Auspicions, Part II

I must apologize for the enormous amount of time that has passed since I wrote that my next entry would come "tomorrow," but then again, is anybody really surprised at my huge delays and terrible procrastinations? My intention had been to tell of all the auspicious events that led up to my acquisition of a ride from Homer to the lower 48. While those events were incredibly auspicious and (I dare say) suggestive of something larger, wholly ineffable, that's been sweeping me up lately, the days and weeks that have carried me along since then have proven to be just as, if not more so, which leaves me with the quandary of how much to tell, what to focus on, and how much of the older part of the story can I tell now that my notebook (in which I mapped out the course of events) has been eaten by a washing machine, reducing it to none more than a soggy spine with a twisted gathering of dwindling margins twirled up inside of it.

 

The Ride and The Wake

 

So Haven, a drummer and Theo-lookalike of Homer, Alaska led me to believe that I could score a ride down the Alkan with his brother and him on August 21st. At the time, it sounded like a perfect ride: groovy company and the exact departure date I was hoping for. In that way, I got my mind set on the day, which more and more has been becoming a superstitious day of the month for me: my birthday is May 21, the summer solstice in Denali was June 21st, I arrived in Homer on July 21st, planned to leave on August 21st. As the time neared however, Haven got dodgier about the issue and eventually admitted, he'd found another ride down on the 17th with a bus-full of fire dancing circus performers all headed for Burning Man. When he told me that, my response was: can I come?

            He promised to ask about getting me on the bus, but as the days neared I lost nearly all hope of him even asking them about getting me on, much less succeeding. Meanwhile, Sven told me about a woman who had bought a truck from his dad (who makes a living buying toasted cars and fixing them up for resale) with the intension of driving it to the lower 48. I kept asking him for her number to see if I could ride with her and Sven kept forgetting. Finally, on August 15th, two days before the fire dancers were to leave, Sven Tyler and I were driving around town and Sven spotted the truck that the woman had bought from his dad. We pulled over and ran into the restaurant that it was parked in front of. We stood in the entrance awkwardly looking around for any woman that looked like her name was Ashley (Sven remembered that much about her) and pretty soon a woman asked us if she could help us. We said we were looking for a woman we didn't know named Ashley. Her response in the crowded room was, "There are no customers here at the moment that go by that name." I looked at her, confused, wondering, "How the fuck would you or anyone know that?" (Sven later told me that she was a very well know, very well connected local artist who hypothetically could have known every single customer personally) She continued, "If there is someone here named Ashley, she must be an employee." We asked at the counter and the girl there pointed at another girl delivering a bowl of soup." I stopped her mid-soup step and told her in a hurry, "I'm sorry but you don't know me but I just so happen to know that you've bought a truck from Carl Nostrand with the intension of driving the Alkan and you have a passenger lined up right now who is kind of flaky and you might be interested in scoring a more reliable co-pilot." She was thrown off, but not completely, "You're the second person to pop out of nowhere and tell me that in two days."

            "Oh...Well, what's the verdict?"

            "It's true, I'm driving down next Friday, but I don't know if I'll have room or not, probably not though. I can take your phone number though, just in case." I gave her my number and walked out with Sven, feeling somewhat defeated. Then he swam naked in the ocean  while Haven and Tyler beat drums in time and we called it a baptism, a new birth after shaving his head. Of course he had to deal with a lot of neo-Nazi jokes, but he's got the build and the soft eyes of a monk to pull off a shaved head, and he swam in the ocean for far longer than I could stand to watch. Every time I went in the water, I found breathing too difficult to support an extended sojourn, but Sven, Strong Sven just swam farther and farther from the shore, butt naked, and grooving.

            It was getting later, Haven and Tyler's drums stopped and the baptism was over. We laughed at/with Sven but all 3 of us were in some sort of twilight awe of the man. As we left the beach, we ran into some friends of Sven's who he hadn't seen in years and part of their catching up was the gaining of the information that a fun run was to take place the next day to support breast cancer research. For some reason we all knew that it was imperative for us to participate. For me, I felt there was some distant connection to my mother's mother, who died when (I'm sorry if I get this wrong!) my mom was only 23 and the two of them, along with my uncle Skip had taken a train ride together up in Washington state, maybe British Columbia just before she died. For Sven, there was the hints of an entire story, far too big to relate here, of the man who invented the tetrajack, a shape with immense architectural and metaphysical implications, Michael Sheppard. Michael was one of the most popular all-around geniuses of Homer, as well as Portland, Oregon, who had had a relationship with Sven's mom, but had also proven to be the most affecting mentor of Sven's life. In fact, his memories of Michael and Michael's invitation for Sven to apprentice him and work on the tetrajack (which Sven ultimately chose not to pursue and has regretted more than probably anything in his life) was easily the most profound, least spoken undercurrent of our entire time in Homer together. Anyway, long story short: Sven didn't take him up on his offer and he died none too long later of exposure in the Vietnam War, where he was a Green Beret medic(June 10, 2009), taking many of the most profound discoveries about the shape with him to the grave and now Sven felt he had to run in this breast cancer awareness run either as a homage to Michael or some type of reparations for not choosing to work with him in the last year of his life.

            We decided to do the run, but it was going to be early the next morning and we drank a lot of beer that night.

            We awoke, late, and considered blowing off the run. Instead we scratched the sleep from our eyes and barreled down the hill to registration, where it turned out we were an hour early. We ate a nice breakfast, talked with Haven (who was to leave the next day and finally got word from the fire dancers that they did not have room for me), and got ready for the run. As soon as it began, Sven was gone, way out in front, a powerhouse physical presence, and I was left wearing my let-it-be shirt, puttering along at my own pace, thinking about my grandmother who I never knew, but whom my mom loved so dearly. Somehow, the thought of running for something or someone bigger than myself kept me going and I ended up running all 5 miles without stopping to walk once. For me, that's a huge accomplishment because I haven't run a distance like that since I ran the Bolder Boulder (6.2 miles, 10k) in 6th grade at the age of 11. Anyway, along the route, I noticed a group of encouragers holding signs, cheering us along, one among them was Ashley, the girl driving the Alkan - we made eye contact, greeted each other warmly as I ran by, and then I finished the race, running straight (actually crooked and wobbly) into the ocean, which took my breath away and gave me a new, slightly more hardcore breath in its stead. When I got back to my pants, I had a text message from Ashley saying, looks like I'll have room in my car after all. And of course, her plan was to leave on August 21st. A few days later, we got together to discuss the details of the trip and it turned out that she went to NYU like me, and she had not only the best taste in music, but a massive iPod full of every complete album that I could ever want to listen to. Finally, her destination was Portland to go to art school (she transferred from NYU, an act that seemed to be a symbol of the trends I've noticed in Americans dreaming of NYC as a historical imperative shifting to artists and (ahem, hipsters as well) dreaming of the verdant mountain valleys of Portland - that is, the whole Pacific Northwest, a region that seems to be growing into what NYC was in Bob Dylan's time. It also just happens to be where Michael Sheppard died.

 

            After the run, the crowd was gathered and speeches were being given. It was no surprise to me, then, that the first speaker was...Sven. He took the megaphone and dedicated his run to Michael and then invited everyone who knew him to attend a memorial service that was to be held a day or two later.

            A day or two later, Sven asked me if I would like to join him at the service and I replied somewhat dodgy that I didn't know Michael and would feel out of place there. I spent the day instead drinking coffee and reading Finnegans Wake. When the time came for the service, I was almost right next door and decided it would probably mean a lot to Sven if I went. I can't express how glad I am that I did.

            At the entrance we were all hugged by Michael's son Peter, who Sven regards as a brother (they are the same age, went to school together, and had dramatically different relationships with Michael). Peter thanked me warmly and tearfully for coming and apologized for spreading rumors about me (I had told him a week earlier that I had spent the night in his hero, Hunter S. Thompson's house in January, and some time later, at a concert, a random kid came up to me and said, "I hear you're related to the great HST!") We sat down at then began the most intense 2 hours of my time in Homer.

            First, I have to copy down the quotes on the program from the wake (which I kept because it was too beautiful to let go). On the cover:

 

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. - Ecclesiastes 1: 4-7

 

            The inside has pictures of Michael on one page and on the other:

 

We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows," Robert Frost (1874-1963) wrote, looking in from the outside. Looking out from the inside, Chuang-tzu (370-301 B.C.E.) wrote, "When we understand, we are at the center of the circle, and there we sit while Yes and No chase each other around the circumference." This anonymous center - which is called God in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures, and Tao, Self, or Buddha in the great Eastern Traditions - is the realest of realities.

-Stephen Mitchell

The Enlightened Heart, 1989

 

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat. Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth. As soon as you find it, you are free; you have found yourself; you have solved the great riddle; your heart forever is at peace. Whole, you enter the Whole. Your personal self returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source.

-Mundaka Upanishad

8th-5th Century B.C.E.

 

            I was surprised to find the Mitchell quote to be written by the same person that translated my copy of the Tao Te Ching and following almost the exact thesis that my studies at NYU followed, as well as my proposed graduate work in Ireland, and the other quote, I guess is relevant to the extent that maybe, just maybe, it is describing the whole point of my trip to Alaska in the first place: the whole point of any trips, any growth, the whole point of living how we choose to, the creation of all our priorities...the whole Point.

            On the back of the program is a quote from Michael himself:

 

Hmmmmm, let's see....

I have been, and still am in some cases, an altar boy, little leaguer, mountain climber, fly fisherman, spelunker, railroader, green beret medic, builder, actor, playwright, director, dancer, potter, muralist, astrologist, inventor, commercial fisherman, corporation president, entrepreneur, yogin, meditator, seeker, mentor, sponsor, egotist, political activist, materials researcher, good neighbor, son, brother, husband, and father.

-Michael Sheppard

October 19, 1945 - June 10, 2009     

 

            The memorial service was divided into two parts: first Michael's friends and family shared memories of the deceased, standing up at will and speaking their hearts. The second part was a slideshow of photos from his life. The first part struck me in a particularly hard way because I remembered two years earlier, having attended my uncle Kenny's funeral, where there was a certain point where my dad had stood up and tried to share memories and groovy times from Kenny's life and for one reason or another, the other mourners were having none of it. For them, it was a time of grief and quiet meditation on loss. For my dad, it was the beginning of a celebration for a life well-lived. I remembered that gulf of opinions on the proper way to handle death so vividly and as I saw all these people crammed into the Elk's Lodge engaging in storytelling and swappings of hilarity, I couldn't help but think of my dad. This was exactly how he would have handled a memorial service. But it went deeper than that: we had recently had a conversation in which he admitted to me that he had been thinking a lot of mortality and the life expectancy of an American male. He said he figured he has more or less 10 more years left in him and he was thinking of how he most wanted to spend them. As I sat there hearing hilarious and heartbreaking stories from Michael's life, I began to feel like I was at my own father's wake.

            The stories told painted a cubist portrait of a man who could not have existed, just like my father. There were stories of his brilliance in ideas, his thriftiness and craft in building, his support for the community and tireless help to get alcoholics sober, his incredibly talent on the stage, his war days, his travels...in fact, I heard about so many sides of a single man, all seeming to be more reflections of the storytellers themselves than a real person, that I began to feel a little like a monk hearing 10,000 tales of witnesses, all nearly mutually exclusive of each other. Michael was a great void at the center of a community. He was the love and wisdom that tied so many thousands together. He wasn't real. He wasn't there. I felt like I knew him so intimately though I had never met him, while at the same time, he was too fantastical, had done too many things to possible have actually existed. But I thought about how my dad's business partners would describe him, how his ski bum friends from Breck would talk about him, his lovers, his siblings, his two extremely different sons, his Boulder friends and his LA friends. My dad was all that, or all something else...in fact, we all are in a way. Though Michael, army medic, philosopher, and inventor, civic visionary and actor, certainly was a little more prolific than the average schmo.

            At a certain point, this void of a man, and the incredible love he filled the community with, even as his son told a story of him screaming at his ex-wife and then at the baby himself, drunk and raving, there was something so profoundly human, while suggestively divine about the character. The story ended with the crying, drunken, madman quitting drinking, and once again proving how everything is part of the whole, everything real has its moment, its enunciation, and all of it is what we refer to as Life.

            In the midst of death, I saw so painfully clearly what the concept of Life could truly mean. And then there was a slide show providing this impossible character with a face, a thousand different faces, and I burst out crying.

 

             Two days later, Sven told me he was going on a hike with Peter to spread some of Michael's ashes. This was territory I really knew I shouldn't tread on, but as soon as Peter arrived to pick him up, he turned to me and said it would mean a lot to him if I were to come along. We hiked to the top of a mountain to spread the ashes. As they fell from the urn, the wind noticeably changed directions.

            According to the newspaper, that night the singer Jewel was going to play in Homer. She was born and raised in Homer, had babysat Sven when he was 4 years old, and her dad had taught both Sven and Peter how to play the guitar. From what I picked up, she had up until that point never played Homer since becoming famous, and many locals held grudges against her for having "forgotten where she came from." In that was it seemed appropriate that her long-time-coming return to the town was the same day we scattered the ashes.

 

After Homer

 

Me n' Ashley drove the Alkan over the course of 4 days from Homer to Seattle. The drive was stunningly beautiful: mountains lakes and rivers, bears, caribou, moose, a beaver, birds, everything it should have been. The pickup truck drove like a go-cart with a spring-loaded seat and we stopped at a hot spring and got "authentic" Mexican food in the capital of the Yukon (which I found hilarious). We got to Seattle late Monday night and stayed with my close friend Rachel Bernstein and her boyfriend, Joel, who had just returned from Syria and the two of us had a lovely time talking about the Middle East. Ashley continued to Portland without me and I stayed an extra night with Rachel and Joel. The next day I spend the afternoon in a coffee shop and found a ride to San Francisco on craigslist in a magic school bus painted rastafarian colors. Along the way we ate only food bought at organic co-ops, did yoga and meditations, swam naked in the ocean south of Crescent City, California, played in the Redwood forest, and met all sorts of incredibly groovy characters along the way. Each encounter was a further auspicion, each conversation held another piece of terrible serendipity that far outweighed all the stories I've told so far, but there is no time or space for them here as I've already written 6 pages. But the fact of the matter is, it's been like a funnel for me lately. Everything seems to be flowing from far reaches closer and denser together as I move forward. Disparate strings are proving to be stretching out from the same ball of yarn. Every day has brought something stunning and gorgeous. I'm thrilled to be alive and the road has taken on the figure of a kind of inevitability. Like the Beatles say, "There's nowhere you can be which isn't where you're meant to be."

            I arrived in San Francisco last Friday morning and took the Bart to Berkeley where 7 good friends from Gallatin where all preparing to go to Burning Man and I spent lovely days with them in Emma Kaywin's house (and also had a super groovy time with her parents, who are both psychoanalysts and who I enjoy so much). On Monday, Kate Ray and her parents drove down from Mendecino county and picked me up in Berkeley, taking me to their new home in Menlo Park. The four of us had a wonderful time through Saturday morning. Kate and I explored San Francisco, visited Half Moon Bay and Mavericks surf spot, we went hiking and saw a couple movies. On Saturday, she flew back to New York and I took the Caltrain north back to the city and have ended up in the company of one who I have loved deeply in the past, Brielle, and her boyfriend, Sean. Last night we had Burmese food and now I am grooving in San Francisco...at a coffee shop.

 

            There's something I've come to recognize about writing and storytelling lately. I believe that every story, if written in enough detail, contains every other story ever told. I chose to tell the story of my ride and Michael Sheppard, but if I had told the details of the magic school bus or my interactions with the Gallatin kids in Berkeley, I still would have told the same story. One is the story of growth and change, discovering a world far larger than that playing on repeat within our own heads day in day out. Another is the story of destiny, no matter what one's philosophical or religious beliefs are. Interpretation is subjectivity, we tell whichever story we love the most and believe in its truth, but the greater truth is that the story took place at all, it's an enunciation of life as it is lived, no matter what the interpretation one chooses to render it in. Another story is that of protagonists and antagonists: the hero's journey, the subtleties of the stage and the performative nature of placing oneself precisely where your desires or narratives direct you. A final story is that of love. Supposedly, all you need is love, and it will always be expressed in the dialect of your own ideology. A long walk, a long tale, a response, and a recognition that we may have all always been talking about the same thing all along anyway. We call each other hypocrites, we call each other out on our inconsistencies, and we do it because those hypocrisies are unacceptable, but also because we recognize our own and are terrified of them. We are all critics, but we are all also livers, alive, and doing everything we can considering the circumstances. Love is to try and to consider exactly wherein do our hearts lie. Where does the truth lie? Where are we coming from? Where are we going? How afraid are we and what exactly is it that we are afraid of?

           

            It is with all of that in mind that I have an announcement to make. I have no idea how many people actually read this blog, and I'm pretty sure it ultimately doesn't matter that much in the end. Whether it's one person or twenty-seven, I have decided to offer up something I've been keeping to myself for four years. To all the people who asked me if they could please read my novel, tentatively called 18, but just as easy to title, The Student Pilgrim, or A Moment-by-moment Account of a Middle Class Semi-white American's First Solo Journey to Western Europe And the People and Experiences He Encountered There and his Facing of Teenage Insecurities In the Process. It can also be called, The Same Olde Story for it describes what so many young Americans are choosing to do this century. It's nothing extraordinary. In fact, it's in its ordinariness that, if it has any merit whatsoever, it has merit. It tells a story so similar to every other 18 year old's post-high school travels to Europe, but maybe, just maybe, it tells the story that needs to be told. The story of anger, loneliness, and frustration, as well as the story of discovery, excitement, serendipity, and ultimately: the first chapter in what led me (and has led so many others in similar ways) to open up to the world, to dream of engaging with it and exploring it instead of holing myself up in a scared, insecure shell, as I did throughout all my teenage years.

            The book is long and was clearly written by an 18 year old, but I think its possible that readers may get something out of it, and so many people in recent years have asked me if they could read it, that I've decided to release it. Starting this Sunday, I will begin releasing the book on this blog, one chapter per week, so as not to overwhelm anyone with its length, and to give me time to change all the names in it, so as not to expose secrets about friends who don't wish to have their stories told without permission. I will also try to cut out some of the fat as I go along (though originally, the fat was kind of the whole point of it - a portrait of the joy and tedium of traveling for months, alone and inexperienced, on a continent built up with more infrastructure and with higher prices than our own. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to send me comments (though please keep abusive rants to yourself), and if you like certain parts, please pass the link on to other people, there's nothing I would like more than for a wide audience to read and get something out of it.

 

All my love,

tcm