, we opened the door and walked in. The other recipients of charity were there, seated in chairs and sipping coffee, all eyes turned to us and silence suddenly cut through the room. We regarded each other in mutual shock.

These were completely normal people! One man sat primly wearing a business suit, reading the financial section of the newspaper. There is no hint of poverty here, I thought, as I scanned the room. I moved to sit down.

The entire room unconsciously edged away from us. Nervous whispers could be vaguely heard. Our decrepit appearance was regarded with surprise and disdain. I could see the thought in their eyes “What are these poor people doing here?”

We waited, accepting an offer of hot coffee from one of the staff who rushed over, with concern written on her face. “You have to fill this out” She told us softly, and hesitantly added “Do you have an address?”

I filled in the forms and showed my identification. Lee had luckily thought to bring the only piece of ID he had ever owned, a crumpled birth certificate. That is still all he has to this very day.

We were given a box. It contained some laundry soap, a few cans, some Kraft dinner, powdered milk, and a few other paltry items. Hardly the cornucopia we had in our hands at the warehouse.

We were satisfied. It would be enough to soak up the beer in our stomachs tonight.

We left, and I stood outside and watched as the man in the suit gingerly carried his box to a parked BMW, got in, and sped off.

The Scams of David Viner, Part 2 - The Investigation

2010-06-02T19:53:00.026-04:00

Click here for part one.

I was furious. Not only did I feel outsmarted, but Viner had befriended me, and betrayed my trust. He has stolen my book, and being a micro budget traveller at this point, was counting on reading to pass some of the duller moments. The near nightly ritual of longingly watching friends go out to places that were well beyond my meagre financial resources.

Five hundred baht is not a lot of money, but it was to me at this time. It could have paid nearly a weeks rent or bought endless amounts of precious water needed so desperately in the tropics. Just recently, I had been delighted to discover a water machine hidden in the bewildering market across the street that sold a litre for 2 baht, if you brought your own bottle. The book has cost quite a bit as well, I thought, as I tallied up the damage Viner had done to me.

The more I thought about Viner the more curious I became. Here was a man of obvious intelligence, with all the hallmarks of an upper class education and upbringing. What was a man of his pedigree doing, wandering around the backpacker's slums scamming travellers for the equivalent of $15 dollars each? I started to get very interested in finding out as much as I could about this mysterious man.

I began to wonder if he might be a wanted criminal, on the run for executing high level confidence tricks among the English elite. Perhaps he was being pursued by Interpol, hiding amid the labyrinthine streets of Bangkok, forced to lower himself to conning backpackers to survive. Or maybe he had already worked the richer areas of the city, and was resting on his laurels, keeping his skills sharp, waiting for the heat to die down.

Also considered was the possibility that he was a murderer, affiliated with some kind of mafia or a human trafficker. He could have been operating a boiler room - the possibilities were endless. It came across my mind that he could be a very dangerous man. Sometimes, it's better not to inquire too deeply into the reasons a man chooses to live in the nether regions of Asia.

Admittedly, the trick he had pulled on me was a crude one, and upon reflection, I felt a fool. But he had done it so smoothly and effortlessly that I was sure he was capable of much greater feats in his unusual choice of occupation.

Nonetheless, I had a great deal of confidence in my own abilities, and was determined not to be outsmarted again. I had, by now, ceased to be angry and was driven by curiosity. I wanted to know his story.

I went out to look for Mike, who I hadn't seen since I had met Viner. Perhaps he could provide some clues. It turned out that Mike had gone, and his urgent business downtown had actually been another one of his futile attempts to re-enter Burma, and return to his beloved Mandalay.

I decided to go to the guesthouse where I knew Viner had stayed. In Thailand, to check into any hotel, a passport is required; your details are taken down and are sent off weekly to the police. This was the law. But rules in Asia are seldom followed, especially in Bangkok, whose underbelly of crime was rotten to the core. If one has the money, anything is possible, legal or not.

I walked past the festering mattresses lining the alley leading to the filthy guesthouse that Viner had previously occupied. On entering, I was greeted by the owner who was working the desk. I politely asked if I could take a look at his registry.

“Why?” His eyes were suspicious.

I relayed the story, which seemed to amuse him greatly. He cackled with delight at my determination to track down a man for a mere 500 baht. Giving me a big grin revealing blackened, uneven teeth, he tossed the registry my way. I eagerly opened the tattered book, flipping through the yellowed pages, and scanning for Viner’s name. There, about half way down, on the last page I found his entry, and more importantly his passport number!

I was delighted. Borrowing a pen and scrap of paper, I took it down. I examined his signature, a dignified, looping script carefully penned with a steady hand. I committed it, as much as I was able, to memory. My broken toothed friend was looking on, interested now and eager to help. I asked him if he remembered this man, and described him. He confirmed that he did.

I proceeded to extract the following information from the owner. Viner had checked in with an expired, British passport, which had the corner cut off. The excuse he gave upon checking in was the same story he had told me. He had been carrying a simple plastic shopping bag, and nothing else. He had been a model, quiet tenant, and caused no problems. He had left no information about where he was going, but he had mentioned that his previous lodgings had been on Rambutree, just off Khao Sahn road.

The owner seemed delighted in these proceedings, and was of eager assistance. It amused him to no end that this unusual guest, staying at a place that only the down and out frequented, turned out to be a confidence trickster. He wished me the best of luck, and I left with his jabbering laughter following me out the door.

Armed with this new information, I proceeded to walk to Rambutree. The bus was too expensive, as saving two baht could buy me a litre of water. I didn’t mind, I was pleased to have a project, which cost me nothing, to occupy my time. I strolled down Samsen Boulevard over canals, and past the shops in the sweltering heat. The canals in Bangkok were always of interest to me, as they simultaneously appeared to be choking with both pollution and life. Buying a small steam bun for lunch, I stopped on a bridge. Tossing in a few crumbs of bread and watching the surface explode with hungry fish vying for a meal, I marveled at the sight.

Walking on, I passed what I had nicknamed “The Mysterious House of Purple Stained Cats”. A place owned by an ancient woman, selling unknown dried substances out of large jars. There were always at least a dozen cats outside this establishment, patched with inexplicable purple blotches. I never did find out what she was selling.

Eventually, I reached Rambutree, and started checking guesthouse registries. Most of these guesthouses were staffed with young, overworked and underpaid Thais. They were unconcerned at my request to see the registry, and would hand it over without trouble. I scanned for Viner’s name, and passport number, finding nothing in the first few guesthouses. This didn’t take too long, as I knew his check-in date at Broken Tooth’s. It was easy to follow the entries, and select the appropriate page. However, as failure mounted, I started to get discouraged. Perhaps he had other passports.

The heat was draining me, as I finally stood before a guesthouse that I knew was infamously populated with heroin junkies. I hesitantly walked in; passing a few of the emaciated, hollow eyed denizens, and opened the registry that was sitting on the abandoned counter. And it was there, that I found the name and unmistakable signature of my target, David Viner.

“What are you doing?” shouted the voice of the owner who was returning to his station. He slammed the registry shut. I raised my eyes to see a seedy looking Thai man, who was eyeing me with suspicion and distrust. A few of the residents who were slouching in the lobby looked up listlessly. I attempted to explain my plight to no avail. “I don’t give information on our residents, get out!” I knew that there was no arguing. This man knew full well knew the nature of his guests, and both he and I didn’t want any difficulties. Any further pursuit along these lines could get me in deep trouble, and easily in over my head. There was a distinct probability that this guest house was owned by, or had direct connections with the Thai mafia. There was nothing to do but leave this distressing environment. I walked out, dejected, with the empty eyes of the hopeless inhabitants silently following me.

The trail had gone cold, and there was nothing for it but to splurge, and treat myself to a frosty beer Chang to reward myself for my efforts, and quell my thirst in the unrelenting heat. I had known for a long time where the cheapest beer on the street was sold, and turned heel to the alcoholic equivalent of the heroin guesthouse.

This place was usually busy, and I was forced to share a table with one of the many drunks who could be found here from opening until closing. Sipping my beer, my new companion engaged me in conversation, and I started relaying my tale.

“Viner!” an angry voice exploded from the table beside me. I looked up to see a decrepit, crippled old man, seated in a wheelchair with fire emanating from his suddenly lucid eyes.

“That bastard!”

I had found another victim of the notorious David Viner.

Check back for Part Three - The Confrontation

A Side Dish of Cockroach

2010-06-01T07:38:00.020-04:00

We were having dinner below decks, The Captain and I. It was a risk, as we had left the cockpit unmanned. Nobody was present to watch for oncoming merchant ships, but it was our nightly ritual to sit down to a proper dinner in an attempt to interject a bit of civilization into what was a thoroughly uncivilized affair.

The Captain was a gruff old fellow, a no nonsense type of red blooded American with the old can-do attitude one rarely finds in the breed nowadays. Through our journey he had managed to repair or jurry-rig everything that had broken down on that tired old vessel. And a frightful list of things had gone terribly wrong already.

The Captain had purchased the ship for a mere six thousand dollars. A 54-foot sailing ketch that he had picked up in the Caribbean; it had been all but been destroyed in a hurricane. He had proudly showed me some pictures of his new acquisition during our initial first few days at sea. It had a hole in it the size of a Volkswagen bug. It was afloat, and he had somehow patched the gaping wounds and restored the lines of the hull, but it was not much improved from its original condition.

We had had several dangerous encounters with merchant ships already. When you are on a collision course with an oncoming ship, a great number of things have to be considered quickly. As a sailing vessel, We were the slowest and least manoeuvrable thing on the ocean. The law of the sea granted us the right of way, and these giant behemoths were obligated to yield, and change course to avoid us. This had not happened once. Attempts to communicate had failed, every time.

There is precious little time to make a decision upon first spotting an oncoming vessel. From the moment its light becomes visible, you have between three and ten minutes to alert the ship, or fall off course. It was hard to believe when staring out at that endless expanse of horizon. But horrible, crushing death can come upon you that quickly. And we we running dark, without a radar reflector. It was in The Captain's infernal temperment to consider lights and radar useless.

On one occasion, early in the journey, I had spotted an approaching vessel. It was night, and I had misread its trajectory, believing it would pass behind us. Almost too late, I realized my mistake. I flung myself below and scrambled to the radio.

"Merchant Ship! Merchant Ship! We are on a collision course, fall off, fall off!" I was met with silence on the radio, no matter how many times I repeated my desperate message. My cries into the radio had awoken The Captain, and shrugging off sleep, he dashed through the companionway to assess the situation for himself. Immediately grabbing for the ten million candle power beam, he shone it up to illuminate the voluminous expanse of sail. The white sails lit up, reflecting the light, creating a beacon that could be seen from horizon to horizon.

We waited.

Still the Juggernaut plowed through the sea toward us.

"We have to fall off!" The captain shouted.

We had no choice and no time to spare, I could now make out the hull of the ship in the darkness, and hear the sea parting as the great weight of the thing pushed relentlessly forward.

He leaned on the tiller, turning hard to port, mindless of the now wildly luffing sails.

There was always a chance that the ship could change course, or respond to our message too late, creating a new collision course, but we had no option at this point, the beast was upon us.

The roaring of the parting water of the ship's passage could now be heard over our own engine. I watched as a black monolith blotted out the stars to our starboard. It couldn't have been more than one hundred metres away. As it passed I stared up in amazement, shocked at this trespass of the unbroken horizon I had looked out upon for so long.

It left us wildly bobbing in the turbulence of its wake. The powerful engines creating a deep, throbbing hum that sent a violent vibration through our tiny vessel. We watched silently as its roar gradually softened, and it eventually disappeared from view.

"Goddammit!" The Captain cursed. "Asleep at the helm! Or more likely playing cards and drinking below decks!"

"If he had hit us, we'd have been done for!" The Captain exclaimed.

"Well," I asked, "wouldn't he have come back and searched for survivors?"

"Are you kidding? They'd have run us down and never felt a thing!"

Our dinners were hardly a relaxed affair, with this omnipresent threat lurking deep in the inky night all around us.

A large cockroach scuttled across the floor. The Captain paused his meal long enough to lean over and kill it with the flat of his hand. He stabbed at the corpse with his fork, picking it up and scraping it off onto the side of his plate. Undaunted, he turned his attention back to the remaining portion of his food.

“Damn things eat each other and just keep breeding” He grumbled.

It was true, the cockroaches were an invincible force of procreation, and no amount of slaughter could slow their ever increasing numbers. However, it was in The Captain's nature to never give up.

I finished up my meal, and made my way out into the frigid night, to watch.

The Scams of David Viner, Part 1 - The Encounter

2010-05-30T22:39:00.010-04:00

Living in Bangkok there is never a dull moment. All you have to do for entertainment is park yourself on the street, and observe the chaos that continually swirls around you. It never fails to provide amusement. But, on occasion, no matter how careful you are, that vortex turns in an unexpected direction, and suddenly envelopes you.

Walking up the street I spotted Mandalay Mike. Mandalay Mike was a point of curiosity in that he was not abnormal in any way. A congenial, good natured, intelligent American fellow, he seemed completely out of place amid the outrageous characters that populated that town. He had spent the previous year or two in Burma, eventually getting deported for political reasons, and was a fixture on our little soi.

The street was littered with tables on the sidewalk, each being serviced by the adjacent establishment. The foreigners, by some unconscious agreement, had chosen this particular table at which to gather. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact the the prettiest girl on the street served us.

As I sat down, Mike was just standing up, proclaiming some urgent business somewhere in town. I was left with his companion, who I had never met. I took a moment to look for character flaws or any obvious signs of derangement, you can never be too careful.

He was an elderly man with a dignified air. His white hair, gold rimmed glasses and neatly clipped beard gave the impression of class and intelligence. His use of the English language was masterly, and he spoke with a cultivated London accent. I was impressed by his demeanor and in the the first few minutes of conversation, found myself enjoying his company.

After the initial pleasantries and a few keen insights were exchanged, I asked him whether he was enjoying his time in Thailand. After a subtly vague, reluctant answer I was left with the idea that something was wrong, and I presented the question again, this time more firmly.

He took on a weary yet slightly embarrassed expression as if he was reluctant to burden me with his problems. He told me that he had been robbed at a Starbucks while turning for a moment to place the newspaper back. His bag, passport, wallet - everything had been taken. I was shocked and asked him how he had been getting by, noting the cold beer in front of him. He replied that he had spent the first three days at the airport, until the idea came upon him to pawn his wedding ring. That had provided the modest amount of money needed to stay at the shoddiest guesthouse on the street and the comfort of a cold beer in the heat of the tropics. But, he added, not to worry, his Japanese wife on Hokkaido was in the process of sending some money, and all would be rectified soon.

I was overwhelmed with concern for this poor old man, and immediately offered to help him financially, to get him by in relative comfort for the next couple of days, until his money arrived. He reluctantly allowed me to force a 500 baht bill into his hands, and spent the rest of our conversation in praise of my good nature.

For the next two days I would meet David at our table and delight in his conversation. He was intelligent, and well versed on a great number of topics. It was some of the most enjoyable conversation I've ever had. I offered him a book I had just bought to ease him through the duller moments before his money arrived.

David appeared to enjoy my company as well. For a further three days he would be waiting at the table, cold beer in front of him, eager to pick up where we had left off the previous evening. I started taking note of his beer consumption, and began to get suspicious. After asking when his his money would finally arrive, he told me there were no Western Unions on Hokkaido, so his wife had to travel quite a distance to get to one. I knew that Hokkaido was the most remote area of Japan, I even had an old friend who lived there, but I found it hard to believe there was no way to wire money from the island.

The next day, David was not there. I had been suspicious the night before, and I was sure he had picked up on it. A couple more days passed, there was no sign of him, he had vanished from the street. During that time I had called my friend in Japan and asked about the presence of Western Unions on Hokkaido. he told me Hokkaido was not the Canadian Arctic, and of course there were Western Unions there. Further investigation on the internet provided me with proof that indeed, Hokkaido was all but riddled with them.

I'm not a vengeful person, but it bothers me a great deal to be outsmarted. Besides, he had taken my book. I vowed to find this David Viner, and make him pay.

Click here for part two

Loser

2010-05-30T21:59:00.002-04:00

Often, in the Western world, I am confronted with a question. This is a question I've been asked so many times, by so many people, I've started to think about it a lot. I can't meet any friend or acquaintance here without this particular line of inquiry being directed at me. Worse yet, the more I'm asked it, the more I'm starting to think about it, and, in spite of knowing better, I'm beginning to feel dragged down by the sheer weight of this unrelenting consciousness being brought to bear upon me.

That question is "What are you going to do with your life?"

Sometimes, among friends it's distilled down to "So what are you going to do now?" But the underlying meaning behind these questions remains the same.

Here, in the Western World, I am considered a loser.

I am without a career, wife or children. I have no marketable skills. I have no education. I don't have a house or car. I have no plans for the future, and I lack ambition. All I have is an mp3 player, laptop, a bag full of ratty clothes that have nearly been worn through and an unregistered, broken old car, somewhere in Korea. I don't even have the key for it.

To the people who ask this question of me, it appears I have gone through a good portion of my life accomplishing absolutely nothing. These people see it as their duty to continually badger me until I can provide them an answer that is to their satisfaction. I try not to be upset, they mean well, and they're good people.

I have a hard time answering the question. So often, I just shrug it off and suffer the subsequent looks of pity that are directed at me.

It's very hard to stand alone. But my inquisitors don't see what I see.

I see people breathlessly scurry about, on solid, unrelenting routines. I see people sacrifice the majority of their lives working for money, only to pay it right back out. I watch as people collect immense stores of material wealth, only to have it sit, unused in their basements. Sometimes in a movie theatre, I turn around and watch the multitude of faces behind me, fascinated by the eerie, vapid stares. I encounter corporate, braying personalities, gushing excitement over total
abstractions. When I walk through the neighborhood, I see house after house emanating the sinister blue glow of the television set. I see hamsters, running on stationary wheels, with bits of lettuce they will never eat, dangling before their eyes.

I see cubicle slaves, who's only aspiration in life is to become mahogany desk slaves.

I feel I could very well turn the question back on them, but I refrain from doing this. They won't understand. Most people love their chains.

They make them feel secure.

The Crows of Witch Mountain

2010-05-29T17:36:00.001-04:00

There are some places in the world that seem to be a nexus for all sorts of odd activity. One such place, in a valley in Toronto has been nicknamed "Witch Mountain" for as long as I can remember.

Witch Mountain isn't really a mountain, but a high steep hill offering a decent vantage from which to observe a portion of the city. It's festooned by some fairly thick forest, and such, isn't the easiest place to discover, but there have been visitors on this lonely, secret hill.

A long time ago, some friends and I had braved the climb to the summit, only to be encountered with what can only be described as the rank smell of evil when reaching the top. A quick search for the source revealed a half buried military ammunition box, with its lid flung open and some mysterious items within.

Searching the box we uncovered what can only be described as a weird collection of artifacts. Pages of ripped and ancient pornography were present in abundance, in in among their tattered remains we dug out some Polaroid pictures and two wooden sticks we immediately nicknamed 'The Juju Sticks'

The pictures were from a 70's Halloween party, and I had never seen stranger shots in my life. Creepy, mustachioed men cutting cakes and drinking beer with a blond playboy bunny in attendance. There was something incredibly odd about them, and they creeped me out. I refused to even touch The Juju Sticks, and they were snatched up by my friend Jordon who claimed them immediately as his. I had no problem with this, and told him to keep them away from me.

The rest of the night was spent discussing the nature of these objects and the recently uncovered ammunition box. Who could have buried these things here? Had the been there since the 70s? Why such an odd assortment of objects? And why on the mysterious Witch Mountain? We left with these questions unresolved.

A few years later, we returned to Witch Mountain a couple hours before dusk. The smell was long gone, and all evidence of the strange time capsule had been removed. The sun was shining, and Witch Mountain did not seem a threatening place. I was with my friends Lee and Jordon, and we had hiked up to enjoy some cold beers and shoot our homemade slingshots.

We arranged some empty beer cans on the surrounding trees, and proceeded to improve our aim. We had a bit of a competition going to discover which of our slingshots were of the best quality. We had been shooting for awhile when I missed my can. The little stone went hurtling off into the trees and came within a foot of a crow sitting on a branch that I hadn't noticed.

The crow turned his head, looked me right in the eyes, and let out a "Squawk!". The meaning couldn't have been more clear if the crow had spoken in plain English. He was pissed off and he may as well have said "Fuck you!". He lifted his wings and flew off.

A few minutes passed by, we were relaxing in the diminishing sun when suddenly the crow came back, accompanied by about twenty of his friends. It couldn't have been more than five minutes since he left, and how he had managed to amass such an army was beyond me.

We stared at this murder of oncoming crows, frozen on the spot. The crows came rapidly towards us and suddenly started flying in a figure 8 pattern and squawking in a rhythmic chant. Our collective gaze was drawn ever deeper into this unlikely sight. We watched with vapid fascination as the crows continued their strange dance in the air. Some kind of pressure was building up, I felt a radiating thickness in the air, like I was being bathed in some deep throbbing energy. Fear came upon me. I looked over at Jordon "Let's go", I hissed quietly but forcefully. Jordan, his eyes still mesmerized by the dancing crows replied "yeeaaaahhhh" in a slow drawn out fashion.

Lee, who I had long known was a master of evil, seemed unaffected and asked "Why?"

We didn't bother to answer him, we turned, ran grabbed our bikes and ran down Witch Mountain as fast as our legs would carry us. Lee followed at a more leisurely pace. We drove on the forest paths a few kilometers away, and set ourselves up on another hill to continue our festivities.

Our fear had abated by this time, we were working on fresh beers, and our spirits were high. The ominous memory of the crows we all but forgotten. it was twilight, and we could just spot an abandoned bike at the bottom on the cliff's edge we were sitting on. Thinking it could be salvaged and its frame could be made into excellent slingshots, we started to climb down.

About half way down, I started getting pelted with stones that came flying out from the trees to our left. Suddenly remembering the crows, I couldn't help but wonder at this odd inversion of events. We abandoned our salvage of the bike and climbed back to the top. Upon sitting down, about a dozen young and very aggressive young guys came out of the trees to the left. It had been them throwing the stones.

We sat quietly with our legs over the cliff edge as they came out from the trees surrounding us from behind. Tension built up in the air. I could feel their violent aggression and we we each ready to defend ourselves against a dozen large, drunk and violent ruffians.

Eventually, after what seemed like ages, they walked off and disappeared into the trees to our right. After a few minutes, I could hear them shouting and fighting among themselves.

My friends were staring and me. "Did you see that?" They asked.

"No, What?"

One of the largest and most aggressive guys had been standing behind me holding a large heavy rock over my head. His friend had been repeatedly whispering in his ear "Do it! Do it! Do it!" Because of the tension I had been totally oblivious to all of this.

We packed up and got out of there immediately.

I couldn't help but think about the connection between the events of that evening. The crow pissed off at me for nearly hitting him with the rock. The sinister return with his friends. The weird and oppressive energy the crows gave off during their dance. And then myself being the target of rocks later in the evening. It seemed pretty clear.

Those crows had cursed me and had I barely escaped with my life.

Over a decade later, in Korea, I told this story to an older Australian friend over a pint.

"Witches!" was his immediate response.

"Tell me, did you ever find something buried on top of that mountain?"

I was stunned, as I had not told him about the ammunition box, nor mentioned the name "Witch Mountain". I filled him in.

It was his theory that this was the work of a coven of witches in the area, who used that spot for their rituals. It was them who buried the box, and placed a curse at that spot, according to him.

A short time after this I left Korea and returned home to meet up with my old friends.

During our reminiscing we touched upon the events of that night and I brought up what the Australian had told me. Jordon had told me The Juju Sticks had disappeared from his house, and he had searched long and hard for them but couldn't find them. And then he surprised me by asking "Don't you know who buried that stuff on Witch Mountain?"

I looked at him, Gobsmacked. Could the mystery have finally been solved after all this time?

"It was Lee. Lee buried that stuff up there when he was about 7 years old."

I looked over at Lee, Master of Evil, The Witch of Witch Mountain, who sat beside me with a big grin on his face.

Six Months in Korea, Temporary Escape

2010-05-29T15:43:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I fly out to Bangkok. Six months in Korea have left me a broken shell of my former self, and I can hardly wait to struggle through my day, hop on a plane, and fly off this cursed rock for awhile.

Korea is easily the most annoying country I’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time in, however I’ll attempt to focus on the good points, which, bizarrely enough, generally involve near fanatic Christians.

These people have been so kind and attentive to me, that I hope some day I’ll have a chance to express my gratitude in return. Most of these Christians are my fellow co-workers, and they almost shower me with gifts on a daily basis, they are always sensitive to my moods, and will make a Herculean effort to ferret out what’s wrong in stuttering broken English if I appear less than my jovial, radiant best. They are easily some of the kindest, most selfless people I’ve ever met.

My experiences in Korea have been limited, but there have been interesting points to consider.

I’ve attended a Korean traditional wedding, which sadly, is fairly rare nowadays as the Korean youth attempt to mimic everything American. It was very interesting, and rather short, but it involved a great number of traditionally clad, costumed drummers madly dancing around the entire wedding party beating a great rhythm out on traditional Korean drums. They spun long tassels perched on their hats by rotating their heads to the beat.

The bride was Chinese, and she was not supposed to smile, but she couldn't help breaking out in laughter as she passed me and our eyes met, we were the only two foreigners there, and it must of seemed to her that any Westerner would have found her elaborate costume, and heavily painted face an amusing sight.

A chicken in a box was also somehow involved, and I was almost expecting a ritual slaughter, but it was merely presented to the new couple. On being taken from the box, the chicken promptly staged a daring escape and a long chase ensued, involving all the costumed drummers until she was finally run down and deposited, indignantly, back into her cage.

I’ve visited the Korean Folk village, where traditionally costumed Koreans, live in traditional Korean dwellings and engage in traditional Korean activities all day. I witnessed them making rope, candles, threshing grain, planting rice and mending fences. In the centre of all of this inexplicably stood a mini theme park and video game arcade, the noise emanating from here spoiled what would have been a very tranquil setting.

I’ve done my best to teach about one hundred and fifty Korean children, ranging from four to eighteen, with almost no resource materials in a terribly disorganized and chaotic setting. Some of them are incredibly snarky, some of them are really great kids. When I leave this place I’m really going to miss a few of my favourite students.

I’ve been lost in the mountains only to be rescued by passing Korean motorists upon finally descending to some unidentifiable road, in an unidentifiable town. Much of Korea looks exactly the same, and the roads are unnamed. My benefactor was so taken by my manner that she went out of her way to go to my school to tell Mrs. Lee what a nice person I was.

I’ve done all night pub crawls both here and in Seoul, stumbling back home, Korean style while the sun peeks over the mountains. One night in Seoul I was lost and hopelessly incapacitated by Korean traditional wine.

My state of mind was such that I couldn’t find the station where I was to wait for my bus. I had to take a thirty-dollar cab ride home. Usually these nights involve my fellow teachers in this area, but I’ve lately been going out with Koreans, my co-workers.

One, who is named Jin, is a nice guy that is trying his best to break his culturally ingrained programming. He keeps taking his accounting certification, and failing, but he has no real desire
to pursue the dreary life of a number cruncher, and I’m afraid I’ve kindled his imagination with stories of my exploits as well as radical ideas such as straw bale building. He comes from a wealthy family, and I suspect he is the ‘Black Sheep’. I like him, and I have some hope in rescuing him from his terrible, eventual fate. The Koreans are in awe of my drinking ability, modest as it is among standards in the West.

I’ve dined in traditional Korean restaurants, one under the shadow of the Korea's largest Buddha, whose giant visage peers benevolently down on you amid the mountains.

Some experiences, as minor as they are, will stay in my memory forever. I was walking home from dinner one night with Julia, a car’s headlights was illuminating the surface of the local river. Coils of mist were flowing down the river, offering a mystical, truly Asian scene. I managed to take my attention away from the neon lit internet cafes and restaurants, the identical condos, the car headlights, and for a moment I had a clear experience of ancient Asia, and a scene in which I saw clearly had inspired their art and philosophy through the long ages.

So it goes.

Now it’s back to the Kingdom for a couple of weeks, to wander amid the squalor, golden palaces, elephants and the constant shock that is Bangkok.

A Dull Weekend

2010-05-29T15:14:00.000-04:00

I was thinking today that posts are reflecting only one side of my experience. You are only getting half the story, there is another, less exciting aspect to life overseas which will be the subject of this post.

This weekend was a bit of a disappointment, Emily is sick with something horrible like scarlet fever, so I didn't make the long awaited trip to Dae-Gu, in a small notion of compensation, I took another trip up to Suwon. I only stayed there for a few hours, but my suspicion that Suwon is far superior to my little village is confirmed. Drunken university students roam the streets, there is a shopping mall and a movie theatre and even a small red light district where stone faced prostitutes are sullenly showcased in brightly lit windows, watching with dread at the prospect of you entering their establishments. Trust South korea to make prostitution boring.

I was tempted to stay the night in Suwon, drinking in the pubs until the first bus was available to shuttle me back home, but I was with Julia and thought that it would probably be better to head back with her. I regret it now, as the remainder of the weekend was filled with a tedium I have rarely had to endure so far in my travels. My boredom was so complete, that I was forced to engage myself with the dreaded chores of cleaning my apartment, and washing clothes. I am now the proud new owner of a drying rack, and a cotton mat. Pictures adorn my walls - the long awaited moment in which I have hung my Naga picture, hauled all the way from Thailand has finally arrived. It now looks as if I'm fairly settled in, and I'm playing with the idea of spending more than the planned six months in Korea. If so, I need a computer, the initial investment will end up saving me money as I donate a weekly fortune to the local internet cafe here.

A good portion of my day was spent hand scrubbing my clothes. There was a week that went by awhile ago when I realized that my feet were getting stinky. I assumed that my shoes had simply trod too many miles amid the filth of the streets in Bangkok, and I cast my mind back to strolling through markets, with a mixture of fresh pig's blood and dirty water flowing beneath my feet. I reasoned that I probably needed new shoes. The true reason was far more horrifying. I was not cleaning my socks properly. One day I got out the old washer board I found in the corner and started running my socks along it, startled at the black water that was streaming out from the freshly washed socks. Surprised, I redid my entire load using this technique and apparently my lacklustre approach to washing was nowhere near adequate. Unfortunatlely, I managed to scrub right through a couple of socks rendering them useless. I have now settled in the happy medium of gentle scrubbing for long periods of time.

It's a terrible chore, and tonight I was idly entertaining the notion that once the science of genetic engineering came along far enough, I would turn myself into a sort of ape man thus negating the need for clothing. My reverie continued, imagining an entire class of ape men, freed at last from the drudgery of cleaning socks and able to devote their time to advancing the fields of art and science to previously unimagined heights.

Washing the kitchen floor was a surprising experience as well. Taking stock of the situation, I noticed that there was a drain in the centre of the floor, and all that was required of me was to dump a mixture of bleach and soap on the floor, proudly employ my new mop and simply push the dirty water directly down the drain.

I took a look at the floor. For some reason it was filthy enough to pass for a stretch of sidewalk in Klong-Toey. The reason for this was unclear, why would the entire apartment be spotless except for the kitchen floor? The unfathomable mysteries of Asia yield their secrets hesitantly, and after awhile you just get used to accepting situations that are created by a bizarre system of logic which is very likely you will never be privy to. Even if I had the owners present, and they spoke perfect English, there would be little point in asking about the situation, as they would probably give me an answer that was simply indecipherable to my poor western mind.

Armed with what seemed like a sound, logical plan, I went ahead and dumped the water on the floor which immediately turned black. That's when I first noticed that the mysterious logic of Asia was going to work against me in this endeavour. The drain appeared to be situated at the high point of the floor, neatly directing all the water sharply away from it and toward the low point which was conveniently located where a bundle of electrical conduit came up from the floor below, containing, of course, live wires.

I gaped in horror for a moment, and then embraced the insane faith that my three dollar, Bangkok special Teva knock offs would surely protect me from any lethal doses of electricity that was sure to stream across the floor at any moment. Leaping in front of the conduit I worked the mop to try and push the water into the drain, to no avail. Apparently a good portion of the apartment had to be entirely underwater before the drain would function as my first glimpse had promised. I took my chances and started to squeeze mopfulls of grimy water down the sink. Luckily, the conduit was well insulated, or waterproof, and the theory of my lifesaving Teva's remains untested.

On another day, after a shower, as I was getting dressed I heard two sharp cracks and then the horrible crash of shattering glass coming from the bathroom. I flung open the door only to see that the bathroom floor was entirely covered with broken glass. It took me a moment to realize where it had come from as the mirror was intact. It was the medicine cabinet door, which had inexplicably popped out of its housing and crashed down on the floor. I examined the housing, which appeared suited to the task of holding up some glass, but the evidence was before my eyes. I cleaned it up after work, leaving some glass on the drain to test an old theory of mine.

One night, as Jordon, Lee and I were sitting beside a horribly polluted stream in Toronto, which we call 'The Purple River', which on occasion turns purple downstream of the Coke plant, Jordon chastised me for throwing and breaking a beer bottle in the middle of this lethally contaminated stream. He informed me that for generations, men and dogs would be hobbled by crossing the river and I had now condemned all future dogs in the area lame by my thoughtless act. I told him that the running water would wear the glass into attractive little brown stones within a week, or less. I am happy to report, that after a mere week of showers, my glass has worn down enough to have now slipped through the drain and disappeared. So Jordan, you can rest easy.

These are some of the duller moments associated with life in small town Korea, but as I explore further, Korea is starting to seem a more attractive place to stay. After this month, I will decide whether to stay longer, but I have the feeling I may be here for a year. I've tossed away good jobs before, only to have suffered through some of the most miserable times of my life.

It's a mistake I'm not eager to repeat.

An Uncomfortable Entry into Japan

2010-05-29T12:21:00.001-04:00

In Asia, people are quick to distrust anything outside of normal behaviour. Even in Asia's only first world country, Japan, appearing slightly abnormal is asking for unwanted attention. Immigration policies are tight in Japan, and they have a no nonsense attitude towards anyone breaking the law. There are more foreigners in Japan's immigration jails than anywhere else in the world.

So when Japanese airport security spotted me, with my long hair, cheap Sheik tailored suit and plastic multicoloured travel bags they stopped me and asked where I was coming from.

"Thailand" I said.

"Ohh" A thoughtful pause and appraising once over with their keen and penetrating eyes. "What do you have in your bags?" They asked gently, their gaze never leaving mine, waiting for my reflex reaction of guilt.

Now I am terrible dealing with authority. I feel guilty, even when I haven't done anything, and tend to get increasingly nervous which, of course, raises the suspicions of my inquisitors. It didn't help that I had no sleep, and was dealing with the kind of hangover only Chang beer can give you.

I answered casually, without pause. "A knife."

This took them back a bit. They weren't expecting this at all. For a moment they blinked in surprise, and then replied "Do you mind if we search your bags?"

"Sure!" I tried to appear casual and upbeat, immediately taking my old Uncle Henry folding knife, given to me by my uncle when I was seven years old, out of the side pocket of my knapsack and slapping it on the counter. Surely, I thought, they will realize that this knife had been with me all my life, and travelled all over the world with me, saving my life on many occasions. They have to note the worn leather sheath, partially chewed by an old dog of mine when she was a puppy. They must see all of this, and understand, I thought naively.

They started rummaging around in my knapsack, pulling out more contraband. My Opinel carbonate carving knife, and a switchblade lighter combo I had bought on Khao Sahn road in Thailand. I had packed in such a rush and been so hungover that I had totally forgotten about this stuff. A sinking feeling of despair came over me. I was in big trouble.

At this time they trotted out a laminated coloured book and presented it to me in that respectful Japanese way. I flipped through a couple pages of pictures of brightly coloured tablets before my mind finally engaged and I realized their intention was to inquire if I was muleing any illegal drugs.

Relief flooded over me. Here was something I could state with authority. With a slightly insulted air of disgust, I passed the book back and shook my head in the negative. How could they accuse me of this? With impeccable timing, they pulled a pill case out of my bag containing tablets of herbal medicine looking exactly like those I had seen in their book. Cold fear came over me, I was going to jail.

"What is this?" They asked gently but sternly.

"Uhhhhh, eyebright" I replied lamely.

"Eyebright!" They exclaimed with incredulity.

My mind was racing. How am I to explain western herbs, herbal medicine and their effects to increasingly suspicious Japanese security who's English was severely limited. My only hope was to be thrown in jail until the pills were analyzed and then perhaps, if I was lucky, released.

The Japanese system of justice is not like ours. If you stand accused of something, you are assumed to be guilty simply because you have been accused. It's not a good country in which to get in trouble.

As I stood wondering what to do one of the security officers was rummaging around in my cheap plastic bag. This bag was filled with junk, all sorts of odds and ends I had bought on impulse, and for some reason had decided to haul to Japan rather than just toss them out. He slowly raised two hands out of my bag, each one holding a slingshot.

There was an uncomfortable silence as they decided where exactly they were going to start with all of this. I had to do something, but what?

"Why do you have the knives?"

Why they chose to ask me this rather than about the pills was a bit of a surprise to me. I can only assume that since they were the first things that had been found, they were simply working in a linear fashion which is often the case in Asia.

An unbidden idea came to my mind, I started talking about Shoji. Shoji is Japanese woodworking, traditional construction and design. A subject which I found fascinating and luckily was well versed in. I waxed eloquently about my desire to learn Shoji, how I was impressed that it was all done by joinery, with no nails involved. Explaining that I was from Canada, where the Cedar trees needed for this type of construction were plentiful. I praised the beauty and simplicity of the design. By this time I had all but forgotten my predicament as I warmed to my topic. I eventually concluded that my trip to Japan was to study this fascinating art from the inventors and masters themselves, the Japanese.

I had not noticed, but during my speech they had repacked all my bags. I looked into their now friendly faces, warmed with proud smiles and they said "You're free to go, enjoy your stay in Japan, and good luck."

I could hardly bring myself to believe it. No further questions about the pills or slingshots. No detention or jail. No confiscation of my precious Uncle Henry. Just a friendly waves of dismissal.

They delay had cost me dearly. I caught the first train into Tokyo and by the time I got there I had seven minutes to navigate the enormous JAL terminal and catch the last bus to Osaka.

When I finally arrived and met my friend who had lived in Japan for a decade, I recounted my story.

"A knife!" He exclaimed. I can't believe they let you in with a knife, I've never heard of anything like this!"

"Three knives" I corrected him.

Objects over Africa

2010-05-28T12:29:00.001-04:00

Takoradi harbour is not the most pleasant place in the world to live. It's a fairly filthy place, and while not the busiest harbour in the world, it still had enough merchant ship traffic that I would be occasionally called upon to move our sailing vessel so that some monstrosity could come in and dock in the spot we were occupying. On occasion, we had to anchor overnight while the ship unloaded her goods, or got loaded up with the produce of Ghana. Mostly cocoa beans, which are some of the best in the world.

It wasn't the most tranquil place to sleep. No matter how much I had drank or how little sleep I had the previous night, I was always awoken sharply at 5:30am. While the Captain was disgusted with any sort of sleep beyond this time, I was often able to force some leeway with him, but there was no arguing with The Gravel Cruncher.

At 5:30 every morning, immediately beside our position on the docks, The Gravel Cruncher would roar to life. After a few minutes of priming its ravenous belly, it would pour about 10 tonnes of gravel into a metal receptacle. The racket this created was impossibly loud and rendered sleep absolutely impossible. Even if I managed to sleep again in the interval between the motion of its insatiable jaws, I would be jarred awake on the next pour. Eventually, I would have to face the fact that I might as well drag myself out of my bunk, and face what the day brought me, no matter how hard my head was pounding.

So it was that I was relieved when we took to sea again. Our mission, sail in a back and forth pattern according to precise co-ordinates while taking depth soundings at regular intervals to create a 3d map of the sea floor. This required some precise handling of our overworked little sailing vessel, and, while the Captain had the last word, I was more or less his equal in matters of authority with regards to navigation.

It was a sunny day when we departed, I manoeuvred our beaten up little tub out of the harbour with care and said goodbye to the Gravel Cruncher and a welcoming hello to the silent West African coast.

We made good time getting to our coordinates taking only a few hours, and set to work immediately. It was monotonous work, but the sea has a way of casting a calming spell over your consciousness making just about anything bearable. In my off moments I would find myself with an empty mind, staring at the motion of the waves, with no memory of how long I had been in that state.

Darkness falls early and with great regularity in the tropics close to the equator, and at dusk we held a meeting to have to The Captain announce we would work daylight hours only. At night we were to "stall" against the current and wind. This involved keeping a night watch, and to raise just enough sail in an attempt to maintain our position. My hopes of getting a good night sleep were dashed, as I would have to stay up half the night with Peter, the Dive Master, showing him the ropes. We were assigned first watch and we were to wake The Captain and Jeff, the Dive Instructor halfway through the night for their turn.

After supper Peter and I sat in the cockpit. I had instructed him on the use of the GPS and our finiky Autohelm 4000, and on the basic handling of the vessel. I was satisfied he knew enough to watch alone the following night. Darkness had fallen and we were stalling well against the mighty Guinea current maintaining a more or less static position.

The unpopulated coast was visible as a dark shadow a few miles away. There were no lights or settlements in this area and we were treated to pitch blackness and utter silence apart from the glimmering stars and the gentle lapping of the waves. It was 9 o'clock pm and we we talking quietly about travel and diving. That's when things took a turn for the weird.

It was sudden and shocking. A blue light descended on us from above, starting gently and growing rapidly in intensity, all the more shocking because the silence remained uninterrupted. Peter had been in the middle of a sentence and cut himself off himself shouting "What the FUUUCCC...!". time seemed to slow down, and I sprang into action.

We could not see directly above. Sailing vessels equipped for bluewater have what's called a bimini over the cockpit. A canvas tarp that shields you from the sun, unfortunately it was blocking our view of the source of the steadily growing light. I glanced in the water to see the shattered reflection of the object and determined that it was directly above.

Peter was frozen in mid curse, and I acted unthinkingly. I dove in to the air towards the gunnel, twisting my body so that I was facing upwards, determined to see whatever it was. Time seemed to slow even more, flying through the air looking upward at the dimishing bimini and expanding view of the sky. I seemed to know exactly where it was and as the last inch or two of bimini retreated I remember thinking "this it it!".

As soon as my eyes came into contact with the source of the light, at that very instant, there was a flash. It was so bright, I remember seeing blue sky and white clouds. The night had turned to day. The next thing I remember I was sitting back in the cockpit facing Peter and seeing the daylight actually retreat over the horizon, as darkness enveloped us again. Apart from Peter's exclaimation, there had been dead silence all this time. I checked my watch, it was 9pm.

Peter was frozen in shock, staring off into space. I broke his trance by saying "What was that!". Peter's eyes rolled in his head, he shook himself back to consciousness, and replied forcefully "Nothing!".

"Nothing!" I replied in utter disbelief, knowing full well he had seen what I had. "What was that light?"

I could see his mind desperately searching for somehow to explain it to himself and remain sane. "It was....probably a helicopter or something" he ventured. Knowing how tightly the mind likes to grip its own version of reality, I didn't want to push him too far, and I was fascinated in watching the process of denying one's own senses in favour of long held beliefs and assumptions about what is possible. I tried one more time. "But Peter, there was no noise..". He didn't answer and the rest of our watch was spent in silence.

I didn't mention the incident to Jeff or the Captain upon waking them up, and took along time to fall asleep myself, thinking I almost preferred The Gravel Cruncher over these presented conundrums of reality.

The rest of the mission proceeded uneventfully, and after a week we had our data, which ended up providing a incredibly boring relief map of the sea floor. It's only feature was gently rolling sand dunes. A few days after landing I brought the incident up with Peter again. He had no memory of it anymore.

He had expunged it from his mind entirely.

I thought about this for a long time.

I still do.

One Night In Bangkok

2010-05-28T04:04:00.000-04:00

There is just no telling where you're going to end up by making the simple decision to go out for a drink in Bangkok. The plan started off to hit Khao Sahn for a beer, I thought I'd phone Pom and Sun, a couple girls I had met the other night at Gulliver's and meet up with them. Sun is a beautiful girl with almost no English ability and Pom has a good personality. Decent enough company.

Before I left, I thought I'd get the energy level up and bit, and had a Red Bull with a couple pre-beers, I then enlisted my Canadian feminist friend Kat and a Japanese guy to tag along. This turned out to be a bit of a killjoy, as Kat was totally disgusted as soon as we walked into Gulliver's upon observing all the Western men having fun with Thai girls.

Taking some responsibility for their enjoyment, I walked them to one of my favourite outside bars on Rambutree, deposited them at a table, and promptly bailed back to Gulliver's. Pom and Sun were there, but had already engaged themselves with a bunch of English guys. It's not a disheartening prospect to be alone at Gulliver's, and it doesn't take long to find some company, I ended up at the table of a drunken Isaan girl who was waiting for her friend.

After a bit of dancing and drinking, as the bar was closing her friend returned from whatever mysterious errand she was on. A Chinese Thai, heavily made up, it wasn't hard to guess what she had been up to, turning a quick trick at a nearby guesthouse with some Foreigner. She reeked of sex.

They invited me to hit Sukhimvit, and I had nothing better to do, so I tagged along. Leaving the bar I spotted a young western guy with his hands all over a transvestite, oblivious to the fact that he was feeling up a man, I wasn't about to enlighten him, let him learn the hard way.
A quick taxi to the infamous Soi three, near Nana This is where all the prostitutes leaving the bars due to the early closing times collect themselves looking to freelance. A great number of foreigners are drawn here for the prospect of doing business without paying the bar fine. It's quite the scene.

We ended up hitting an Egyptian restaurant ordering Arabic tea and coffee. The Isaan girl, who had been eyeing me all night runs to the gutter and begins vomiting loudly and repeatedly. She's down for the count, and I'm left with Nani, the Chinese Thai freelance prostitute.

Nani had ordered while I was in the bathroom, and I'm surprised when the waiter carts a large water hookah out on the patio and throws some mysterious coals into it. I make a small attempt to inquire what exactly it is that I'm going to be smoking, but the booze is setting in pretty hard, and I'm up for just about anything. We take turns drawing from the pipe and sipping Arabic tea garnished with mint leaves. I start to get a mellow feeling.

Eventually some old fellow ambles by, notes the Isaan girls situation and tosses her into a taxi, Nani tells me it's her grandfather but he looked far too young. I use the moment to quickly duck inside pay the bill, and mumble an excuse to Nani before disappearing into the gloom.

I decide to take a stroll around and take in the atmosphere, a transvestite lurches out of the darkness and follows at my heels for half a block. I ignore the ungainly creature until it slinks away.
I sit briefly at a table of dancers from Nana disco, but I'm soon drawn away in search of water as the hookah has made my mouth incredibly dry. I pass table after table of prostitutes, some alone, some in groups and some with western guys. Another hideous transvestite grabs me and I have to deal with another proposition. I still can't find water.

Eventually I explain my situation to a couple of girls sitting alone, and they invite me to take their water, we get into a bizarre conversation that could only take place in Bangkok. They're prostitutes in Singapore, and consider themselves a cut above the riff raff that surrounds us. One of them is really annoying, and expects me to entertain her, I tell her that she's not doing anything for me, and that quite frankly I'm not going to put out the effort. She takes off in search of a more amiable foreigner, and I chat with her friend for awhile. Interesting girl, I like her, she was going to be married to an English guy, but his parents wisely put the kibosh on the arrangement, lucky for him.

The girl is cool, but my eyes are now getting heavy, I give her a friendly goodbye, flag a taxi and hop in only to note that the driver is far drunker than I am. I give him directions, he tries to charge me about 1000% more than it should be, I laugh and tell him in Thai he's not fooling me. The price is then dictated by the meter, as it should be, and we speed off into the night. I'm not sure if it's the smoke, the booze or my attitude at the moment, but when he stars puking out the window as he drives I feel nothing but amusement.

I tip him ten baht as he lets me off.

Night Walk Home

2010-05-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

Teaching can be brutal, it had starting to wear me down a bit, and the continual chess games I was playing with Mrs. Lee were doing nothing to improve my nerves.

To alleviate some stress, I decided to stroll the few kilometres home. It was a pleasant walk, and totally incomprehensible to the Asians why I’d want to endure this kind of torture. When I mention walking for more than 15 minutes, most of them say ‘it’s impossible’. So I didn’t tell anyone to avoid the pleas of accepting a drive and warnings of my imminent death on the side of the road. I just skipped out and started, slinging my Korean schoolbag over my shoulder. After a kilometre or so, I was between towns on a charming country road, surrounded by rice paddies full of chirping frogs. The familiar smells of clover patches did a lot to improve my mood.

I had awoken today ready to quit because I was sure Mrs. Lee was delaying my pay for a week, but it turns out that I'd just lost track of time. It’s seemed like I’d been teaching years but apparently it’d only been two months – unless the two schools were working in tandem to manipulate me. It was possible, but I didn't have the energy those days to bother about a weeks pay. After this money came in on the weekend, I’ll be in a better position having enough cash to flee the country at anytime. I really wanted to stick it out at least six months, but I had a difficult job, and I was hoping that with habituation, it would get easier.

The countryside here is beautiful, it was so nice to spend an hour walking enveloped in a cloak of darkness, washing the memories of the day away. Packs of kids screaming and demanding, not listening, talking in class, interrupting. Teaching can be very difficult. Tomorrow will be worse, seven classes with no break, but then, thankfully it’s the weekend.

The outskirts of Toon-Jon consist of a shanty town, where poor Koreans scurry about in their aluminium roofed hovels, or squat in the dirt smoking cigarettes around piles of burning garbage. I pass through and a few curious eyes turn to follow me. I’m not in the least worried as even if there were trouble, I have enough pent up nervous energy after class to single handedly decimate a horde of emaciated, looting Koreans. But there is seldom any violence here, and I’d be in far more danger walking in downtown Toronto.

Over an ancient bridge spanning a sickly, trickling creek and into Toon-Jon proper, with it’s condos surrounded by budding tomato plants bursting up through plastic bags in neat little rows, tended by withered twisted old ladies. Into my house. I briefly considered lying down, attempting to finish Atlas Shrugged, but Ms. Rand starts a book far better than she finishes one, and I dropped my bag on the floor, changed into sandals and marched out the door to purchase some water, and come to the PC room here.

These Koreans towns are busy places, full of blinking signs of sharply contrasting colours displaying pictures of animals with huge smiles, looking absolutely delighted at the prospect of being butchered and eaten. Drunken Korean men lurch down the street holding each other up, spending their few brief moments away from work rapidly drinking themselves into submission with Soju, the national hooch. On occasion they take notice of me, and once in awhile aggressively demand conversation, which I try and avoid.

The weekend plan was into Seoul, I was planning on drinking and hopefully catching a friend's David Bowie act if he was playing on Saturday. I was too tired on Friday to do anything after the grueling schedule. I was hoping the following week I would have Internet and cable TV at home, So I could entertain myself there rather than spending money here at the internet cafe. I was also expecting my long awaited meeting with Mr. Han, who wanted me to write…something for him. It was a chance for extra cash. Mondays were inexplicably dropped from my schedule, which was fine with me. I could make more with private students anyway. And I didn’t mind the recovery time.

Road Trip Across Korea

2010-05-28T00:44:00.000-04:00

Friday night we took a little trip to the East coast of Korea, after work. We started at about 11:30pm, luckily I had slept in until about 2:00. I was perfectly capable of staying up all night but I was worried about the Koreans since they had to work the next day. They assured me that they were young and strong and that I shouldn’t worry.

We were driving in a flashy Korean car (Koreans always buy Korean), with a speeding camera detector and all the racing extras. The Korean guys are really into their cars, and they can hardly be blamed. They’ve only had them for about 30 years, and the assistant director, who is my age, told me that when he was growing up only 1 in 20 families had one.

We stopped at a rest area, and I bought everyone expensive coffees, I ran into a pack of Irish teachers, and had a few words with them. Then we hung out in the car for a bit and talked. One of the Christians was really into ‘post modernism’ and had tried to read some Carl Jung. We were trying to have a conversation in this area, but it was frustrating for both of us because of the language barrier. We eventually gave up, and I told them some stories of my weird experiences, being dragged across the floor by an invisible force, intuition stories, and pre-cognative dreams. They were very receptive, and remarked that we can not be sure of what humans are really capable of. I was surprised that these Korean Christians were more open to this sort of thing than many people in the West.

We piled back into the cars, and continued our journey, it was a long drive for such a small country, as I saw on my way back the road twists and curves around many mountains, so it ends up being about twice the distance.

Finally we arrived at the beach, and was it ever cold. We did a little milling and walking, waiting for the sun to rise. There was a crisp clean pine smell in the air and it reminded me of a beloved Northern Ontario forest. We took refuge from the cold in a Family Mart, and I grabbed the chance to quiz the Julia on the quality of various food available there, as well as finding out just what certain products were, which, up until then, had been a mystery to me. Strangely and unexpectedly, Jethro Tull’s Bouree started playing through the speakers, probably about the last thing I had expected to hear, as most of the music I’ve heard is popular western mimic music.

We strolled to the beach again, posed for pictures, and hit a tofu restaurant for breakfast. It was quite delicious except for the Kimchie, which was “bad Kimchie”, meaning that it was old and sour. I was then informed that “bad Kimchie” is good, and cleans the blood. I proceeded to suffer through eating a great deal of the disgusting stuff for the health benefits, to the amusement of the Koreans, who wouldn’t touch it.

Next we hit what was apparently an old Korean hangout, a traditional Korean building built on a ‘mountain’. Anything that is not flat is a mountain to the Koreans, it was just a large hill by a little lake, but a very tranquil spot. I examined the construction technique, which is beautiful, but uses a lot of wood, and wandered through the grounds examining local wild plants, again to the amusement of the onlooking Koreans. The pine trees forests are beautiful and very Asian looking. The Bamboo stands have black trunks, opposed to the bright yellow I was used to in Thailand and Laos. I wanted to walk through the forest, but I hesitated, knowing the Koreans usually walk on paths, and there were no paths here.

Finally we started out journey back, and this time I got a chance to see some of the countryside, which I was quite enthralled with. Passing a section of wooded, endlessly folded land I remarked that I’d love to take a week to hike and camp in those mountains. The following conversation ensued.

K “Oh, you can’t climb there!”
Me “Why not?”
K “You can’t”
Me “But it looks beautiful, does no one hike there?”
K “No”
Me “Why, I’d love to hike there”
K “We have many famous mountains for climbing, you can’t climb there, it’s dangerous and there are no paths. You also can’t light fires in Korea, it’s dangerous.”

I had to bite my tongue at a response about what I’ve begun to call ‘Korean Konformity”. I don’t want to climb well trod mountains with hordes of Koreans, I want some solitude. Swimming is another point. The previous week I was taken to a small lake, very small. I remarked that I’d love to go swimming there sometime.

K “Oh, you can’t swim there!”
Me “Why?”
K “it’s deep, you’ll die”
Me “No, I can swim very well”
K “You can’t swim there, it’s too deep”
Me “Look, I’ve been swimming since I was about one year old, I swim 10 times that distance every year, I can swim across there easily.”

No response but a worried wrinkle appeared on her forehead. This was the wife of the owner of one of the schools, and I knew she was thinking that this insane foreigner may very well jump in there and kill himself, sinking like a stone to the bottom as soon as the water reached a depth of about 6 feet. I got the sense that she was partially worried about my well being and tenuous grip on sanity, but most of her concern was directed at the fact that she would have to go through the laborious process of acquiring another foreign teacher, with all the related expense, after this madman killed himself in his bizarre delusion that he could actually swim. We got out and I noted a sign by the shore. I asked what it said.

“It says you can’t swim here, the water is very deep and you will die.” she said, giving me a sidelong glance to assure herself that the authority of the sign would certainly put a halt to my suicidal notions. I feigned a wide eyed look, confirming to her that yes, the sign MUST be right, and after a life time of swimming this small lake would certainly be the death of me. Satisfied, we drove on to the school. If I had flung myself in and crossed the lake in the two minutes it would have taken, I’m sure she would have fainted from the shock of disbelief that a human could do the impossible in front of her very eyes. Koreans are not water people, some of them wade, but they don’t go in water above the head. One day, to the screaming horror of the onlooking Koreans, I’m going to fling myself into deep water and blow their minds.

I’ve also made up my mind that before I leave, I’m going to climb an unclimbable mountain, and light a fire, the consequences be damned!

Back in the car, the Koreans were getting tired by this point, so to my dismay they pulled into a rest area and announced that we were going to take a nap. I fidgeted in this cramped car, with the sun blaring in though the windows, thinking that I could never sleep here, and how long did the Koreans plan to rest? Finally I got out, wandered around and found a nice sunny little grassy hill with a local dog on top. The dog eyed me suspiciously until I sniffed the air, turned three times and curled up beside him. Satisfied that I was well familiar with the canine world, the dog relaxed and nodded off.

I hadn’t expected to sleep, but I did. When I awoke suddenly, over an hour had passed and I briefly worried that the Koreans had shrugged at my absence and taken off. I got back to the car in time to see Julia typing me a text phone message, intuition again, I woke up just when they were ready to go. I got back in the car and they enquired as to where I went. I told them I had slept outside in the sun. There was an uncomfortable silence as it went through their minds that there seemed to be no limit to the madness that this foreign barbarian was capable of. I smiled to myself. Finally we got back, to ‘beautiful Toonjon”. The Koreans were exhausted at this point, and I felt sorry for them that they had to work.
So that was my little trip across country, and there seems to be good possibilities for the individual to have a good time in nature if a few rules are broken. The Koreans would never consider it, if it’s not done, it’s not done. I, however, am of a slightly different attitude.

Pizza on the Mekong

2010-05-28T00:42:00.000-04:00

“How happy would you like your pizza?”, the waitress asks.

I look up from my table in downtown Phnom Penh. Five kids are lurking near the gutter braving the security to run up and tout me books, motorcycles are veering crazily along the street. The most bizarre collection of ex-pats sits around me, one looking the spitting image of a Cuban military general, cigar, uniform and all, sitting authoritatively amongst his sharply contrasting comrades.

“We have Happy, Very Happy, and Super Happy..” She continues.

The fellow we are sitting with has given me some trouble, he seems friendly, but many guest house lurkers are. I’ve been eyeing him with suspicion all night, he’s keen on heading to Martini’s which has an infamous name in Phenom Penh.

He clams to have arrived from Wales a couple days ago, had bragged about his 1.3 million pounds in the bank and his successful pharmaceutical business. I’ve seen the type, and now I’m trying to figure out what he wants with us, what his game is. A few points in his story don’t check out.

He was a nice deep tan, more than two days worth – especially out of England. He has dry skin patches on his elbows, something a man who owns two drugstores would take care of on his own, promptly. His shirt was bought yesterday, he claimed, but it was easily over two days old, and his shoes looked too worn to have from straight from the UK.

No, he was feeding us a line, I’d already warned Clem, my travelling buddy on this trip, but he wasn’t convinced.

“Just lightly happy”, I tell the waitress giving the mysterious fellow across from me an appraising glance. I confirm “Light Ganja – No mushrooms”, “of course, sir..” she replies professionally, insulted that I should question her on the difference between ‘happy’ and ‘super happy’.

A stunning, European woman walks in, in an evening gown and an elegant black hat. She looks like something out of Paris in the 1930′s. I’m in love with this place already, this collection of bizarre freaks. I’m secure in my own ability to avoid notice at this point, I’m dressed like a typical two month circuit runner, with my Khao Sahn ‘Same same… but different shirt. Nobody suspects I’m on a spy mission to asses this town as a possible home for a year or more. I’m sold already.

I make it clear to the weirdo clinging to the respectability of my little group that we and not going to Martini’s with him. He starts bitching bitterly about the bill, as someone would when they’ve spent money on a bad investment, and he takes off. I was thinking of calling him on it, and demanding his passport, I would have even put a $50 on it, but such confrontation is not usually wise, I let him know subtly that he’s not outsmarting me, and chase him off with my attitude and demeanor.

I think I like this place, and I think I’ll be back, in six months…

Starving Raccoons

2010-05-28T00:39:00.000-04:00

It was just another night, down in the park, drinking with friends. It’s a nice feature of Toronto that there are so many forested areas within the city. We always preferred to have a few beers in the company of nature rather than the awful bar scene.

On the way from the Beer Store, driving by a pet shop, I had noticed a free sample bag of dog food. I thought it might make a nice treat for my old terrier, so I put one in my knapsack.

I drove down the forested path into the valley, the beers clinking in my knapsack. As I descended the air got cooler and the light was fading. I was looking forward to having a few cold beers with some good friends.

We ended up sitting around a picnic table in the gloom at the valley bottom. We were sitting in a clearing surrounded by trees, quietly enjoying conversation. The silence of the valley was suddenly interrupted by terrible screeching and aggressive snarling.

The horrid noise was coming from a pack of raccoons. They were moving through a clearing from one grove of trees to another. I could see them nipping at each other and it instantly came to my mind that they were hungry.

Remembering the dog food, I stood up and brought it out of my bag. Somehow the raccoons were aware of my intentions, and immediately ceased their terrible racket. They approached our group quickly but cautiously, creeping along through the grass in that weird light the moon gives off deep in the forest.

I stood up and started throwing out handfuls of dog food pellets. The raccoons surrounded me, snuffling in the deep grass and making satisfied crunching noises. One of my friends took a handful, knelt down and held out his hand. A raccoon approached slowly, and finally placed a paw on his open hand. With the other paw, he took pellets, one by one, and ate in a dignified manner.

Eventually, my dog food bag was empty, and the crunching ceased. The raccoons started to peacefully disperse, and I turned toward my beer. After a sip or two, I suddenly felt something behind me. It was a sudden, sure feeling and I turned around without thinking.

Behind me was one of the larger raccoons, and for some reason I knew it was the matriarch. She sat alone on the grass, her companions having retreated into the forest. Our eyes met for a long moment and again a strange knowing came over me and it was if I could hear a clear “Thank You” from her. She then turned away and retreated back into the woods.

A few weeks later, we were in the same place on a similar night. I felt the same feeling from behind, and turned again. There in the grass was the same big female raccoon, looking up at me with those expressive eyes of hers. I had brought nothing but beer this time, and I felt badly about it.

“I’m sorry” I said, making an empty hand gesture.

She walked off alone into the woods. I never saw her again.