Note: This is the first chapter of my upcoming novel, The Adventures of the Thin Man and Andrea. You can read a later chapter about the Thin Man’s romance with Vivian in Rome here:
It’s predicted to rain on landing/ I predict we’ll have a drink
Paul Westerberg
Dateline Singapore: Late October
This little country, such an unlikely success story, such a strange winding of forces. The thin man has been on land for five weeks after his latest gig on the cruise ship, and though his stomach is still in limbo his sea legs have mostly subsided.
Now there is nothing more that the thin man wanted after washing up here earlier in the season then a long weekend. Say, five years. Five years in the hammock, five years frolicing with the lovely ladies at the bar. The occasional speedboat ride, a flyer or two over in Macau. Five years out of the swim of modern capitalism, if you can even call it that. Five years clean. That was the dream. Five weeks on land though and the thin man is looking for work, the money gone in a haze of long days and longer nights. Wine, women, song, and a speedboat ride or two will add up quick. C’est la vie partner. That’s what comes from burning holes up to heaven.
Still, the thin man has a few dollars in his pocket as he walks into a bar just outside of Chinatown. Halloween is approaching, and the proverbial Spooky Lady’s Sideshow is in full effect. The barmaids are Eyes and Baby, or is she Baby Blue? In any case, the thin man and Eyes make eyes, in an innocent way, so the story is told.
The thin man orders a Cognac and ambles over to the pool table where the nine ball is always on. Eyes sizes him up quick, guesses he can play a bit. A game is proposed, a game for two players.
But of course no game is really ever between two players alone. Baby’s watching—tough to tell her rooting interest. And, after Eyes breaks and a few balls fall, the bar as a whole starts tuning in to the frequencies of the game as the regulars make small talk and the travelers weak-tea passes at the local girls. Local girls are no push-over; sometimes folks get the wrong idea on that end. The thin man always did like the locals; heck, it’s part of the travelers’ creed. After all, everybody is a local somewhere. Certainly Eyes and Baby could take care of themselves.
Eyes missed and the thin man was able to sink a few easy balls before Eyes surged back, she’d been around more than she looked. She was an expert at drinking what the punter was drinking. That’s a key part of the art of the barmaid, an underrated profession at the best of times.
The game is nine ball, what else? Eight ball is for rookies, a southerners game. The thin man hails from the north; he knows a thing or two about sequencing. You see, the thin man had had a bit of a specialized role onboard the cruise ship where he had worked as a dealer in the casino. As a result, he also possesses some of the skills of a card shark, a mechanic. Sequencing goes with the territory of a mechanic, after all.
Mid-game and the thin man is beginning to fade a bit–the combination of Eyes’ eyes, and a cheeky Cognac or three is taking its toll. Eyes sinks the 8 and only the 9 ball is left. It’s a touch and go situation. The skeletons muse over the action with as much interest as they can muster from beyond the great blue veil. The couple on the rail stops sniffing whatever they are sniffing, and ask the thin man to join them for a round. No time for that. Cheeky Cognacs and beady cat eyes aside, a game is a game.
A couple of desultory shots bounce about as the players size each other up. Baby leans in; the skeletons whisper sweet somethings, even the bartender sneaks a peek. Everyone is getting paid, except the thin man. He is just there for the action.
Eyes edges the nine right up to the pocket, leaving the thin man a clean shot. He leans in from the left and drops it, silky smooth like. Baby claps and Eyes bats. Game over, though the thin man knows that Eyes could have had him the whole time. She was just being hospitable. A good host for a weary traveler.
The game over, the thin man’s thoughts turned to more practical considerations. He needs a place to stay, and though the nine ball had brought them all together, he didn’t think Eyes or Baby would necessarily take him in. He’d probably need to establish himself as a bit of a regular first before having a shot at any of that action. But the thin man is a gamer, constitutionally unable to categorize situations as problems. No problemo senor, no worries mate. He does, however, have a few issues, the first being he is unemployed and pretty much out of cash. So, he’s asked around, kept his ear to the wind. A fellow traveler there on the ship had turned him onto a broker of services of sorts, the kind of individual who specializes in assisting upstanding institutions with their shining mission statements and their CSR campaigns navigate the grey areas of competition and market position. He has the number for this broker in his pocket, and asks to use the bar phone to give him a call.
The broker picks up right away, saying “yeah, your buddy mentioned you might be looking for a little work. I think I can put something together.”
“That’s good,” says the thin man. “Any chance of a hotel for the night in the meantime?”
“Sure, said the broker. Head over to the 1887 in Chinatown. They’ll have a room in your name. What is it, by the way?”
“Let’s go with ‘Jack Bishop.'”
“That’ll work. I’ll meet you at breakfast at 8.”
The 1887 sounds incredible, thinks the thin man. Rock n’ roll.
Note: This is the second piece from my old blog “Jungian Intimations.” The first piece is here.
One who has no god, as he walks along the street,
Headache envelops him like a garment.
(Cuneiform tablet, late 2nd millennium B.C. Cited in Jaynes, 225)
An idea is something you have. An ideology is something that has you.
Morris Breman
It is well known that older people tend toward one of two poles in their attitude toward certainty, and that the degree of apparent confidence with which those in the second half of life hold forth on subjects to which they claim authority or expertise is directly related to the degree to which they suffer from an inflated, runaway, usurping ego. On the one hand the dogmatists, those in whom opinion has ossified into ideology, whose “conversation” is always monologue ascendant. On the other hand, those at least somewhat mellowed by time, those who have come face to face with their own limitations, whose ego has been able to absorb the blows apportioned by father time, and to grin in the face of impotence (cf Slater, 115).
There are certain professions, however, where egocentricity in the form of professed certainty is positively rewarded, where the fawning of acolytes, the plaudits of the mass media, and the material rewards issued forth from committees and councils depend in large part on stating and holding a single position, and defending such position against all comers. The expert industry is ever at work, animated by the simple fact that very few people actually have any real idea of what they should be doing, of what the “truth” is in a given situation, or, least of all, on what basis to make a decision. When Julian Jaynes theorizes that for most of human history the right brain hallucinated the voices of gods which were then interpreted as commands in moments of stress and decision, and that when the right brain began to cease its projections societies then turned to augury in all its various manifestations in order to simply decide, we are given a hint as to the centrality of authorized claims of certainty in the workings of human organizations (cf Jaynes, 321).
The early history of modern psychology is dominated, to this day, by two great figures, Freud and Jung. Freud was Jung’s elder, and looked to Jung to carry on his work, to take up the mantle of his successor. Jung, for reasons which we will explore at a later date, was unable in good conscience to do so, essentially because Freud insisted that his theory be treated as dogma, as unassailable fact. As Jung recounts in the section on Freud in Memories, Dreams and Reflections,
I can still vividly recall how Freud said to me, ‘My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.’ (…) In some astonishment I asked him, ‘A bulwark against what?’ To which he replied, ‘Against the black tide of mud’–and here he hesitated for a moment, then added–‘of occultism.’ First of all, it was the words ‘bulwark’ and ‘dogma’ that alarmed me, for a dogma (…) is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and for all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment; only with a personal power drive (MDR, 150).
The relationship between the two men never recovered, and Jung would from this point go his own way, even as he was subsequently slandered by Freud and his followers with charges of anti-Semitism, heresy, and, indeed, occultism. Essentially, then, Freud, once he had hit upon an animating set of ideas, saw it as his job to defend said ideas against doubt, both that of others and that of himself. Thus, Freud, for all his genius, in later life fell into defensiveness, and defensiveness, when extended over a period of years, leads only to desiccation. The works that he did produce toward the end of his life which attempted to address issues of myth and meaning raised by Jung are generally considered to be unconvincing, even slapdash, and perhaps even a little desperate (cf Storr, 106-110).
Jung’s life and work stands in stark contrast to Freud’s, and indeed to the common prevalence of ideology in the later stages of human life, primarily in its radical openness, in his willingness to confess that he knows nothing. This position is stated in language so moving, so forthright, and so laden with an appreciation of the numinosity and mystery attendant on the encounter of the human intellect with the broader cosmos which it inhabits, and perhaps informs, that the reader can scarcely believe that the aging scientist could summon the humility to exit the stage with a confession so radically uncertain, and yet so full of faith. The last two pages of his life, then, read thusly:
I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions–not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundations of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.
The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time of divine beauty. Which element we think outweighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning, is a matter of temperament. If meaninglessness were absolutely preponderant, the meaningfulness of life would vanish to an increasing degree with each step in our development. But that is–or seems to me–not the case. Life is–of has–meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle (MDR, 358-359).
For Jung, the founder of analytic philosophy, one time disciple of Freud, and originator of a whole host of terms and concepts in common usage, to close the last chapter of his life by writing “there is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions–not about anything, really,” is, I suggest, startling. Coming on the heels, as it does, of twenty volumes of his Collected Works, of millions and millions of words committed to print, and a life which animated both friend and foe alike to believe that he was, or should have been, in the business of prophecy and the establishment of his own religion, this statement, this closing on the simple, moving, “anxious hope” for meaning, bears closer scrutiny. It is the intention of Jungian Intimations to retrace the steps which led to Jung, in his late 80’s, confessing to such a curious blend of doubt and faith, and to give some suggestions for what this blend may mean for those of us who stagger on, searching for the blurry outlines of his footfalls, at once craving and fearing the appearance of the voice of the gods in our ear.
New Note: I really don’t have much to say about this essay, but I am happy to reprint it today as it has proven one of my most, possibly my most, controversial piece. Comments have ranged from: “The writer is a genius,” “to you’re a total idiot” and everything in between. This is the epic story of Razzlekhan and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I hope you enjoy it.
I went home with a waitress/ the way I always do/ how was I to know/ she was with the Russians too.
Warren Zevon
This is the saga of the queen of crypto hacking Heather Morgan, aka Razzlekhan, and the shameless tail chaser and phony public intellectual (is there any other kind?) Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Just so we are clear about who’s who here, Taleb, the bestselling author of “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile” is the villain, and Morgan, who along with her husband is accused of pulling off the largest heist in human history, $4.5 billion dollars, is the heroine. Morgan was briefly a Twitter star in late February, 2022 when her alleged crimes were revealed; however her stardom was not based on her hacking prowess, but rather on what was perceived (incorrectly) to be her world-historically awful rap videos, including, but not limited to, her banger “Versace Bedouin,” in which names herself “the crocodile of Wall Street.” Here is a taste of her work (note that the real Heather Morgan appears to be in her early 30’s, and is certainly not a grandmother. Also, the video depicts Morgan rapping around the Wall Street district of New York City with three women “dancing” behind her, one wearing large green gardening gloves and carrying a flag with a design we are unable to clearly see for the entire video):
Razzlekhan’s the name/ the hot grandma you really wanna bang/ always run the gilf game/ ever since I was fif-taneee
I’m many things/ a rapper, an economist, a journalist, a writer, a CEO/ and a dirty dirty dirty dirty ho
Better than most writers/ creepier than most girls/ weirder than most rappers/ but I still rock pearls.
Alert listeners will note the apparent Liz Phair reference vis a vis Razz’s sexual maneuvering in her teens, suggesting that there may be at least a little guile to her lyrics. But what impresses me (and I’ll just state this right out–I think Razzlekhan is a misunderstood genius) is the straight ahead sincerity of the lyrics. I mean, Versace Bedouin was released before Morgan was implicated in the crypto hack and here is her dedication at the top of the song:
Never forget, weirdest is the most original/ this song is for the entrepreneurs and hackers/ all the misfits and smart slackers.
The really hardcore music fan may pick up a possible Drugstore reference from “Say Hello”:
I say hello/ to all the junkies/ the sinners and the creeps/ I say hello to all the people in this place/ I say hello /to all the drug heads/ the prostitutes and freaks/ I say hello/ to all the people in the world!
But even I don’t think Morgan is a Drugstore fan, so the resemblance is most likely coincidental. What I love about Razz’s work here is that Versace Bedouin is a simple and totally sincere statement of intent. She tells the listener exactly who she is and what she’s about. She’s a weirdo and misfit, a hacker, a probable criminal, a business owner, and a dirty ho, and she is just letting the world know. She is, as the kids say, putting the motherfucking world on blast. Razzlekhan is coming for your bitcoin, baby, lock that shit down.
And the media loved it. The Guardian wrote a long (and pretty helpful) article on Morgan with the lead “Is this the new face of organized crime? Decoding Razzlekhan, the rapping bitcoin fraudster.”
“Who is this Bitcoin crime queen” they write breathlessly “and what does she tell us about the future of organized crime?” Well Mr. Guardian, that’s a good question that maybe I can shed some light on. Morgan and her husband (who, like the rest of the uncaring world didn’t care for her rap career–Heather I’m here for you baby; just reach out) stole the money, allegedly, from the platform Bitfinix but were unable to convert much of into cash or liquid assets and had to settle for Walmart gift cards instead. So that might tell you something–I’m not sure how organized the pair was.
Mr. Guardian again:
“It is hard to articulate how it feels to be alive in an age of massive wealth disparity and multiple deregulatory lines of questionable crypto minting, but I think watching an alleged Bitcoin embezzler struggle through painful rap bars in a flat-billed cap that reads ‘0FCKS’ is a good summation of the overwhelming confusion.”
But it really isn’t hard to articulate at all–it feels great, because while Heather Morgan the journalist, CEO, and dirty ho may be facing a little legal trouble, Razzlekhan the artist, in my opinion, stands unbloodied and unbowed atop the pinnacle of outsider art along with Daniel Johnston, Mayo Thompson, and the handful of other transcendent geniuses so far ahead of their time they were subject to as much ridicule as they were celebration.
(My favorite piece of music criticism ever comes from a Pitchfork review which doesn’t seem to be online anymore of The Red Krayola’s 1989 album malefactor, ade–it must have been a re-release because Pitchfork wasn’t around in ’89 of course–where the critic accuses Mayo Thompson of “playing the guitar badly, on purpose.” And it’s pretty true. The Red Krayola is out there.)
Razz herself embraces the outsider role and speaks directly to her artistic origins and sensibilities in her artistic biography:
Razzlekhan is like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz… No one knows for sure where this rapper’s from — could be the North African desert, the jungles of Vietnam, or another universe. All that matters is she’s here to stick up for misfits and underdogs everywhere (…) Because Razz has synesthesia, her art often resembles something in between an acid trip and a delightful nightmare. Definitely not for the faint of heart or easily offended, Razz likes to push the limits of what people are comfortable with. Her style has often been described as “sexy horror-comedy,” because of her fondness for combining dark and disturbing concepts with dirty jokes and gestures. Just like her fearless entrepreneurial spirit and hacker mindset, Razz shamelessly explores new frontiers of art, pushing the limit of what’s possible. Whether that leads to something wonderful or terrible is unclear; the only thing that’s certain is it won’t be boring or mediocre.
To my knowledge, no major media outlet even gave Razzlekhan a fighting chance; however I invite you to read the above self-description again with care. She is not in the least bit joking around. She identifies variously as a Bedouin, Turkish, a nomad, and an alien. Later in the same piece she identifies her influences as: Die Antwoord, Tierra Whack, Mickey Avalon, Salvador Dali, Diane Arbus, Hunter S. Thompson, Roald Dahl, and Charles Bukowski. This is a consistent, real, list of artists that a true outsider might well identify with. At the Razzlekhan level, the distance between greatness and awfulness is razor thin, artistic merit being, like everything else really, a circle not a line. In any case, judge for yourself–pull up a Razzlekhan video on You Tube (they are still there) and see what you think.
But what does any of this have to do with the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Well, it would have had nothing to do with him if our boy hadn’t chosen, with exquisitely poor judgment, to interject himself into the Heather Morgan/ Razzlekhan drama. Within hours of the heist news breaking, Mr. Taleb posted the following:
I have several things to say about this nonsense:
I. Check his use of “Attention” and the scare word “vulnerability.” Taleb thinks this message is super important and even urgent. He’s got to get it out there RIGHT NOW.
II. The story is obviously total BS. Taleb seems to have no sense of how Twitter works, and his narrative is so bizarre that he is basically begging for a roasting, which users in the hundreds did, of course.
III. Taleb gives no insight into why Morgan was DMing him. What did she want? Well, users, myself included, had a theory as to what might actually have occurred here. Occam’s Razor would suggest that at some point Morgan and Taleb began exchanging DMs, possibly on her initiative, as she was writing extensively for Business Insider and Forbes I believe, and maybe she wanted to ask Taleb something about one of his books. Taleb then pivoted into a bit of tail chasing, or, as one Twitter denizen put it slightly less crudely, he was looking for a little “bobs and vagine.” When Morgan was arrested, Taleb got spooked that somehow their DMs would leak, so he concocted a ridiculous cover story almost (but not quite) as stupid and unbelievable as Joy Reid’s claim that her fifteen year old blog with homophobic jokes and comments was hacked by Russians.
IV. The use of “some more recently” is a pure “tell.” Taleb’s bobs and vagineing has been going on for some time, it seems. But why in the world would Taleb think that the messages would leak just because Morgan was arrested (she was later released and her husband was held in custody, and I haven’t been able to get a status update on where she is today)? I mean there are really only two options:
i) that the messages would be released by the FBI or something as pertinent to the case, in which case Taleb and Morgan would have been discussing her hacking. This seems highly unlikely;
ii) Morgan would choose to release them herself in an effort to incriminate Taleb. But Nicholas baby, this is just not going to be a priority for Morgan after her arrest. I mean, she is accused of stealing 4.5 billion, and she’s got her rap career, and her husband is in prison. She has got stuff going on man; your DMs are way down the list.
All and all, this message shows that Taleb is an idiot and a complete joke. And people took note, including Edward Snowden, piping up from Russia. Check this out:
Snowden comes in with the savage take down here, and Taleb punches back with an offer to debate, what exactly? It’s not clear if this debate challenge was issued prior by Taleb nor is it clear, at least to me, what is to be debated. Are they supposed to talk medical issues? Mental health? Hacking? Bobs and vagine? Taleb continues to make no sense, and Snowden lets him know with another zinger:
Main Character Syndrome indeed. I would add Major Asshat Syndrome and Big Phony Fraud and Fragile Loser Syndrome as well. Because this is the guy who wrote Antifragile! Which is supposed to be about things that thrive during chaos, or in other words, things which are resilient. And nothing says resilient less than faking a hacking narrative to cover your tail chasing, issuing an incomprehensible debate challenge to someone way out of your league, and tripling down with blocking random twitter users who question you. And I would know, because after I liked the bobs and vagine comment and added something like “Methinks Mr. Taleb doth protest too much,” the fucker blocked me too! Sadly that Twitter account is history so I can’t post a screenshot, however it was obvious that this huge baby was scrolling chats and mass blocking to distract from his disastrous piece of public relations. Honestly, the whole thing was super funny and Taleb showed his ass in the worst possible way.
Taleb obviously thinks he is hotshit. Check out his Twitter bio.
What a poser. A flaneur is a French term for someone who walks the streets taking things in, and Walter Benjamin wrote extensively about the flaneur in his epic, and epically unfinished, “Arcades Project.” Actually, a flaneur is a lot like a kibitzer. I am the kyotokibbitzer (two b’s baby), and I love Benjamin’s work, including the Arcades Project. I bet Taleb is aware of Benjamin and fancies himself a fan. But he doesn’t know the first thing about Benjamin, because Benjamin was a humble guy who did great work and Taleb is a braggart, a tail chaser, and a bum. Deadlifts and dead languages my ass. Text is dead there Nicholas, at least your texts are, because you made a complete fool of yourself and you suck. Taleb exemplifies precisely why I dislike anyone who calls themselves a public intellectual or an expert. He is a poser and I’ll bet you 10 to 1 his ideas are stolen just like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, another total loser who piggybacks on people who know something to pump up his image. (A sure sign of a loser is a “public intellectual” who insists on using three names. What’s wrong with Nassim Taleb or Neil Tyson? The only people who need three names are serial killers; I mean even public intellectual number one Malcolm Gladwell only uses two names. Gladwell is known to pilfer ideas as well, but The Tipping Point is a pretty good read and the dude genuinely knows a tremendous amount about the sport of running. And he doesn’t call himself “Malcolm Julius Gladwell” or whatever. This is because he’s just a writer and knows that using his middle name would make him a prat.) Anyway, it’s totally fine to fake it ’til you make it, and most of us do to a greater or lesser degree, but you can’t fake your way into being an expert. Never trust “experts,” full stop.
So that’s the story of Razzlehan, the misunderstood genius, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the big phony. And in case you are asking, yes I did ask Razz to get in touch with me above. I’d say “I can fix her,” but she needs no fixing. She can DM me all she wants, and she doesn’t even have to get the Russians involved.
I graduated from Hamilton College in June ’96 and with it the clean identity of being a student and living on campus. I went back to Spokane right after and my plan was to join the Peace Corps which seemed cool, but I’d missed the application window and wasn’t prepared to wait a year.
By August of that year I was coaching cross‑country at Saint George’s School in Spokane, taking over for my father while my parents and younger brother were on sabbatical in Scotland. My middle brother Mike was away at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. I stayed alone in my parents’ house—rural, exposed, already marked by a break‑in a few years earlier and the occasional drunk driver knocking to use the phone. Nights mattered. Sounds carried. I was alert, but not dramatic about it.
I started coaching started as soon as it was allowed, about three weeks before the season. I coached both girls and boys and ran with the team; except for a brief varsity stint sophomore year at Hamilton, I was in the best shape of my life. The teams were legitimately good. The girls made state—no podium finish, but it mattered. One runner, Ben Robinson, stands out. I drove him home after practice and we talked. It was quiet mentorship without ceremony.
The coaching paid about $2,500 for the season and ran only in the afternoons, so I needed another job. I found work at a downtown photo studio that processed school yearbook photos. I parked up on the South Hill to save money and walked fifteen minutes into town. One morning around 7:15 I walked by a police sting at a house—a. drug bust, by the look of it. An officer asked if I was with the house; I said no, just heading to work, and he told me to move along.
My first assignment was the big printer. An older full‑time guy—let’s call him Mark—trained me. You had to load the machine in the dark. I took a coffee break at 10:30 when he said I could, and when I came back Mark told me I’d messed up the setup. Paper was all over the place, and he laughed and told me to be more careful. Mark liked Americana music; I played CDs on the boombox. Later I was moved to developing—another machine, pitch black, learned entirely by feel. I didn’t think I could do it, but the learning curve clicked the way WHCL the radio station had at Hamilton. Sometimes I worked again with Mark; it was the better gig.
My routine was simple and tiring. Up around six, nearly an hour’s drive across town, work until early afternoon, then straight back to Saint George’s to coach from about 3:45 to six. I’d drive Ben home, go back to the house, have one or two beers and some food, and sleep by eight. I wasn’t smoking and only once I got a little weed and smoked behind the house. It felt weird and lonely. I was lonely in general, but the long days made it manageable.
Weekends softened rather than broke the pattern. I drove to coffee shops, bookstores, and CD stores—Annie’s Bookstore downtown, new and used. I read, though not as much as a few years earlier: mostly Anthony Powell and Le Carré—nothing academic at this point.
By November both jobs had end dates, and I knew this wasn’t a life—just a holding pattern.
Late Fall 1996: Before Boston
Japan entered through practicality rather than some kind of master plan. My mom had been talking with the mother of a younger Saint George’s student and she had been teaching English conversation at a company called NOVA in Japan. At the time NOVA was enormous and hired broadly. The interview would be in Boston. I called Ian, who was living with his parents, and asked if I could crash. He said yes, so I took my little money and left Spokane mid‑November, just after state cross‑country.
Before Boston I went to Pullman to see Mason Anderson, who was still at Washington State University. I picked him up and we drove to Seattle to see a concert. We got stoned in the car and I drove stoned through rush‑hour Seattle traffic—bad judgment that somehow didn’t end badly. We made the show and the hotel. It was a good time.
From there it was time for Boston.
Late Fall 1996: Boston and New YorkCity
I arrived in Boston knowing the NOVA interview was still weeks away. I stayed at Ian’s parents’ house. Baran Tekkora from Hamilton was also there for part of the time, and Elena—Ian’s on‑and‑off girlfriend and my crush from Hamilton—was around for about a week or ten days, but not the whole stretch. In total I stayed roughly three weeks, with the interview at the end.
Ian’s dad was kind and mostly kept to his study, which was filled with classical music—his obsession. I asked him if he knew Arvo Pärt, whom I liked, and he did; he put something on for me and that was enough for mutual understanding.
My daily routine was simple. I’d get up, eat English muffins, drink coffee, and then head out alone to explore Boston by bus, train, and on foot. I walked the parks, wandered neighborhoods, and spent a lot of time in record stores—especially Newbury Comics. I spent what little money I had on CDs and experience without much restraint. I was deep into Ron Sexsmith’s first record then. I carried a Discman and listened to it constantly while moving through the city, sometimes to the point of tears. I also bought a record connected somehow to This Mortal Coil—female‑voiced, adjacent rather than the band itself—but the exact artist has slipped away. At the time I was excited, wide open to it.
At night I mostly stayed in. Ian and I watched TV and talked. He was dealing with some personal issues at the time, but we had a chance to go to Newbury Comics together a few times and I recall we went out drinking once. One glorious evening we went to see the band The Red House Painters play at Mama Kin downtown. They played a nine minute version of “The Little Drummer Boy” and I melted into the furniture. It was transcendent.
During the wait I realized I liked Boston enough to consider staying. I thought about looking for a job and even called a Zen center to ask about renting a room for a month or two. But the man I spoke to on the phone was super rude and unfriendly. Even though he eventually said I could stay, I didn’t want to deal with him if he was a central figure there, so I dropped the idea. I had no job lined up anyway so it was probably a good call.
By Thanksgiving Baran and Elena were gone. I went to New York City to visit Miche—the Swiss‑Cambodian friend who is featured in my Hamilton series—and his mother at her apartment. I stayed the night and we had a nice Thanksgiving. Afterward I returned to Boston.
The NOVA interview itself was anticlimactic. It was a group interview—about six of us—with a recruiter who had previously taught for NOVA in Japan. He was heavyset and talked about how great Japan was because of the free food samples at department stores and supermarkets. I wore my only suit and showed up early, but it was clear that didn’t matter much. I had a degree. I was in.
When I got back to Spokane my parents and younger brother were home from Scotland, and the house filled back up. I had the NOVA job, but it didn’t start until April, so I needed work to bridge the gap.
I went back to Gonzaga University and checked the job board. I found a job at a food bank warehouse on the eastern outskirts of downtown. I drove out there every day and worked for about two and a half months, stocking shelves and moving food around on small motorized carts.
The warehouse ran on strict time. Breaks were enforced: two fifteen-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch. No lateness. The clock mattered.
The people were the education.
The first person I remember was a high school student there on a court-ordered work study after bringing a knife to school. He talked about it openly, even boasted, and said once, “I’m a Jewish Santa Claus; I don’t exist.” He was only there a week or so and then disappeared.
There were full-time workers and temps like me. One full-time guy had once been a top counselor in Spokane, burned out completely, and now worked in the freezer. He seemed genuinely happy there. Several others were former truck drivers who talked casually about carrying guns while driving.
I became friends with a fellow temp named Jeff. He was in AA, NA, and Sex Addicts Anonymous and showed off the bracelets he’d earned for staying clean. He was a chain smoker. His sponsor had told him that if you’re trying to quit booze, coke, and women all at once, the last thing you should do is quit smoking. We drove around after work and talked and talked. He was in his early to mid-thirties, a sweet guy, and I related to him—maybe because of, not despite, his problems. I saw him a few times after I quit and later wrote him a letter from Japan that spring, but we eventually lost touch.
Some of the temps desperately wanted full-time jobs. One woman—Clara—was in her forties and needed it badly. When a position opened up, it went instead to Sharlene, the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the office managers. As a temp, Sharlene had been pleasant; once she became full-time she turned abruptly bossy. Clara didn’t get the job.
That period taught me what real poverty looked like. Clara and her friend were adults with no cushion at all. Lunch was strategy: a four-dollar buffet. Once I took them to a deli where lunch cost about seven dollars, and they thought I was being luxurious. My parents had always lived paycheck to paycheck too, but they had two full-time salaries, a house, and some nice things. This was different. I learned a lot from Jeff, Clara, and her friend about how the world actually worked.
There was also an African American guy who took the bus to work because he didn’t have a car. He lived near the Shadle area by the large public school there. He told me that every male he knew had been in prison or was in prison—except him. I started driving him home. He was deeply thankful and surprised that I would drive into his neighborhood. Another education.
I was able to save about twelve hundred dollars from the food bank gig. About six weeks before leaving for Japan I’d had enough and quit one day. Jeff later told me that all the temps were fired the very next day. Sharlene’s mother thanked me profusely and wished me well, and then they were all let go.
As I was getting ready to leave, my maternal grandparents visited. My grandfather Bill Kolb was still healthy then, about six years before his death. He gave me seventeen hundred dollars in cash. That brought my total to nearly three thousand. My mother didn’t know about the gift at the time and is still surprised he gave me so much, especially since my grandparents were always financially strapped themselves.
On my last night in Spokane I chose a Mediterranean restaurant and we went as a family. NOVA had asked whether I wanted a big city or a smaller one. I said smaller. I was initially assigned to Osaka, which is a major metropolitan area. Then, one day just before flying, I got an email saying a spot had opened up in Kumamoto on the southern island and asking if I wanted it. I said yes.
I flew out in April 1997. The plane still had a smoking section. By the time the money ran out, I had my first NOVA paycheck.
NOTE: This is the second short story in my upcoming collection. The first is here. This is a work of fiction.
I met Mariko on a cold January night in Tokyo. I had subscribed to Meetup.com, though I wasn’t using it much at the time. That night I did. A local band was playing — popular in their own right, and they sang in English. That detail mattered. It meant the room would be mixed: expats, bilingual Japanese, wanderers, people hovering between worlds.
I went to the bar, hung up my coat, and grabbed a vodka. The crowd was mingling before the show. I learned more about the band. They had hardcore followers — the kind who know every lyric, who close their eyes during certain songs, who treat a small venue like a cathedral.
Then there was Mariko.
I met her on the dance floor and we hit it off immediately. She was 32, lived in Tokyo, and worked in a corporate job she didn’t like. She spoke pretty good English, so we communicated in that language. It was easy. It felt as if I’d known her forever. I was into her. More than that, I wanted her.
Shortly after we started talking, another guy tried to make a move on her. I guess I really liked her because I was not going to let some blasted interloper come between me and her. I said, “Thank you, dude, but we’re talking,” and that was that. He buzzed off. She was essentially my date for the evening.
The band played and they were good. Mariko and I danced — close but not too close — and talked more during the breaks. There was another girl there, Saki, and a young American guy who had been talking with her a bit. We all decided to go to a second bar. It was still earlyish.
We found a wine bar nearby, but the young people thought it was too expensive. I offered to pay, feeling like it couldn’t be that much. We ordered a bottle and shared it. The bottle came to ¥12,000.
We talked and all got along well. Saki was younger, graceful and attractive, just starting her career. The young man was clearly into Saki, and Mariko and I were into each other, so it worked well. Mariko and I talked deep and soulfully, staring into one another’s eyes. We stayed about an hour and a half on the one bottle.
When we left, Mariko and I were on the same train — me back to my hotel, her back home. We talked and exchanged Line. As her stop approached, I said, “I’ll see you again,” and gave her a little kiss on the top of the head. It was a good night.
A few weeks later I was back in Tokyo. I was somewhat at a loose end in my job at the time and had a lot of spare time. I texted Mariko and we agreed to meet at a craft beer bar near my hotel in Shibuya.
We met, drank beer, and I ate tacos from the taco truck outside. That same feeling of familiarity was there right away. After that, we moved to a small, quaint wine bar. The woman running it asked for our music suggestions.
I chose Nina Simone’s “Black Gold.”
Mariko chose “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” and then “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.”
There was only one question between us: would we sleep together?
We did not sleep together that night, or any other night.
We wrapped up at the wine bar and headed to Shibuya Station. She said, “kairitakunai,” which means “I don’t want to go home.” That’s about as green a light as a guy is going to get.
I read her as meaning she wanted to go home with me.
But life is timing, as they say. Maybe I was faded. Maybe I had something else on my mind. The spotlight came on and I was backstage getting ready. Instead of inviting her back to my hotel — the objectively right move — I gave her a little kiss on the lips and said good night.
That was that for that evening.
Two weeks later I was back in Tokyo again and I met her again. We drank and had a good time, but something was not quite the same. We had had our window, and in that micro-moment I had blown my lines.
We parted at the train station again. This time I didn’t kiss her.
A little while later my phone died, and for various reasons I didn’t get a new one right away. When I did get a new phone, Line — the app we had been using to communicate — ate her contact along with a bunch of others. She was gone. I could not have reached her if I wanted to.
In a way, it was a clean break. No drama. No mess. Just a corporation fucking with the program. Life moved on and I didn’t think much about Mariko.
A year or two later I went back through all my Line chats just hoping, but no dice.
NOTE: This is the first short story in my upcoming collection. The second is here. This is a work of fiction.
I met Simona in the smoking room of Osaka’s Kansai International Airport (KIX) in very late November. She was 42, Lithuanian, and drop dead gorgeous. I was on my way to New York to see bands and she was going back to Philly where she was living. We smoked a few last cigarettes and boarded the plane.
On the plane I was seated in the first ten rows of coach and she was seated in the back. She asked my neighbor in the middle seat (I had the aisle) to switch and the woman agreed. Simona was next to me.
She immediately ordered two white wines for her and two for me. The stewardess said, well, it’s one at a time, but since this is an international flight… The flight crew would alter its point of view of the two of us in due course.
We talked, and soon we were flirting. Full on. She got up to use the bathroom and left the seat rest up. I took this as a sign. Within ninety seconds of her being back in her seat we were petting, pecking, and then fully making out. It was electric. Automatic.
Soon a man from a few rows up began complaining that we were “making noise.” We weren’t saying a word; our lips were locked. But he said so, and the stewardess came back and said we were cut off. Simona asked for one more, and got it.
Then, in short order, a man—maybe the chief guy—came back. “The pilot is prepared to kick you off the flight if you don’t cool it.” This was Air Canada, and he delivered the bad news in the most Canadian way possible. Polite, a little snooty, and totally assured. I stood up and, somewhat absurdly, tried to shake his hand. “We’ll settle down,” I promised.
Simona, on the other hand, was distraught. “It’s because I’m a second language learner. That’s why. It’s discrimination.”
We survived the flight and landed in Toronto, where we went for a coffee and cake. We started making out like teenagers again in front of the staff, who laughed. We drank our coffee. I had to connect to JFK and she was going to Philly. We exchanged Facebook, and she patted me on the ass as I left.
“My future ex-husband,” she said.
I was staying at an Airbnb somewhere in deep Brooklyn and I couldn’t hack it. The first few nights were OK because the shows I was seeing were in Brooklyn, but the later shows were in the Lower East Side. I had to move to Manhattan, so I took a room at the Roxy downtown. From there I texted Simona.
I told her I was coming to Philly and would be staying at a nice hotel right off Rittenhouse Square. Would she join me? She messaged back that she would like to, but her aunt kept a close eye on her comings and goings and she was living in her house. Simona worked in a bank. Then I said, you are 42 years old. And she said, yeah, OK, I’ll meet you.
Simona drove down to my hotel and picked me up. We drove around and went to the Rocky statue and she took me by the place where they keep the Liberty Bell. I had wanted to go see Jay Som, an up-and-coming musician, but she wanted to see a comedy show. She asked me who should get the tickets. I said I didn’t know the show, and she said, figure it out, you’re the man.
We went to a fish restaurant for dinner and she ordered a bottle of white. Then another half. We drank deeply and ate. When the bill came she offered to split it. I was prepared to pay for the whole night, but she somehow worked out that I had no money. She was smart like that.
We moved to the comedy show. She drank more wine and we left early. We went back to the hotel where I had prepared wine and chocolate. We drank a little and she undressed.
We kissed and I went down on her. I had a condom and put it on, but after the act it had disappeared. I went to shower. When I came out she told me the condom was gone.
“It’s OK. If I get pregnant I will keep the child. You don’t need to worry.”
Uh, OK.
I didn’t want to have a child with Simona; after all, we had just met five days ago. But there it was.
We slept naked and woke the next morning. I entered her from behind and she said, “don’t come in me.” I didn’t. We both showered and went down for breakfast.
After avocado toast and coffee we went to get her car. It was taking forever, so I got a cab as I had to get back to the train station and back to New York. She kissed me goodbye at the door of the cab.
Note: This post takes up my favorite songs number 51-101. 1-50 is here. As before, this list does not include ambient music or jazz, two genres I also love. This list is a product of nearly 40 years of intensive music listening, so it is, at a minimum, highly curated. You may know some of these songs, perhaps not others, and if any of them peak your interest, that would be a fantastic outcome.
51. It’s a Long Line (But It Moves Quickly) — The Mendoza Line
Note: Back in 2012 I started a project devoted to the Collected Works of Carl Jung. I didn’t get very far, and I started with his later life reflection on creative people which appears in his memoir, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.” I will follow this post up with additional Jung pieces.
Toward the end of his life on earth, Carl Jung worked with Aniela Jaffe on a semi-autobiography titled, in English, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (MDR). While the exact nature of the origins of the text continues to be a matter of controversy (Shamdasani, 22-38), this work is, by any standard, one of the most remarkable works of self-reflection on record. As Jung’s work has seduced me, once more, into an extended contemplation of telos as a universal governing principle, and forced me to ask hitherto avoided questions about the nature and possibility of free will, it is only appropriate that we begin with the end, namely the second to last page of MDR, written when Jung was in his mid-80’s.
Looking back over the course of his life, Jung writes/ dictates as follows:
“A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his own daimon. ‘Shamefully, a power wrests away the heart from us,/ For the Heavenly Ones each demand sacrifice;/ But if it should be withheld/ Never has that led to good,’ says Holderlin. This lack of freedom has been a great sorrow to me. Often I felt as if I were on a battlefield, saying, ‘Now you have fallen, my good comrade, but I must go on.’ For ‘shamefully a power wrests the heart from us.’ I am fond of you, indeed I love you, but I cannot stay. There is something heart-rending about that. And I myself am the victim; I cannot stay. But the daimon manages things so that one comes through, and blessed inconsistency sees to it that in flagrant contrast to my ‘disloyalty’ I can keep faith in unsuspected measure” (MDR, 357).
Here, Jung’s daimon is also his muse, a fickle yet demanding goddess, possessed of little mercy. Here too we see Jung playing with telos, and also recognizing that creative work never comes without a price. And yet, Jung is not railing against his fate–while apparent disloyalty, inconstancy, faithlessness, restlessness, and driven arrogance may have plagued his personal relationships, Jung hove true to his inner compass in a manner and to a degree which would have permanently flung most mortals far the other side of sanity, fellowship, and comprehensibility. When Jung writes that “I can keep faith in unsuspected measure” he is referencing the overarching centrality of intuition as a guide to his life’s work, and building on forty years of reflection on the central orienting elements of personality. The relentlessness and courage of his six decades of work, even as he came increasingly to fear for the reception of his ideas (pace Answer to Job), attests to his faith, and to his larger constancy, even as from a smaller bore perspective his alleged lack of intellectual coherence and questionable allegiance to science as commonly understood has led lesser minds to accuse Jung of prophecy, shamanism, and outright oddness (cf Shamdasani, 83). In order to counteract such limited understandings of Jung, understandings based almost certainly on shallow or incomplete readings of the Collected Works, it behooves us to take an extended look at the textual evidence. This textual evidence, as we shall see, while voluminous, circular, and even repetitive, signifies in the final judgment nothing short of the most remarkable, daring, and far-reaching bodies of work to issue forth from a single human intelligence since Augustine. It is our pleasure to place ourselves in the service of this intelligence, to reflect, if even in the smallest way, a sliver of the numinous with which Jung wrestled throughout his life, as Job wrestled with his angel.
Note: This is Part II of the series on my week with Isobel. Part I is here, and left off with my decision not to sleep with her, come what may.
PART II — Thursday → Saturday, Early Morning
Thursday
I woke up Thursday a little shook to be honest. Things had progressed so far, so fast, and although my feet seemed under me, it was hard to be sure. The fact that she had made a hard pass at me the day before was on my mind. In any case, we met by appointment in the morning . It went the same as before; we walked over to Pret again, but this time she ordered lightly and barely ate. As it turned out this was a sign of things to come. I finished my sandwich and coffee, and we walked back to campus, side by side, talking easily but underneath it something had shifted. We were no longer orbiting — we were a dyad, openly.
Back in the garden, same bench, same proximity. We weren’t spying on sessions anymore. We weren’t even pretending to. We talked all morning like our lives depended on it. And in a way, they did. We covered the history of thought, we recovered our careers, and I told her all about the various ups and downs I had had over the last several years at my school. We talked about astrology and she voiced some of her doubts. I told her I wasn’t a “believer” per se, but that the study fascinated me. We left it open.
After the morning break, we reconvened at a bench in the courtyard, this time in public. I was in a bit of a dilemma, you see my wife was scheduled to come to town that very night, and she would attend the dinner gala, the final dinner for the week. Somehow, I had to get ahead of this situation; I had to lower the temperature. So, I did what I often do in a difficult situation, I leaned on Dylan, specifically the quote from “Oh Sister” off of the album Desire.
I told her, “I feel like we should be like brother and sister.” Containment disguised as poetry. It was the best I could do. This took her aback a bit, and then I explained that my wife would be arriving, in a matter of six or seven hours. She didn’t say much, just took it in. She already knew I was married. She didn’t know my wife would be in Oxford. Whole different deal.
This revelation changed something in her body, and something in mine. We went to lunch — Indian again. Normally I ate fully, and she usually ate less, but that day we both pushed food around the plates. She couldn’t eat a bite; her appetite had totally shut down. Mine was not much better, and I picked at the curry to try to make it look decent. We paid and left. The epiphany of Tuesday had tipped into cognitive and bodily overload by Thursday.
During the afternoon, we talked as before but because the sessions were winding down I think we actually went to a session. I also browsed the bookstore, which was really cool. It was a big table in the common area and it was run by a bookseller who had his own astrology bookshop somewhere in the south. I had switched from the Mendoza Line to Dylan and was playing “Red River Shore” and “Mississippi” in addition to Oh Sister.
Evening arrived. My wife arrived at the hostel two minutes from campus. I went to meet her and walked her back to FAS. She met Isobel and Maddy before dinner — brief, surface-level. My wife complimented Isobel’s shoes. I could barely hold in a laugh for some reason. After all, she couldn’t have known what she was stepping into.
We ate in the dining hall — I sat with my wife and the one Japanese woman there, switching English and Japanese. Isobel sat elsewhere with Mystery and her daughter. There was a collection for the tutors — I took the box table to table, people applauding, giving money. My wife later said I was performing. Maybe I was. I was also alive.
After dinner my wife was tired from travel and wanted to sleep. I walked her to the hostel, kissed goodnight, then went back to the courtyard. Wine, tutors, Maddy, Isobel. A lighter night between us — more social, less fused — but the thread held. We probably stayed until one.
I slept well. The finish line was visible.
Friday
We met again in the morning — Pret. This time she made a scene of helping me pick breakfast. My appetite returned. She still didn’t eat. We walked fifteen minutes to a large park, quiet, green, open.
She was struggling — not with me, but with everything. Engagement, career, identity, meaning. We sat on a bench. “Don’t sit too close to me,” she said.
“OK, how close is good?”
“Right here,” she said, indicating a space about one inch to her right. We talked about our situation–there was nothing else to talk about. We named it outright.
Then she got up and walked to a small arched bridge over a narrow river and said, She stood there for a bit, and then said in a loud declarative voice:“This is my bridge.”
I said, your bridge absolutely.
She stayed there a long time, twenty minutes maybe. I sat on a bench farther back. Eventually she came back to sit beside me — to my left again, shoulders touching. Then, she began to collapse onto me. Shoulders low, breath shallow. I half carried her back to campus. Ambulances and sirens on the street — not symbolic, actual. The world felt like an emergency. We moved slowly. It took almost 40 minutes.
At this same time, I was thinking, obviously. I came up with a name for what Isobel and I were experiencing. I called it the “catalyzed emergency,” just instinctively. I knew at once what I meant, and I also knew one day I would write this story.
We got back to campus and she went to look for Claire Martin, the tutor from day one. She ended up finding Claire, who was free, and Claire held space for her for ninety minutes. No charge. A private grace from a wonderful soul.
I went to the bookshop again. I talked to another Dylan fan and we had such a good chat that I pulled up Dylan’s Red River Shore and played it to him on my phone. He didn’t know it, but loved it. He did a moment chart on his phone and we talked about Dylan’s chart.
At the bookstore I met Melanie Reinhart, for the first time in person. Melanie was the first astrologer I reached out to in 2012 when I was first getting deep into the subject, and it was she who referred me to Darby Costello. So this was a fortunate meeting indeed.
We talked for nearly an hour about her childhood in Africa and her longing to return. I bought Sue Tompkins — Aspects in Astrology because Melanie said another author, who had a book on the charts of musicians, wasn’t a real astrologer. I couldn’t lose face in front of Melanie so I chose Tompkins, but although it’s a great book, I suspect the other one was more my speed.
Melanie asked me up to her room to help carry her bags down the three flights of strips. When we got to the room, she finished packing, and I carried her bags down from her third-floor suite and said goodbye at the gate.
Afterward I found Isobel again, near the entrance. She was steadier, post-Claire. We pushed through the crowd in the quad and slipped to the chapel to say goodbye privately. We spoke plainly — never forget, life-changing, go back to our lives. I told her I wanted to know her as an old woman. She agreed. We exchanged WhatsApp.
She left campus.
I said goodbye to Maddy later in the quad. I said goodbye to Jim, the dream tutor whose session Isobel and I attended and I left out of this story. “You’re a funny guy,” I said. “Takes one to know one,” he answered. The Exeter gate closed behind me, and I walked to the hotel my wife and I were to stay at alone.
My wife was in London at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. I wandered Exeter, then went to the Tolkien exhibition — letters to his children, original sketches, it was a really moving experience. Afterward a stationery shop — a single Tintin postcard. Dinner at the hotel restaurant — bouillabaisse and red wine. Then I texted Isobel. One message became a hundred.
I sent her “Leave the City” by Jason Molina and Red River Shore. She listened and cried. She said she wouldn’t go home to her fiancé that night — too flooded — she would stay at a hotel instead. We planned how we would keep in touch.
I slept next to my wife in a new bed, and in a new world.
Saturday, Early Morning
My wife had returned somewhat late from London and she was tired and slept early. She had an early flight, and a bus pickup 5:15 AM.
When the morning came I walked her to the stop. Street quiet, air washed and pale.
We hugged, kissed briefly, light and familiar, and she boarded the bus.
I stood there watching it pull away. Not knowing yet what I had broken open. Not knowing yet what I had kept intact.
Subtitle: I didn’t sleep with her so I had to quit my job.
Mistakes were made tonight
The Mendoza Line
Note: This piece is about a single week in my life that reordered things for good. At a minimum it’s an interesting story; at maximum it is the hinge between two versions of myself. I do not pretend to be the hero of it, and I take full responsibility for everything contained here.
It begins with a dream I had in Bali at the very end of July 2018. I was the lead trainer for the IB Asia Pacific workshop leader and school visitor training — my first time in that role after five years of apprenticeship. At the same time I was working at Ritsumeikan Uji as shukan, a kind of junior administrator. By mid-2018 I was burnt out: long days, multiple roles stacked on top of one another, and, most of all, a boss I no longer trusted.I was scheduled to go to the Faculty of Astrological Studies (FAS) at Exeter College, Oxford at the end of August, and in the meantime I would attend John Innes’s wedding to his fiancee Kristi. All this occurred, and here is that dream.
PROLOGUE: DREAM I
7/29/2018:
The dream starts with an image of a large whisky bottle. The bottle is very fat and also ceremic. So in fact it looks nothing like a normal whisky bottle. It is perhaps of Suntory brand. I know before I know that a story of some kind will unfold inside the bottle. I am reminded somehow of a ship inside a bottle. Suddenly I am inside the bottle itself. There is a whole word here and all sorts of people in a cityscape. I come to understand that everyone lives in relative fear of a species or group of overlords.
The overlords are both omni-present and also very distant. They rule by fear and have the power to rub out anyone at any time. Sort of. When a person is marked for removal their status is updated. Their status is displayed on a kind of glowing chip in their shoulder. There are basically three types of statuses. First is “needing to have the life wrung out of them.” There are marked people and their time is limited. Apparently they are political criminals, thought criminals. Oddly, even when marked these people continue to circulate and take part in oppositional activity. I never actually see one of them removed, although their actions do take on a greater sense of urgency.
The second category is another worded status. This one is more ellitipcal and I forget the wording. Though safer than the first, this is still a status to be avoided if possible.
Third is a number. A voice tells the city that statuses will be updated and that anything under 40000 is a safe score. I check my update with bated breath, fearing the dreaded worded status. My number is 49500. Not bad I think—although not under 40000 this is perhaps for young people. 49500 seems reasonable for my age.
Suddenly the view shifts and I can see into the bottle from the outside. All of the people and various creatures and scrambling for the mouth of the body. The bottle begins to approach a wall into which is will soon merge. Here, the entrance to the bottle will be sealed. The I character in the dream is also scrambling for the exit although he doesn’t seem to stand much of a chance. Creatures spill over one another and one baby creature somewhere between a human baby and a little mouse slips through the mouth of the bottle to the other side of the wall. The bottle snaps closed and I am once again staring at the large ceremony bottle from the beginning of the dream. I feel a sense of relief that the perfect creature has escaped. End of dream.
This dream is about reincarnation.
(The me on the treadmill does not survive. Dream group says whisky is a spirit which takes 50 years to mature. That gives me a book deadline I guess-49.5 the book and the end of the provisional personality.)
PART I — Sunday → Wednesday
Sunday, late August 2018
I flew into London from Osaka and took a pre-arranged bus to Oxford, then walked to Exeter College. Check-in, dorm keys, linens. The halls smelled like old plaster and a little like soap — an old building. I carried my bag upstairs, opened the door to the room that would be mine for the week, and sat on the bed for a moment to locate myself. New country, new rhythm, no context yet.
I walked the campus — stone walls, grass cut low, shaded paths. The quad had that contained feeling of a place that already had its stories. I didn’t know I was about to enter one.
I went to dinner at a taco place just outside campus and had a beer or two. Back in the room I read a little astrology to warm up for the week and listened to the band The Mendoza Line. Little did I know they would end up playing a surprisingly large role in what followed.
Around 10 PM the fire alarm went off. Everyone in the building stumbled outside in pajamas and stood around talking for a few minutes. Odd, but fitting — a small communal disturbance to start the week off.
Monday
I woke up, showered and dressed and grabbed my notebook for the astrology sessions. At this time I was fully committed to attending sessions and making the most of them. Breakfast opened early and I liked that — fruit, eggs, strong coffee. The hall had a low hum, people still new to each other. I walked to the first seminar which was given by Ms. Claire Martin. Claire was in her 70s, and a very comforting presence. She’d been doing astrology forever and has a couple of books which are helpful. The seminar was on the first floor, window onto one of the gardens. The air had that mild, hopeful tone of a first session.
Claire spoke on the 1890s — fields of meaning, ectoplasm, etc. I offered something Jung-coded because that’s where my mind goes when the border between psyche and symbol starts to move. I didn’t know she was in the room yet, Isobel (not her real name), though she already was.
At one point Claire mentioned an Aries Moon. I said, simply, “I’m an Aries Moon.” Nothing loaded, nothing aimed. Lecture ended, chairs moved, and she came to me from the back of the room.
“I am an Aries Moon too.”
We walked to the next session together. That was it — no delay, no drift. We sat side-by-side for the rest of the day. Chatting between sessions, coffee break close but not touching, her chart in her bag. She showed me her own chart print-outs — hers and her fiancé’s — and we compared placements. Similarities everywhere.
Lunch in the dining hall. More sessions in the afternoon. Light talk, no electricity announced but already there. Monday night we ate with a group — tutors, a few new friends. We were beside each other the whole time, not hiding it. Later we drifted to the courtyard bar, opened wine bottles, and someone lit a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked more than a dozen cigarettes in sixteen years, but I took one with her, and then another. Not ceremony, more like instinct, more like inevitable.
We ended the night late. I walked back to the dorm alone and put on The Mendoza Line again. I already knew I was in trouble so in addition to “It’s a Long Line (But It Moves Quickly)” I was listening over and over again to “Mistakes Were Made” from which the epigraph comes. Sometimes you just know.
Tuesday
We had planned to have breakfast together, not at Exeter but at Pret, about an eight minute walk away. We both ate and she helped me pick my breakfast. We were acting like a couple already. We attended the morning sessions, seated right next to each other and then the day started to open. In the afternoon we did not attend sessions, instead we spent the time in one of the beautiful gardens. We sat close on the bench by the open window, listening to the session through the gap. I talked about muses and how I work best with one. She talked about photography, stalled career energy, her family, and Swiss-Russian split. Russian women, I reflected not for the first time, are a problem, and I knew deep down I was already in trouble.
Tuesday night the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus was scheduled to play Oxford, and I had a ticket, but she canceled. Instead we went out for dinner, just the two of us, at an Indian restaurant near campus. We were already deep into our relationship, and everything came easy; I could feel it inside ten minutes. This was one of the best meals I have ever had for reasons bigger than taste. I told her about my two epiphanies, one when I was four years old and one when I was seventeen. The whole evening felt like a third epiphany.
Back at campus everyone was drinking in the courtyard again. There was Mystery and her daughter, tutors, people rotating. We stayed late, drank wine, smoked, and flirted like teenagers. I went to my room around 1:30 AM, playing The Mendoza Line over my headphones again. I was seeking their counsel, essentially, and they are a great band.
Wednesday
I woke up and this day we had breakfast at the dining hall. By this time, people were noticing us. Comments here and there, sideways smiles. Morning and lunch blurred into one long conversation — the garden, the bench, a little grass, nothing hidden. We were finishing each other’s thoughts, and I was in deeper than I had ever been. We didn’t attend much of anything. Afternoon break she went to change. I went back to my room and put on Mendoza Line with the full weight of obsession. She came back later and said, without shame, that she’d pleasured herself during the break — just stated it directly. This was a complication.
For dinner that night she changed again — a red dress, short but not careless. Stunning. Whispering at the table, touching lightly, laughing against each other. Everyone knew by then. After dinner was wine again, talking with the tutors, including the lovely Rod Chang and Mystery the long courtyard. I met Darby Costello in person for the first time. Darby is my astrologer and we had already had a number of phone consultations by this point. She was fully alive drinking wine, and talking like someone who knows how to hold a room. I was so happy that she was my astrologer. Isobel and I stayed late once more, and cleared the courtyard. Around two in the morning we parted, cheeks touched, no bedroom, no act.
Back in my room, lights low, I lay on the narrow bed with Mendoza Line in my ears. I knew exactly where I was standing:
I would keep going. I would see where this led. But I would not sleep with her. I couldn’t.
That was the shape. That was the decision. Wednesday ended on that line.
