22. The Shaman and I

This year I felt that the time had come to spend my first ever Christmas away from home. It makes sense on a practical level - I now live in San Francisco while my family will be in Switzerland. However, on a deeper level, maybe I also feel an urge to manifest my autonomy. Perhaps Christmas away from home is a last symbolical severing of the umbilical cord.

For a while now, I have wanted to take part in a shamanistic Ayahuasca ritual in the Peruvian Amazon. My interest was piqued by an email which I received over the summer from a good friend, describing his experience of such a ceremony. He wrote:

“I am a very scientific, secular and skeptical person, while always hoping somehow that I would get irrefutable evidence that the tooth fairy is more than a story, that there are ghosts to make old castles more romantic, and that the spirits in the trees will help me if I ever get lost in the forest. But as much as the artistic, romantic side of me hoped for this reality, I have not had any experience that could not be better explained with science and a proper understanding of statistics. That is until I took Ayahuasca last Christmas. It was very much a spiritual experience for me, the sensation that you are interacting with something that is not a creation of your own mind is ... well, for the secular among us, a new taste for the world, a flavor of experience that reminds me of being two or three years old again, when everything was alive and magical.”

So, rather than return to Switzerland, I decided that this year I would head to the Peruvian jungle. Perhaps, on some level, I also wanted to replace the umbilical cord with a connection to a nurturing spiritual reality.

I flew to Lima, and from there to Iquitos. On arrival the air was thick and soupy with humid tropical heat. The streets pulse with innumerable ‘moto-taxis’ – motorbikes whose back wheels have been removed and replaced with benches, converting them into a form of rickshaw. I took one of these to the Plaza de Armas where I was due to meet a shaman by the name of Otilia.

Iquitos

As I sat waiting in the courtyard of the hotel Casona, the heavens opened, as they would do once at least once a day throughout my week in the jungle. Eventually Otilia arrived. She was a calm, composed, middle-aged woman with broad Andean cheekbones. However, she had none of the jewelry, the nose bones or the wild stares which I associate with shamanism. We shook hands and made small talk while she went to buy some Wellington boots for her daughter, then we took a taxi along the road towards Nauta.

The road was flanked by wooden huts thatched with palm fronds. It was five o’ clock in the afternoon and everywhere portly, half-naked men were reclining in hammocks and stroking their stomachs. The younger men played football on the many compacted earthen football pitches.

The roadside gradually became less populous. After 50km the taxi stopped. Four handsome young Peruvian men – Otilia’s boys - were waiting for us. With their muscular bodies, olive skin and thick dark hair, they bore a striking resemblance to the Native American werewolves in the recent film of Stephanie Meyer’s fang-bang novel, New Moon. They hoisted the water barrels, oil and food which Otilia had bought onto their backs, securing the weight with straps around their foreheads, then they made their way down the path into the jungle.

I followed. The thick mud was reluctant to release my feet. There were a number of small rivulets which had to be crossed – I inched cautiously along the slimy tree trunks which served as bridges. I was soon dripping with sweat and the mosquitoes begun their week long feeding frenzy. The jungle floor was gloomy owing to the extreme height of the trees which towered above. Vines and tendrils hung in my way, motionless in the syrupy air. Underfoot, the intricately twisting roots were traps for the unwary. Some were a bright shiny blood red and others ivory white, like the bones and arteries of the earth itself.

After half an hour I arrived in the jungle clearing which would be my home for the next week. I was shown my hut – a rudimentary construction balanced on stilts on the fringe of the jungle. None of the buildings had running water or electricity. In the communal dining hut I met two Frenchmen and one French woman who had also come to take Ayahuasca. Antoine was in his fifties – he was an old friend of Otilia’s and, after a career in television, he now worked in Paris as a healer. Claude was in her forties and Stephane in his thirties; they had both come to the jungle to be healed. Later I also met an Australian woman who has been living with Otilia for over a year now; she is trying to fight breast cancer using only the medicinal powers of plants.

My Hut

For the next three days we ate according to the Ayahuasca ‘dieta’ – fresh fruit and rice but no sugar or salt. On the third day we met at nightfall in the space underneath the floor of the temple building (the building itself was under repair). Otilia and Antoine sat at the large table at one end, lit only by a flickering candle. Claude, Stephane and I occupied the three benches which completed the rectangle, each of us about 5 metres apart. Otilia, dressed in a bright traditional dress, began furiously to smoke thick cigarettes. She came to each of us in turn and blew smoke over us. Then she returned to her table and blew smoke into a plastic bottle containing a brown liquid. She whispered mysteriously throughout.

The Temple Building

I was the last to be called to her table. She passed me a small earthenware cup containing the brown liquid. I lifted it to my lips and swallowed the contents. Ayahuasca means ‘Vine of the Souls’; it is brewed from the Banisteriopsis Caapi vine. The liquid was viscous and extremely bitter, though not as revolting as I had anticipated. When I had returned to my bench, Otilia blew out the candle. We sat in the pitch darkness in silence. I never felt nauseous myself but occasionally one of the others would vomit. In fact, for two hours I felt nothing at all. Then, slowly, I began to feel a gentle rocking. At about the same time, Otilia began to sing ícaros, the beautiful Spanish melodies which traditionally accompany the ceremony.

I became aware of the sounds of the jungle weaving a rich matrix around me. At the same time everything seemed to brighten, as if suffused with its own internal green luminescence. The ícaros reminded me of nursery rhymes and my mind wandered back to my childhood – I remembered what it was like to be a baby. Occasionally Otilia would interrupt her singing to ask us individually how we were feeling, and whether we were experiencing visiones. I did not experience visiones, but I did become aware of a growing sense of joy within me – the universe seemed like such a great cosmic joke. Soon I was battling to fight back the waves of laughter. At the same time, however, I could hear the sound of others vomiting in the dark. I heard Claude writhing on the floor, alternately groaning, weeping and throwing up. I thought of snakes thrashing around in the squelching mud, locked in some dreadful embrace of death.

While Otilia sang, she accompanied herself by tapping a bushel of leaves. After a while I could have sworn that the sound of the leaves and the sound of the singing were coming from different places. Then, as clear as daylight, I felt a tap on my knee. I extended my arm into the darkness but there was no one there. However, it did feel as if there were other beings around me, beings I could only sense and not see but who had definitely not been there before

Eventually Otilia came to sit down beside me. She continued to sing and started to tap me with the bushel; the taps felt like moths dancing over my fingers. Then she began to tap my stomach and I started to feel a little queasy, though again not sufficiently to vomit. Still in pitch darkness, Otilia made me lie down on my bench and began to massage my stomach. She pressed into my belly button, something which I hate. After a while she told me that I had an internal hernia, whatever that is. She made me repeat after her the names of the fruits and plants which I need to take to effect a cure.

Six hours after drinking the Ayahuasca, Otilia drew the ceremony to a close. The world was no longer lit by pulsating green light, but when I stood up I was very unsteady on my feet. I set off towards my hut but got lost as soon as I was out of sight of the temple. Everything looked different by torchlight and I backtracked a number of times. I was beginning to fear that I would have to spend the whole night stumbling blindly around the jungle when, thankfully, my hut hove into view. I barely slept at all that night; however, lying beneath my mosquito net, I was flooded with a sense of serenity and with an intimation of the mysteries that surround us.

The following day, unusually, Otilia joined us for lunch. I asked her how she had learnt the ícaros, of which she knew upwards of 500. She told me that she had never learnt them, that she was born knowing them. So from your mother, then? I asked. No, she replied; her mother did not know any. Then I asked her how she knew which plants to use to treat ailments. She replied that the spirits come to her and tell her during the ceremonies. So you see the spirits? I asked. She nodded; she said that as soon as the ceremony begins, her own spirit leaves her body. Her body will continue to sit at the table and sing the ícaros, but her mind will go from person to person, sharing their experience. She says she has been telepathic since childhood.

The Shaman and I

At this point Antoine, who has done many ceremonies, told me that he once left his body and observed a dinner party hosted by his housemate in his apartment in Paris. When he spoke to his housemate by telephone the following week, his identification of the guests and the topics of conversation was spot on. But, said Antoine, that was an unusual experience. More frequently he sees people from his past, and occasionally he is able to walk the streets of past civilizations. Those are his visiones.

Having not had any proper visiones myself, I was skeptical of all this. However, my skepticism diminished as Otilia spoke to us about our individual experiences. She obliquely referenced Stephane’s childhood trauma, something which, he later assured me, he had not mentioned to her. And she had a good grasp of my own psychology.

Taken alone, nothing that happened to me in the jungle is incontrovertible evidence of the existence of a spirit world. However, I am more willing than ever to suspend my disbelief. Leaving the jungle, I had a renewed sense of the mysteries and interconnectedness of life. Since my departure from Iquitos I have felt lighter and my mind has been clearer – I certainly think there is potential therapeutic value in Ayahuasca. Strangest of all, I have felt an odd tickling in and around my belly button for the last few days. I intend to ask my doctor about the ‘internal hernia’ that Otilia mentioned. However, it is perhaps no coincidence that one of the original intentions of this trip was the symbolical severing of my own umbilical cord.

21. Art Basel Miami

Last weekend, in an attempt to uncover the mysteries of the contemporary art market, I put on my great uncle’s Lederhosen and posed as an eccentric Austrian collector at Art Basel Miami. The gallerists had largely ignored me the day before. This sartorial jeu d’esprit was an attempt to spark them into action. And it worked. The assistants - meticulously coiffed men and languidly bored girls - appeared to perk up. They showed me around and made introductions. I asked a few questions. They replied guardedly. I got the distinct impression that they were withholding information, or perhaps waiting to see whether I would reveal my hand. And maybe that is what the art world is – a big game in which no one is quite sure of the rules, but no one wants to be the first to admit it.

Let me give a sample conversation:

Austrian ‘collector’ (examining beautiful, painstaking woodcut by Franz Gertsch): This is interesting.

Gallerist: Yes, Gertsch is a very important artist.

Austrian ‘collector’: How long would it take him to produce a print like this?

Gallerist: Gertsch works at his own speed.

Austrian ‘collector’: No doubt. And what speed is that?

Gallerist: Gertsch cannot be rushed.

Austrian ‘collector’: So how long would it take him, if he wasn’t being rushed?

Gallerist: (Reluctantly) I would say, anywhere up to 6 months. Maybe more.

Austrian ‘collector’: (Impressed) Wow, that is a long time. (Examining the tiny pointillist marks) Is he autistic?

Gallerist: (Pokerfaced) Gertsch is a very important artist.


Art Basel Miami Beach has been running since 2002 and is the sister event to the more established Art Basel in Switzerland. The fair runs for the first week of December. The official show takes place in the vast convention center. There are 250 galleries exhibiting contemporary artists; some, like Franz Gertsch, are very important. Miami’s other galleries and exhibition centers take advantage of the event to open their doors to this international assembly of art world movers and shakers. Galleries in parts of town such as Wynwood and the Design District showcase the new crop of artists waiting to be discovered.

I never knew exactly what was going on at the fair. There were a lot of people milling around but how many of them were in a position to pay the huge sums for which most of these works were being offered? Despite the ubiquitous gallerists and their languid/coiffed assistants, I never saw any evidence of business being transacted. And, in that sense, the art fair parallels the city of Miami itself. After New York and Chicago, Miami’s skyline is the third most impressive in America, according to the Almanac of Architecture and Design. And yet many of these huge buildings stand empty. Miami, like the art world, has been hit hard by the recession. Furthermore, and again like the art world, it is hard to know what makes Miami tick. San Francisco prides itself on its technology and bohemianism, New York is driven by finance and Los Angeles by the entertainment industry. And Miami?

The city is one of extraordinary diversity, even by American standards. Over one third of the population of the metropolitan area are Cuban. Large numbers of Haitians, Columbians and Brazilians live in the city itself. They rub shoulders with a generous sprinkling of European emigrés and well-heeled New Yorkers. People watching is a very entertaining local pastime. I enjoyed the sight of a statuesque platinum blond lady strutting down Lincoln Road, dragging two befuddled poodles behind her. She was no stranger to cosmetic surgery – she looked as if she had recently been punched in the mouth and was now caught in a wind tunnel.

What brings the inhabitants of Miami together? In one sense, it is a shared love of pleasure. The sports cars are flash, the yachts are big and the dresses skimpy. There is a flirtatiousness in the air which cannot be explained by the sultry climate alone. However, is there still enough money flying around in a recession to sustain these sybaritic lifestyles? That is also a question which the art world is currently grappling with. Given the cost of shipping artworks around the world – the actual cost as well as the insurance costs – it is baffling how the contemporary art scene functions at all.

Back at the art fair, there were a number of works which I found baffling in another way. I am thinking of the $5000 door mat lying in the middle of the gallery, with a plaster cast of a doorbell on top of it. The poor girl working there told me that she had already had to chase a dozen people off the mat when they accidentally stepped on it. I was so perplexed myself that I forgot to play the game for a moment; I asked her outright what the point of this ‘work’ was. She stammered a little and called her employer who proceeded to crush me beneath the weight of his art world babble.

Austrian ‘collector’: This is interesting.

Gallerist: Yes, Gabrielli is a very important artist. His experiments in form are designed to encapsulate the physical manifestation of a single thought, with all its lyricism and paradox. His pieces represent both interior visions and the very real destruction of the well-defined and corporeal. They stand on the anxious fulcrum of categorization where distinctions between forms and material disappear, or are made to disappear. Gabrielli is a very important artist.



None of this made any sense to me but it was so fluently and so earnestly delivered that any disagreement on my part would have felt like a personal insult.

I left that gallery full of admiration for the owner. Did he believe what he was saying? Was he making it all up? In any case, he had silenced me through his use of language. Like a master spin doctor, he had used language to befuddle rather than to clarify, and he had left me feeling like the idiot. That’s when I realized that language is also a big part of the art world game.

There are times when a dealer or a gallerist will push you for a reaction. At these times, there is one phrase which I find particularly useful. After a considered appraisal, I like to say, ‘Hmmm, yes, it’s very derivative.’ Out of context, this is of course utterly meaningless. Its beauty lies in the fact that it could be an endorsement or a criticism – you never have to show your hand, and you come away sounding like a great expert.

20. Georgian Wedding

I would like to describe the wedding of a dear friend who recently married in Tbilisi, Georgia (the central European country, not the US state). So far in this blog I have tried to refrain from writing about anything to do with my social life (what there is of it). I hope I have managed to restrict myself to events or narratives which may be of interest to people that don’t know me, as well as to those that do. And I have tried to steer clear of anything of a private nature.

However, I found my friend’s wedding a quite extraordinary event. For a start, it gave me my first taste of a remarkable country which I might otherwise never have visited. I was only in Tbilisi for a few days, but many aspects of the city made me think of descriptions of Middle Earth in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. When you look around you see castles, churches and monasteries perched on cliff tops. There are also a number of huge white statues of proud warrior women, their swords uplifted. However, the architecture is much more eastern than I had anticipated: many buildings have the sort of carved wooden first floor galleries that I associate primarily with Nepal. The language and alphabet are also quite unlike anything else I have ever encountered - in fact, the alphabet is unique. On the other hand, the similarities to England are also striking: both countries have almost the same flag, St. George as their patron saint, and a great love of drinking and sport.

Mama Georgia Statue

I also gained an extremely positive impression of the Georgians themselves. For a start, they seem to be extremely laid back. In fact, they take laissez-faire to a whole new level. However, at the same time there is a strong sense of pride, honour and chivalry. This is expressed in their treatment of women who, I was reliably informed, are placed on a pedestal and never permitted to pay for anything. They have also embraced rugby, which is surely quite unusual for a central Asian republic. And they are fearsome wrestlers, which I know firsthand from having been unfortunate enough to spar with the occasional Georgian at my judo club.

My friend’s wedding took place in the Mama Daviti church, on the steep side of Mount Mtatsminda (‘Holy Mountain’). There are no seats in the church; everyone stands. However, it is perfectly acceptable to wander in and out as you wish – again the Georgian laissez-faire. At times this attitude can maybe go too far: I was standing next to a woman whose mobile phone started to ring. She rummaged around in her bag, eventually found it, and then started blithely chattering away. That would not have gone down so well at an English wedding.

Mama Daviti Church in winter

Outside it was a bright and sunny; inside the church was very dark. Three ancient women chanted haunting madrigals and the incense smoke curled thickly around the candles. Bride and groom both wore crowns and the groom – my friend – was addressed with the new Georgian name which had been conferred upon him when he converted to Georgian orthodoxy two weeks beforehand in London’s Seven Sisters. The only incongruous note in this solemn ceremony was that two other couples were being married at the same time – normal procedure, apparently, though for a brief moment it did make me think of Las Vegas.

The following day the wedding guests were driven to a lunch half an hour outside Tbilisi, in the countryside. In dappled sunlight we walked down wooden steps, crossed and recrossed a small river, and walked below platforms and treehouses suspended in the foliage above. The path lead to a walled, shady terrace overlooking a broad river. It reminded me of Rivendell, the home of the elves in Middle Earth. On this terrace we were served a Georgian banquet. Since no one could read a menu, it was hard to pace oneself. Dish after dish arrived, most of them in dumpling form, and most of them very salty. This wasn’t a problem for me since I like salty food. However, in Georgia even the mineral water is salty; I found myself wishing for some normal water with which to dilute it.

Following our return from lunch, I decided to go to the sulphur baths in Tbilisi with a friend and his girlfriend. I was expecting something like a Turkish steam bath. However, the negotiations with the bath house mistress were futile since the communication barrier proved insurmountable. We were lead into our private room; I am not sure whether this was a tourist luxury or the norm. There we were given thin sheet-like towels and directed towards our private sulphur bath – a sort of hot tub full of pungent eggy water. I think we were supposed to get into the tub naked but, although I have overcome my public schoolboy’s embarrassment about male nudity, being with a friend and his girlfriend changes the dynamic. None of us had brought swimwear, having been informed that it would not be necessary (and assuming that men and women would be separated). So, we climbed into the eggy hot tub in our towels.

The water was indeed hot but in no way as satisfactory as a sauna for sweating out the accumulated toxins of the past few nights. After some minutes we heard a knocking on the door of the anteroom. I went to open it and was confronted by the burly figure of our masseur. I let him into the anteroom and he promptly took all his clothes off. I wondered whether there had been some miscommunication. The burly masseur must have seen the consternation in my face since he put his black y-fronts back on again, then he followed me into the room with the eggy hot tub.

There was a large marble slab against the side of this room. The masseur indicated to me to get onto the slab. I sat on it and swung my legs up as lithely as I could, given the restrictive nature of the sodden towel which I still had wrapped around me (and which was by now quite see-through). The burly masseur tore it off in disgust, then he began to pummel my naked form on the hard marble top, in full view of friend and girlfriend (who, I hope, chose to look elsewhere). There were three stages to this punishment and at the end of each stage a new victim was required; this involved copious amounts of soggy towel application, soggy towel removal and a complex trigonometry of gaze aversion. My favourite moment occurred during a respite in the proceedings, when my friend was naked and supine on the slab and the masseur had popped out to look for his instruments. We suddenly heard childish giggling; looking up, I could see the outstretched pointing arms and delighted faces of a number of street urchins who were peering down at us from the windows in the side of the cupola which crowned the small dome directly above our heads.

Though I wouldn’t say that I particularly enjoyed the brutal massage or the eggy water, I do feel that I have shared a bonding experience with my friend and his girlfriend. And we all enjoyed the walk from the baths back to our hotel. It was still early on Sunday evening and the streets were full of people wandering aimlessly around in large family groups. In Western Europe, certainly in Northern Europe, we only go out if we need something, or to shop. This was more similar to the Italian passegiata – couples flirting, children running around, adults stopping to shoot the breeze. There was a very enjoyable sense of unhurried bonhomie – a sort of collective stock taking. We are much the poorer for not having this in the west; I might even trade our fine northern saunas for it.

19. Matterhorn Peak

I recently read Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. The story is narrated by a character called Ray Smith; he heads off with his beatnik friends - Japhy and Morley the yodeller - to climb Matterhorn Peak in the Eastern Sierra, on the Nevada border, in search of solitude and the Zen way of life. I enjoyed the book and was inspired to climb Matterhorn Peak myself.

I left San Francisco at 7am on Saturday morning and arrived in the tiny settlement of Bridgeport around midday. There I filled out a wilderness permit before driving the 10 miles to Twin Lakes, following in Kerouac's footsteps. I parked my car at Twin Lakes and set off up the steep Horse Creek trail. The trail led me alongside a chattering brook, through beautiful scented pine glades and eventually up into a magnificent, boulder strewn valley. Kerouac wrote:

With my sneakers it was as easy as pie to just dance nimbly from boulder to boulder, but after a while I noticed how gracefully Japhy was doing it and he just ambled from boulder to boulder, sometimes in a deliberate dance with his legs crossing right to left, right to left and for a while I followed his every step but then I learned it was better for me to just spontaneously pick my own boulders and make a ragged dance of my own.

'The secret of this kind of climbing,' said Japhy, 'is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you never hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen.' Which it was.

Kerouac describes the beauty of this valley - part of the Hoover Wilderness - in detail. He does not exaggerate; it loses nothing by comparison with the finest valleys that I have seen in the Alps. The jagged Matterhorn Peak (3738m) rises serenely above it.

Matterhorn Peak

I climbed for four hours and then bedded down for the night at a tiny, unnamed lake just below the North Face. There was a fearsome gale blowing by the time I climbed into my sleeping bag. I made some Kava tea which a friend of mine had recommended to me. Kava is a herbal relaxant; Polynesians consume large quantities of Kava and I imagine it must have some active ingredients since it is illegal in both the Netherlands and the UK. However, I noticed next to no effect. That may have been due to the fact that I was camping at just over 3000 metres, so my breathing and heart rate were probably already rather higher than usual. In any case, I saw many shooting stars which more than compensated for the disappointment of the tea.

Lake Camp and Northeast Couloir

The gale blew itself out overnight and the following morning dawned with perfect clarity. I packed my rucksack and climbed up a long scree slope to the northeast couloir. I had read a description of this route online and it had sounded quite straightforward. This turned out not to be the case. I think the recommendations were intended for winter climbing; with snow and crampons, the couloir would have been steep but not too hard. However, the small amount of snow left over was really just compacted ice and I didn't have crampons. I climbed up the rocks alongside the 'snow'. The going was very steep indeed and the rock was crumbly and treacherous. I was lucky to be climbing alone since I dislodged some fairly sizeable slabs which bounced their way menacingly back down towards the lake.

Eventually I made it onto the eastern ridge. From there I was able to traverse to Matterhorn Peak itself and then pick my way up the less steep south face, though even this had its interesting moments. At the summit I discovered an old metal cartridge box containing a few sheets of paper filled with names and dates. I contributed my empty moleskine notebook as a summit book; I have always thought that is a fine tradition.

I climbed back down the south face and was able to descend the soft sandy scree slope with huge lung-gom-pa leaps. At the bottom of the south face was another tiny lake. This is Kerouac's description:

We finally got to the foot of the Matterhorn where there was a most beautiful small lake unknown to the eyes of most men in this world, seen only by a handful of mountainclimbers, a small lake at eleven thousand some odd feet with snow on the edges of it and beautiful flowers and a beautiful meadow, an alpine meadow, flat and dreamy, upon which I immediately threw myself and took my shoes off.

Kerouac's 'most beautiful small lake.'

It was midday and hot by the time I got to the lake, so I undressed and jumped into the water. There is an interesting physiological phenomenon which occurs when I jump into very cold water (sub 5 degrees): when I emerge, my vision is cloudy for a few seconds. The first time it happened I thought thought there was dust in the air, but I have now noticed it on a number of occasions. I would like to know more about this but I can't find anything online; I'd be grateful for any information.

From the lake I took the pass between Twin Peaks and Matterhorn Peak - a much more pleasant route. The descent back down to Twin Lakes took about 5 hours during which I didn't see another soul; from there I drove back to San Francisco, quite content.

Good Climb

18. Night Swim at the Dolphin Club

Night Swim at the Dolphin Club



Cars backed up to the Golden Gate, bumper to bumper;
Drivers rubberneck through windshields, curiously;
Is it a suicide? Do we have a jumper?
No? Then let’s blame the Governator, spuriously.

The sun is in front of me, descending, blinding;
I’m stuck in rush-hour traffic when I should be unwinding.
This is not right, not how life was meant to be.
I make a U-turn – sheepish, hurried, hot;
Is this too drastic? Have I cut the Gordian knot?

At the Dolphin Club white painted boards catch the last of the light.
This rickety wooden building has sheltered shivering bodies for over a century.
What does it represent? Escape from the quotidian 9 to 5 penitentiary?

I stride out between twin piers,
Without the wetsuit which members frown upon,
And dive into the icy water, transfixing like sharpened spears;
But for Dolphins this cold is the sine qua non.

Just get to the second buoy,
Then the pain will subside.
But the water is black,
I can’t see my arms.
Aim for the flag,
Look for the lights.
But what if I get lost?
Can I swim by the stars?
Would I recognize Orion?
Whose is that bark?
Is it a sea-lion?
Do they feed in the dark?
Are there jellyfish?
Are there eels?
What about those amorous seals?
What of the sharks?
Do they enter the bay?
Be still, mind!
This is not a game I want to play.


It is dark now, too dark to see,
And my goggles steam up, annoyingly.
But my breathing is regular, cyclical, strong,
And I feel that water is my element - here I belong.

The wind has died; the surface is glassy, flat.
Salt water washes away the day’s crust, the caffeine sweat, the cack.
My strokes come easily, epassyterotically;
Thoughts flow gently, hypnotically.

I swim back in beside the pier,
And emerge from the water like a primordial pioneer:
The first to stagger from that inky primal soup,
Bold leader of some prehistoric splinter group.

Memories of the day sloughed off like a second skin,
And the blood is coursing deep within.
My mind is clear and I survey the scene:
Dark sea, dark sky, and one grateful swimmer in-between.

17. Burning Man

I myself have been the victim of more than one inveterate bore who has trapped me in a corner and proselytized about Burning Man. I don’t want to be that guy.

However, I do want to describe this extraordinary event.

Burning Man is an annual week long event held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, about 7 hours drive from San Francisco. The event attracts up to 50,000 visitors whose camps and installations form a temporary city in the middle of the desert. The city is carefully mapped out in the form of a giant horseshoe, approximately 6 miles from side to side. The open space in the middle is known as the ‘playa’. It is a vast and flat white surface on which enormous works of art are exhibited, including the eponymous effigy of the wicker man which is burnt at the end of the week.

Pyramid Lake, 70 miles south of Black Rock Desert

Black Rock Desert, Nevada

Within ‘Black Rock City’, as it is called, the normal rules do not apply. There is no currency: you either rely on your own supplies, or you barter for goods. Many people set up lounges, bars, clubs and disco tents in which everything is free. There is no requirement to wear clothes and many people wander around naked. There is an attitude of extreme permissiveness; the freedom to take drugs is a part of that.

So, those are the facts. Does it actually work? Well, to an astonishing extent, the answer is yes. I found it very interesting to see that, when people are trusted with the freedom to behave as they want, they tend to behave responsibly. When people visit a bar or lounge where food and drinks are provided through a stranger’s generosity, it is remarkable how rarely that generosity is abused. Admittedly the event only lasts a week; I am not sure what would happen if resources became scarce, but everything seems to function very smoothly for that week.

You certainly don’t have to set up a free bar or disco tent. One of the aims of Burning Man is that people should feel free to offer whatever skills they have. Artists display their creations - there are many spectacular works on display in the desert and many of the pieces would have taken months to create. Other people give trampoline or trapeze performances or set up anything from healing tents to padded dungeons for couples who want to explore S&M and bondage fantasies. And if you just come as an observer, as I did, no one seems to mind.

At first it is disconcerting to be invited into people's lounge-bar style camps and to have drinks pressed into your hand by strangers. However, I thought of Khalil Gibran and reminded myself that there is charity in receiving as well as in giving:

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

From The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran

Another interesting aspect of the event is the extreme friendliness of participants. It is of course possible to question to what extent this is real and to want extent it may be fueled by psychotropic drugs. However, it does go hand in hand with the attitude fostered by a community, albeit a temporary one, based on gifting and not selling. I noticed people's friendliness most in the early morning, when I was wandering around by myself, having been woken by the sunrise (since I was sleeping out in the desert in my sleeping bag). Everyone I walked past – everyone who wasn’t doing yoga, that is – would smile and say hello. I started greeting strangers in that way myself and I certainly begun to feel better for it. It makes me think of the school of psychology which argues that certain behaviors will, in and of themselves, lead to certain mental states. Adherents suggest that you should smile at yourself in the mirror every morning because that muscular action will automatically trigger a more positive mental state. It sounds silly but perhaps it works.

For many people, planning for next year’s Burning Man begins as soon as this year’s event ends. My own trip this year was much more spontaneous and only came about because a friend had kindly left a spare ticket for me at the gate. So, I drove the 7 hours into the desert with a sleeping bag, a lightweight camping gas burner, a few tins of chili beans, some trail mix, and a few water bottles. I parked my car on the outside of the outer ring of the horseshoe. From there I was able to walk into the desert and to sleep near the foot of the encircling mountains, hundreds of meters away from the nearest tent.

When I left Burning Man after two nights and three days, I opened the boot of my car to change back into my jeans. As I did so, I had a strong sense that I myself had changed, that I was no longer exactly the same person who had stowed those jeans in the back of the car upon arrival. I think a lot of people have this feeling, and it is partly what keeps people coming back. However, it is hard for me to be scientific about it. Hard to investigate the reasons for this feeling. There are too many variables.

For a start, I love the desert. I have always loved the desert. I love its dry heat and the unabashed intensity of the sun. I love the feeling that the desert is very clean – sure you get dusty but there are no flies, no unpleasant smells. Despite not washing for three days, I never felt dirty. I love the extremity of the desert, its absolutism. Everything is black or white – alive or dead – there are no shades of gray, no gradual processes, no slow rotting or decay. Throw away a banana peel and it will have disintegrated by evening. I love the fact that the desert forces me to confront these extremes and, in doing so, maybe to gain a new perspective on my own day to day concerns.

There are hills and mountains surrounding black rock desert, but the desert floor is flat and white. It reflects the sun’s rays and creates a very intense and unusual light. On the second day I had a feeling that I usually only get when I am high up in the mountains, and even then only rarely. On those occasions, I have the impression that I can see objects more clearly, that the objects themselves are more individualized, more clearly defined. I feel that each object is sufficient unto itself, each object is dignified by its own sphere of existence. The things in the world seem more lonely but also more proud. It is hard to explain but I certainly had that feeling in the desert.

There is a very interesting aesthetic at Burning Man: it feels like a millenarian vision, a Mad-Max post-apocalyptic phantasmagoria, sci-fi meets Conan the Barbarian. It may be what the future will look like. People wander around in every conceivable form of dress (and state of undress) though most wear dark goggles in case of sand storms. Fantastical ‘art cars’ prowl around in the distance – these are the only vehicles which are allowed to cross the immense ‘playa’. They are the creations of Burning Man devotees – for example, a huge metallic spider with eight functioning legs, a fire-breathing dragon and a giant pirate’s ship on wheels. At night these vehicles weave their way across the vastness between floodlit works of art, their edges defined with electroluminescent wire. It is quite a spectacle.

art cars

Tree made from animal bones

You don’t have to be high to enjoy Burning Man, but it helps. I dosed myself with a cocktail of LSD and ketamine and spent some time in awe at the miracle of my own breathing; I felt as if I were breathing life into the universe with each breath. Then I walked some distance out into the desert and conversed with my own shadow. I lay down, limbs splayed, beneath the burning desert sun. I spent an hour staring at a piece of mud (and exploring the interstices of stellar space). I thought I saw infinity in a handful of dust.

Later, when the effects were beginning to wear off, I made my way to one of the music tents on the very edge of the Black Rock City. I sat in the shade of the white canopy and stared out into space; there was nothing between me and the distant mountains. I felt as if I had arrived at the ragged edge of something. I was reminded of the end of Philip Larkin’s magnificent poem, Here:

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

I certainly intend to return to Burning Man. It is a fascinating human experiment as well as a tremendous visual spectacle. There were a number of things I was apprehensive about before going, though I need not have been. Firstly, I thought the event would probably take itself too seriously. I don’t think that is the case. I particularly enjoyed the piece of art below, in which a ‘spiritual’ looking woman says, ‘Art will save the world’, to which her interlocutor replies, ‘Fuck Art, I’m here because breasts.’




Secondly, I was afraid of encountering a lot of holier/greener-than-thou attitudes. If anything, the opposite was the case. I was surprised by the wanton burning of refuse, petrol and propane as part of the installations and art cars, and by the generators of the thousands of RVs.

Thirdly, I was afraid of a lack of sanitation and a sense of being packed in like sardines. However, the desert feels pure, the portaloos are plentiful and cleaned with impressive regularity, and space is really the last thing that I needed to worry about.

short self-interview

16. The Alpensalamander.

A few days ago I climbed our Hausberg, the Untersberg, just outside Salzburg. I was accompanied by my old friend Alex Humes. After two hours steep ascent we reached the area of open grass just below the precipitous Dopplersteig. As we walked along the path I saw an extraordinary black lizard. He was very small, very shiny and had an oddly expressive face. I tried to photograph him but he escaped into the grass beside the path. However, over the next hundred metres or so we saw at least fifteen more of these black lizards. Alex gamely picked one up for me to photograph. We also saw a baby. The regular tread on its back made it look like a cross between a wet tire and a slug.

In bed the following morning, I uncharacteristically wrote a short poem about the lizards. I then got up to have breakfast and opened the Salzburger Nachrichten. I was confronted by a double page spread about these same lizards, the Black Alpensalamander. They are very rare and only live above 700 metres altitude. They also have the peculiar property of being able to regrow any limb should they lose it. Hence the Alpensalamander is of great interest to scientists and stem cell researchers. There is in fact a website where one is requested to record sightings of the little critter - www.alpensalamander.eu.

I have attached a few photos and the poem:

The Alpensalamander



O salamander, from which dark crevice did you crawl?
From which crazed poet’s fantasy did you creep?
How came you by a black so deep?
How is it that your lightless eyes can see at all?


What dread hand crafted your shiny carapace?
What dread thought your inscrutable face?
Who shaped your back like a wet tire?
Did he know the fearful dreams you would inspire?


The imaginations of the most perverse,
Could not conceive a visage so alien.
You were created from a dread, a chant, a curse,
O fearful reptile, so far from the familiar mammalian!


If I were to cut you, would you bleed black blood?
If I were to crush you, would the world implode?
Are you mortal? Made of flesh, or clay, or mud?
Are you antediluvian? Do you remember the flood?


You sit immobile on my little finger,
What dismal end do you portend?
Of what dark fate are you a harbinger?
Or do you order the long night to descend?


O salamander, do not scrutinize me so!
My race is young and foolish, that I know;
You who are unchanged since the primordial soup,
Grant us the time, allow us to regroup.


Imperturbable, implacable divinity,
The cycle of samsara you have transcended.
Blindly you gaze into lifeless infinity,
And all that is and was, was by you intended.


From your ancient vantage point, how ignorant we must appear;
Sub specie æternitatis, to what folly we adhere.
Now your magnanimity I implore:
Do not condemn us to non-being; do not close the door.


O salamander, do not cease to think on us:
Allow the world to dawn once more.
Tomorrow we progress, we chase success,
We will run further, climb higher, reach the distant shore.

15. Bay to Breakers

I had heard about Bay-to-Breakers. I knew it was a running race from one side of San Francisco to the other. My friend J had told me that spectators accompany the runners and often wear fancy dress. However, I had no idea of the scale of the event, although I gained a sense of the level of dedication with which it is celebrated when I went to J’s house the night before.

J is a psychology student on my course. When I saw him on the eve of the race he was busy shaving off large quantities of his housemates’ hair in order to craft spectacular Mohicans and mullets. One of J’s housemates is a handsome man with delicate features and plentiful dark hair, much like Jim Morrison before the rock'n'roll lifestyle took its toll. After being shorn, J’s mulleted flatmate looked like a mid western redneck noodler – the crazy people who pull catfish from their lairs by encouraging the fish to swallow the their hand. Anyway, when I asked J’s friend why he wanted to look like that, he said it was to get into the spirit of Bay-to-Breakers.

A Noodler

Very few people actually run the race. For the vast majority it is an opportunity to dress up, to drink alcohol in public (usually illegal), and to walk the 7 miles from the Bay Bridge in the east to ocean beach – the breakers – on the far western edge of the city. Streets are closed to traffic and music is pumped out from houses and ghetto blasters and garage bands and huge speakers wheeled along in shopping trolleys.

I arrived at the Ferry Building at 7.45am, a quarter of an hour before the race was due to start. It was a bright, sunny morning and the weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 90s, unusual in San Francisco. On J’s advice I was carrying a backpack full of beer and tequila. The crowd at the Ferry building was so dense that it was impossible to make out where the race started. Adding to the general confusion were the thousands of soft tacos which were whizzing through the air, don’t ask me why. If you got hit by one it was easily recycled – you just picked it up and sent it spinning on its way towards the next victim.

Around 8 o’clock the huge crowd started shuffling forward. Progress was slow but this allowed plenty of time to observe people’s fancy dress. Flying pigs were a big theme this year. I also saw ten or fifteen totally naked older men, another legal transgression to which the authorities turn a blind eye on this day. There was a team of walking vaginas but my favourite were the fifty individuals dressed as fish who walked in the opposite direction to the rest of the parade – salmon swimming upstream. In previous years there have apparently been teams dressed as bears who attack the salmon as they pass.

After half an hour the heat was already intense. I met up with J and his housemates. By this stage everyone was already swigging from cans of beer. We walked alongside a few larger floats for a while. However, even the biggest of these were DIY jobs, usually pushed along using man power. The big corporate sponsorship which is a feature of both the Notting Hill and the Rio carnivals was absent. Also absent was any sense of threat; no one seemed worried about being mugged or stabbed and people put their bags and rucksacks down very casually when they wanted to dance.

As the parade made its way westwards we occasionally stopped off in the apartments of friends who lived along the route. Rejoining the throng on Fell street, I could see nothing but brightly dressed revellers stretching away for a number of miles ahead of me. I had still not seen a single runner. Personally, I found myself reveling in San Francisco’s attitude: a running race with all the excitement and fanfare and cheering of a marathon, but without the actual running.
The sun had risen higher into the sky and the incline up Fell Street proved quite taxing. The air was windless and perspiration was plentiful. Some homeowners stood in front of their houses with garden hoses and sprayed cooling jets of water over anyone that requested it (and over a few that didn’t). The Ghostbusters float overtook me, followed by at least a hundred people dancing to the famous feel good theme tune.

Cooling Off

Reaching the top of the hill on Fell Street, we sat down on the lush grass of Alamo square, overlooking the city. A stranger placed a bong into my hand and passed me his lighter. There was a cooling breeze coming from the distant ocean, still far out of sight. I was struck by how many young, beautiful people I could see. I know that is the image which the rest of the world has of California, but up until now it has not been borne out by my experience. The cooling breeze ruffled the girls' hair which could not have been shinier in the bright clear sunlight. They have clean hair, these American girls. And throughout the day I repeatedly noticed how many of them smelled of vanilla. It is the same smell as peppermint tictacs which, apparently, are coated with vanilla.

Alamo Square

After a while I rejoined the throng. I thought to myself that in many ways the event resembled a music festival with fancy dress. However, personally I have never been a fan of music festivals. I find them slightly aimless. After an hour or two I tire of seeking my own gratification. I think that one of the things that appealed to me so much about Bay-to-Breakers was that I had a sense of purpose: to get to the ocean. The end of land. What a wonderful, simple, manageable goal.

I often find myself talking about the importance of living in the moment, but very rarely do I actually do so. I am usually too busy looking forward to something, or thinking back to something else. Even on a holiday I have been looking forward to, I often find myself, once there, looking forward to how relaxed and well I will feel by the end of the holiday. Bay-to-Breakers was different. I was never not in the moment. And really, isn't that a big part of the secret of happiness? To exist fully in the moment in relation to whatever you are doing.

There was a period of an hour or so when all the various factors came together to create a genuine sense of euphoria. The effects of alcohol and pot must be acknowledged. The effects of the intense heat too: heat like that breaks down the boundaries between people. It makes the limits of our individualities seem more fluid. Interactions occur which would be unimaginable between people on a frosty day, wrapped up in overcoats and hats and scarves. And nor can I deny the positive effect of pretty, scantily clad girls in bikinis and cowboy boots, and those little shorts worn by college athletes.

I found myself tracing a proud lineage back to San Francisco’s Summer Of Love and the hippie movement. Usually I am skeptical of hippies with their conspiracy theories and holier-than-thou attitudes and nebulous thinking. However, something about the universal positivity, the bonhomie, and the absence of any sense of menace at Bay-to-Breakers made me reevaluate my usual attitude. Maybe humans are more capable of creating their own reality than I generally acknowledge, and maybe unregulated human life need not be Hobbesian - i.e. ‘nasty, brutish and short.’

In retrospect, I must clarify that I am not suggesting that the global economy could be run on the principles of free love, or even that a single country could function without regulation and organization on some level. However, I am left thinking that there are a lot of nice people in San Francisco. English teachers the world over would have their red pens poised over the word ‘nice’, but that is really what I mean. What I take away from Bay-to-Breakers is that, under certain conditions, it is possible for people to express their essential niceness. No matter how unusual those conditions, it is nevertheless heartening to experience that.

For the last few miles through the Golden Gate park I attached myself to the ragged end of the parade. In the distance I could see the sparkling ocean. I chatted to various stragglers, including an American Austro-phile clad in Lederhosen which he had purchased on EBay. Around four in the afternoon I reached the wide windy sand of Ocean Beach. I continued walking and dove into the icy breakers. The water’s restorative embrace constituted the perfect coda.

14. Naga

For my current practicum placement I am working at an educational and therapeutic day treatment centre for emotionally dysfunctional children aged between 8 and 13 in Oakland. There are only about 14 children at the centre, and they are all black or Latino. There are about 12 staff; the ratio is impressive. Most of the staff are full time but there are a few like me who are only there a day or two a week. However, the kids require that level of supervision. They will be quiet and attentive one moment, and often quite sweet too, then raving lunatics the next. That is not the technical term.

It is very hard to tell what pushes their buttons. It can often be something totally innocuous, like someone not passing the ball to them while playing football. Then they will storm off the pitch screaming blue murder and weeping uncontrollably. One of our pedagogic aims is to prevent them from venting frustration on each other. It is considered a minor triumph if they go and kick the living daylights out of a door or a fencepost instead.

During classes I have been roped in as an assistant teacher. I am trying to teach the fundamentals of adding and subtracting. It can be a pretty frustrating process. I am used to being able to break things down into ever simpler concepts until a student understands a basic principle, then you can build things up from there. However, with basic arithmetic you get to a point at which things cannot be made any simpler. You hit an explanatory rock bottom. Many of these kids have some form of cognitive delay and they won’t ‘get it’ even at the most basic level. As soon as I hide the counters or beads or whatever, they founder. It’s a pretty tiring and unrewarding process and the teachers who work with these kids have the patience of saints.

Kids are allowed to walk out of the classroom at any time. They are encouraged to do so if they feel that they may shortly lose emotional control, though very few of them have that level of self-awareness. There are a few who abuse the system by walking in and out of the classroom whenever it suits them, though this does detract from their ‘reward time’ later. I often find myself wondering what would have happened to one of these children had they been put through an English Prep School like my own. Would the high levels of discipline and the constant threat of punishment have had a salutary or a detrimental effect? How do symptoms of Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder respond to cold morning runs, hours of mud-clearing and the occasional application of Mr. Perry’s slipper? It would make for an interesting piece of research.

I had to present a case study on one of the children at the treatment centre. I chose to write about Kenny (not his real name). Kenny is a 10 year old African-American boy. Most of the time he is extremely charming and engaging. However, his tantrums have to be seen to be believed. I was unaware that it is possible to cry as vigorously as he does: the tears actually jump off his face like little bullets.

Kenny’s great love is nature documentaries, particularly anything concerning lizards, snakes or crocodiles. His depth of knowledge about reptiles is astounding, as is the complexity of the vocabulary he uses. He invents extremely imaginative stories and blends fact and fiction in very fanciful ways. I often talk to him about snakes; he seems to find it very calming. I think he is gratified by my interest and relishes the opportunity of displaying his mastery of a subject. This is rare for him since his reading and arithmetic are both developmentally delayed.

Kenny grew up in a broken home. His father was in and out of jail. He frequently moved house with his mother and continues to do so. As a 5 year old he formed a close friendship with a 7 year old girl who was then diagnosed with a brain tumour and died shortly after. Kenny arrived at the school two years ago with a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, recently Kenny has started having auditory and visual hallucinations. He reports hearing voices and seeing a ‘Naga’ and a ‘shotting gun’. He claims there are homeless men ‘making dukie’ around his front door and that he has to clear it up (which his mother says is untrue) and he has started defecating around the house. At times Kenny runs out of the classroom with his hands over hears ears. He goes to the quiet room where he writhes around on the floor. He has now been diagnosed with Schizophreniform Disorder, a version of Schizophrenia.

Recently I sat in on a therapy session with Kenny. The therapist asked him to draw a picture of himself. He drew a stick man with a peculiar appendage emerging from his hand. The therapist then asked him to draw how he felt. Kenny drew a box and coloured one half yellow and the other half red. The therapist asked him to draw how he would like to feel; Kenny drew lots of stick men.

The therapist then asked Kenny to explain the drawings. Kenny stated that the first drawing was himself and his ‘Naga’. He didn’t want to dwell on it. The second drawing, the red and yellow halves of a square, was the way he felt because he always has a sense of being pulled in two different directions. One is his good side, the other is his bad side. The drawing of lots of people represents how he would like to feel because, as he said, ‘I want to return to my people’.
When Kenny had left, I asked the therapist about the ‘Naga’. Apparently, ‘Naga’ is the name that Kenny gives to his animal spirit who is with him at all times. Kenny’s ‘Naga’ is a lizard. This is very similar to the ‘daemons’ in the Philip Pullman series. The therapist told me to look up ‘Naga’ on wikipedia, which I did:

Nāga (Sanskrit: IAST: nāgá, Indonesian: naga, Javanese: någå, Khmer: neak) is the Sanskrit and Pāli word for a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very large snake - specifically the King Cobra, found in Hinduism and Buddhism. The use of the term nāga is often ambiguous, as the word may also refer, in similar contexts, to one of several human tribes known as or nicknamed "Nāgas"; to elephants; and to ordinary snakes, particularly the King Cobra and the Indian Cobra, the latter of which is still called nāg in Hindi and other languages of India.

Naga Goddess

The therapist came across this by accident. She asked Kenny how he had found out about Naga. Kenny says that he invented the word. If that is true, then it is powerful evidence for Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious.

*

On Friday night I went out with a friend from my judo club. The judo club attracts a colourful mix of people. The head Sensei is a 50 year old, two time Olympian (heavyweight) who trains San Francisco’s SWAT teams. Grappling on the floor with him is a farcical business. It is like being slowly crushed to death by an enormous Boa Constricta. He barely has to make the slightest effort and keeps up a lighthearted commentary whilst manoeuvring his weight onto my chest; that is sufficient to make me tap out.

My friend, on the other hand, is quite proud of his ghetto heritage. He is also powerful but not in the same league as the head sensei. Sartorially there is more than a small nod to Turtle, the character from Entourage. Think baggy.

After judo we went to a nightclub South of Market called Mighty’s. My friend used to work there as a bouncer so we were ushered past the considerable queue. As soon as we got in we saw two stocky young men trying to get at each other but just about being restrained by their respective groups of friends. My friend tensed his shoulders, puffed out his chest and made a beeline for the melee. I prayed that I wouldn’t be expected to get involved in some local turf war. Looking around, I realized I was the only white person. In itself that wouldn’t worry me, but I realized that statistically it was quite likely that at least one of the patrons of the club would be an older version of the kids I work with at the treatment centre. That particular patron might not know his tai-otoshi from his seoi-nagi, but I still wouldn’t rate my chances for a second.

Fortunately, the situation diffused itself. For the next two hours I was mesmerized by some extremely high level Bboy dance-offs – all entirely spontaneous. Circles were formed, battle lines drawn; perhaps the turf war was resolved that way. In the past I have introduced my one and a half pseudo breakdance moves to the slippery dancefloors of Salzburg. This would have been a very different proposition. The only person who might have carried it off would be my friend A.S. I laughed quietly to myself at the thought of him garnishing his legs – his signature move - in the thick of this ‘tuff krowd’.

As we were leaving I spotted a girl with Down Syndrome leaning against a pillar on the edge of the dancefloor, contentedly tapping time. She was wearing a bandana, sideways baseball cap, baggy dungarees, chunky jewelry etc – the whole rude girl outfit. My own sister has Down Syndrome and it is a condition I associate with greater innocence/naivety/childishness; in short, with the polar opposite of street/rude/bling…call it what you will. I have no doubt that this girl shared those characteristic Down’s traits. However, I couldn’t help finding her appearance extremely incongruous. I suppose that is her everyday reality and I shouldn’t be surprised by it. Nevertheless, it has left me thinking that Mighty’s is the real deal.

13. Sea Lions on the Pier

Rather a long time since I last posted on here. That's because I have been working on an oil painting. I am pleased with it, but it has taken me a long time.

I bought an audio CD of Moby Dick to listen to while painting. That helped to get me in the mood.

12. Ice-Cold in Alex

My friend Alex takes a dip in the bay:

11. Be warned, blog haters...

...this is blog writing at its self-indulgent best. Or worst, depending on your outlook. But essentially it's all about me. And my life. And there's no reason why I expect you to be interested. But if you've got this far, then maybe you are interested, and I'm grateful for that.

I am sitting in my kitchen. It’s raining outside, as it has been for about the last ten days. That’s fine though. ‘We needed it,’ as everyone keeps saying.

The apartment I rent is a sort of L-shape. The corner of the kitchen where I am sitting is in the crook of the L. Diagonally opposite, a couple of metres away, is my bedroom window. The paint is peeling off the window frame. Underneath, the wood is sodden. The peeling paint pleases me. It makes me think of seaside towns in winter, boarded up and empty. But if this were my own apartment, then the peeling paint would annoy me. It would be another thing to ‘get done’. Another item for the mental check list. How tiresome.

On the table in front of me is a plate with condiments: red Tabasco, green Tabasco (the large bottles are only available here in America), Kikkoman soy sauce, salt, pepper, Dijon mustard. I wonder about the mustard. Should it be kept in the fridge? Does it go off? I have never seen it go off. And in the middle of all the other condiments, a large and proud bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce. I use a lot of Worcester sauce; it goes into bullshot, my favorite beef broth-based vodka cocktail (beef broth is also only available here. It is similar to consommé but non-gelatinous and hence ideal for drinks, though possibly not to everyone’s taste).

I have a friend in finance who was once taken on a tour of the Lea & Perrins factory. He says he saw enormous vats of Worcester sauce slowly churning. The full recipe is a closely guarded secret but one of the more surprising ingredients is the juice squeezed from the bodies of anchovies.

On the walls I have two maps of San Francisco. I know my way around fairly well now, so they are not really necessary. But I have a friend in Wales who does lots of extreme army things and he has a big map of the Brecon Beacons on his kitchen wall. I think I may have projected my admiration for his extreme activities onto his map (not literally, that would be disgusting), which is why I like the maps on my own kitchen walls.

There is also a calendar on my wall. On the cover is a picture of a winsome blond waif with pouting lips and bedroom eyes. Cassandra Cass, Fantasy Girl 2009 is emblazoned across the front in a sparkly pink cursive script. Cassandra’s own handwriting reads: To Claus! Thanks for last night I didn’t feel a thing! Love! Cassandra Cass.

Let me explain: I have another army friend who lives in Los Angeles and who came to visit me in San Francisco for the weekend. He was one of the first openly gay officers in the British Army. As an aside, I once saw him show the shamrock tattooed on his butt cheek to General Sir Mike Jackson, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, in the Sunny Bar of the Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz. The formidable bags under General Jackson’s eyes, then still extant, wobbled visibly.

My ex-army friend took me along to a drag show brunch at the Sir Francis Drake hotel. At this bizarre event, drag queens parade up and down miming a number of gay anthems while a lot of octogenarians politely nibble at their waffles. One of the drag queens was the most attractive woman I have yet seen in San Francisco. Or rather, she would have been the most attractive woman, if she hadn’t been a man. From observing her/him, it was impossible to tell. Beautiful feminine features, perfect breasts and a slender stomach without a trace of male musculature. It was only when I spoke to Cassandra at the end of brunch that her manly voice confirmed what my friend had been insisting upon. It felt rather odd to have been taken in so completely. Nevertheless, I am sure there are many who unhappily don’t make that discovery until later. Or happily; who am I to judge.

*

I have been reading an article on Freud. He has been quoted as saying:

‘In distinction from the successful man of action who is able to impose his wishes on reality, or the artist who transforms them into works of art, the neurotic escapes from reality through his symptoms.’

If Freud is correct, then the more neurotic potential a person has, the better an artist they could turn out to be. At least, they would have more raw material to turn into art, so long as they possessed the means. This makes me worry that I may not be neurotic enough; if I were more neurotic, I’d have more raw material. I am worried about not worrying enough, which is neatly self-defeating. Although, having realized that, I have now temporarily ceased to worry and the cycle can begin again.

10. Søren the Seal

Søren lived in San Francisco bay. He was a young seal, a seal pup in fact. But his fur was no longer white and soft as it had been when he was born. No, it was sleek and black and the water just dripped off it so Søren never felt wet or cold.

There were many other seals in the bay and lots of them secretly wanted a coat as sleek and shiny as Søren’s. But Søren himself never really thought about the way he looked. The one thing he was proud of was his name, Søren. It was a very rare name. He had inherited it from his grandfather. Søren’s grandfather was a great Danish seal who had swum all the way to San Francisco from Copenhagen a long time ago. He had to dodge the ice bergs in the arctic circle and escape from the Polar bears in the Bering straights.

Søren was very proud of his name. He knew that it was very unusual to have a line through the ‘o’. Also, he was very proud of the bravery of his grandfather. But the seals in the bay did not see things the way Søren did. ‘Why did your grandfather have to swim all the way here?’ they asked. ‘What a waste of energy. Just think of how many disgusting fish he would have had to eat along the way. Such a profligate use of resources.’

And that was another thing: all the seals in San Francisco bay were Californian seals. None of them ate fish. They only ate seaweed. But Søren hated seaweed, and he loved good Danish herring. Unfortunately, being a seal, he only had flippers and no hands, and so he could never brush his teeth.

‘Go away Søren, your teeth are totally gross,’ said the Californian seals whenever Søren wanted to lie down amongst them on the pier.

‘What terrible fish breath,’ said the tourists on Fisherman’s Wharf who came to photograph the seals as they were sunning themselves.

One day the Chief Sea Lion summoned Søren. He was very good at yoga and he liked to show off his flexibility to the tourists. ‘Really Søren,’ he said, ‘this has gone far enough. Either you change your diet, or you go elsewhere.’

‘Seaweed makes me feel sick,’ said Søren. ‘Please let me stay here. I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘Your bad teeth and fishy breath are giving us all a bad name,’ replied the Chief Sea Lion as he struck another pose for the tourists. ‘You are not wanted here.’

‘But I don’t have anywhere else to go,’ repeated Søren.

‘That is not my problem,’ said the Chief Sea Lion, lowering his bulk into yet another sun salutation. The tourists’ cameras flashed.

Søren slipped off the pier and poured himself into the water like smooth black oil. He was very sad.

Søren swam slowly towards the Golden Gate Bridge which spans the entrance to the bay. As he passed under the bridge he turned round to look for one last time at the beautiful bay and the skyline of San Francisco and the happy seals sunning themselves on Fisherman’s Wharf. A salty tear hung for a moment on the end of his droopy whiskers before being swallowed up by the salty ocean.





Søren turned back round and was about to strike out for the distant blue horizon when something on the bridge caught his eye. He had to squint in order to make out the figure on the side of the bridge. Søren saw a girl in a bright red pompom hat. She seemed to be tearing up a sheet of paper. Though she was a long way away, Søren thought she looked very sad. When she had torn up all the paper she threw the pieces into the wind. Then she closed her eyes, raised her face to the sky and lifted her arms.

‘Oh no,’ thought Søren, ‘she’s going to jump!’ Like all the seals in the bay, Søren knew that people sometimes jumped off the bridge into the sea when they were very unhappy.

‘I must try to stop her,’ he thought. So he swum as quickly as he could into the middle of the channel, right underneath the girl. Then he leapt out of the water and did a somersault and a back flip and all sorts of other tricks. He smiled and giggled and chuckled and laughed and made it look like he was having the time of his life. It was not easy because inside he still felt sad.

The girl heard Søren splashing in the water underneath her and she opened her eyes. She watched for a while and Søren jumped even higher and twisted and turned even more acrobatically in the air. Then, finally, the girl smiled. Søren waved his flipper at her and she waved back at him. Then she climbed back over the side of the bridge and was gone.

*

Søren was exhausted. Nevertheless, he felt he had done a good thing. He pointed his nose out to sea and began to swim. His heart felt lighter than before.

Søren swam throughout the rest of that day, and through the night, and through the next day. He didn’t know where he was going but, like his grandfather, he decided to trust his luck. By daybreak on the third day he was very tired indeed. He thought about sleeping for a while but he knew that if he slept the sharks could creep up on him unawares. Nevertheless, he felt his eyelids closing. He tried to fight the tiredness but eventually it was too much for him and he let his eyes stay closed. He was on the verge of dropping off to sleep when he heard a voice:

‘Oi, mate, I wouldn’t kip ‘ere. The sharks'll 'ave ya.’

Søren opened his eyes and saw a disheveled man sitting on a surf board with a broken kite in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

‘Um, yes, thank you,’ said Søren. ‘It’s just that I’m very tired and I don’t know where I’m going. But what are you doing here?’

‘Got blown off course didn’t I,’ said the man, rubbing his big hairy tummy. ‘Went out kite surfing and a sudden gale swept me away. Took me right up above the clouds. Quite a rush, I can tell you. I was up there a long time and the wind just got stronger and stronger until eventually it tore the kite, then I dropped back down. I’ve been here for three days now. No wind you see.’ The man paused to relight his cigarette. ‘So what’s your business out here?’ he asked Søren.

‘Well, I’m actually a bit lost,’ admitted Søren. ‘The chief Sea Lion told me to leave San Francisco, so I decided to swim out to sea until I found a new place to live. I haven’t seen anything yet though.’

‘There’s no land anywhere near here, I can tell you. I’ve seen it all from the sky. But why did you have to leave San Francisco?’

Søren felt himself blushing underneath his sleek black fur. If the man hadn’t noticed his oral hygiene problems, maybe he shouldn’t mention them? But then he reminded himself that it is always best to tell the truth. ‘Well,’ began Søren, ‘the Chief Sea Lion said that my teeth are in poor condition and that my breath smells. But that’s only because I like eating fish.’

Søren was cut off by the man’s raucous laughter - he had thrown his head back and was guffawing at the sky. His hairy tummy bounced up and down over his swimming trunks.

‘Oh that’s a good one,’ he said, when eventually he had stopped laughing. ‘Well my friend, you should come to England. Everyone has bad teeth and smelly breath there, and no one thinks anything of it.’ The man rubbed his tummy once more.

‘Really?’ asked Søren tentatively. ‘How do you know?’

‘I know because I am from England,’ said the man. He smiled and Søren saw that he really had very bad teeth indeed.

‘But where is England?’ asked Søren.

‘It’s a long way from here, that’s for sure,’ said the man. ‘I can use the stars to get me there but the problem is that with a broken kite and without any wind, I’ll never make it.’

Søren thought for a moment. ‘Couldn’t I pull you?’ he asked the man.

‘It’s a very long way and there won’t be much to eat,’ replied the man, ‘but I like the idea. Do you think you’re strong enough?’

‘I think so,’ said Søren. ‘My grandfather swam all the way from Denmark to San Francisco through the arctic circle. I think I can swim back.’

‘Well, we can use the Panama Canal now,’ said the man. ‘If you are willing to give it a go, I certainly am.’

So Søren took the kite in his mouth and started pulling the man along behind him. Occasionally the man shouted out directions. They traveled mostly by night so that the man could navigate by the stars. Fortunately they came across a huge school of herring along the way, so Søren was able to sate his hunger.

*

Søren and the man journeyed for many days. They passed through tremendous storms and huge rolling swells which made even Søren feel seasick. They swum between the towering walls on either side of the Panama Canal and were lucky to avoid being run down by one of the enormous oil tankers. In the windless Sargasso Sea, Søren had to battle his way through endless seaweed and through the nests of eels who make their home there. When they met the Gulf Stream, Søren's companion was badly stung by the trailing tentacle of a Portuguese Man of War. Søren had to pee on the livid weals; disgusting as it may sound, according to many people that is the best thing to do.

For a number of days they were able to float along with the current of the Gulf Stream. However, there were no more herring and Søren soon felt very weak. But just as he thought that he would not be able to swim much further, he noticed that the sea seemed to be changing colour. It was no longer the deep blue of the mid-Atlantic; the water was a bit greener and a bit greyer. ‘It’s not far now, I can feel it in my bones,’ said the man. And he was right. Shortly after sunrise Søren caught his first glimpse of England’s cliffs rising proudly above the waves.

Søren dragged himself and his companion ashore at Land’s End. They were both exhausted. However, Søren soon found himself surrounded by a crowd of beautiful Cornish seals.

‘Where are you from?’ asked one of the young seals. She was snaggletoothed but Søren thought she was the prettiest seal he had ever seen.

‘San Francisco,’ said Søren.

‘That can’t be true. He must be lying. No one could swim all the way from San Francisco,’ said one of the cynical older seals.

‘I think it might be true,’ said the pretty young seal. ‘He can’t possibly be an English seal. Just look how fine his teeth are.’

When he heard that, Søren's heart leapt. He staggered over to his friend the kite-surfer and embraced him. Then he lay down to rest. That evening he told his story to an assembly of all the Cornish seals, but he didn’t say anything about bad teeth or smelly breath because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Søren settled in the small, sheltered cove beside the cliffs at Land’s End. He married the pretty, snaggletoothed seal who had spoken to him when he first dragged himself ashore. On windy days he still goes out swimming and sometimes he bumps into his friend the kite-surfer, and then they talk about their great adventure together.