Have you ever seen page five?

20MAY2012 – Concept: a human life is fully-realized within five weathered pages of a paperback novel, one pressed between many on a shelf near the back of an old bookstore, just to the left of a hand-lettered cardboard sign: FICTION.

Background characters in a novel are summoned forth from the No Thing and brought to life with such mastery, such clarity and depth of definition that the Reader can’t help but identify with these imaginary beings, understanding and identifying with them in a sudden flash of entirety. The Devil lives in the details. These fictional lives brush up against the Reader’s own with unexpected force, jarred into creation by vivid descriptions of spilled drink, flowing tears, clever plans, the rasp of whiskers or raucous laughter, such that the Reader can’t help but cheer them on.

Don’t get cocky. They used to cheer for lions, too.

But then the thumb is licked and the fourth page is turned and somewhere near the bottom of page five, the character is killed off. Is this cruel? Not particularly, that’s just how the story needed to be told.

“We are stories telling stories.” We have control over our own story right up until the moment when it collides with the storyline of another character. (Either we happen to them, or they happen to us. Depends on your perspective, really.)

These fictional characters live so completely on these yellowed plains, covered from head to toe in every aspect of what makes them real, existing behind and between each and every single letter on the page. The postcards, the tickets stubs, the dryer lint, the bar tabs, the take-out containers, the music collections, the book collections, the love letters, the grocery lists – all of the debris and mementos of their imaginary lives – are just dust trapped in the cracks and crevices of every foot of serif of every word of every sentence of every paragraph of the few pages they’re given, compacted by years of fucking and fighting and fear of failure, French fries and Friday nights, the whole thing rusted over with sweat like the pocketknife of an old man. Every word breathes, every letter hums. The characters aspire to learn everything there is to learn about the pages on which they exist; the height, the width and the location of the strange indentation at the upper edge of the third page where a worm ate its way into their falsified reality…

We can tell ourselves what free and wonderful beings we are and insist that everything is one big gorgeous goddamn pageantry. But you and I both know that we can’t travel beyond our own sixth page, and we can’t escape what’s coming up fast from the bottom of the fifth one.

Our destiny, too, is to be fed feet-first and screaming into the Great Grinder of Storytelling; we are brought to life so that the Reader may identify with us and we are killed off in such a way as to propel the story along and make the survival of the remaining characters that much more dear.

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” – Chuck Palahniuk

We are trapped like dolphins in a round tank, pinging ourselves into madness. (I think, therefore I am/very sad) We burn brightly while we can, but in the end we simply aren’t equipped to make it to the epilogue.

##

The above (crudely) illustrates a nagging sensation I’ve had for many years, that I left the factory incomplete, minus some very important pages from my owner’s manual, that I’m not a fully fleshed-out character in my own right. I don’t mean that I lack experience – hell, no. I’ve been a-many places and I’ve seen a-many things, and I’m just as impressed by life as you are.

But the miles aren’t long enough, and the dreams aren’t bright enough. I feel like a simulation, a placeholder, the storekeeper in an early Nintendo game, a character on the Holodeck — something programmed with a limited number of responses despite being part of a greater complexity. A one-act play in five pages. Trapped on the stage, unable to see past the lights…

(I can’t give you tomorrow.)

TWM

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22APR2012 – Caught some kind of vicious, viral ass-kicking on my return trip from Newfoundland which necessitated the need for forty-eight hours sleep since Thursday evening.  As a result, I feel more awake than I need to be.  It’s a rainy Sunday night in Brooklyn.  The windows are open, the rain is a cool television hiss and my feline roommates are attempting to telekinetically levitate my empty coffee cup — based on the weight of their half-lidded stares.

Change is in the air.  Operation Rose Petals is a done deal.  (Speak to no one about this.)  I’ve got a week’s worth of vacation in my immediate future and the prospect of migration to the Left Coast looms ahead in mid-July like a heatwave on the horizon.  A shimmering and wonderful possibility…  

The move feels like a reward of sorts, as though I’ve done something inherently right according to the Great Machine, as though maybe I’m meant to discover something important there.  Open a locked door, or experience some long-overdue epiphany that will play a vital role in paying back the debts I owe to others and the debt I owe to myself.  (Some debts can never be forgiven.  Others must be erased.) 

Standard practice for an exodus has always included a three-day purge-a-thon.  It says so right there in the fucking manual.  I typically go through every item I own and trim the fat, discarding the unnecessary: Sell or give away books I no longer need, donate articles of clothing that no longer fit properly, and dispose of one-way sentimental anchors.  Terminate with extreme prejudice.  Make light the load, for shit is afoot.

He got the high sign, so he jumped a bus

Along the roads that wind on through

The hot Mojave and the Jericho.

He’d start his whole life anew.

And what he left behind he hadn’t valued

Half as much as some things

He never knew…

Speak to no one about this.

15APR2012 – Part of this is my job description, part of this is a dream. There are moments in the light of day when I cannot tell them apart. Sometimes, I travel from place to place at the direction of (a certain government agency) and perform tasks — which began as uncomfortable and tedious but have grown progressively more rewarding.

“Head south, drive for twenty miles. Pull over at (a certain gas station) just outside (a certain town). The station will be abandoned. Open the envelope located under the passenger seat. You will find a pair of gloves. Put them on and pocket both the lighter and the box containing paraffin-soaked cotton. You will break into the office at the back of the building without being observed. Force the lock on the top left-hand desk drawer. There will be a large square package wrapped in plain brown paper. Do NOT open it. Instead, carry it with you to the lot behind the gas station and look for an old rusted drum. Place the package in the drum and set fire to the package using the lighter and paraffin, making certain to scatter the ashes thoroughly and bury the fire. Once you’ve finished, return home. Speak to no one about this.”

Next. “Catch the first flight to (a certain place). Rent a car and drive to (a certain pier) and wait there for six hours. Purchase a sandwich from a food cart at the end of the pier if you get hungry. When (a certain vessel) moors to the pier, board and ask to speak to the captain. When you meet him, hand him a one-dollar bill and take his picture. He’ll know what it means. Once you have his photograph, return to the airport and fly home. Speak to no one about this.”

Next. “Travel by train to New London, Connecticut. Be at (a specific address) by 0800 Wednesday. Someone there will give you a large green bag containing a knife, a compass, a space blanket, a warm coat and a whistle. Purchase sufficient food and water. Then, drive to an old airfield at the edge of town. There you will board the large white military aircraft with an orange stripe on the side. They’re expecting you. It will take you to Newfoundland. When you arrive, walk to the end of the runway and board another white plane. This one will have the word ‘surveillance’ painted along the side in big red letters. They’ll be expecting you. They will fly approximately 375 SE to position 41° 46′ North, 50° 14′ West. When you arrive, there will be a boat waiting. Photograph the boat and any activity you observe. The aircraft mechanic will jettison an object through a drop tube located in the rear of the aircraft. Photograph this event and anything you think might be of interest. Return home. Speak to no one about this.”

There’s never a definite end to the tasks. Sometimes they come in the middle of the night. Sometimes they come very early in the morning. “Tomorrow at 0400, you will don this dress uniform complete with colorful ribbons, insignia and a fancy hat. You will travel to attend (a certain function) at (a certain place). You will be introduced to (a certain person). When you meet him, take his picture. Wait twenty minutes. When he is introduced to (a certain person), you will photograph them together. The photograph should appear natural. It must NOT appear posed. After this, you are free to go. Speak to no one about this.”

Next: “Catch the first flight to New Orleans. Rent a car, drive to (a certain place) and wait for instructions. After two weeks, you will drive to an airfield on the edge of town and board a helicopter. They will be expecting you. It will take you to an oilrig located in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon arriving, you will photograph the drilling equipment, the interior of the control room and anything you think might be of interest. Once you have these photographs, board the helicopter and return to (a certain place). Speak to no one about this.”

Sometimes I receive these instructions in the middle of the task I’m completing ordering me to drop what I’m doing and begin another task, or walk from it away entirely. The standard guidance is simple: “Travel light. Pack a duffel bag of clothes, a laptop, a camera and your passport. Use this card for expenses, and present this piece of paper when challenged. Speak to no one about this…”

TWM

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BEFORE – Visions of separate realities carbon pass-by entrapment: (“The next… October-bound train… will arrive in… three days.”) From my perspective, everything beyond the window plane appears to be rushing toward me with some degree of urgency, as though I were moderating a real-time game of Clue with a host of inanimate objects, each of them wishing a word with me in private about Col. Mustard.  Instead, they pass by at the last moment, fearful of some unspoken reprehension, palming off a succession of furtive notes; hastily scribbled requests to meet them “At the clock tower at eight…” “In the garden at midnight…” “At the place where we first met (illegible)…” I want see what happens when the batteries run down and the angels and asses rush in from the wings to take their bows.  Doors open, close. Lives board, exit — decide to take another train.  Size everyone up: the smiling, the scowling, the well fed, the poorly stimulated, all of them lining up for a seat on the Devil’s favorite shit wagon.  Talk soon. Travel sooner.  Love belongs in a jar where it can do no harm.

11MAR2012 – “This is the time, and this is the record of the time.”  Note to self: One, read up on the definition of turbulence, the effect of turbulence on aircraft with regard to the effect on jet engines v. propellers, and maybe a few paragraphs more on the jet stream.  Two, find out who makes the best pens around and then buy some.   A lot of some.   And three, get some new glasses, because these three elements all Voltron’d together are seriously impeding my ability to think with my fingers in the Here and Now, that being: cruising speed aboard a military C-130J enroute to St. John’s, Newfoundland, for the third time in as many months.

The first trip was a thrill; the concept was still new to me.  I took pains to over-accentuate mundane realities like train rides, and fictionalizing the reproachful looks of tired café waitresses who honestly had better things to do with their time than deal with the wild-eyed ways of a wayward and weird American giraffe.  But I had fun with it.

I wrote next to nothing about the second trip because I was distracted by the sheer scope and involvement of the mission (see also: herding cats, changing diapers on an octopus, nailing fried eggs to trees, changing tires on a moving car), but seeing as this trip is possibly my last hurrah — in a manner of speaking — I need to do this right.  Can’t imagine I’ll have much cause to return to this part of the world.  Buy the t-shirt, move on.

(Enough of this weird talk; let’s have some action while the fun lamp is lit.)

A long ride on a loud plane forces you into dealing with your own head.  You can squeeze away from this threat by immersing yourself in a good book; you can close your eyes and catch up on your wink quotient; or you can sit and stare out the window at the cocaine clouds and the dull blue and orange blurs that mark the last known position of the propellers as you calculate your monthly bills to the nth degree… until your resistance breaks down and you’re visited by the ghosts of your respective past, present and future.  Faces, facts and failures.  You can pray to a god who’s never there; ask yourself over and over if you left the gas on; struggle to recall if the cats have enough drinking water in their bowl…

The inside of a C-130J Hercules is a geometric blur of gunmetal grey smeared into something vaguely resembling a boiler room and an extremely tidy garage workshop.  Despite the modern contrivances, traveling in this manner puts you in close touch with the romanticism of WWII-era aviation like nothing else.  You’re surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs of circuit breakers, breaker boxes, junctions, hoses, neatly coiled-and-accounted for wiring and objects that largely defy description.  The interior is deafening, hence your being shoved into a violent lake of mute contemplation.  The important “Oh, shit!” items are all brightly colored yellow or red and labeled in a large DON’T PANIC font.

To the uninitiated eye, this says that either maintenance onboard this aircraft occurs far more frequently than it does a commercial jet of the same size, or there is a need here for total mechanical transparency.  It’s my guess that most aircraft of this size and mission-configuration benefit from such a naked arrangement (versus having to gut the fancy panels each time in order effect repairs when something going sproing!); commercial maintenance crews probably aren’t very keen on Mr. and Mrs. America fat-fingering about with the buttons of such a complicated system.

Q: “Hey, what does this do?”

A: (Cause death.)

you’ve perished, and then not even.
You will only be fully understood after your sell-by date, after

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21MAR2012 – Sitting in the Crown Inn on the first good night of the year…

Bought a salad from the former tattoo parlor across the street and a left-hand stout when I walked in the door.  Something old and folksy on the radio lasted an hour.  Now I’m looking up at the bottles behind the bar as markers along the road, remembering.

(I know drink is slow poison, but for now it’s the only game in town.)

Bottles in no specific order: Crown Royal (when mixed with ginger ale) makes me think of Angela, my former roommate in D.C. Great girl. Took me to my first Nick Cave concert, had a hand in my discovering Clutch and Admiral Browning, and turned me onto The Flaming Lips.

Those bottles of Jameson’s and Maker’s Mark represent time spent in S.I.N.F.U.L. partying with Mike Lutz, and the seven-hour loop of time that is Murphy’s Irish on King Street in Alexandria.

There’s  Jim Beam, my first drink at the age of 13.  The sticky sweet darkness still reminds me of graveyard sex with a certain Scottish art school student I dated for years.  (As the music switches to T-Rex, I can still see her brown leather jacket, her wild smile and her paint-splashed Doc Marten’s just as clear as if she were sitting next to me…)  

That bottle of Grey Goose reminds me of the Sarah Connor to my then-Kyle Reese — the mother of our John Connor… a lot of time, a lot of words.

That bottle of red wine  takes me back to one very special night on a beach in Chincoteague, where the horses roam and heartfelt words flow off into the pounding surf, but even the best nights have to end eventually…

(Bottles of white will now and forever remind me of turning everything inside out and this-way-round whilst seated across from Ms. Fuller.  Cats pace the room.  Share the Mac power.)

Radio plays Lou Reed’s ‘Satelite of Love’, and I can hear people all around me murmuring along.  Lou owned this town while he had the chance, back New York was just as filthy on the outside and surviving here meant you’d really accomplished something.  It’s a playground anymore, but I suppose it’s better that way now.

The moment feels precise, like the pads of fingertips touching, as if this somehow communicates the closeness in the room and emotions I’m no longer in touch with.  Something between a hypodermic and a fountain pen… drinking is my Brigadoon.  Light rising and falling across the page of my notebook with the flicker of the candle at my elbow.  At the sound of the tone, the time will be 8:30 p.m., 1,000 years ago…

The Crown fills up eventually but it’s the memories that drive me from the bar. I feel overcrowded now, as though I were buying the next round for a cast of thousands.  Note to self: re-read Lester Bangs’ memoirs of his NYC time.  

First there is a mountain,

then there is no mountain,

then there is

–

08APR2012 -

“San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.  Whatever it meant…” – Hunter S. Thompson

Been a wild few weeks.  There was a lot of uncertain noise and rumors about a possible transfer and a promotion, which, after a bit of gamboling about has finally settled into fact.  Apparently I’ve kicked a sufficient amount of ass in the game of NYC to earn an extra life: I’m being transferred to San Francisco later this summer.

I’ve been Google Earth-ing/Craigslist-ing the shit out of the Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda areas, looking for a place close enough to let me bike to work.  A new rail system to memorize, new sights to see, new memories to remember, and new logistics to sort.

Finished my second trip to Newfoundland on Thursday, returning to Brooklyn just in time to turn 41.  Headed back up on Wednesday for the at-sea wreath-laying over the site of the Titanic. We’ll fly 375 NM SE of St. John’s, open the tail of a C-130 and deploy out a stack of wreaths in memory of those who lost their lives a century ago, effectively turning the page on this chapter in history.

Finish one assignment, move on to the next.

Aries in The The Spring

Monday afternoon. There’s a cool gray sunlight just beyond my window. I can almost taste it. The lungs of the earth are turning green – but not so’s you can see directly. You have to catch it from out of the corner of your eye, like a Magic Eye painting, or Santa Claus kissing your mother. Birds fly past in single file, evenly spaced.

Occasionally I’ll look up from my work and glimpse a woman in a dress walking through Battery Park. The weather, albeit getting warmer, isn’t quite to that stage but I, for one, appreciate the effort.  Sunglasses. The flash of perfect teeth like the rifle shot of a silent laugh viewed from forty yards distant.

In that instant my brain explodes in a warm shower of sparks and light, wet lightning rippling through the room divided atop my spinal column, the pink, post-coital afterglow of a spectacular orgy containing 20 million volumes of information. When the dust settles, I’m left with three primal elements: legs, hair and boots. Christ, I’m like a house cat on a window ledge watching cars pass by. Eyes wide and wearing the same incredulous expression, shifting my hind legs as though I were prepared to pounce on a toy mouse.

And away she goes…

An older man passes by in the opposite direction; long, greasy hair slopped back in a wet ponytail and heavy work boots thudding along the concrete. Muttering to himself. What really stands out is the enormous brown fur coat he’s sporting, and the fact that he’s viciously scratching his forehead as though he were trying to peel a potato, win a free meal, or dig out his third eye.

When I look up again the lighting has changed. Suddenly it’s three months ago, and there’s nothing on these trees but plastic sacks and hard-carved love notes high on the trunks.  To: dead people. From: other dead people. The light will change again, and I’ll be ready.

There is no greater high than being an Aries male in the Springtime. This is our season. We were here first. (Also: The Scottish invented thumbs. Before us, you lot were stuck scooping porridge off the ground with a flat rock. Thank a Scotsman today. And by ‘thank him’ I mean ‘get him drunk’.

Crouching low in the windowsill, it’s

(from my iPhone)

 

 

 

 

TELEGRAM FROM THE WEEKEND

THE GOOD AND EVIL SOULS OF LIGHTNING BUGS ENGAGED IN FINAL ELECTRONIC WARFARE STOP WALKING DOWN BROADWAY STOP PISSING WITH STRANGERS STOP THE INTERNAL VOICES STOP THE HIGH PITCHED FALSETTO OF THE REPRESSED ARTIST IN DIVORCE OF PHALLIC CULTURE AND UNREASONABLE CHILDHOOD DEMANDS STOP WALKING SLOW LIKE A HEARTBEAT EMOTIONLESSLY CATALOGING THE SPATIAL AND CHROMATIC UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR FELLOW MONKEYS JUST STOP EITHER IT WILL HAPPEN OR IT WILL NOT HAPPEN STOP THERE IS NOTHING SIMPLE LEFT STOP THE HOLE WILL GROW REGARDLESS STOP SPEECHLESS IN A ROOM OF YOUR PEERS ALL STOP

Phantom Limb Syndrome

12FEB2012 – Dutch Boy, Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn. Waiting for coffee and eggs Benedict amidst the sonic swath of: the singing click of washing plates, running water and loud reggae flowing forth from the kitchen; the layers of conversation bolted to the cafe walls by sibilant hooks ejected into fricative fucking existence by the deadlier of the species dominating the room; the silence of couples exchanging a kiss on the sidewalk outside.

On top of the world one minute, lying prostrate in the valley with a face full of frozen pig shit the next. It’s not as complicated as you make it. (In fact, it’s much, much worse…) The clock ticks louder, each second resounding like a rifle shot until the explosions are loud enough to wring water from blood. Each blastwave shakes the table, rattling flatware and clinking the glasses. I am beyond screaming at this point. This goes unnoticed by everyone else.

Everything we do takes place in this world, during this timeline and in this dimension. We are captive court jesters; reciting our lines at the top of our lungs and juggling just as fast as we can, giving our all to a sleepy king who yawns once an hour, resting his fat head on a meaty palm. No escape pod, and no way to hug the beyond from here.

While escorting a friend to Grand Central Station on Saturday, I theorized that our emotions were somehow anchored to the ocean. When we enter this world, we are issued an anonymous measure of the sea which goes about behaving as the sea is meant to behave, all the while manipulating our moods, governing our capacity to give and our eventual tendency to need something in return for ourselves. The throbbing desire to give is proportional to the clawing need to receive. Some of the blocks are subsurface, cold and salty. Some of them crash frequently upon sunny shores and white sand beaches, aerated like blue champagne. When we pass on from this world, our block of ocean is returned. Renew, reduce, recycle. Our emotions are by no means new. Sign and date here, please.

Maybe I’m getting it right but I’m not loud enough. Maybe I’m doing it wrong and thankfully no one has noticed. Or maybe I’m doing it wrong but no one has bothered to tell me, like the elderly deaf uncle who shows up to a funeral with his fly open. I have no choice but to carry on — the desire to write burns as brightly as ever.

On good days, it feels like having lengths of exposed copper hair shoved deep beneath my skin; there is a stink of ozone and tiny sparks are born to die as the wires are scraped across the leads of a battery with a pop, propelling my left hand to spasm and flail for the nearest pen and begin stabbing words into existence across the surface of anything that will carry ink. Those of us afflicted by this terrible disease meet twice weekly in anonymous church basements, sharing our shame over stale donuts and buckets of burnt coffee. It is foolish, embarrassing and wrong but I know I’ll never be able to stop, even if I fail.

Putting way too much thought into the expression “I don’t mind”,

The Phone Call of Cthulu – Voice Mail

08FEB2012 – Final leg home. Same great train, same flashing light occulting through the same naked trees, the source first born in the heart of a sustained nuclear explosion anchored 92,935,700 miles off our starboard bow.

Landed in Groton, Conn., yesterday afternoon on the shortest of runways, our gear strapped to the cargo deck of the tail so the crew wouldn’t have to kill the engines. The doors opened on empty tarmac; a stand of brown rushes greeted us with rustling uncertainty as a large blue pickup truck backed slowly into position to accept our various bags, packs and Pelican cases.

It was a joy to shout above the engines, feel the heat of the exhaust and see the heat rippling in the shadows. For a moment, I felt close to my father.

He’d been a crew chief in the peacetime Air Force, retiring after 20 years to make rock biters for the Jeffrey Mining Machine Company until they laid him off and he found himself unable to find anything better than a job as a security guard. If ever a man died of broken pride, it was he. He never really told me what he did in the military; when I was a child, he’d sometimes draw funny cartoons of uniformed men with flattop haircuts driving around in old Jeeps, and he mentioned on occasion that he’d been to the Philippines and Germany. He tried to pass on his understanding engines but I was never ready.

Staring out the window of a moving train is a great way to clear your head. Upright wooden lungs stand watch over the rocks and squirrels, accepting my projections and quiet contemplations in mute understanding. You can say anything to a tree; there is no expectation of reciprocation and no consulting fee will be discussed.

During my three hours on this moving couch, I will think back on the past and imagine the future; wonder at the nature of love, question where it all went sideways and further speculate as to where the brightest days and minutes might have gone — as though Potential packed its bags and fucked off to Azerbaijan, flipping the bird through the open window of the cab.

The steel rail below my window is unfaltering; the view unflattering. I can almost glimpse the allure presented to the old hobos; the campfires, the fresh air. A can of beans and a park bench, with only the cold and the cops to care about. Americana! The Big Rock Candy Mountain! Shit, yes.

That was then: The street rods of my youth are stacked beneath rotting tarps in back lots, available for a song and a little elbow grease surrounded by brick boxes, dead lawns and patches of earthly mange. Stuffed animals abandoned overnight, duct-taped to the only tree within a five-block radius; sacrificed to the ghetto gods with prayers for a better tomorrow. A man stands with his hands in his coat pockets; he’s got fuck else to do today.

Looking out on the ass-side of retail hallucination, the optical illusion that every little thing is going to be fine. Crews whitewash graffiti off the side of a delivery truck that’s miles better than anything else I’ve seen on these walls. Raped and ravaged rivers parallel park against cheerful rows of freshly painted houses facing pockmarked parking lots, and piles and piles of junk and twisted, discarded who-gives-a-shit and damn but everything looks tired in the winter. It’s as though the Earth hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since the Europeans got itchy for a road trip. I’m sure it all looks different in the Spring.

Hello, Brooklyn. I’m home.

(Posted from my iPhone)

The Phone Call of Cthulu – Part Two

Cold, loud and beautiful

05FEB2012 – “Colder than the breastular organs of a practicing Wiccan and louder than the first four Metallica albums.”  I hit SEND on my infotext back to November Yankee.

I am standing on Cape Spear, St. John’s, Newfoundland, and right now I’m pretty gosh darned impressed by the sea.  Each mighty surge of water is an unstoppable force rushing in to attack an I-don’t-give-a-fuck coastline; each wave is cruelly devoid of heat and louder than the last train out of Valhalla.  I’m talkin’ about some serious waves here, dude.  

The snow on the hills above is drier than an East German punch line and it crunches beneath my boots like the dead bones of the ancients as I clamber to the highest point of the land, wolfing down lungfuls of chilly air like an inlet manifold.  I knocked on the door of the newer lighthouse (no one home but us ghosts) and peered through the windows of the older structure, my hot breath exploding on the glass.  It was furnished.  I wondered briefly what the original lighthouse keepers burned to stay warm.  (Possibly other lighthouse keepers?)

Looking west, I could see a single road winding back into the dark distance like the long and angry scratch of a paint knife across a bitter canvas of loveless blues and bloodless whites. The road is decorated by a single set of taillights making best possible speed for the warmth of town. Looking east: Fucking nothing… Just wave after heaving crest of heart-stopping cold. Imagine falling into that — you’d have about ten seconds to say your prayers before they froze to your lips with a grinding shriek reminiscent of dry ice.

(Later, from the sheltering warmth of the rental 50 yards down the hill)  I am dressed warmly by modern standards and still I was freezing. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live out here pre-central heating, pre-GoreTex, or pre-anything that could keep the cold at bay.  Hopefully I’ll be back here in April; I’ve got to explore the battery down the hill, presently buried in snow…

“Wait, what?  There was a battery there?  Tell me more!” (Not this kind of battery, but the song kept running through my head…)

Construction of the Cape Spear battery was authorized by Canada for the WWII defense of Newfoundland, even though Newfoundland was not yet a part of Canada.  Allied forces used the bunkers to protect against U-boat attacks, which at the time was a very real threat in the North Atlantic.  This couldn’t have been very pleasant duty in the winter.  I imagined Newfie troops wrapped in layers of sealskin and wool, twiddling the radio antennae every hour or so with nothing more than a pack of cigarettes and a deck of girlie cards to pass the time.  Just waitin’ for ze Germans to show up… 

Most of the military site was destroyed after the war, but the tunnels and gun emplacements have been stabilized.  The huge gun barrels, known as disappearing guns because they could be lowered behind the concrete parapet for loading and maintenance, are all that remain of the war time armament.

Edge of The World

Cape Spear is true barren beauty. The air is purer than a nun’s thighs and the sky goes on forever. This the furthest northeastern-most point of North America. I think back to those rugged hillsides in Scotland where the heather is a foot deep and the curvature of the earth is most visible… I remember the sense of forever I found in Dutch Harbor, where the eagles behaved as rats feeding from the dumpsters behind the hotel and the way-back whispers of war could still be heard from around the corners of buildings. “Here a ghost, there a ghost, everywhere a ghost-ghost…”  Loneliness of geography is universal. 

Pop song playing on the radio as we headed into town, listening to St. John’s 94.7 OZ FM: “Still alive but I’m barely breathin’/ pray to a god that I don’t believe in…”

Standing on that cold edge of nothingness stirred my on-again-off-again love affair for extreme solitude and remote locations, and I briefly entertained the notion of living out here all alone with my back to the world, tending the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s foolish, I know. I’d probably end up talking to snowflakes and generally behaving in manner befitting bat shit.  But I’ve got my reasons.  Or at least I think I do… Sometimes I feel like a telegraph operator adrift in space; frantically tapping out descriptions of the infinite fantastic before my O2 runs out.  I swear I don’t know what makes me tick some days — when I visit places like this, I feel like I’m cracking the code of my consciousness, dialing up and down the dial for a radio station I used to know, half-hesitant for the strains of the first song but afraid to hear the rest of it play out.  ”When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.”

06FEB2012 – Wheels up at 1000 for another flight.  I ate my sandwich, dozed for about an hour and tried to read.  Then I put my camera together and paced back and forth along the centerline of the aircraft, looking for shots I hadn’t already taken, studying the myriad of boxes, switches, dials, indicators, buckles, lines and hoses.  I mean to tell you, the inside of this aircraft is fucking confusing. This is a bird with some serious infrastructure.

Presently, one of the spotters motioned me to the rear observation window and pointed down.

Imagine never having to buy ice for parties again...

It had carved a swath through a bed of sea ice, and was easily the highest point of land for 20 or 30 miles.  We swung low and slow and did a few lazy donuts to get a better look.  I braced my elbows and knees against the industrial grey padding that lines the tail of the aircraft, wedged myself into place and leaned heavy on the shutter, bracketing wildly against the filth of the observation windows, the flicker of passing clouds and the strobe of sunlight until I got something usable.  My first real iceberg…

After seeing this?  I got nothing.  Flying home tomorrow.  I’ll leave you now with a link to some local expressions, my favorite being:

The Devil to pay and no pitch hot,