Vacation (PART 4)

10/16/05

I am sitting on my Machame Camp eating rock; the ground is covered with frost. It must be 7am, 7:30am, I've decided not to keep track. The sun is up, and it's starting to warm me and the ground. My last dream last night included a musical number, with all the dream's character's getting a verse. It was pretty spectacular.

It was a short and intense hike today, through moorland and heather. Maybe half an hour into it, I was standing on a rock, looking at the peak, looking over the valley, and a heavy mist (fog?) started rolling up the hill. It came fast, it came strong, it covered me, then everything. Visibility was maybe 20ft. It gave the day a solemn, mystical feeling. People were more tired than yesterday; we mostly walked in silence, which I liked. The day was yellow and green and brown but mostly grey and sometimes pure white. It was punctuated by the loud sporadic visits from the white-necked raven, or a porter with a radio, gaining on you from behind, piled with bags. These guys are amazing. They leave camp after you and arrive to the next camp before you. They are climbing up rock walls, 65-degree grades, with 30kg bags balanced on their heads.

Shortly after Ma's arrival, we stopped at the Sweet Easy for a snack. It was a mango, grapefruit, and shrimp salad. It was the first time since I've been in East Africa that someone had appeared to seriously consider the flavors they were combining, and it was glorious.

I think we may break through the cloud line tomorrow. It seems so close.

There was a coffee shop in Nungwi, like a real coffee shop with real coffee, not dark tea or instant coffee. I ordered a mocha from the Maasai (fake Maasai? There seemed to be plenty around) behind the counter. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap along with his traditional garb. I sat down and glanced through a trashy British celeb mag that was sitting on the coffee table while he made the drink.

They just served me warm peanuts. I'm not sure I've ever had warm peanuts.

On the east side of the island, about halfway down, in the middle of nowhere, between one fishing village and the next, on a road that had just turned from sand (deep sand) to tarmac, underneath a triptych of election posters tied to a power line and swinging in the wind, a lone cow was trotting up the street towards me. There wasn't another human in sight.

The sun tried to break through, but the mist beat it. I can see my breath. And I just heard a cell phone ring.

In Nungwi I found a t-shirt with a picture of a majestic elephant. It says, "THE BEAUTY OF ELEPHANT IS IVORY" and I don't think it was meant as a joke. I bought it for Russ. I think he will appreciate both the poor grammar and the frighteningly evil message. They wanted $15, I paid $4.

I signed the visitor's log for Shira Camp. The fellow told me they sell water, 3000/= for 1.5 liters. I'll keep going with boiled brown stream water. I asked about AA batteries. They are 3000/= each. I need three for the headlamp. I'll keep writing by candlelight. There are 10 guys from the UK, all mid to late 20s, and they have found a potato and a stick to play baseball or cricket or something with. A part of me wants to join them, but a larger part does not. I do want to find Perrine though. A raven hops by the door of my tent. I am tired. I need to drink more water.

I went to the bathroom, the long way through the camp, but I didn't see her.

I was watching the sunset, sitting on the roof of a dhow with a load of foreigners, some from the UK, most from Oz, the girl from Portland. Ma had opted for a ride back in the speedboat. I'm chit chatting with people, we're drinking Konyagi and Krest tonic water, eating glucose biscuits, I am watching the sun sink nearer to the horizon, watching a dhow sailing towards us from the other direction. It's going to pass right in front of the sun, right when the sun kisses the water. It's going to be a perfect shot. A perfect Zanzibar postcard. I have 100-speed color film in my Spotmatic, it's going to be good. I want the dhow a silhouette, the sun a fiery red. I meter it. 1/1000, f11, it's going to be good. I'm glad I put my 105mm lens on, I thought for a second I should just roll with my 55mm, but in the back of my mind, I knew this situation might arise, I knew this was a shot I wanted to get, I knew it would look better taking up the whole negative, not have to crop it later. This is going to be good. Someone is asking me a question about Kenya, about a motorcycle, about Stone Town. I am answering questions, but my focus is on that sun, on that dhow. It's an easy shot, focus is infinite, metering is done, it's just down to timing. There, the sun kisses the water, the dhow is about to pass, I put the camera up to my face, only one frame is needed, I press the shutter… The girl from Portland happened to shift her weight right then, her fat fucking head getting right in the way of the shot. C'est la…

The mist is coming in heavily now. My knee, badly sunburnt, is starting to peel, and it itches. I was hoping the fog would lift, would break, reveal a spectacular view, would turn into an amazing sunset… but alas.

A man with long blonde, permed hair walked up to the open-air bar on the beach. I handed the joint (the local price for an ounce of island weed? Four dollars) back to the guy from the UK, he handed it to the chick (another one with those silly braids) from Oz. The girl from Portland leaned in and said, "Is that Michael Bolton?" We all laughed. The guy from the UK said "Ask." She did. 'Michael' turned out to be German and indignant, "But his music is garbage, everyone hates him!" Portland tried, without a lot of real effort, to climb out of the hole, "Well his music doesn't matter, it's the look that counts." "Well I'm offended." This girl is a gem: "Well it's not my fault if you look exactly like Michael Bolton, is it?" After Michael had left, his buddy, who had come to watch the show, said "Don't you know that Michael cut his hair and wears suits now?" We all laughed. Then he told me about sleeping in a tree with a tribe in Namibia.

Like yesterday, my eyelids are crazy heavy. And there is so much sediment in the water I'm drinking, it is so brown.

I am the only person making this trek on their own. There are the 10 Brits and then a dozen Germans, and then a few foursomes and twosomes scattered about. The 12 Germans are on a seven-day hike. We'll leave them behind the day after tomorrow.

As I was being detained by Mahonda police, halfway between Stone Town and Nungwi, honeymooners kept passing in taxis, sending glances to me that said things like, 'oh you poor misguided youth… why would you come to a third world country and break the law?' Then they would look at each other in a way that seemed to say, 'we'll do better than that with our children. They'll never be detained by third world police.' A few hours later, as I avoided arrest by the Nungwi police with a $10 bribe (YES! I'VE BRIBED MY WAY OUT OF ARREST IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!) about 20 young kids looked on. The next day, when all my papers were finally in order and the police officer realized that he couldn't detain, threaten, or extort money from me, he tried a new tactic: pure unabated begging.

I shut my eyes for a little while. I woke up, took another piss (I seem to be reaching the 'copious 1.5 liters of daily recommended urine.) I looked around for Perrine. I stood at the spot where I would stand to appreciate the view, if said view wasn't just a heavy wet blanket of white. I got cold. I came back to my tent. I came back to my tent and turned on my phone to check the time, it's only 3:45pm! I can hardly believe it. What the hell am I going to do with myself for the rest of the day?

Well that was a bad idea. To stave off boredom I suited up and went outside. At first I was just sitting there, then I decided to take a walk. I went past one Brit, so strong playing stickball just an hour ago, now puking, presumably from the altitude (we are now well past 10,000 feet.) I should've taken that as a warning. I did not. I decided I should walk to the next ridge and see how the view would be from there (if there was one.) I felt good, warm and strong, so I sort of bound down one ridge and up the other. The view from there would have been very nice (if there was one.) I turned around after a bit, and felt so good that I even jogged down one ridge and then up the next and then uh-oh. My heart was beating too fast, my head was starting to pound, the air was too thin to catch my breath. I've been trying to breathe through my nose (I read somewhere you should) but it wasn't letting enough air in, so I opened up my mouth and tried to let more in. I stopped walking. My hands are above my head, then I'm bent at the waist. Finally I'm breathing, but my head was still pounding, and I felt so stupid to have spent two days, so conscious not to move too fast, to lose my breath, to over exert, and then to blow it at camp. I walked back slow, when I got to my tent I stretched, when I got inside I took 80mg of chewable children's flavored aspirin that Ma brought me. I'm starting to feel okay. Tomorrow sounds like the true test, and apparently day four is sink or swim.

I wish my dad were here, he would really dig this. I am reminded of the week we spent rafting down the Grand Canyon, setting up camp, experiencing vastness.

I remember living in 305 those years he was sick, always stoned or drunk or otherwise fucking my life away. He would call. I would answer. His name would appear on my caller ID and I wouldn't want to take the call, though I always would. It was just such a downer. He wasn't, it was. And it wasn't fair: no one else had to leave the 4-foot bong ripping sessions to go and take a call from their dying father. No one else had to give up their game of NFL Blitz or leave the DVD in the middle or the girls to Jeff and Gavin and go and talked in hushed tones in the kitchen. No one else got up and down, 'the surgery was a success, I'm going to be fine' and, 'they found it again, I'm going to have another surgery' calls every few months. And no one else had to take that call, the one I feared, the one where he told me he was too tired to keep fighting… How could he give up? He never gave up. He ran fucking marathons. He built houses. He didn't give up. He had a seven-year-old daughter, and he had me and there was so much more…

We had a memorial before he died, he was there, in his black leather jacket with his shiny bald head. I remember people speaking and I remember Kyra singing, but it didn't seem real. I wanted to cry, it seemed appropriate, but I couldn't cry because I wanted to cry for all the wrong reasons, because people were watching and he was watching. And I went to buy ice at Sav-On or Walgreens, whatever it was, and a cute check out girl was ringing me up and I wanted to ask her out, is that terrible? That 'Hey, when I'm done with my father's memorial and I drop him off back at the house do you want to go get an ice cream cone?' but not ice cream because it was winter and the snow came soon and it was cold and grey and then the moaning started, every night, god that moaning, I've never heard a worse sound night after night and no amount of morphine seemed to stifle it. And he woke after we all thought he was gone for sure, but he was awake and holding my hand, and it was Christmas, and that was the last time I heard him speak, but I'm not sure that I remember the words, I think I do, but I can't be sure. And now they want to serve me dinner, but I'm not ready, it's still early, and the fog is lifting and the sun is coming out and it's out! How can you eat dinner now? It's hot, it's getting hot and I don't want to eat, I just want to breath, deep breaths that fill my lungs and my heart and my blood with oxygen and life, and I don't want to stop writing, if I stop writing I die (if you touch the ground it's lava and you die, you melt, you lose, and I don't want to lose, I want to keep playing, we used to play a game when I was young where his hand was a spider and it would come crawling at me, that huge hairy, veiny spider, and I would slap it and it would flip over, dead, but I wouldn't want it to be over, so I would kiss it and this huge hairy, veiny spider would come back to life and I want to…)

And dinner is served and this pencil lead is dull and the fog is rolling back and covering the sun, there it goes, and my headache is back and maybe food will help. And I hope I make it to the top.

The soup was good, chicken stock with shredded carrots and cabbage and of course too much oil. And I sharpened my pencil as I wait for the next course, the meat and starch. And I am feeling guilty that I'm here because couldn't $720 save a lot of kids in the village, not pay their school fees, but buy so much that they need? But my gramma gave me this money for my birthday to use as I saw fit, and how could I pass this up. The sun is fighting hard, fighting and not giving up, and fight on. Burn through. Give me a sunset. Let me stand on a ridge and watch you sink into the horizon, melt away like you did last night. And let me see it from above! Let me stand on a ridge above you and watch you melt.

Well the sun was defeated and I got cold and I went back to my tent to finish dinner, zipped up the door. The fog beat the sun and the cold chased me in.

So now I've eaten. I feel better. I'm wearing the beanie I bought at an open-air market in Ecuador. I love it. It is going to be cold tonight, very cold. Full thermals and two sleeping bags cold. Camp tomorrow is at about the same elevation; we hike up 3,000 feet and then back down.

And he did fight. Too hard. He fought until the last breath. And when he didn't exhale for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, when he didn't take another, and we knew that he was gone, finally gone, I left the house, and I walked around the lake, and I sat under a tree. And I felt relief. For him, for me, for all of us. He wasn't ready to go. We didn't want him to die but even more than that, he wasn't ready to go. He fought and fought and fought and when he finally let go, I was relieved. And sitting under that tree I could imagine his release, his ascent, and I smiled. And I felt guilty, but only a little. And I felt 100lbs lighter, though 10 years older, but it felt good to feel light, sitting under that tree on that clear, cold night. And after that, and after New Years in Tahoe where I got staggeringly drunk but felt entitled, where I didn't tell anyone, no one knew but my brothers, and they didn't really know, I didn't want to talk about it, I just wanted to sit and drink my whiskey, a whole bottle, and slip on the ice into the crush of humanity at the state line, and feel warm even though it was freezing, after that, I went back to 305 and it tried to swallow me again, but I fought, I escaped the belly of the whale and I am here.

Things don't always work the way I imagine, and sometimes it's all for the better. The sun never broke back through the fog. But it was still beautiful, the fog thinner at least, creeping through some distant mountains that had finally become visible, turning pink and blue as the sun set behind.

But then the summit broke through the clouds! Burning pink, reflecting the sun we could no longer see, a soft fire burning through the mist. The color faded fast, but it was there. Then the fog lifted from the mountain completely, and it was all grey and white and huge and beautiful, and it looked so close, it looked like we would be there tomorrow, even though I know it's still three days, some 24 hours of walking away. I stood with Nicodemus, we looked at the mountain, we looked at the mountain talking about tomorrow's hike, about water, about signs of altitude sickness, we stood staring at the mountain that looked so close, and then! And then a pure white light, so bright, appeared on the summit! And I didn't know what it was and I looked at Nico and he looked just as amazed as me, and the light got brighter, and what could it be? Is it someone on the summit? Is it somehow a reflection of the sun? And it got bigger and brighter and oh my god it's the moon! It's rising from behind Kibo, it's rising from behind the summit of Kilimanjaro! And it's full tomorrow which means it's pretty damn full tonight, and the moon, the almost full moon, such a pure bright white light is rising from behind the peak! And I wanted to see the sun set into the horizon and I didn't even think about the moon rising from behind the peak! And the goddamn moon is rising! I howled. It was so perfect, so beautiful. And even if I could've asked for something, I never would have thought to ask for that, for the almost full moon rising from behind the summit. I would've asked for that melting sun, which by comparison is so mundane, so ordinary, everyone has seen the sun melt into the horizon, but who has seen the moon rise from behind the peak of Kilimanjaro?! And they say the peak looks like a lunar landscape and I was so excited, so excited standing next to Nico that I asked if we could go now, and he laughed… But I really do want to go, to start walking, it's so bright, the moon, it would show the way, guide us to the peak…

When we got back from Ecuador, I swore I was a new man. I promised myself I wouldn't fall back into the same traps, the same routines. I had seen the rainforest; I had been blessed by Shamans. I had sat in a dug out canoe and witnessed the most beautiful sunset imaginable, the forest reflecting off the burning, swirling red waters of the Amazon. And I had swum across the river, and not been eaten by anaconda or umbrella fish or piranhas. And I had knelt on the edge of an airstrip in the middle of the night, alone, vomiting out a wonderful poison, and I had looked up into the trees and caught a glimpse of an ancient knowledge that came from a foreign toxin inside me (and had the room started vibrating when the Shaman blessed the potion, the medicine, chanting while he stirred?) And after seeing all that, feeling all that, I promised myself that I was born anew, that I wouldn't fall back into those same traps. And six months later, stoned and drunk, chain smoking cigarettes while I played video games, pissed that some sorority whore hadn't called me back that night, resigned to sit and drink and smoke and smoke and stare into that goddamn box, I knew I had failed. And maybe he called, and maybe I reluctantly answered, and maybe we talked and I felt guilty, because I knew I had broken a promise that I had made to myself, and is anything worse? And he was couch surfing with friends, he had sold the house he had built and we had gone to Ecuador and seen things and I had promised myself and now he was couch surfing with friends until he found a place to rent, and he was still fighting but he was still dying and he was looking for rentals, and in the back of his head was he thinking, 'can I die here?' But maybe not, because those fucking Shamans had said he was going to live, had said he was cured, had taken our money and put on their feathers and danced around him and said he was cured, and said they had taken his cancer away. And he believed it and I wanted to believe it, wanted to so bad, and it seems so silly now, but maybe if I had just believed a little harder, maybe I could have… Maybe I didn't believe enough. There was a cute blonde chick on the trip and she was young but so was I and we would sneak off together and when the Shamans were dancing around him with their feathers on was I thinking about her? And I didn't believe enough. But no matter how much I believed those Shamans with those feathers were taking his cancer, they weren't, they were only taking our money. But he believed. And that was what was important because he was so tired of those surgeries and hospitals and doctors and he just wanted some ancient knowledge to lift him up, to cure him, and maybe I saw it, maybe I saw it as I knelt on the edge of that airstrip, puking out that beautiful toxic medicine, maybe I saw it and I should have asked it to cure him, but I couldn't ask, all I could do was stare, stare and try to listen, listen to the deafening rainforest, shouting its quiet truths. But when I got back to 305, when I turned on that N64, when my roommates brought home that new bong, so pretty, all purple and hand blown glass, when we sat around so drunk on Saturday night and I said okay just one, just one cigarette, only one cigarette at the end of Saturday nights, when I stopped listening, I shut out that night on the edge of that forest, I shut out that deafening night and I went back to before, I broke my promise. But after I went to live with him that winter, after I held his hand while he took his last breath, after I sat beneath that tree and felt guilty and light, after I went home to 305 I felt different. And after I started school again I felt different, and I went back up and spoke at his memorial, another one, this time he wasn't there, but somehow he was more there than the time before, and after I spoke, not anything I had written, I just told everyone how I felt, and I danced, danced at his memorial just the way he would have wanted me to, and after all that, I went back to 305 and I didn't need to promise myself anything. I just knew. I just felt different, even if just a little. And they, it, tried to swallow me again, but I am too big to be swallowed. You can't swallow me motherfuckers, I am too big.

And it's cold now. Very cold. And the candle is burning down. And I'm going outside to look at the moon and to piss.

The moon is bright, so bright, so bright that I can't see many stars, so bright that I can see the mountains, those mountains that are miles away and still snaked with tendrils of mist. And it's cold, so cold that I am in thermals and gloves my Ecuadorian beanie, and in two sleeping bags, so cold but I am keeping warm. And my candle, it's only a stub, but it keeps burning, still burning on its can of baked beans. I am tired, but I am not, it's still early and I drank three cups of tea, just because it kept my fingers warm, my belly warm. But I will sleep soon. I am tired. I am 10,000+ feet in the air and I am cold and warm and awake and tired and alive, most importantly I am alive. I am alive and lying in two sleeping bags on the top of the world, and I can hardly wait… I could be swallowed in a millisecond, but right now I am alive.

I have his ashes with me. It has always been my secret fantasy to spread them from the summit of Kilimanjaro. Now that I am here, I actually don't know. But I'm glad that he's coming up with me.

My candle is out.

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