As the weather intensified, Winston remained fishing with his companions. “If they can do it, then so can I.” The orange lights reappeared, the same as they had the night before. He studied them as they moved towards him. Now, with his senses restored from a day of relaxing and piranha snacking, he could see that the lights didn’t actually turn off spontaneously. They gradually disappeared as they bobbed under the surface of the pond. Something was swimming his way! He backed away alertly, never taking his eyes off of the orange-glowing lights.
“Squawk! Squawk! Squaw-ploosh!” Frightened now and a bit saddened by the sight of his avian allies being viciously slaughtered by the menacing crocodiles, Winston turned and walked briskly away from the pond. He thought that he should have felt more emotion from the killing of his friends, but as he walked and heard them die one by one, he felt a sense of enrichment rather than despair. The day’s events had made the jungle feel a lot more like home, and the presence and actions of the crocodiles now seemed only normal. He felt at peace.
In the jungle, time moves very slowly. In a storm, you can see every individual rain drop as it passes before your eyes. You can hear every note as it rustles through the trees. Horny monkeys now sounded like Robert Plant lyrics, thunder like drums, lightning cracks were clapping hands, rain the snare beats, and buzzing insects like tambourines. Instead of noise there was music; instead of confusion there was simplicity. “I’m gonna find Mom.”
Chapter 16 - The Neil Young Sauna Club Elects the Bear
“I’ve always found it more enjoyable to be on the ground than in the watchtower.”
Fear is a peculiar entity. It can present itself in a wide array of intensities ranging from mild perspiration to suffocation. It can cripple, and it can also enable supernatural feats. It can be honest, and it can be superficial. But it is always real. Regardless of its motive, it still persists. It is remarkable what some people can conquer. It is astonishing what some people can succumb to.
Winston’s last thoughts before being kidnapped by his fear of the unplanned, his fear of the unexamined choice, were fragmented contemplations leading to faded realizations captured in a translucent dream-like state. He lay in his hammock, swinging between the trees, his mind half asleep and his body half-conscious as it prepared for the explosion of shock it would receive from the morning monkey choir. He was dreaming that he was sitting outside on his doorstep in Charlottetown, 18 years old, contemplating the meaning of life. At first his realization had been highly complex and structured. But as he stared blankly at the old blue house across the road, the definition broke down into a simple image about love and growing bonds with other people as sacred as those among a family. At this point in the dream, he felt that he had finally figured it out. In his dream, he began to scroll down his definition and, just when he thought that he had written it perfectly, a seagull shit on his head! At this point, he awoke.
The image above him was a lot to digest and would back up his mind for many moons to come. Five dark men in straw hats and earthy green shorts and shirts loomed overhead, staring at him with smoky gray eyes that reflected Winston’s own frantic face back to him. Winston clenched hard onto both sides of his hammock. “Shock-a-go-tong!” bellowed one of the men.
“Shock-a-go-tong! Echoed another. They continued to speak loudly, more directed at one another than to Winston, all the while never taking their eyes off of him. One man then muttered, ‘Pow-doe.” They grabbed Winston by the shoulders and set him on his feet. The six of them then began marching through the jungle.
The men didn’t bind his hands nor did they point weapons at him. They simply walked with him through the jungle in a casual fashion that made Winston feel as if he could run from them at any time. However, with his supplies tucked safely with his hammock inside a jungle to which he possessed no map or common sense for, he failed to appreciate any difference. He was stuck with them if he wanted to survive, and their calmness scared him more than if they were hostile. If they had have been pointing weapons and tying him up, he thought, it would indicate nervousness and a lack of confidence. Their calmness, however, made him realize that they knew exactly what they were doing and that they knew exactly how to do it. The Sun was extremely hot that day and his worry caused his body to exert itself quite heavily on mental processes. He collapsed to the ground.
“Tah-ah,” the men said as they slapped his face. “Tah-ah,” they said as they shoved leafy ferns so deeply into his mouth that there was no need to chew. He spit out the disgusting vegetation and lifted himself up to his feet. Winston watched as the men all ate the plant happily. They rubbed their stomachs as they swallowed and made hand gestures that resembled the act of drinking a big glass of cool, refreshing water.
“Ahhh,” one of the men said as he again offered Winston the plant. “Ahhh. Tah-ah.” This time he ate. The six of them ate and ate and ate.
They continued to walk and Winston began to clue in that “tah-ah” was more a source of water than it was food. The men carried no water jugs and carried much more economical energy sources such as dried meat and nuts. Water must be scarce he thought. This bit of new knowledge calmed his nerves. The proceeding series of quivers, spasms, and shooting pains elicited by his abdomen did not have the same effect.
The illness the Tah-ah brought to his body was as violent as that brought to myself the night I lost my raw fish virginity at an All-You-Can-Eat sushi restaurant in Montreal. When the constant puking and diarrhea subsided, his skin boiled and settled on a gold jaundice-like hue. He was too weak to stand and his stomach muscles knotted up from acidosis. The men had no choice but to leave him for dead or to carry him the rest of the way.
The five men held Winston above their heads with the aid of a thatched rack they had made out of bamboo and vine. Every so often they would set him down, chew some Tah-ah, and ring their shirts onto Winston’s forehead. The sweat, they hoped, would keep him from overheating any further. So, as it would go, for the next two days the five men broke their backs and Winston enjoyed near-death induced hallucinations. He also enjoyed fragmented memories of his past that offered little value other than to take his mind to another time. One memory spawned in its entirety in his mind. It was a memory of a story his father had told him about his own University days at Acadia.
Samuel and his friends had lived in a dorm at Acadia for their first year of school and, like most first year students, they felt good about doing bad things. They soon had developed a pre-party ritual. They would, as a group of ten, lock themselves in the men's washroom and strip down to their underpants. Next, they would crank all of the showers up as hot as they would go until the washroom transformed into their own private steam room. The boys would sit in there for hours smoking weed and listening to Neil Young music. The ritual naturally became known as the annual meeting of “The Neil Young Sauna Club.”
Upon conclusion of the meetings, the boys would pile into Samuel’s room to drink and listen to an old police scanner that they had all split on. Samuel had said that the scanner always provided the most hilarious of phone calls from people who probably had no business talking to the police, but were too wasted to resolve their own problems. One example was the night a drunk driver called in to the police about a dead bear that was on the side of the highway. The driver said that the police should get someone to remove it, but the subsequent radio communications revealed that the cops instead decided to remove the drunk driver from his automobile. The bear wasn’t important and would remain on the side of the highway. Or at least it should have.
The members of The Neil Young Sauna Club unanimously decided to take a field trip to remove the bear. They drove to it and strapped it to the roof of the club’s station wagon. As they drove around laughing with a black bear strapped to the roof, conversations slowly leaked through their stoned cackles. “What should we do with the bear? We’re going to get busted if we keep driving around.” It was only a matter of seconds until they had their answer.
Bob S
heppard was a trivia genius. He went to play at the campus bar every week and won more beer than he could finish. It certainly made his nights out cheap as he could get drunk by simply paying the price of admission. But Bob Sheppard never locked his dorm room when he went out. It’s hard to imagine what his face would have looked like when he drunkenly crawled into his bed that night only to find a black bear under the covers beside him.
After a hell of a laugh, the boys removed the bear from Bob’s bed and security was none the wiser. Still not satisfied, the boys decided to play with the bear for a little while longer. They found a long tan-colored trench coat, a fedora hat, and a large pair of black sunglasses. The next day, the black bear could be seen trying to make a phone call from the campus phone booth. Samuel said he had spent most of the day sitting on a bench watching the expressions on people’s faces as they walked past the phone booth. But that joke too was only good for so long.
The bear was relocated to the third floor of Samuel’s residence building and was accessorized slightly. Samuel simply shoved a cigar into the bear’s mouth and lit it. It looked just like the bear was smoking. For days he would routinely relight the cigar and for days students laughed as they visited the third floor smoking bear. On the fifth day, the smell radiating from the dead bear overpowered the tobacco and someone finally called security to come and remove it. Thirty years later, Samuel said he could still remember exactly how it had smelled.
Winston, barely breathing and strapped to a bamboo stretcher in the middle of a foreign wilderness, couldn’t help but wonder if the five men had elected him as their prop, just as the members of The Neil Young Sauna Club had elected the bear.
Chapter 17- The Recipe for Living to 50
“Some people are more comfortable when their feelings overpower their thoughts. I am only relaxed when my thoughts drown out my emotions.” - Lovers after their first fight
Sometimes life is just like a strong freezing wind. It begins by sharply paining the chest and then proceeds to tighten all of the muscles of the body until the eyes eventually water. Finally numbness sets in and all feeling is lost, making it possible to continue walking even though we are nearly frozen to death.
“Bab-tah-wah! Bab-tah-wah!” said one of the men as the five of them lay the thatched stretcher holding Winston’s limp body down to the ground. “Bab-tah-wah. Tay-no-da tak-ah!” they said.
“Sah,” said a young woman as she appeared from her straw dwelling. She was mid 30’s looking with soft skin that partially hid the sun damage that her face had endured. Her skin was dark and her body very slender and attractive. She wore a dress composed of the same earthy materials that the men’s clothes were, embroidered with metal pendants of varying shape, size, and color. She offered the men a waving motion and they slid Winston into the straw dwelling and left him there.
“Uhh. Uhh, uhhh!” he grunted as his eyes blinked away the daze he was in. “Ohh, uhhg!” he groaned. He started to toss and turn slightly while his head swiveled around the room, his body still horizontal on the stretcher on the floor of the straw hut. His face stopped and stared at several clear tubes running dark fluids to and from his body. His eyes then turned to the young woman standing in the corner of the room. She was gently stirring a giant cauldron that smoked above a bed of red coals. Deep earthy aromas filled his nasal cavity as she proceeded to sprinkle more powders into the brew.
“Ah ha, you are awake lost soul,” she said with a smile smacked across her lips. “I am Magenta. Welcome to my home. You are English, yes? You look English.”
“Yes, yes. What happened? Why am I here? Where, where the hell am I?”
“So many questions lost soul, you and I have something in common then. I have many questions for you too. Who are you? Why were you in the jungle?”
“My name is Winston and I'm looking for my mother. I was told that she lived on the island surrounded by pink dolphins and that she had found a way to live longer than other people. I was told that there was a place that allowed her to stop aging. I'm looking for this place. I'm looking for her.” The woman paused from stirring her cauldron for a moment and the look she gave Winston revealed that she was taken aback by his comments.
“So, you think you have found the right place then, do you lost soul?” she stated sharply as she returned to her task.
“I don't know. I, I don't even know where I am. I only know what I'm looking for, but I have no idea how to find it.”
“I see. Well you sound like you know more than most. To know exactly what you are looking for is more than most Englishmen I have met have ever known. And what is it about finding your mother that will bring you such fulfillment? Hmm?”
“I'll be able to know for sure that she's still alive and I'll be able to know why she couldn't come back to me. I'll finally find out why my father loved her and why he wasn't upset when she left us. I'll finally get to know her as a real person and she will be able to tell me why she chose to free herself of burdens instead of staying with the people who loved her. I think, that if I learn all of these things, that I will finally know if I was supposed to be chasing her from the moment she left me.”
“Well, it sounds like you do know what you need. I will tell you then what I need. This is my home, but also my office. I am an insight chef. I was busying myself preparing truth soup for you, but I guess it may not be necessary now. It sounds like you want to tell me the truth on your own anyways?”
“Truth soup? Uhh, my God. I have nothing to hide Miss. I have no idea what would make a good lie or a bad lie so I think I'll take my chances with the truth. I'm looking for my mother, but also I suppose for some kind of magic as well. I've tried so hard to find my happiness in this life, but I've always ended up feeling like a spectator to the happiness of others. I always end up miserable and running. I guess I just felt like retracing my mother's journey might reveal something secret about life. Or else she would have come home.” Winston remained on the floor of the hut, shirtless, breathless, and clueless. “I thought searching for her would give me purpose,” he gasped.
Magenta listened suspiciously as she flicked the tubes of dark fluids running to and from his body with her index finger. “Well, lost soul. You certainly are a tattered Englishman, this contentment potion isn't having much of an effect on you. Oh don't look so alarmed, I have a feeling you've had THC in your body once or twice before this. I always find that people are a lot easier to understand once you get them to relax and let go, that's all. I run the blood-recycler on everyone when they come to see me.” She allowed her smirk to linger on him for a bit and then went back to stirring her cauldron. Winston watched for a second and then dropped his head back to the floor. Dream-catchers dangled from the ceiling and lightly dripped beads of water onto his forehead. He opened his mouth and prayed for them to crawl inside. “What the hell am I going to do now?” he said quietly under his breath.
“You are severely dehydrated lost soul. The chief will never let you leave in this state. I must say, I'm terribly curious to see what he's going to do with you.”
“Magenta, what did you say you were again? An insightful witch or something?”
“Ha, lost soul. I am an insight chef. I have recipes that can do many things for many people. I may even be able to help you if you like. I have one recipe in particular which I make for the young people in the village. You, obviously, are far too old for it, but I would make it for you if you like.” She smirked again and then dropped a fiery pine-cone into the cauldron. A pink cloud of smoke burst out and the smell of roses filled the room. “Mmm, that is some fine truth soup.” Winston picked himself up from the floor and rolled onto his side to face Magenta.”
“What recipe is that?” he asked with a mighty thirst.
“It's the recipe for living to 50. When you get your strength back, I will show you how it works.” She then revealed a small glass bottle from her pocket and emptied it into the blood-recycler. “Now get some rest lost soul,” she whispered.
&nbs
p; Chapter 18 – The Inevitability of Efficiency Deficiencies
“The doctors stressed to me the importance of rest. But how can you rest when every time you fall asleep you worry that you may never wake up again?” - Martha Stone
How do you prioritize your dreams? I've had so many: some real, some not. I've had some dreams only once and some almost every night. I'm old enough and I feel wise enough to know which ones are possible. Sometimes I think that I can have Dream A and Dream B or that I can have Dreams C, D, and E but not A or B. I love my dreams and freeze in my tracks when pushed to let go of one. Sometimes I remain frozen in that same spot for years. How do you prioritize your dreams?
“Cock-a-cock-a-caw!” Winston was awakened by the familiar sounds of a rooster. His first thoughts were of Thailand. His second thought was simply the color red. His eyes were closed and a decidedly real burning sensation lived in the space between his eyelids and eyeballs. It became so hot that he inevitably surrendered to his fears and opened his eyes. Again the dream-catchers stared back at him and he was able to insert himself back into place and time. His mouth was incredibly dry and tasted like old potatoes.
“Have some milk,” Magenta said as she offered him an opened coconut. He drank gratefully and soon felt better. “Did the rooster startle you?”
“I love roosters,” he replied firmly.
Searching for the Fountain of Youth Page 9
