“Here you poor son of a bitch. Take my hand. There you go. Up you come.” The voice belonged to an elderly man in a tattered brown jacket and torn denim jeans. His beard was the same smoky gray as Ko's shack and he smelled as bad as Sean's chicken coups. He told Winston that his name was Gerald and that he had some water at his home. Winston was extremely disillusioned and weary from the beating and was just pleased to have someone to hold him up as he walked. His cheeks stung emphatically and his head felt as if it had been bashed in by stones. Gerald walked him towards the deepest overgrowth of the marsh very slowly, and Winston steadily began to regain some transparent awareness of what was happening.
“Thanks Gerald,” he said in a dying man's breath. “I could really use some water.” As they continued towards the overgrowth at a turtle's pace, Winston replayed the events of the day to Gerald.
After being brought up to speed, Gerald asked, “What are you going to do now?”
“I just want to get rid of the pain,” he responded brokenly.
Psychedelics, entactogens, and empathogenics; mind manifesters, touching within, and empathy creators. All have anaesthetic potential and have been clinically shown to aid in the exploration of painful memories by inhibiting the fear of emotional pain. When Gerald said that he had run out of water but did have lots of LSD, Winston smiled and swallowed the little piece of acid-soaked paper handed to him. The pain in his head faded like the moon and he began to think of Oi and Jenny. He smiled as he went back to the beach and danced with his hips and then to Halifax to dance with his eyes. He thought about Samuel and Martha, and that he would probably never see either of them again. “They're with God now,” he told himself while smiling. And then he started laughing uncontrollably. “Ha,ha,ha! The pain's all gone Gerald! It doesn't hurt anymore! The pain's all gone!” Gerald smiled and then slapped wet, dark mud from the marsh onto Winston's cheek.
“That hurt?” he said, his mouth now shaped like a banana.
“Nothing. Ha, ha! It doesn't hurt at all!”
“Ha,ha. It looks like I might have a new friend then old boy. Oh thank goodness. I thought I'd never find anyone ever again after Martha left, but you know what, you seem just like her. It's almost like I'm meeting her for the first time all over again.”
“M...Martha?” Winston's eyes were dilated and his visual periphery shrunk to a miniscule five degrees from center. His depth perception ran away and all that he saw was Gerald and the white radiating light of his aura. “Martha was my mother's name. She ran away from me when I was twenty-six. She was dreadfully sick, and she left me.”
“Well I'll be damned. Your last name is Stone, isn't it? You're sweet, innocent little Winston Stone! My God, this is unbelievable!” His chuckles and head-shakes ceased upon meeting Winston's probing gaze. “Ah fuck, I'm sorry. What do you want to know?”
“When?” He paused. “How?” He paused again. “Why Gerald? Why?” He sat on his knees, stuck in the mud of the marsh and lost in bewilderment from what was transpiring. His face was now literally two inches from Gerald's mouth as he began to explain. Gerald cleared his throat.
“I met your mother three years ago in Nimbin, Australia. You see, you can get away with practically anything in Nimbin; the cops never come into town. It's kind of funny actually: they only come into the town if it’s to give some junkie like me a ride there. Oh they have a different way of looking at things around Nimbin. Instead of throwing all the junkies around the area into cells, they just throw them all into one town and let them do whatever they want. That's what Nimbin was: a junkie zoo where tourists could come and watch us from the safety of their tour buses. It was a depressing place, until your Mum showed up. How long ago did you last see her Winston?”
“Ten years ago,” he responded, unscathed by what he was hearing about this desolate and lovely town. “It's been ten years.”
“Mmmm. Well, when the cops sentenced me to life in Nimbin, I felt pretty lost. I didn't know anyone there. I didn't even know what Nimbin was. Martha was the first person I met. She sold weed in front of the library in the middle of the town. I bought some off of her and we ended up getting to talking. She told me that she was extremely sick and was dying of cancer. The weed took the pain away she said, but she was worried that she was developing a high tolerance to it. She was scared that it wasn't going to work for her much longer. And, sure enough, a month or so later, weed hardly did anything to numb the pain.” Gerald sighed heavily and stared at the sunrise for a few moments. “Ahh,” he sighed again. “So I told her that she should try LSD, and she absolutely loved it. It cured her pain just like it's cured yours. But LSD doesn't work forever either. She developed tolerance to it, and she said that the pain was worse than it had ever been. I could never understand why she didn't just go to a hospital.”
“She spent her whole life in hospitals, as a nurse and then as a patient. I think she became as sick of them as she did of cancer.”
“She certainly was an adventurer Winston. There was this one day. She came home from work with this crazy story to tell me. It was about this island where people lived forever. Oh, some customer had told her the story and had given her a map of how to get there. It was quite absurd, but believing it seemed to make the pain more bearable, and she started to get better. And then, in an instant, all I had left was a hand-written note saying that she loved me, but she was too desperate to stay. She left to see if this island was real. I never saw her again.” Gerald could hear church bells ringing in his cortex as he looked to the sky in search of an artificial depiction of Martha.
“Do you know where the island is?” Winston asked while attempting to disguise his own desperation.
“No. I never looked at the map. I remember that she said it was in the Pacific and that pink dolphins always swam around it. But I mean, that could be a hundred different places. Why do you think I'm in Thailand boy? Pink dolphins swim around all of the islands here.” When Gerald awoke in the mud later that day he saw a note.
I'm that desperate too Gerald. Thanks for your help. Take care.
Winston
Chapter 15 – The Rhythm of the Jungle
“You can't be a snake if you don't have thick skin.”
After scouring every Thai island with no success, Winston moved on to Indonesia. Getting to Indonesia was the easy part. Getting to the island that housed Martha was not. Since so many of the tiny sandbars in the South were vacant or near vacant, commercial transportation did not exist. In order to take the road less traveled, one must find their own way. Winston, now awake from his stupefied drug-bingeing in Naiplo, was still sharp and resourceful. It seemed to him that the only transportation to these desolate worlds would be the fishing vessel. These vessels, he realized, had no destination. They had no boundaries; they had no home. They patrolled the ocean like a prison light over forbidden ground, stretching on endlessly in the search for life. When they found it, they would capture it. For years, he worked as a deckhand aboard numerous ships, waiting patiently for the bounties of the sea to lead the boats to his heart's treasure. The journey itself was grueling, terrifying, disgusting, mesmerizing, and inspiring. But I could care less about the journey.
As a young man, as I still am today, I was sold some magic beans. “Take these and watch your dreams come true,” they said. I've always resented that message. Movies, literature, and psychologists have all leaped on board and preached the same thing just like uninformed rubes in a picket line against poverty; they offer nothing but a headache; I'd rather eat my ice-cream too fast than listen.
“The journey is the experience, the destination doesn't matter,” the robots buzzed.
“The answers aren't important, it's the questions you ask,” the professors preached from their padded chairs.
“Wander about aimlessly, chasing a dream that you can't remember anymore until age stops you,” the puppets sang as they danced.
“Why seek truths in the world when you can create your own life full of fantasies, myster
ies, and omens,” the soldiers crooned.
I am 24 years old, and knowing that I once believed in this foolishness has given me ulcers; I could have gained more wisdom from a lecture on life by Mother Goose. If life was so damn easy to figure out, why would it be worth living? No, I don't think it is so simple, so cut and dry, so black and white. So fuck your magic beans! I want answers! I want truth! For this reason, the exciting and shocking details of Winston's near drowning at sea, his short stint as a prisoner aboard a boat named the Shebatune, and his love affair with his boss's mistress are all being omitted from this book. These events were influential in shaping Winston, for sure, but they gave him no more clarity; they provided no essence. They were steps, but to what? His time at sea had taught him a lot, but had answered no questions. He cared only about the destination, as do I.
On October 31st, 2031, Winston found what he had been seeking: pink dolphins swimming around a very tiny island in the Pacific. He inflated a small raft, hopped off of the fishing vessel, and began rowing to the horizon. He had done this several times before, and would simply find work aboard another vessel when it came around if this island were not the right one.
His veins pulsed violently, sending a cocktail of blood, fear, hope, and fulfillment to the place in his heart that hadn't felt nourished since Tom had died. He was going to see his mother again! He was going to see his mother in three dimensions for the first time. Winston was unsure if she would even recognize him. He was unsure if she was even alive. Time had changed the two of them, he thought. He hoped that she felt as if she had gotten more out of hers than he had. “So much time wasted following my nose,” he thought. “Why couldn't someone have just shown me long ago what it was I sought? Why did I have to use so much of my life to finally learn what I was supposed to be doing? Time,” he thought. “If only I could have some of it back. I would have chased my mother from the moment she left.”
Winston continued to row the life-boat towards the golden embrace between the sun and the sea, as the sharp calls of the gulls faded away and the voiceless sparrows took their places as his watchmen. The waves decrescendoed, and his paddles sliced through the water as effortlessly as a knife through soft butter. Large clumps of dark green algae clung to the paddles like a bad toupee to a bald man who made the mistake of going swimming in public. The calmness of the ocean widened his veins and the coolness of the air seemed to dissipate. The sun fell and the moon rose. It's truly beautiful: the ocean. At night, when everything is dark black, it still shines. Even in its darkest, coldest, loneliest state, it glimmers.
When the 27th star glowed in the sky, Winston caught his first glimpse of the land's topography. He rowed feverishly. An hour later, the waves rose high and his boat rode in with great velocity. Until finally it stopped. His feet touched the sand. It was heavy, gritty, and wet. “My mother's feet may have felt this,” he thought. He began walking and the waves dragged his footprints back out to sea, eventually cascading his first steps on the island to every corner of the globe. A grain of sand for every land over time. The beach stretched east to west for miles, but lasted only meters north to south; a vast jungle impeded its Nordic existence. Winston decided to camp on the beach for the night before beginning to venture into it. He pitched a tent, ate some rations, and snored contently until sunrise. He awoke and began the trek.
Winston knew a few things about the jungle, but he had never spent more than a few hours submersed in one, and he had never been alone in the jungle before. He was nervous, but he had a calming self-confidence about what he was doing that made the jungle feel like home. For hours he trekked, as the heat cooked the transparent sky into blurred illusion. The ground seemed to harden with every step as the moisture in the Earth lessened with each passing minute. Soon the Sun was at its peak and Winston couldn’t purge forward anymore. He sat on the ground with his feet crossed and removed his drenched shirt. He then rung it out above his head and let the sweat offer some relief to his boiling skin. Little did he know that he would soon have to rely on this just to stay alive.
It was a different kind of heat in the jungle: much heavier and stickier than that of other places. The jungle air was living proof that renewable resources could be perfected; it stole energy more efficiently than anything man had yet created. Winston sipped water out of his canteen and ate a biscuit. As he ate, he thought of nothing. The scene before him had successfully halted time in his brain and tetanized his neck. Green vines and jungle leaves scattered light beams and pierced shadows creating an epic dance of dark characters that moved to the beat of the gentle breeze that ricocheted through the dense tranquility before his eyes.
A sharp pain, however, set the stop-watch back into motion. Winston looked down to his exposed ankles to see hundreds of large red ants competing to be the first one to reach his private area. He swatted at them ferociously and sprung to his feet. He took off running, his hands doing the navigating as he dodged trees and brushed through large ferns, frantically praying for a breath of relief. Finally, the first small clearing since entering the jungle presented itself. With hands on his knees and his back horizontal, he caught his breath. He looked down at his ankle and saw the large swelling. It hurt terribly.
Too rigid to continue, Winston decided that he should make camp in the small clearing. He was sore, soaked, and tired. Hell, he didn’t even know where he was trying to get to. Once again, a new encounter had stripped away the swagger. Studying his surroundings, he noticed a large abundance of gray and red tubes scattered about the terrain. They didn’t move as he gazed, so he deemed them safe to touch. They felt tough and leathery, but still some-what alive. In comparison, the texture was similar to that of the skin of an onion when rubbed between your fingers; strong and defined but still capable of crumbling into dust instantaneously. As he pondered the identity of these deposits, the answer slithered by. Three large black snakes of roughly 2 meters in length apiece writhed in the near picture. Winston was terrified and, as he swallowed, it felt as if a large ball scratched the insides of his throat. He was panicked. Without a second’s haste, he began climbing a tree.
By nightfall, he had successfully gotten a grip on himself. Half a day spent on the jungle floor revealed the dangers of ants and snakes. Half a day in a jungle tree revealed a safe-haven. Using vines and a knife that he had packed, Winston built a hammock between two trees five feet above the ground. Although paranoia still occupied his gray matter, exhaustion comforted him. As he performed his final check of the surroundings before shutting his eyes, he noticed dozens of small orange glowing lights not more than a hundred meters away. Winston watched, puzzled by the glow. Every so often some of the lights would go out, but then return. They seemed far too bright to be a living creature, and thus, Winston was able to let his lights go out. Slumber was sustained and the molecules of his body worked joyously; so long had they waited to form their assembly lines of ordered replenishment. Molecules and enzymes danced through his bloodstream in x-rated embrace until they had stolen the best from one another. They then quickly separated and found a new partner with a sense of detachment rivaled only by their college years. For every reserve lost in the day’s battle with the jungle, two new recruits were born. The overnight energy boost allowed Winston to awake the next morning feeling perky. Perky and wet.
As sweet as a dream can be, it’s awful hard to forget that you’re in the jungle; there's a reminder every minute. For example, the monkeys in the morning. The shrill calling of jungle monkeys at sunrise can practically tear the ears right off of you. The sharp probing noise of the jungle monkeys can best be described, to city dwellers, as very closely resembling the painful noises a flock of seagulls in fast food parking lots would make if you fed them whiskey and then tossed a single french fry their way.
Winston pried himself from his vine support and scratched at the tens of millions of insect bites that he had accumulated. In full realization of the fact that he didn’t even know which way would lead him back from where he came,
he decided to start walking toward the orange lights from the night before. In minutes, he reached a clay-colored pond of still water. It was exceptionally large for seeming to have sprung up out of nowhere. Giant birds lined the watermark with their feet dry and their beaks wet. With very fast stabbing motions they penetrated the water’s surface. A lot could be learned from watching the birds do their fishing. With perfect stillness, the thin-legged fishermen waited and fought the urge to ripple the glassy water. Like a patient yet stubborn old sea captain, they remained in the same place, refusing to admit that there may lie a more profitable fishing hole upriver. Winston thoroughly enjoyed this and began to reflect upon his own life. As frogs of every color of the rainbow hopped past his outstretched feet, he thought back to his youthful days when he lusted for smothering acceptance in order to enjoy the reflection in his bedside mirror. If only he could have found a way to discover the patient confidence of these birds, then maybe he wouldn’t still be searching for something. Maybe he wouldn’t have aged so poorly if he had have been much more like these patient, stuck in their old ways, fishermen of the sea that stood before him now.
Needing something to eat, Winston decided to make up for lost time. Using a bulrush shoot, a vine, and an earring that he had been wearing since his short stint as a prisoner aboard the Shebatune, he constructed a fishing pole. He used warm snake skin as bait and sat among the birds. Within seconds, he had his first fish: a small-bodied, big-mouthed piranha that was as ugly as it is when you hook up with one on a Saturday night at the Velvet Underground in Charlottetown. “So that’s why they don’t go in the water.” Winston spent the rest of the day fishing and eating raw piranhas with his winged friends and slimy dancers. His sense of time vanished and his heart felt no age. When the sun was high in the sky, cracks of thunder boomed like a bass drum in a teenage basement. Boom, boom, boom! Snap! Boom, boom, boom! Snap! The rain began quickly and pounded the leaves of the jungle relentlessly. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! Soon the sun relinquished its watchful duty and passed the responsibility to the moon. With so much life happening simultaneously in the jungle, it’s hard to imagine that one body can keep watch of it all by itself.
Searching for the Fountain of Youth Page 8
