Episode 10: Talk About Tanks

Han and Fan are my roommates for the last year, and not so different from any other college students. When I make my rounds closing the library late at night, I usually find one or the other – sometimes both – squirreled away somewhere at the study desks, earphones jacked in and shooting their way through a video game. Han spent a recent Asian festival snapping photographs, so I can see myself Japanese taiko drumming. Fan's desk has several Japanese anime magazines shelved; a hobby we both have in common. Our apartment's front door is still decked out in Chinese banners and a giant sticker proclaiming the lunar new year; I wonder if I can talk them into giving me the paper lanterns they took down? There's even a lucky charm stuck on my bedroom door, just like theirs.

In China, it is said that the generation born after 1989 have no clue what happened that spring. State censorship of media and information is strict. In a documentary I watch four Beijing university students shown a picture of Tank Man standing before the tanks; they study it intently then surrender. One whispers, “1989,” but none grasp the context of the image. “Is this a work of art?” asks another.

Han and Fan agree to an interview, with Tiananmen Square the topic. I want to see how close I can get to Tank Man via their memories and experiences, and how far the historic myopia travels.

Han sits on the couch and fiddles with his glasses when he's choosing his words carefully. When he thinks deeply, considering his answer, he leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, and hmphs. He's been to Tiananmen Square, the symbolic and beurocratic heart of China, twice. Once as a child of nine with his parents, and again as an adult at twenty.

“Who do I think Tiananmen Square is?”

“Yes. Like a person. If Tiananmen were a person, what would it be like?”

“I never thought of that. Hmm. It looks great,” he spreads his hands wide (the Square is the largest public space in the world), “and well-protected. Maybe... a middle-aged person with strong honor. A person of high honor. Like status.”

Fan is a bit more nervous. I hear him speak English less than Han most of the time. “Sit here, sit down,” says Han at the beginning, but Fan hovers around the counter separating kitchen from small living room. His hair poofs up, where Han's is combed flat and short. Yet both have glasses, and the same wispy college-stubble on their chins. “I think... it's a symbol of government. Government power. A symbol of freedom of government.”

“Both?”

“Blood was there. It was covered in blood. Like a river.”

“1989?”

So they had both heard of it, of the protests and the crackdown afterward. But each had started down a different road.

“I did not know until I came here,” said Han. “Here, the teacher talk all about Tiananmen Square. In China I don't know. Nobody knows. The censorship is very tough. I was shocked.”

“I knew,” breaks in Fan. “The internet. I see pictures. That man in front of the tanks.” Internet censorship in China is monolithic, but like many in the younger generation, Fan can get around it. “So I knew, but I learn much more. I talk about it with friends, on the internet, here. But I wouldn't tell a police man!” he laughs.

“So you saw the Tank Man?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody really knows what happened to him. What do you think happened to him?”

“I heard he was run over by the tank. Dead,” says Fan.

“I don't know,” says Han. “Probably arrested.”

“Do you think something like that, Tank Man, the protests, do you think it could happen again in China? I mean not in some future, but in your lifetimes?”

Han squints. “Ahh... I don't know. I just don't know this thing.” But Fan is nodding his head, “Yeah.” “He's going to Beijing in summer,” Han points at Fan. But he won't be visiting Tiananmen. “I'm just flying through, but a few days in Beijing. I'll go around the city.”

“But not to Tiananmen Square?”

“No,” he shoves away from the counter laughing, “I don't like the Party.”

Episode 9: Drumspeakers

I love writing dialogue. In fiction. I hate writing in nonfiction; my memory, even my hearing fail me as a recorder, and my notes are scattered helter-skelter codes.

But I try.

Taiko practice has ended. My friends and I are standing around after, kibitzing, and discussion is on the upcoming drag show.

"My knees are killing me; it's even worse with drag practice," says Holly.

"Yeah. And Jazmine keeps smacking my back so hard." Nicole rubs her back for emphasis. "She should put her hand lower."

"And grab your butt? She totally grabbed your boob in the one turn!"

Laughter. They're both in the drag show; not me. I offered to don a burqa and "perform" John Cage's 4'33", but that's too much art and not enough fun. Okay, I'm done snarking on that.

And I wasn't really taking notes here.

"You could do the drums. A blog on the conversation of the drums would be amazing," interjects Katie.

Yes. Yes it would.

"You can steal the idea; I give it you."

By all means.

What we just finished, before the kibitzing, was a conversation all its own. Seventeen people pounding on drums, the Japanese taiko (a mixture of different sizes and, in a pinch, a few garbage cans upside down), mixing harmonies and rhythms.

One drum, the shimedaiko placed behind the twin taiko rows, leads the conversation. DUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUM.

And the sixteen answer: DUUM!

The call: DUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUM.

And the answer resounds again: DUM... DUM. Bodies respond with one arm, then the second, falling on the cowhide.

DUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUM.

DUM!

Then together, caller and answer, a conversation mixing its stride and speaking over each other. What would be rude in words is a beautiful beat.

Repeat, add a last DUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUDMDUMDUM with greater force and launch into a conversation apart from the shimedaiko. It continues to speak, keeping a rhythm and time of eight-beat cycles, but the conversation expands and overflows past its bounds.

DUM DUM DUMDUM (scream SO--REI!) DUMDUM DUMDUM (HAI!). When the melody cycles through four times, the conversation changes. It slows but resounds with more force. (SO--REI! SU!) DUUUM (SU!)DUUUM (SU!) DUM DUM. Four cycles. Then a sharp break, the stamina of the conversation lightening for a DUM! CLACK CLACK CLACK. Bodies join the dialogue more actively; swaying to the beat and raising the sticks high, letting gravity pull them back down; the drummer is already in an implicit negotiation with the physics of earth. But now the sticks clack together as the body squats and curves left, center, right. Two cycles, instead of four. The variety of in conversation that keeps in interesting.

Inwardly, I'm having a mental conversation. Am I doing right? Is my left arm hitting with the same strength as my right, keeping the beat even? What's the beat? Crap, I miscounted? Did sensei see? And I bet these are the same thoughts wandering through sixteen other minds.

Back to DUM DUM DUMDUM (SO--REI!) DUMDUM DUMDUM (HAI!).

Now the hard part. Our bodies have to converse with each other in threes. Four cycles and we jump clockwise, switching positions on the drums. I leap back and Nicole jumps forward; Holly shifts left in our triangle of drums. All around us similar jumps flow together.

And the drum beats on. We switch again. Now we solo.

One drum, Holly in front. All sixteen other drums fall silent.

DUM DUMDUMDUM DUM! DUM DUMDUMDUM DUM!

Nicole and I rush in with the same answer, three drums synchronized.

Then we shut up and Holly leads in again: DUM DUM DUM DUM DUMDUMDUMDUMDUMDUM DUM!

Nicole and I stumble in. They were all supposed to be CLACKs on the rim of the drum.

There's whispering as the next group does their solo, more individualized choreography. A unique discussion adding to the drama of drumming.

"I thought we were doing the clicking?"

"We are. I just, my arms are tired."

"It's okay. It's practice."

There's a lot of nervous laughter after quick recriminations. Sensei said, before beginning, "If you screw, just keep going! Don't worry about it." I hoped she didn't realize how confused we just were. I was. She's awfully attractive. Yeah, I'm hot for taiko teacher. Sorry, can't hear you. The conversations rise and merge togeth--

(ONE... TWO... PA-CIFIC TAI-KO!)

DUM DUM DUMDUM (SO-REI!) DUMDUM DUMDUM (HAI!).

And if you were upstairs, as we shook the University Center, your body was in the conversation, too. Shaking along. Shh... the drums are talking, and they drown you out and bring you up at the same time.

Episode 8: The World Needs More Breakdancing Lawyers

My cultural sensitivity meter is about to take a hit.

“So, are you from Hawai'i?” I ask.

“No, Portland. It's alright; I get that a lot.”

The air still isn't up to the warmth I expect for an April, but the sun shines brightly on Trombley Square. Mike and I sit down on the red bricks. Sure, I could have walked around the town of Forest Grove or jumped the bus and hit the city looking for a stranger. But it occurs to me: how many strangers do we see all the time? Evey day? I sit in University classes for months next to people I never know, names I can barely keep in my head once we're all dismissed.

So Mike, you're it. I think I should be forgiven for a Hawai'ian assumption. He is Japanese, with short black hair thinned and spiked; not long ago he had it bleached blonde. Around Pacific University, it's a decent bet someone like that is from the islands. His speech has the laidback wandering quality I've grown accustomed to over the last two years, although he does lack the lilting, almost questioning tone I pick up a lot in the Hawai'ian accent.

“I'm from Portland,” he says. “Like metro-side, not downtown. It's more, you know, southside. Are you from here?”

“No,” I laugh. “Texas.”

“Oh, well I don't know if you know the high schools...”

I shake my head.

We're not a whole lot alike at first glance. T-shirts and jeans for me, duct tape holding one battered, generic brand tennis shoe together. Mike has unscuffed but slightly faded Nike tennis shoes, to compliment the Nike socks and Nike sports shorts hanging just below the knee. There is no trademark swish on his t-shirt, just a black explosion with the words “Sunset Fevertym” in neon colors.

“It's my high school breakdancing team,” he explains. “I did six years of tennis. My mom wanted me to get into something, you know, so I wouldn't do drugs or any of that stuff. There was soccer. Then I did tennis, my brother too. I was pretty good in the northwest. I was just like a few steps from national level. You can go to Texas or Florida or somewhere. But then I just quit. It wasn't my passion any more.”

I take notes all over the place. Little scribbles dot the page, and lines with arrows crowd the space to fit what matters together.

“Do you want me to slow down?”

“No, no; go ahead. I'm just scribbling.”

“Okay,” he says. “So I got into breakdancing in high school. At first, you know, some guys were doing it and it was fun, but then there was a performance at high school, a talent show. I got up there and it felt good. It was my second passion. It gave me confidence. I could be more myself when I started. Four of us made a team, the rest were just like posers.”

I asked what he was majoring in. As a freshman, he was hovering between two choices.

“Well, I wanted to do Psychology, but maybe Environmental Science. I'm thinking more environmental science now. It has more to with the law, and I want to be a lawyer.”

Frankly, I'm all for it. The world needs more breakdancing lawyers.

Episode 7: Hi, I'm Skeerd

Shh. Don't tell a soul. Not a goddamn soul.

I might reckon I'm a fraud. Until two years ago I lived in the same state all my life. Twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years in Texas, since I was four just in central Texas, just outside Austin, never in Austin, ya got me? The hill country. Austin might be the Live Music Capital of the World, but I only ever saw two concerts. I'm not the cool, hip, Indie check-this-ink-ain't-I-the-!@#$ –

Look. I'm being a fraud right there. I don't like cussing if I don't have to. When I want to, when I need to, I'll sure enough cut'er loose. But otherwise, I aesthetically like those little relics of comic books, the !@#$ words. I'm not really a cusser by nature. I'm liberal with my damns and hells and I laugh when an God or Christ gets censored out of an expletive. For crissakes, the Almighty has better things to do than shove celestial soap down your throat. But I figure !@#$ and !@#$ and even @$$ when you hitch up to hole is a bit more than I want to get accustomed too.

There were times when, after a month working at a gas station with a part-time stripper, she was shocked to hear me yell “Hell!” one night when the ice machine door slamshut my finger. Yessir. I shocked a stripper, with little thing like that. “I never heard you cuss before!”

But I wander. Over yonder. A lot.

Speech, it's a funny thing, that there speech. How you talk. I'm a sittin' there with my mom in the car dealer. We're buying her a car. On her own money, with her own credit. For the first time in my lifetime, and it's only three, four years back. Yeah, those doin' the math let a low whistle o' disbelief. It's the first time my grampa ain't cosigned, as far as I know. Long time. So the guy, see I'm there to kind of counsel her and ask questions because I like finding the little things they're going to stick up your arse when they think you ain't readin' the whole real deal, so this guy, the car salesman, the used car saleseman you unnerstan', he says, “Are you from New York?”

Naw, I'm from a few miles thataway. All my life. But I watch ungodly amounts of Law & Order. Maybe that's it.

I went through a few years of peppering talk with Cajun stylin's. Still fun and I like chewing gator. Sure 'nuff.

You may have noticed an “arse.” BBC on the PBS raised me every Thursday and Saturday night on the intricacies of bloody proper English swearing, ya git. Not like I was going out and doing anything else.

Somewhere I mixed it all up. I can't fake a real accent, from anywhere. When I moved to Oregon, I hear often: “Wow, Texas? But you don't have an accent!” Except when I have the Louisiana sausage down at Monkey Deli. Dem's powerful spicy. And Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I do love y'all and ain't.

I jumble and ah stumble over my words all the time. They don't know quite where they're from eeder. I spoonerism all the damn time. If I get riled up it's worse. And I like getting riled up and geared up for an intellectual fight, but I get distracted by narrowing down to one mighty fine point and controlling the flow into a certain channel. I never feel made clear and I don't know if its the words or the ideas that get in the way.

Or maybe there's nothing in the way. Naught at all. And it's all just window dressin' for emptiness.

And that leaves me, not scared, nor even skeerd.

Damn skeerd. Ain't no two ways about it. Skeers the fucking shiznit right out of moi.

On Marriage, by the Unqualified

Marriage. Marriage is what brings us here together, today. It must be the strangest intersection humanity has developed yet, this weird confluence of friends and family, custom and law, the sacred and secular. Here you have what is intended to the happiest of states, so the societal norm informs us, of union. Yet everyone has a story of this friend or that relative, or themselves, who married and divorced. Perhaps again and again.

In a marriage you develop the deepest intimacy. Not just the sex, but what happens afterwards. Laying in bed together, after the afterglow has faded. Sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own. And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The in-laws you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

The affairs.

Kids even.

Maybe kids from other marriages.

Even kids from affairs, mayhaps.

Marriage. Marriage is not exactly as advertised.

#

My mother and father divorced when I was two. Or three. The family has always been a bit fuzzy on the exact moment. My mother never remarried, and only rarely dated in the dim, dim recesses of my memory. From there, it would be easy to accommodate a belief that any trepidation of marriage on my part, or relationships in general, could be easily Freudianised as their fault. Too easily.

This would not factor in my grandparents, who raised me as much (and perhaps a bit more) than my mother. From age three on, I grew up in a multigenerational household. My grandparents were nearly a stereotype: Depression-era survivors who met and married post-World War II. They lived and loved their five children through the Forties and Fifties and Sixties. There was never any doubt to look at them it was a cooperative marriage, with each a claimed spehere. Inside the house, grandma ruled. Outside, you heeded grandpa. I wanted permission to go somewhere? That's child-raising – ask grandma. I need money? That's finances – ask grandpa. Never once did I have any sense my grandma was unfulfilled, or my grandpa bitter. They lived and loved exactly as they wish.

When grandma broke her hip and slowly faded painfully over the next two years, me, my uncle, and my mother took turns driving grandpa to the hospital or nursing home two or three times a day to spend time with her. And mostly, it was me; I had more availability. I listened to them chat and laugh, or her whimper and him hold her hand.

These two are not idolized, however. Neither were pure saints with some “I only met my soulmate once” story. Theirs was my grandma's second marriage; two of my uncles and an aunt are technically half-relatives by blood. My grandpa stepped up to the plate and adopted them all when he married. Only my Aunt Sandy would grow up to defy him by taking her biological father's surname after her own divorce. And when grandma died, she left me a book she had been working on for years. A baby book, oddly enough, called Grandmother Remembers, filled with all kinds of facts I had never even though to ask about.

Such as their marriage date, March 21, 1952. My mother was born October 12, 1952. I did the math. Less than six months.

“Well,” grandpa said, “she was early.” He smiled.

Sure.

#

I can divide my friends up into two distinct camps: the ones I had before returning to college later in life and the ones in college with me now.

The ones before, almost none had gone to or completed college. The closer we were, the less likely for them to be products of higher education. Some married, all divorced. One dutifully pays his child support, loves his daughter, is a great dad, but never married; relations between him and his child's mother are rarely harmonious. Another's longest lasting, most loving relationship was with another man's wife, long distance. He cited that marriage as a “military marriage of convenience” and thus a sham. Another friend who was in the military confirmed this is fairly common, which speaks volumes in itself. The longest marriage of a close friend likely lasted only so long since he spent a great deal of time in prison; once he was out, the combination of personality traits and parole constrictions wrecked his marriage and free access to his three children.

Never once, however, have any of them took a stand against marriage. Not one does not desire a relationship, and a marriage eventually. A permanence.

The friends in college, most of them, seem deathly afraid of marriage. As much as most religions make marriage a sacrament, they take a stand against marriage for themselves as holy writ; usually this is coupled with an intense abhorrence of having children as well. It's not that they want to “date around” or can't have relationships either; most do. “If I ever wake up next to him and realize we actually are in a relationship, something that won't end at any moment, I'll freak out and run,” said one after they'd been together over a year; now they live together.

It's all a bit paradoxical. What is a marriage? Is it the ceremony and the paper? All the college friends who view marriage with an intense distaste for themselves all vow support for rising surge in favor of gay marriage; but why support something as a legal institution you can't stand the thought of doing yourself?

Whether you call it marriage or keep it undefined, when you figure out a system after the afterglow has faded, sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own, what can you call it? And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The relatives you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

If you can face all that, why be terrified of a single word?

I Found This Book Nowhere

and the book is saying

so

are

you

This is the strangest book I own; the cover is a color mixed somewhere between navy and purple and claimed by neither. There is a bright white chair in the middle surrounded by a circle. At twelve evenly space points along the circle eleven lines radiate out from each point, creating an intricate network of white lines cross-hatching the circle. In truth, there are no lines or chair; the images are created by negative space on the cover. Therefore, it is only an impression of a chair. But your eyes slide off this distinction and see, yes, a chair. A simple wooden chair within an abstract, geometrical pattern. At the cardinal edges is the word “Remember,” four times. There are words around the circle; but we'll read them later. All in all, it has the look of an occult tract written in Frank Miller's Sin City.

The title? Well, here you have to indulge in some conjecture. The book arrives in my hands working at the library, a tiny part of a large donation from a retiring professor. My task to methodically determine what books the library already holds, and whether the donation is an earlier or later edition.

This is a problem child.

No, the library has no copy. But searching through the WorldCat database, collecting millions of books catalogued throughout the international network, I could uncover three titles:

Be Here Now

Now Be Here

Remember Be Here Now

Librarians all over the world are confounded by this tome. At least I'm not alone. Amused and wondering just how to catalogue this thing, and generally intrigued by the–

Wait, let me tell you more about the pages. And why it's so hard to classify. Forget the cover; no one who handles books, stacking and shelving and searching and archiving, is fooled by the outside. The secret history of a book is written on the inside, in the title page. A blank page, and then a few more pages gives you all the legal information. The real author, the full title, the copyright year, the publisher, the printing. All the hardcore nerdy stuff a booklover wants to really know; where the ancestry of the ink lies. And what the technician needs to handle the blizzard of texts storming in.

Only this title page is little different. It tells me,

“Yes, I am printed in 1971. By the way, did you know that's the Year of the Earth Monkey? Also, this is made in love for love. Any portion of this may be reprinted to ring the bell of the dharma, but only with prior written permission of the Lama Foundation.”

More or less. As of a sixth printing, there were 186,000 copies of the book floating about. Not too shabby for a book with no fixed title. Yeah, after all that, no title on the copyright page. There is no title page, really. There is a page devoted to telling you how the money (in 1971 costing $3.33) paid for the book is distributed, with the admission

“We don't fully understand the relationship between the energy formed here and the green energy that flows through us.”

Amen, brother. So I walk in to the supervisor, because the book amuses me and perplexes me all the same.

“Hey chief, how do I handle this. It has something like three names.”

She takes it and turns it over, flipping through it. The pages are yellowed with age just a bit, and the cover has tears and dog-ear stress. She laughs at some of the illustrations and the general tone of the writing. “Well, this hasn't actually been catalogued by anyone yet. It doesn't exist. What do you want to do with it?”

“Man, it would be awesome if I had a book like that.” I'm wistful but joking.

She's got her head bent and looking over her glasses with a smile.

“Seriously?”

She keeps looking.

“I need you to at least say okay.”

“See,” she says, “It's in pretty bad condition, it lacks solid information, there's already other copies held by other libraries. We'll probably just have to give it away or recycle it anyway.” The hard truth is the library can't store infinite books. So we nod, and the book disappears into my bag before I settle in to research the rest of the stuff on the cart.

This is perhaps my favorite part. The author is sitting down with a relative who believes he's Jesus and is locked up for doing one crazy thing after another, stealing and the like. And he looks at the author, funky beard and a dress and the whole hippie shebang, and cannot understand why Jesus is locked up and the author's free. The hippie explains:

Sure * Because as far as I'm concerned we're all God * That's the difference * If you really think another guy is God he doesn't lock you up ***

*Funny about that *

And all the *'s are tiny, haloed Christs.

It's a hippie bible. Now, I've got a lot of books on my shelf. Three different English bibles. Even a Mormon bible, just 'cuz. The Tao Te Ching, the Analects, the Apocrypha and stuff on Kabbalah; I could use a good Qur'an. Books on all kinds of mythology. Every continent covered, except Antarctica, but if you know a good penguin mythology collection, send it on by. Fiction, mostly fantasy and science fiction but not all. Science and poetry and history and the Complete Works of Shakespeare and E.A. Poe. Beowulf and Grendel. But this book is the weirdest of the lot.

I put it on the shelf and all the books shimmy to Parliament: We got the funk UNGH! Give us the funk! You see, what I'm trying to tell you is the title. Remember the words around the circle I didn't tell you? Be and Here and Now chase each other around the circle in repetition, but the spaces change, and at one point they merge for BE NOWHERE. The spine has both Be Here Now and Now Be Here, flipped, mirrored. I'm trying to tell you

the

title

is

*BEEEP*

I love my family. Truly. But when that phone rings, and I see “Home” or “Mom Cell” pop up as the caller identity, I let it ring. And ring. I could press “ignore” and let it go straight to voicemail, but then they know. You have to let it play itself out, play the game and don't blink first. If it's important, I'll check the voicemail and call back.

Sometimes the thought strikes me: perhaps I am a terrible son. Who ignores calls from a mother? Wretched scum and villainy! But picture the Cosby Show, and all the Huxtables leaving and returning to the family home, over and over, and you circle close to our family legacy. My mother, my uncle, myself, we all flung ourselves outward at some time or another and then gravitated back to my grandparents. Repeatedly. Even as an adult, I would be asked, “So you still live with your mother?”

No, with my grandfather. It's his house; Mom living there also is pure coincidence. I'm just carrying on a tradition.

Maybe I'm not a terrible son; maybe I'm a terrible person, all-around. I don't much like picking up the phone in any situation. When it rings, I think, “Why is this person calling?” Most of my friends know not to call without damn good reason, so I'll pick up, otherwise...

Cue my voice:

“Hi, you've reached Steve. I'm not here right now, or maybe I am and I just don't feel like picking up. In any event, leave a message. Bye.”

It's not the flashiest, kindest message out there. One supervisor commented, “Well, at least your honest.” Which is pretty much all I desire. This cell phone, bits of metal and plastic and tiny circuits, is a tool. I like tools. I like to use them.

I do not like being used by them.

It seems as if this little tyrant has wormed its way into supremecy overnight. Old landline phones had the advantage you could escape them just by leaving the house. And I can still remember me and a friend wandering the mall as teenagers almost fifteen years ago, with the dull beige, brick-like hammer of a phone that was newly “mobile.” Hot stuff. You had to carry it; no pocket would hide the sucker. At least its slavery was obvious and apparent.

Whenever my friend Seth calls me, at some point I'm bound to hear swearing as he swerves his car. He can't divorce his phone and the road. For me, if the phone rings in the pocket while driving, I don't pick up. The thought of it strikes me silly. Even dangerous.

So the phone, you see, is for me. It is for my convenience. It is, I must sadly inform you, not for the world's convenience. If it goes in my pocket, I regulate.

When I return a call home to see if something has happened, if Grandpa is in the hospital or anything, I do make a point to say hello to him. Let each other know we're still kicking. You can time it in under a minute or two. Neither of us really wants to ramble, just a hello, you good? Sure. Take care.

He never calls. And we like it that way. When I close my eyes and transport technology back two thousand years, for fun, I picture Jesus sitting around being tried by the Sanhedrin. Ringing all around him in black, they shout, “Why won't you answer our calls?”

Serenity fills his voice.

“Man was not made for the telephone; the telephone was made for man.”

Amen.

Episode 3: Dynamite Dice

Lean in, I have something spectacular to tell you.

About dice.

Now your average die, the one everyone is familiar with when you break out Monopoly for family game night or bust out the serious poker chips at Vegas, is a six-sided little cube, pips arranged in symmetrical designs on each plane. Usually one through six, although I've seen variant schemes. There are thousands of different colors and materials to choose from, but the most common today would be plastic, smoothed on the corners for increased rolling and to lessen manipulation. And the most dominant color: black and white. Simple.

They were playing with dice in Rome, in Greece, in civilizations lost to time and unnamed. Millennia later, two men named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson would show up and figure out a new game to play with them, and the six-sided die would become merely one weapon in an arsenal of polyhedral dice used in role-playing games. Four-sided. Eight-sided. Ten-sided. Twelve-sided. Twenty-sided. With simple, basic statistics, people around the world began building worlds, destroying them, and rebuilding.

Now this isn't all that spectacular. The spectacular bit is this: it was an old, old trick. The Greeks knew all about building a universe out of polyhedrons. Plato devised an elemental system of five separate elements, and to each he assigned a shape: pyramid/fire, cube/earth, octahedron/air, icosahedron/water, and dodecahedron (every other shape can be broken down into right-angle triangles; the dodecahedron cannot, and thus was a “cosmic” element – the aether). The world in Plato's view was built of mixtures of these elements. Contrary to Einstein, Plato's God did indeed play dice with the universe.

My favorite is the decahedron, the humble ten-sider the philosopher found no use for. Most of my favorite role-playing games use it exclusively. Simple to construct percentages, easy to scale from 1 to 10. And it spins like a dream. Each side is a lop-sided diamond, squat near the equator and pointed at the pole. A twenty-sider is easy to spin; it's almost a sphere and it wants to roll. You have to coax a good spin out of the ten-sider, give it space, and somehow that makes success sweeter. My favorite ones are a fiery orange, not quite burnt. The numbers are black and bold. And the orange is an illusion from a distance; peer closer and you see flecks of every warm range: smudged yellow, salsa red, and a sea of soft orange swimming around the splashes. Spinning, they all merge together like the tip of a flame with faint black stripes. Then it wobbles, clatters, and comes to rest.

And they explode. In many games that use them, a ten “explodes,” adding one die to another until they fizzle and cease exploding; there is no limit to what that ten can become, its potential astronomical. Every lump of plastic, or stone if you lay out enough cash, can go nova. Only a ten can do this. Other dice may “crit” or “stack” or even achieve a “nat.” But no other die explodes.

Handle your ten-siders with care. Plato was wrong about the pyramid. Dice with a decahedron, and play with fire.

Episode 2: Talk About Rules

PowerPoint presentations by anarchists are a thing of beauty. There's a guy named Margaret at the podium giving a brief history of intellectual anarchy; the Pearl Room of Powell's bookstore, a huge edifice of bricks and books, is packed. Mostly people plop down to see the icon of Portland fantasists, Ursula Le Guin, like me.

Then the sketchpad filled with stick figures illustrating key moments in anarchy literature is hoisted high. Modern technology at its finest: Sharpie and paper in perfect harmony. Red marker helped highlight the antics of more notorious anarchists with flame. An occasional bit of arson, and the knifing of a secret police captain, later and the speaker is quick to put it, “I'm not with the bomb-throwers!”

Mr. Killjoy was anything but.

This is not about that night.

I'm rushing. I've just been from the graduation information booths at the university's. It was an unpleasant experience dealing with the Registrar.

“I know, but you aren't actually planning on graduating as a Japanese major. We can't let you write it down,” she said. I've been waiting to hear an answer and hoping it would be different. “You'll have to talk to Financial Aid.”

“I've already talked to them. We had a meeting Friday. If y'all can just clear me on this, they're okay with my...,” damn you Maruki-sense, and your twisted naming conventions, what was it again, technically? “Modernity Japanese Narrative class. It meets the requirement, you just need to let me put it down on paper. The major.”

I know I can get a Japanese professor to sign off on it; they owe me a solid by now.

“I've talked to the higher-ups, and you can't do it. You'll just have to talk to Financial Aid.” She keeps repeating the mantra, like a sacred charm.

“I've talked to them. I don't have any options and I'm maxed out on all the other aid. This is it. We should be able to do this.”

“There's nothing I can do.”

A white cake with white frosting and a lemon middle sits on the table when you enter. I sliced a piece before grabbing my robe order form and getting down to business with the registrar.

Two bites. Forget it; I toss the cake in the trash.

“I was walking around this anarchist book faire looking for anarchist fiction. Have you tried that? Not a whole lot. I was determined to buy every novel written by anarchists there,” Margaret says, grinning. “I bought both of them.”

He held up a book, but I miss seeing the cover.

“Could you move? We have to keep the aisle clear,” says a woman with a Powell's nametag. I was squatting down near a pillar, trying not sit on another listener's bag of stuff, my legs sore and jacket thick. There was no room for me to shed my jacket in the congested room.

“Sure, sure. Sorry.” I stand, move closer to the pillar. I lean on the pillar to scoot in from the shifting aisle between people, supporting my weight with my arm. The rest of the session is spent shifting my arm occasionally to reduce fatigue.

The guy next to me, his stuff is piled on the floor. He doesn't move it, and despite anarchy in the air I don't either. I just stand for it.

I seek a meeting with the associate dean. 1:30, no problem. I'll just keep climbing the totem pole. I'm only trying to play the game I've been offered, because I want to play it, but the only weapon I have are the rules themselves.

And just before the meeting, literally the minute before I slide out of my chair and shake off enough of a slump not to smell desperate, I get an email. The numbers don't crunch. Modernity Japanese Narrative can't be an independent study with a 455 tag; will 395 do?

No. No it won't. Not by the rules. If the class is not a 455, I don't graduate. Money be damned.

“Numbers. Paper. I'm getting buried in them,” I write back.

Calm.

Calm.

Goddammit. Calm.

This is the conversation I didn't have with Margaret.

“What about Daniel Quinn? Ishmael? I mean, you stressed horizontal power structures versus vertical ones throughout the talk. Why isn't he listed as an anarchist here, in the appendix? Isn't tribalism just about the ultimate form of anarchy.”

“Well,” he thinks about it, “with a tribe, you'll still have a structure you're born into, right? A set of norms that don't allow for variance, and an even stricter cultural taboos. So there's still a hierarchy. You might even have a chief.”

“Chiefs are temporary; once they're permanent you've moved into a power structure, sure, and you've got what we've got here. But I mean, can't we take the basic ideas of a tribe, and rework it into something new and voluntary? Something not ethnographic or geographic,” I'm struggling to put the words in the right order, “something more voluntary. Like a circus operates. Or gypsies.”

“Sure, and there's even people doing it. But not enough. Fiction might inspire more. We're buried in theory right now.”

“Well,” I shrug, “what about Quinn?”

“For one thing, I don't really remember him ever self-identifying as an anarchist. So I didn't think to interview him.”

Self. Identify.

This is the actual conversation.

“Oh, hi. Could you sign this?”

“Sure.”

Thrilling.

Mythmakers & Lawbreakers. A book full of interviews with a wide variety of anarchist philosophies represented. I spend far too late in the night devouring it once I'm home, delighted to see Le Guin, Alan Moore, even a line developer for a defunct Dungeons & Dragons setting. I make a note to investigate some authors I never read before.

I walk in reeking of desperate.

“Oh there's the subject of our conversation.” Professor Beard is just walking out of the associate dean's office, Steve Smith right behind her. I nod hello. Keep it together. Keep it together.

“So, right, you see there is no 455 it turns out, and we can't assign an independent study to anything more than a 395. Or you'd end up taking it to the Registrar and they would just be confused and reject you.” Well, it's a familiar feeling this week. “So, we're going to write 395, here,” she shows me the green form, the holy grail I've been chasing the last few months, “and then I'll talk to the Creative Writing faculty and we'll see if they'll make an exception. I think it will be alright.”

People have been telling me they think it will be alright a hell of a lot lately. Or, worse, they “hope” it will be alright.

“Sure. Well, I'll just pretend it's fine for now, all done.”

Mr. Smith doesn't look too sure. He goes over the whole deal again himself. I repeat myself.

“Well, is this what you're here about?” asks the professor.

“No, no, I just got your email five minutes ago, right before I came. This is about something else.”

“Oh, well, good luck. I should be able to get back to you tomorrow, yes?”

“Okay.”

Mr. Smith leads me into his office, sits down at his desk. We exchange a few strained pleasantries, and I shrug my coat off on the back of the chair. If this were second story or higher, the window would look inviting.

“I'm losing two thousand dollars, because I did the right thing, I filled the paperwork out on time. I know it would take me another two years to graduate with Japanese, but it's been a long time. I mean, thirteen years, I need to be done. I can do it this year. It's not like I might not still come back and do Japanese, but I need to survive for now.” I hedged before, with the Registrar, with Financial Aid. I tried to tapdance with hypotheticals, falling short of begging. “I don't want to graduate and starve the next day. It's paper; I don't understand. Shuffle a paper here, for me. Sign something. That's all it takes.”

There's more, of course, but you have to sandwich it between mental commands to Hold It Together and stuttering and looking away and looking back and what with all that, translation from garbled memory and fierce emotion to dispassionate recitation suffers a tad. Or flushes straight down the toilet; dissecting verbal diarrhea is a messy business.

Turn the spigot off.

“Look,” Smith leans forward, hands steepled on the desk, “I don't know if there's anything I can do. But, this is like any other bureaucracy, it has its own wheels. I can't promise anything. I'll look into, see what can be done. Okay? Will that do?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

We shake hands.

I hope it's alright.

Dawn is soon. A book you can't put down is a thing of beauty. Mythmakers & Lawbreakers leads me to Lewis Shiner's Slam. A recent parolee is having the worst week out of jail, and it's not his fault. Drug deals are going down he can't control, he has a ridiculous job, a UFOlogist and the blind and the deaf are breaking into his new home almost every night.

On the edge of the Gulf, in Galveston. I've seen that sea. The water is never blue in the book; nor is it ever. Brown and warm and, if you close your eyes and don't think about it too much, clean. He's just trying to get a beer and play poker with his old friends, things any man unparoled could do, no problem.

But it doesn't work, any of it, until he dies. According to the rules. A simple paper trick.

I keep thinking of the last words he shares with his parole officer.

“This isn't your fault or mine. It's a problem with the rules. They won't stretch to fit me.”

Episode 1: My First Big Boy Trip

"San Luis Potosi," mused Coyote. "Sure, I been there. Me and some amigos started a little brushfire down there. Twice"

Yes, I'm sure you did. San Luis Potosi is an important city in Mexican history, but few Norteamericanos could place it. It isn't huge and bloated like Mexico City, doesn't have the tourism of Monterrey, or the notoriety of Tijuana. San Luis Potosi is still a good-size metropolis, however, and halfway between the Rio Grande and Mexico's capital in the heart of the desert hills.

I don't doubt Coyote was there. In 1810, Father Hidalgo, a priest a bit crazy to put the needs of his Indian friends over the aristocracy he was born into, let loose the bells of Dolores to summon Mexicans to independence and war; San Luis was an early victory. A hundred years later, a crazy vegetarian and teetotaler proclaimed the opening of the Mexican Revolution (different name, same game) after escaping prison in San Luis. Something about San Luis Potosi just inspires the Coyotes of the world thirsting for some radical change, I suppose.

So, in the summer of 1997, my friend Danny and I plunked down thirty-two bucks to ride Greyhound to Laredo. From there, another thirty-two bucks (translated to pesos) took us twice the distance in a bus twice as nice and half as crowded down to San Luis.

Now, I had no idea at thee time I was traveling Coyote style. We hit a dusty trail with no idea what we were doing. At least I didn't.

Here's a little tip if you want to travel south of the border, from Texas into Mexico. And I don't mean a quick trip for some cheap shopping or to linger around the pool in a fancy resort. I mean deep. Grab your passport, get a visa. It's an easy thing to know now, in a post-9/11 world it's absolutely required, but when an ignorant I passed Nuevo Laredo and the bus headed into the desert, trouble started. So here's the second tip: do the research yourself. Our purpose was to visit his extensive family living in San Luis; Danny was Mexican, born in the Yucatan, so this came regular to him.

"Danny, am I going to need a passport or something?"

"No, no, you don't need anything. It's Mexico."

Coyote is laughing across the fire, hooting and yowling something terrible. I can only grumble I was 18, and had never been outside the USA before, what did I know? I didn't come from a traveling family. When I told my mom what Danny and I were doing two weeks after graduation, she laughed and said, "No you're not!" Sure I was, I was an adult, and as I packed my bags it dawned on her that maybe it was true. I was going, I was a man, and that was that. She even drove me and Danny down to the bus station.

Coyote growled and tipped his battered hat. He respected that.

All that machismo vanished when the nice young men in fatigues with machine guns escorted me and Danny off the bus about dozen miles past the border.

Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus I'm going to die in the desert and no one will ever know. All I could picture were the Federales mowing down Pancho and Lefty splitting with the loot, just like a Willie Nelson song. And, unkind as it was, I prayed I was Lefty.

We were paraded into a small government building. Tiny. There was a pudgy, middle-aged Federale with a mustache, so cliche it hurt. He shot a stream of Spanish at us and Danny handled it all, with me growing more and more nervous. "What's he saying?" "Don't worry." "What's he saying now?" "It's okay, it's okay."

I would discover later it wwasn't me in the most hot water; they were convinced Danny was Guatemalan. One thing about racism and discrimination, there's always someone below you to kick down the ladder. His eyes, they said, weren't right; well, he had Yucatan blood, he said. The Federale let that go. Then he asked if we were priests.

So here's you're third tip: Bring a bible. No, seriously. We grabbed a taxi to get us over the bridge into Nuevo Laredo. The Mexican customs agents searched our luggage as we watched (we had a suitcase apiece), but stopped immediately when they saw a bible packed on top of the clothes in each one. We were both a bit more religious back then. May it was intense Catholic respect, maybe it was a smuggling code and they were on the take; I will never know. But a strategically placed bible can save you some hassle in Mexico.

No, we told him, we're not, just like to keep some churchin' in our lives (I imagine Danny explained it much more eloquently in Spanish). So he pulls out a paper, and gives me instructions on how to sign it for a temporary visa. In perfect English. I'm shaking in my sneakers the whole time as a world of machine guns and the Law breathes down my neck, not understanding a word spoken, and it was all unnecessary. Well, fair enough; it was his country, not mine.

And that's how I got into Mexico, completely backwards. I didn't do a thing you should do. I was smart enough to have had a birth certificate copy with me, just in case (a copy useless now, since the laws changed), but I didn't have nearly the documentation I should have had. I didnt ask the right questions. The things I did right I had no idea I was doing.

We didn't land in a posh resort; I awoke after my first good sleep in San Luis in the concrete ghetto. Danny's aunts and grandmother were downstairs watching telenovellas, and Danny nowhere to be seen. Still, between his abuela and me we figured out she was our host and lived a block over, across from a collapsed home nestled between more concrete homes holding up its lost walls. She was a former history teacher, and I have fond memories of her guiding me and Danny around the city and giving us its Revolution and Independence history. On those steps, she said when we visited its cetral cathedral, Hidalgo called for the Revolution. And there are lost tunnels connecting that cathedral with others throughout Mexico.

Some of her history is a bit suspect, actually. But they were good stories. "I liked her," said Coyote. I assured him so. "And think about those guys, starting there, or near enough," he continued. "Scared as hell, I bet. Didn't know how to do a thing, just went and did it. The last guys you expected to buck the system and have an adventure. And for Mexico, if not for themselves, it worked out pretty well. It's not a chance if you don't take it, and not a journey if you never leave something behind."

San Luis Potosi, where I became addicted to tortas sold by a guy on the corner. Where I dared Mexican carnival rides (and I thought the Federales were scary). Where peasants were still begging in the alleys or kneeling and praying their way to the cathedral steps as vendors sold kneepads and ice cream. Where we shot pool everyday. Where we never saw the lake because the rains made it impossible for ten people to get up a mountain road in a Volkswagen.

I won't say I became a man, or anything so trite. But it was the first decision I made as a man, that couldn't be contradicted or overruled. And it got guns pointed at me and paperwork tossed at me. But it worked out all right, in the end.