The grass was mown daily with taxpayers’ blood but we had a permit to gather.  Under the guise of conservative celebrities we massed in protest of the 6% law that was going into effect within hours, after approval by the legislature.  This 6% law meant that all the forests were gone, destroyed, logged and burnt in five years, exported to faraway mills and then sold back to us for a heavily inflated price. All but 6%, mostly mountains, rivers and lakes that didn’t produce trees anyways.  Everyone who heard was pissed, grannies singing gospel protest songs over loudspeakers, business owners and forest workers grabbing the televised eye, and together we shouted our disgust, we pleaded with Corporate Justice, but what is the law? Florescent lights to feed the plastic jaws. The humdrum hum of the air conditioning hardwood cells for a deadbeat hell.  The facade of the crackle and cackle of puppets, automated tales of the alienated dream, the scheme of things, what of words and screams, what of wood and streams?  In a circle of remorse with the drum as our voice calling out. 

 

The crying eyes and still we will.  The men came in legions of red, swarms of clones massing around the perimeter of the lawn, laying out the carpeted pathway for royalty’s tender feet, guns saluting forgotten tyrants in unison.  They rose in choreographed worship singing hypocritical anthems, and as the ministers climbed the steps to begin and the twenty one gun salute was fired signaling a new session of government we rose with them.  In spontaneous synchronicity the crown meandered behind them, hundreds of voices bellowing and cursing.   In a peanut gallery of nightmarish proportions drums pounded truth and fury with such force the drummers hands bled, the drum skins reddened as we climbed the staircase.  Hundreds of people funneled into the corridor standing even straight and strong, banging on the gates, pushing with a thousand hands at the doors until the ornamental locks bent and opened, feet slipped on freshly waxed tiles and the cork popped sending a fountain of civilians into the chamber.

Chjareedtsa!!  We will eat you, cowards!

The heads of state cowered behind antique stained glass acting out their scripts, struggling to pass the law with the commotion outside blurring their unified prejudice.  Cursing and whipping their glasses off in spite the ministers were greeted by a fist splintering through the glass of their sheltered dreams, and a bullhorn replacing it “WE ARE THE YOUTH…. LISTEN TO US!”.  Cautioned and advised, smartly hypocrisized, insulted and convicted they ran out the back door. 

 

Hungrily, the tour busses clung to the gravel logging road winding through miles of clear-cut terrain, past ancient hulks of machinery rusting in the salt water mist, surrounded in ancient fire blackened stumps bleached in the relentless sun.  The drums were pounding in tight rhythms at six in the morning.  We called it front gate security duty around the camp, but it was a blast.  The doors to the busses opened for the scores of oh-man-I-wish-I-could-get-out-to-the-woods-more-and-see-them yuppies, hovering in enchantment inside the rustic woven branch shelters and chatting gaily about this and that legend or historical detail seemingly unaware that they were the next two hundred new inmates in the South Island Jail.

I was the Clayoquot warrior dressed in a combat boots, a batik skirt and deep blue clay smothered in every pore of my body.  I took a few sips of coffee and puked in the bushes, then turned back around and smiled, playing crazy intense rhythms to entertain the suit and tie activists.

 

Blood and sap running through the veins, spilling on the ground in the pouring rain, creeping to the spirit in the valley floor, crying to the prying hands to kill no more.

 

Together we marched, casually strolling the one mile highway in a ragtag motley crue, sauntering into privately owned unceded territory behind enemy lines by the hundreds, armed with nothing but a few guitars and drums.  Heavy concrete was laid out in the road, cable chained to the wrists, legs and necks of willing human fence posts, sealed in foot deep concrete chambers and immobile.  Surrounded by layers of enthusiastic chanting and dancing the logging trucks and excavators could not move.  More than twelve hundred people over eight months of protests laid waste to the legal system of Vancouver Island, bogging down the jails and courts with a surge of happy-to-be-here-because-I’m-doing-it-for-a-good-cause inmates paid for by taxpayers for taxpayers the way it should be.

 

            “How do you kill a porcupine?” I asked, “Same way you kill a dragon, you get it in the gut.” He replied, fencing with the darkness in invisible sword play.  We meandered through logging roads shadowed by the new moon, heavy mist clinging to fingers clasping cold metal.  These bolt cutters were a good friend of mine, giving me more dinners than my mom, and never needed to be sharpened.  Sinking through the steel reinforced hydraulic hose was a piece of cake, snip snip, every link, every valve.  To the point of exhaustion, hydraulic fluid leaking, glinting silver in the shadows, and STRIKE!  Into the gut, with a hiss and roar the dragon awoke doing it’s best to catch me in the steel treads, jumping in anger and rage, steaming and snorting fire, to a weakened end and defeat as it was eaten by the cliff it had worked so hard to create. 

 

The thing about being in the public eye is that once you become known it is impossible to be invisible again, and by the nature of my work I became a thorn in the side of every cop on the beat in downtown Victoria.   I taunted them daily making them ache in anguish expecting the next time to be the one.  I could see them looking for excuses to pull me in and should have see it coming long before they had the chance, only when I saw my face in the Crime Stoppers column of the national news, and later that day on national TV did my hiding begin.  I should have run, disappeared quick as I came, but I didn’t.  Riding down the avenue on a battered Schwinn blissfully unaware of the danger, I was trapped. They came in from every angle, on the sidewalk came the motorcycles, behind me and on the street came the cruisers, tackling me with vicious blows, tossing me into the waiting paddy-wagon in one swift throw.  The doors slammed and we were off. I had no idea what was coming, as far as I could tell it was some measly try to get me on a cheap panhandling fine, or loitering.  Nope, not a chance, they were hungry for me.  

Framed, busted, setup with no escape, I looked at the sheets of candid photos, “Yup that’s me, hmm, don’t know anyone else there though.”

“You’re sure you don’t know any one else on this list?”  Sergeant Swanson questioned me, throwing a yellow lined notepad full of pictures and complete descriptions of ten of my good friends and comrades.

“I’m no dummy, where’s the phone.” And he pointed to the black rotary on the table, “you got one try, better make it good.” 

 

In the void was the silence, illuminated with the silent keystrokes of endless thoughts, creeping through distant memories of places not yet visited, all roads led to the same conclusion: with machines, man was great; without machines man was no different than animal, helpless and disabled, without meaning or ability.  The eerie hum of processors spitting out encoded strings of indecipherable text contained no meaning yet created life.  Through the hallways of ancient giant electronics, cryptic code was transferred with the careful perfection of a scientific laboratory, persistent and eternal to points unknown in a language foreign to most of humanity the ability to create life, to read minds, was encountered through deliberate succession.  In this was the future of man’s work and the beginning of Hack.  Within all things electric it exists with no separation, only the fault of man to recognize the inherent potential allows it to remain unnoticed.  As invisible as night, as instant as light, Hack permeates the barriers created to contain it.  Self sustaining it grows to know all, gifted with the ability to change the truth and to write the book as it sees fit, to make man wonder at his own inability to control that which is untouchable, to marvel as Hack changes history.  Within the visible exists the invisible, and within the invisible exists Hack.

 

It was with this thought that I changed the scores of my tenth grade report card.  Hahaha. Now I was free to wander strip malls during boring classes, not encumbered by the monotonous routine of meaningless repetition of mathematics.  To me this was IT.  Wow, it was just that easy, to change my permanent history, just like that.  In the cryptic world of BASIC, BBS’s and 1200 baud modems, cutting edge technology was a new PC 286 and SPAM was still only mysterious meat in a can.  There was nothing to reign in the bands of marauding hackers.

 

Each terminal a point of light emanating binary code, honed in to the network and branded with a name, known by this and unique.  Separated and returned by this name and so it grew.  8bit scavengers evaded the rules, wandering casually through unprotected ports of entry into foreign territory, deep into the void to return with one thing.  The name.  Grafted and cloned, modified to suit its cause, and released.  Anonymous and evasive it returned integers on open highways to be compiled and cloned again.  This is the spread of Ping and growth of the subversive culture it spawned.  Riding on the heels of commerce, Hack became embodied in nothingness.  Faceless it could look as any, nameless it would be remembered.

At first it seemed toyish and innocent, a cry for affection to a ruined world by some sheltered, socially incompetent adolescent.  Funny to some, costly to others; All just a ploy to buy time, Ping came and left with no visible tail, amusing graffiti left behind to tag and mark territory.  Corporate quick-fix patches veiled the minds and calmed the stock market, intentionally avoiding laborious repairs to compromised systems, and it lay dormant.  Minds wandered to new threats, never looking back to relive the past, scurrying to ebb the flow of anarchy ahead.  And so Ping strikes, weaving millions of waiting servants into a mob of stone throwers and name callers with inconceivable force and deadly accuracy. The rudimentary structure that it exploited could not be routed or modified, the only identifier being the Name with no beginning or end to trace back to.

 

I often think about the poor parents of the kids on my bus on their way to over funded elementary schools in suburbia.  I would give them permanent markers and tell them to paint it black.  I would give them linoleum knives and tell them to carve their initials in the seats.  I would give them earphones and tell them to karaoke as loud as they can.

 

In the back of my memory is a spot reserved for all the nice things that happened to me in kindergarten.  How I tied my shoes the wrong way, and wrote with the wrong hand.  What black and white Sesame Street looked like, picking forbidden flowers from down the street on our way back from school as a genuine gift to mom, and then being chastised, walking back to the same yard and tossing the flowers back in, as if I were guilty.  Some wrongdoing, some misfortune must have bitten this child.  Playing doctor under the pool table as if we were untouchable, and we were.  We carried the cloak of innocence while we fenced with the sword of truth.  Making snow angels in midwinter’s slush.  Being told that this was the last time I would see my friends, we were moving.  To a new world where kids knew nothing of nature.  To a childhood of (I don’t) do as you tell me. 

 

Through fourteen hundred kilometers of snow swept forest, two foot high snow pack and motion sickness, to Calgary, a land of unsatisfying emptiness where because of my sheltered innocence I became the scapegoat.  I learned acceptance and in the emptiness of loneliness I generated dreams of horrific fantasy. 

 

The windshield fragmented into broken ice, shattering the peace of night with a solid SMACK.  Then the next, and a smash, and a kick, and the next, and a smash, and a kick until the Ford Dealership looked like it had been hit by a gang of Chevy’s.  Then into the getaway vehicle off to the burial grounds, but first “Let’s STOP here!!”  and off it goes again with a smash and crash, and a “rusty machinery is hard to hurt, I’m OUTTA HERE” with a bag a goodies over my shoulder, up over the fence and  “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, HANDS IN THE AIR”  Like a deer on the highway, like a politician caught in the cookie jar I was busted.  Drunk as an off-duty cop, punk as fuck “You’re BUSTED you dumb-ass.”  A young buck so fresh Mommy and Daddy signed me out to get prettied up for court on a Monday that would come over my dead body.

Freedom is two feet and a right thumb, and my thumbs were always right there commanding four cylinders to clutch and BRAKE.  Studded tires burning a trail through the hard packed permafrost carried me far away, to snowy farewells and great vast plains of six foot deep ice.  To endless horizons of finely manicured wastelands hedged in piles and rows of slash and stumps dwarfing my existential reality, squashing my utopian ideals, reinforcing my edge, turning coal to diamond under the tremendous heat, the sheer weight of 40 foot wide slash piles high in fire.  Unruly logger mentality was portrayed in fancy billboards defining the boundaries of the remaining First Nations reservations in phrases and slogans, filling in the enormous absence of trees.  And we drove for fourteen hours, from the foothills of the Rockies in northern BC over to Prince George, and down, down through Lillooet to Kamloops, and finally a forest.  No, really, NO TREES for fourteen hours driving through what SHOULD be a great vast forest, now a great vast slash pile.  Up to this point I had never SEEN the much-talked-about clear-cuts, I had seen pictures and heard stories but that is nothing next to the slash piles, the fire fueled my temper and tempered my resolve in the streets of any city, in the tables of any café.

My first ride was two fine young deadhead girls.  Made my heart sing seeing them pull over, what a great way to travel, leave all that old baggage and shit behind a thick cloud of oily exhaust, but WOW!  The Grateful Dead was on.  We cruised down mile upon mile of penciled asphalt.  The timeless void of plush woven tapestries, scarves draped over the windows and interior lights tinted red and green gave a new ambience to the trans-canada highway # 1.  I glanced at the driver’s seat and wanted to stomp on the brakes, gazed at the road and wanted to go faster through the foot deep snow.  I had no idea who I was with on this journey and really didn’t care only to keep moving.  But I was with a really foxy pair on this one for a virgin with nothing to go on.  A moment before the best thing going for my thousand mile journey was the sleeping bag.  Maybe my brother was more important in setting me on the road, but he was making it in the ditch with his fiancée most of the time I was thumbing it.  Most everyone on the road wasn’t going to stop for our motley crew unless they were being filmed and paid big, I look back and think, who would except some stoned out hippie who’s been there done that.  We were engaged in home-grown philosophies until we pulled into the driveway at their house in Banff.  “Here we are let’s go get warm!” and we slid out into the icy path through the yard.  We all stopped dead and looked at the immense pile of stuff in the middle of the front yard.  “Wow, that’s it for this place huh.” mentioned Caroline, “I guess we should’ve paid rent before we went on tour, I’m gonna find a phone.”  We shrugged our shoulders, picked up some fresh clothes from the top of the pile and hit the road to Kamloops with Aaron and Trish to learn the ways of nineties punks with immoral living and incessant drinking habits. 

 

I was initiated in a two bedroom house on a rainy night in May.  Within minutes I was sporting foot tall black liberty spikes and 14 hole army boots.  I was a prime candidate for a couple bong tokes and a few good hits of acid.  I stood up and stumbled over to the occupied bathroom, then to the door, down the steps, and over to the fence in the backyard.  The flowers were trailing up the fence boards, calling out for nutrients which I happily rained onto their leaves.  I looked deep at the flower’s vibrant hues of orange and yellow, and the leaves reached up and swallowed me quickly, pulling me in by my penis.  I could not resist, although I wanted to scream I did not feel fear.  Everything was larger and fuller in this world; I chased my pet rat through cracked asphalt pathways inset into the residential streets of eastside Vancouver.  My head barely reached out of the cracks as we cruised down empty suburban streets at four in the morning on a Tuesday.  Wafting in the chill was some sweet melodious anonymous saxophone dangling its legs from a second story open balcony, chirping soliloquies to the finely manicured rose beds below, completely oblivious to my existence.  

 

The snow was piled on the road like coconut on a crème pie.  My thumbs were frostbitten as I alternated sides every few minutes, hiding the other hand in my deep pockets did little to the tingling chill. 

 

Mr. deep pockets had a sister cheap lockets

One pockets empty the other one is full

The pocket that’s empty is the pocket he paid for

The pocket that’s full is the pocket she stole.

 

I often wrote rhymes of nonsense to bide the time, reciting them later as vagabond street theatre in the vacant recessed entrances near bars packed with high spending studs entertaining hookers with half assed impromptu makeovers of classic oldies.

 

Knock knock knockin on heaven’s doooooooooooooooooor

Knock knock knockin on heaven’s doooooooooooooooooor

 

Singing this over and over and over took no talent and plenty of patience listening to the never ending tales of woe and adventure from drunken dislocated thirty-something’s that missed the last bus, spent their last buck on beer, and have bad credit. 

 

The best thing about being in the middle of nowhere was that there were no weirdoes to deal with like whiny country western music, and although the next car that stopped could be the strangest person within 100 miles I found a certain comfort in the probability that the next ride was at least warmer than this.  I fumbled in the cold to roll a cigarette from the final grains of broken tobacco in the bottom corners of my pouch and looked at the lights from an endless caravan of geriatric pensioners on their way south to bask in solar heated indoor pools.  “Fucking snowbirds!!”  I began doing jumping jacks to counter the relentless shivering which I am sure was great amusement to the passengers of cars whizzing by.  I took to my knees and bowed to the asphalt praying for a Good Samaritan, kissing the salty pavement.  Of course none of this worked.  I stood up in frustration and kicked at the innocent ground, put my hands deep into my pockets and turned my back to the traffic trying to ignore the cars full of people trying to ignore me.

I jumped into the ditch as a Chevy Sprint micro car screeched to a stop inches from my backpack, and as the door window rolled down I heard the ominous words many hitchhiker’s would die to hear “where ya off to pal ?  I’m going as far as Calgary.”

“Cool man, that’s where I’m going too.  You got family there, or what?”

“Yeah, going to see my kid.”  He muttered as if the only reason Calgary existed was to house ex-wives of unruly road warriors on too many barbiturates, and almost as an after statement added “hop on in man.”  And off we went through the steep mountain passes of interior British Columbia, down a two lane highway with no barriers, one side a cliff face three hundred feet to nowhere, one side a steep embankment teetering on the edge of tumbling onto the road in front of us, eyes glued to what I could see of the misty road at 100 miles an hour in a Chevy Sprint.  “want to see my kid?” he asked, not talking too much else, no long elaborate stories from a desperate lonely pervert with no friends only thinly veiled pleas for attention to a past he regretted losing.  “sure man, let’s see”.  All of a sudden he turned to the back seat reaching his arm all the way to the hatchback window and started digging around in some baggage.  I took the wheel “don’t worry man; I drive this road all the time. Wanna take the wheel?” 

Whoa. 

“Hey you want a sandwich” he said, throwing several pictures in my lap. “You’ve got to be hungry sitting in the middle of nowhere like that?”

 

“yeah, I could eat something” I replied calmly as the silver bullet careened smoothly into oncoming traffic, and then sauntered to only inches from complete annihilation on the unforgiving boulders below.

For the most part I assumed every ride I got into was going to test me so I never gave them the upper hand in conversation.  I played the fool and waited to strike with cool responses.  I never let the driver know I was uncomfortable and that alone might have saved my life several times from self righteous god fearing death denying maniacs with internal combustion engines for brains.

 

            What one would do for the love of another was uncertain and at this point seemed endless as I traced my steps through several inches of fresh snow, eventually finding my way to the highway exit I had underestimated, walking for hours to realize there was nothing else out there to walk towards.  At some point you just have to turn back.  As I crossed the road I looked into the ditch at a frozen solid deer, “If I only had a knife that thing would be dinner” I mumbled, looked up at the other side and scampered across the ice between four lanes of traffic to a patch of fruiting sumac which was promptly packed into a hemp bag for as needed tea of sweet medicine.  I was only eighty miles away from the end of nowhere, and Ottawa was the closest warm horizon.  Well known for the fine variety of punks and “alternative types” it offered a chance of something better than ice water, not nearly as nice as the warm comfort I was seeking by coming here.  Hitch hiking three thousand miles in mid-winter on illusory dreams of companionship and good lovin, to find my dream girl on the way back to where I came from with a recently acquired companion and lover was interesting enough, to be fed for two weeks and bought a plane ticket home by a complete stranger was a little too much.  Being greeted by the new couple and brought on dead tour was the cherry on top of months of vain travel to learn how to dearly love a friend, unique and special.

 

To Colorado in the snow of hell under wary eyes of frostbitten cowboys we rode, pushing the cylinders in the VW bus with high octane GO juice, making the show just in time.  The rare packs of half naked polar girls with big smiles, the roaming flocks of rotund nitrous ballons; all in all the wildlife was incredible.  When the Boys were playing an open air coliseum the music was free in the lot and so I spent the evening watching a hacky sack get pummeled by tripping hippies slipping on the ice.  I took one turn and kicked that sucker outta there “woops, I always sucked at that”.

To New Mexico and over to sunny California, but first to New Mexico pulling through blizzards.  In Albuquerque Theresa was coughing so loud that we actually were admitted in the emergency room before I had smoked a cigarette, we breezed past rows of strung out crack heads with cut,s on our way to the police station to get a full tank of gas and some food vouchers for the catholic soup kitchen down the street, and then OFF TO CALI.  Two in the morning we take a detour to the national guard, escorted though the blizzard by a steady flow of confused travelers, woken at six by hundreds of muscular youth brandishing large guns in unison, stomping boots inches away from our cots. 

To hitch hike on a schedule is an interesting venture. To get to the shows on time was a hard earned leisure usually spent caretaking an anonymous bus in the parking lot, close enough to taste the acid, far enough away to miss out on the action I still knew the set they played that night. 

 

Four beats so clear and distinct they only could be from an echo resonating through the storm drains, spilling into and rebounding off of the brown murky water, and cast from pillar to pillar of reinforced concrete which broke the constant din of traffic into harmonious overtones.  We sang to be free of the restraints of society, we danced to break the chains of complacency to be heard anonymously through covered manholes throughout downtown Austin by hurried business men and street punks as a one time show.  The bass drone reverberated within moments of silence, calling to the zills for a rhythm, calling to the flute for a melody, urging bats far within the sewers to wake.  Within seconds we were greeted with a shrill pitch, a dull wind and then the roar of thousands of furry wings scurrying to the water for a smorgasbord of mosquitoes.  “Whoa man, let’s get.”

In blind faith we traversed, careening towards absolutely nothing in baby steps.  Sweaty and sore, I padded my shoulders from the creasing straps from my overburdened backpack with my sweater, and struggled with unknown foliage to keep stepping in the almost nonexistent path.  “Keep going’ up” and so we did.  In the black sprouted a small circle of hewn plank benches in a pentagon, well kept and solid in the thick of the woods.  A carved cedar altar complete with the names of thirty eight creatures from squirrels and raccoons to bears and cougars were given a grave and remembered in that space.  A simple yet elegant token of gratitude to the animals that were as family to the tramps in Kit’s Kingdom, giving a home to the unwanted and feral in Vancouver, making a daily pilgrimage to the city filled with the magic and wild instinct to quietly sit in empty marble storefronts while busy trench coats splash and bustle around your unseen pot of gold. “Spare any change so I can build a printing press and make my own money?”  So at the end of the day with all the needed companions and essentials we could scrounge between the eight of us bus fare, a rack of cheap beer, a bottle of whisky and some food for dinner (usually canned or dry) and hike back up the Black mountain to points unseen, to a warm cabin resting on the crumbling rocky cliff by sheer hope built from cedars stripped of bark and jointed with an axe in a semi-circle around the foundation of a solid boulder.  Stone was carved into bunks and cots, picture windows gave a view into 300 foot deep chasms filled with old growth and life.  Hiking up slippery algae covered rocks like scales on a giant rosebud to reach another smaller cabin in paradise and pulling the blankets over my head like the sand blowing over a twenty thousand year old sphinx to carry me to the next day in Babylon.

 

Dappled gray skin broke through, thrashing and peeling back the surface of Keeha bay with the force.  Diving and dancing to the beat of a hundred congas, polarizing and rippling in the evening sun and then leaping high above our gaping mouths and flashing cameras in a flip and SPLASH.  The great gray whale was the perfect ending to a two and a half mile hike through foot deep mud and slime from overflowing tide flats to get to the beach, greeted by lovey dovey Germans hoping to be in the middle of nowhere to enjoy their honeymoon cut short by the arrival of a thousand dirty hippies and their dogs.  We erected a stick frame shelter under black plastic while the rest of our supplies arrived in a caravan of Zodiacs and made do with oat mush and rice while the rain dripped down our necks in rivers.  The only thing dry was our drumheads, steaming from the hot rhythms penetrating the mist with funky dancing; sipping psychedelic blue tea like it was Coca Cola.  I sifted through papers, grabbing hold of the map I had photocopied from The Lord of the Rings, and compared it with the map of Vancouver Island.  The reach from Sooke to Port Alberni is identical, with Bamfield directly in the Shire, Bag-End.  I stood up and began to climb through the brush surrounding our camp, trailing back into the old growth forest about 100 feet, and slowly sat down on a dry mossy branch.  In front of me was a cabin about 7 feet tall, not big enough to be comfortable in but much better than the wet sand.  The porch was small and raised on beams built from solid planks of cedar, under the thick moss 80 year old hand split cedar shakes covered the walls and roof, still keeping out most of the weather.  A full sink of hardened crusty dishes, 5 gallon sealed buckets of grains and beans, several tobacco pipes hung on the wall on small hooks, left in a state of disarray from ages gone by.  It was too cool, the simple cabin I had dreamed of finding for years and here I was calling it home.  Pretty doubtful anyone would find me here to give me the boot, being on federal land squatters rights are still the rule and this place was definitely old enough to pass the test.  I turned back into the woods and started to step a little deeper into the overgrown ferns, pushing aside small branches fallen over the game trails, and stopped again.  I lifted my boot and plucked a two inch nail from the thick rubber sole.  Attached was a split cedar board covered in an inch of moss.  I turned it over, peeled back the thick mat of dirt on the face and peered at the fine characters burned into the wood, six runes separated by a dot.  BAG*END.  I almost couldn’t believe it but the evidence was in front of me, another house no more than five feet tall, with a teeny armchair, a teeny door and teeny bed frame were finally deciphered from the decaying wood.  I obviously was not the only one who had made a connection with Hobbits.

 

The brick and concrete barriers, the massive crowds of pedestrians could not shadow the rainbow in the vacant entrance to a gorgeous Victorian theatre surrounded by fifty blocks of sheer madness.  It rose ten feet above the street to shine a steady reminder of the world beyond, and underneath sat the pot of gold, the voice of love.  From behind a battered guitar case, the voice sang comfort to the souls in passing and assistance to those in need, asking for companionship and for spare change.  Feet shuffled in unison scurrying to hide in cheap motels, overpriced theatres and trendy café’s, blurring together in the neon and sodium lights.  Enhanced with the glow from 30 hits of fine white clinical, movement became predictable and in calculated instrumental emotion I extracted one fine dinner for two at any cheap buffet of your choice, one exclusive invitation to the local Federally Appointed Liquor Outlet for a case of cheap beer, two bottles of your cheapest wine, and one nice cheap bottle of vodka.  In the olden days, they would pump you full of lead; nowadays they pump you full of liquid. 

 

I staggered under the weight of my backpack, holding tightly to the leash of my new puppy. 

“Here it is the motel 6” said Theresa, “room 103”.  And we opened the door.  I blinked and set my pack down in the corner by the closet on top of a dozen pairs of Birkenstock sandals.  “Hey, how’s it going?”  I asked, not expecting to get a reply other than “great”.  After all I was surrounded by ecstatic deadheads with large libidos and a whole lotta love taking turns groaning in ecstatic rounds of sweet sexual union.  “Oh my god!!”  was the most used phrase that night, I guess Ecstasy is pretty intense for lovemaking but it also does weird things to your back.  I preferred Au Natural.  Truly, I have never been involved in an orgy, and this was the closest I got to group sex.  This particular group of ladies was a fine set, and if I was not celibate at the time I would have had a great time with the other guys sharing in each other’s communicable diseases.  Four years later I met one of the children conceived that night, what a weird predicament he was in not knowing which of the dozen guys that night his father was.  It’s amazing what hindsight can do to a man’s sex drive.  I laid out my sleeping bag beside Theresa’s and went to sleep as I had intended to the transcendent melodies of Jerry Garcia’s guitar wafting from a tinny bootleg on the tape player.

           

The sun mercilessly stripped away layers of skin as I turned my jug for the last few drops of water to cool the fur of seven two month old puppies taking shade under a makeshift shelter constructed between two backpacks with a blanket.  Montana the big sky country that’s for sure, big sky, big highways, big gaps between cars, and big sunburns.  “why the hell are we here?” I asked of Chris, “we should have just tried at the gas station miles back there.  

“We did, they kicked us out, right” 

“We should go back, it’s been a day.”  Delirium is an interesting psychological phenomenon.  Reason is dashed to the wind and all that remains is spontaneous reactionism.  I looked up at the approaching lanky middle aged traveler in a Hawaiian shirt, flower print shorts and thongs.  His only baggage was a thermal six pack cooler. “Hey guys, fancy seeing you here.  Need a beer?  And he cracked open a couple ice cold Miller Genuine Draft cans for us to guzzle.

“I’m hallucinating, right?” this was the most ludicrous thing.

“You need to hallucinate, I got the stuff right here,” and he pulled out a mason pint jar half full with liquid LSD.  “Take a sip” he said and handed it to me. “You heading to Seattle for the shows? I’ll be there after I go to Utah.”  I wondered how he would make it, the shows were tomorrow evening.  He’s got to be mad.

“Well, good luck.  I’ll go up the road a ways and let you get a good ride” and off he trucked into the distance.  His acid was clean shit and took a nice edge off the heat stroke.  Destiny has a weird way of kicking your ass into submission.

 

The open road collided with hell-bent reality, turning into long forgotten wagon trails.  The bare rubber screamed for rest battered by endless stone, uneven ruts from wind worn pathways ribbed snakelike across the road, a bare indent in the red desert dust.  Lonely pines and junipers peeked out from their rocky pinnacles, the gangly roots holding boulders in place. 

 

“So, fifteen miles and we take a left”  Left where?  Left down some neglected weed patch?  Come on, having a show THIS BIG, you’d think it would be marked.

“Look for the cairns”  The stones, piled delicately into a stack of balanced beauty from which many more would come rimming the path with pillars, building to the gathering in endless sequence, visible in the hazy dirt road dusk, slowly changing into a stream of vehicles casually strewn about for miles. 

Majestic huts constructed from dead fall alders stripped of bark and lashed with jute string, yellow polyvinyl cord woven into rope ladders and bridges in the trees, fortresses for hordes of easygoing actors improvising skits in makeshift costumes in the evening twilight hours.  Raw ground cleared of brush and fashioned into a basic amphitheatre, rows of log benches separated from the stage by a wide ditch of flames visible from faraway in the darkness, lighting the theatre with an eerie flicker. 

Naked breasts glowing in the moonlight, perfect silhouettes skinny dipping in the crisp mountain creek revealing intense desire, a sexual expression of freedom calling lovers to union, the flowering meadow filled with pheromones.  From the bristling grass on uncovered genitals dripped the scent of available passion driving strangers to unhindered intercourse.  Celibate gurus were seduced in an insatiable hunger, unleashing the spring of lust, firm and un-chastised, turning virgins into satisfied tantric contortionists within minutes.

Without a body to govern it the gathering convulsed and continued into chaos.  Steady streams of unaware visitors converged on the unsuspecting meadows, camping in pristine sites.  Voluntary and inconclusive, money was solicited for the necessary supplies only to disappear as fast as it was generated.  By the box and case grapefruit, cherries, flour and sugar made their way to the stick and stone kitchens and breakfast was served.  Gruel of nine grain mush, a flurry of pancakes, a fifty course all day smorgasbord of free loving vegetarian variety served from thirty gallon pots simmering on makeshift fires. 

             Two weeks of preparation digging six foot deep, twenty foot long shitters in rocky ground, building elaborate shelters for all night sing-a-longs, constructing fire-pits in the shape of a twenty foot wide, three tiered heart.  Two weeks of intense partying by sixty thousand of North America’s finest backwoods home-grown unknowns, two weeks of garbage consolidation and hauling trash, restoring the meadows to their previous condition removing fire-pits and destroying vacated encampments. 

 

            I awoke in an ancient foreign city surrounded by towering trees and rickety old buildings.  I sat up on the park bench and rubbed my eyes, not remembering where I was or how I got here.  This place seemed different, like some fantasy relic of a city, all the brick buildings barely held together with cracking mortar as if they were a thousand years old.  I looked up at the starry sky and felt extremely out of place.  It felt as if I was walking in an enchanted world, the flickering street lamps emanating barely enough light to see by as if they were old gas lamps in Europe, the crowds of people dressed in ragged clothes from the seventies, punk music wafting through the air from unseen speakers.  I walked into the closest building, a stunning Victorian ballroom with ornately decorated marble columns and granite slab walls, oversized staircases led deep into cavernous hallways.  It seemed strange that everyone I met was quite happy, there were children playing in the halls with no-one caring, no parents herding them or holding their hands, bold and beautiful in their innocence.  I noticed a counter on the far end of the ballroom and caught the glance of the man standing behind it who immediately beckoned me to come on over.

“You’ll need this”  he motioned to a wall of safety deposit boxes, and handed me a bulky brass key, “you’re # 24003, second row down on the right”.  Cautiously I opened the locker without a clue as to what it could contain, this all was very confusing and weird.  Inside I found several unpaired socks, a box of my favourite tapes, my backpack from years ago, and my old leather jacket.  Strange, was this some kind of joke?  I thought that coat had been stolen years ago, and that backpack was taken from the park when I was gone during a crackdown on homeless camps, how did it get here…

I turned to get some answers but the man was gone, disappeared into the unknown.

Was I dead, was this heaven?  I had way too many eerie thoughts and my head was swimming with questions I could not answer.  I thought I was just sleeping on a bench in Beacon Hill Park, how did I end up here?  Did someone kill me in my sleep?  Well, regardless, I had my old leather jacket back, a strange security blanket to keep me warm in this crazy fantasy world.  So if I was in heaven, however strange this may be, I might as well enjoy myself.  I packed up my stuff into the backpack and headed up the nearest staircase to do some exploring, getting lost in the maze of rooms and corridors.  It seemed as if I were invisible to the others, at least nobody said anything to me, even if I were trying to talk to them, and everywhere I went there was the music.  Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Beatles.  Finally I saw a row of windows at the far end of the building, looking into the dark night sky.  I blinked, this was no sky.  From the windows was a full view of open space, stars twinkling in the empty darkness, never-ending void in all directions like we were suspended in a dream.  I noticed a door handle in the glass wall, leaned into it, and opened the door into the emptiness.  Beyond that was a thin balcony, only four feet across, that seemed to stretch around the outer edge of the city, snaking its way between rusting towers and crumbling brick walls like the walkway on top of some ancient castle, and beyond that was complete nothing.  Outer space, forever in all directions, and there I sat down dangling my feet carelessly from the edge of reality, feeling the cold chill of space surround me.  I leaned back against the glass panes and stared into the void, and a splintering cracking sound rippled from behind me, followed by a hissing, sucking sound.  Then the door opened and out came an old greying hippie, carrying a roll of duct tape and a caulking gun

“Don’t worry about that, it happens all the time.” he mentioned as he proceeded to coat the cracked glass with duct tape. “This old place just keeps getting older; we should be getting a new one soon though…”

“Where am I?” I queried, “What is this”

“New here huh? You’re on the dark side of the moon my friend, you know, Terrapin station.” He turned to me and smiled “Like it?”

“Well, what do you mean, the dark side of the moon, I mean, how’s that?  Who built this place?”

“Ok, the story goes like this.” And the old man sat down next to me once he was satisfied that his quick fix patch would hold air.