Hokkaido diary: Tokyo Skytree and craft beer

As before, I'm trying the Paul Theroux approach to travel writing: no bloviating, no florid soliloquizing, no fluff. Just straight-up description. As Mary Chesnut wrote in her Civil War diary, "My subjective days are over."

I'm going to do something a little different this time around. Instead of just telling you blandly about my week-long trip to Hokkaido in the past tense, I'm going to include snippets from the journal I kept. Present tense is always more vibrant and visceral. 

So. Day 1.

Hokkaido diary
2/2 - 2/7

2/2:

• was almost late for my flight, but made it. Miss H saw me off. I sure do love that girl.
• nice sandwiches on board, though thin strips—Japanese style
• next time I'm taking the limited express to from Narita to Tokyo (¥1000, or $10) instead of the Skyliner to Ueno (¥2400, or $24)
• Looking at Chiba Prefecture for the first time in six months—still as gray in the sky, but browner in the grass. And not stinking hot and humid
• Checked into Capsule Value Inn Kanda. Met a very nice Finn named Manu (?)—talked about mandatory Swedish in Helsinki schools, idiosyncracies [sic] of the Japanese culture; his dad was a farmer, but he lusted for knowledge at a library 16 km away
• tried to go to Tokyo Skytree; cost ¥2000 to get in. I said "screw that noise, I've been up Tokyo Tower." Checked out the Minolta Planetarium, but cost ¥1000-¥1300 to get in. 
• went back to Kanda and ate maguroichibadon (sushi over rice) for ¥700
• found a craft micropub called Devil Craft nearby—tried microbrews with Mel, a foreign reporter for the Japan Times (and occasionally the Korea Herald)
• Sacked out in my capsule, reading Paul Theroux, hearing Finnish snores and Japanese farts

I'm getting to be an old pro at hopping back and forth between Japan. Getting to Incheon Airport was a breeze. I made it onto my flight with just five minutes to spare because I underestimated how much time it takes to get there and check in. The gate agent even scolded me, his face flat and impassive. But I made it, and that's the important thing. 

I did the same thing as I did last time: I cleared customs and immigration at Narita, exchanged my Korean won for Japanese yen, and then forked over ¥2400 of that precious wad ($23.42) to ride the blue Skyliner to Ueno Station in northeast Tokyo. Then it was a couple of stops down the Ginza subway line to Kanda Station, where, after a bit of poking through back alleys and some help from a good Samaritan (a shortish middle-aged Japanese fellow with his hair cropped close to his skull and a bellicose demeanor), I found my capsule hotel, the Capsule Value Inn:

I checked in and stashed my stuff in the lockers, retrieving only my camera. Then I went back downstairs. Passing the front counter, I bumped into Manu, a Finnish fellow with the look of a mean drill sergeant: buzz-cut hair, blade-like nose, his face all angles and hollows, hardly an ounce of fat on his body. His eyes were piercing gray-blue and his English was flawless. He'd never stayed in a capsule hotel before, and as he was leaving Tokyo the next day (like me) he thought he'd give one a shot. We chatted for half an hour on the hotel's front stoop before I headed off to see Tokyo Skytree. 

Part of my Tao of Travel (again, I'm ripping off terminology from Paul Theroux, but the man's traveled farther than most and he's got some good tips) is this: once I get to a city, at the soonest possible juncture, I find a high place and take a look down at the city from there. Get the lay of the land, so to speak. In August, on my way through western Japan, I did it with Tokyo Tower, Mt. Arashiyama in Kyoto, and Kumamoto Castle. I've done it several times in Seoul: Namsan Tower, the 63 Building, and Dobongsan. I've looked down on L.A. from the Mount Griffith Observatory, the Rim of the World Highway, and several others. I think it's nice to get a bit of an overview before you dive into something, you know? Like looking at a menu at a restaurant or reading the abstract of a scientific study.

But here's the thing: I'd already looked down at Tokyo in August. And I'd done it in the bright daytime, when the air was clear. A moist, slimy fog was stuck to Tokyo's back this night, and I doubted whether, even from the Skytree's Tembo observation deck a redoubtable 450 meters off the ground, I could have seen much of the city. Moreover, even though this was the tallest tower in the world and the tallest structure of any kind after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, I wasn't up for paying ¥2000 ($20) to get in. The lines were humongous, the night was chill and foggy, and I was content just to stumble around at the tower's base with my head craned back, looking at the clouds swirling around the tower's 634-meter spire.

Then I headed back to Kanda. I was in the mood to just sit and have a beer and reflect on the long, exciting journey ahead of me tomorrow. By some cosmic stroke of luck, there was a brewpub just around the corner from my capsule hotel. It was called Devil Craft, one of only two in Tokyo, run by a trio of American expatriates, crewed this night by two handsome and bantering Japanese fellows and filled with foreigners. I fell into conversation with one of them, an Englishman named Mel, who looked almost exactly like Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape and wrote for the Japan Times. I sipped the Miyama Blonde (by Shiga Kogen Beer), Rogue Brewery's Yellow Snow IPA, and Left Hand's Fade to Black, a rye ale. All were supremely delicious. Mel and I chatted away as we drank. He asked me about living in Korea, I asked him about working for a newspaper in Japan. The man had quite a long list of interesting things he believed: he'd interviewed Paul McCartney for 20 minutes and said he hated him; he disliked the Irish and thought the Potato Famine had been faked (just another example of Irish self-victimization); he felt the whole Dokdo/Takeshima possession dispute was bollocks; he avoided films and had no idea who Sir Ian McKellen was. He'd served as a parachutist in the RAF during the Iraq War and had broken both his legs, being sent to Australia to recover.  Japan was a stopover on the way back to Britain, but Mel had liked it so much he'd stayed. He'd married a local and gotten into newspapers, and would be interviewing Lionel Richie on that musician's Japan tour in a few weeks. Right now he was collecting man-on-the-street interviews about the upcoming Tokyo mayoral election and whether the Fukushima incident should factor into it. He wanted to interview me, but I demurred; I wasn't sure how much my job would be worth if Sejong University learned that one of its junior professors had shown up in the Japan Times yapping about Tokyo elections and nuclear meltdowns. No matter; Mel had plenty of bites. He'd already interviewed one of Devil Craft's waitresses and, shortly before I arrived, had become engaged with a foreign-born Japanese man and his Russian wife. Lots of fish in the sea. Mel and I parted as friends, though I did not share his views on the Irish.

Then, my head reeling, I wobbled back to the Capsule Value Inn and spent an hour reading the rest of the Tokyo Andagarundo chapter in Theroux's book. I set an alarm, turned out the light, and waited to see what fortunes the next day would bring me.

Get ready for Day 2: Tokyo to Sapporo. 

the four stages of (writing) enlightenment

Let me be clear:

Oodles of stuff has been written about writing. I'm adding my voice to thousands of others, many of them better, more experienced and more expert than I am. I'm a novice craftsman. I'm not trying to steal Stephen King's or James N. Frey's thunder, here; I'm just putting my two cents in.

Second, I like analogies. I use them all the time. They're useful, particularly when you teach ESL for a living. I used the example of a drunk person trying to talk to demonstrate the concept of incoherency in class earlier this evening.

I achieved a sort of writing epiphany this week, in the throes of NaNoWriMo. So I thought I'd share it with you, relating it to the four stages of enlightenment in Buddhism.

The interesting thing about these four stages is that they're not something one achieves in a single lifetime. It takes at least seven rebirths to get from start to finish, if you do everything right. The first stage, Sotāpanna (stream-enterer), is the lowest level. This means that you've embarked upon the Noble Eightfold Path, "opened the eye of the Dharma," and have complete confidence in the Three Jewels. You've jumped out on that road, as the Van Halen song goes. And you've pretty much secured yourself a get-out-of-jail free card: since you've attained, even at this initial stage, an innate knowledge of the inner workings of Buddhism, you won't be reborn as anything lower than a human in your next life. You'll probably wind up as human again for the second stage, but you won't become an animal or a demon. You're on the right track.

This is the stage that every fledgling writer goes through. You're in the bookstore, gazing with envious eyes at the names of all the published authors in your favorite section. You take one off the shelf and leaf through it. In a fit of ambitious fervor, you say to yourself, "I want a piece of the pie. I'm going to write a novel. If this guy/gal could do it, then so can I."

You rush home, breaking at least three traffic laws in your hurry to reach the nearest laptop or typewriter (or notepad and pen). You sit down...

...and discover that this is actually a lot harder than it looks.

Several hours, days, or possibly weeks later, with sheaves of wasted paper lying around the house (balled-up or blowing around intact), you admit that you've bitten off quite a bit more than you can chew.

This is it. The pivotal moment. The turning point. The critical juncture. Will you turn away from the path, forsake the way of the writer, and go off and do something more immediately and materially rewarding, like clearing minefields? Or will you stick to your guns? Keep seeking the elusive thrill?

It may take you a while to decide, but ultimately you come back. The typewriter calls to you. The laptop serenades you in your sleep. Every florid, stirring, eloquent bit of writing you've ever read comes back to haunt you, torturing you, taunting you to do better. After an indefinite period of soul-searching, caffeine, alcohol, denial, penury, penance, distraction and pain, you're back in front of a keyboard with your hair a mess, your colon on strike, your eyes bleary and your heart singing.

You've embarked on the path. You've entrusted your soul to the Three Jewels: Buddha (the highest spiritual ideal that exists within all beings, that of crafting tight prose, flowing style and the power to turn simple ink and paper into resonant gold); Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha, also called The Elements of Style); and Sangha (the community of those who have attained enlightenment, otherwise known as the bestseller list: the Faulkners, the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, the Plaths, the Lees, the Kings, the Grishams, et al).

Congratulations, you're a writer. Now what?

Stage Two: Sakadagami, the once-returner. You'll return to the human world once; after that, your rebirths take you progressively higher into the Pure Abodes. Now that you've cast off three of the worldly fetters (TV, the Internet, and cell phone games) and have gotten serious, you're on the fast track to success. This is the stage when you start to realize certain things about writing.

First, it's not as hard as you initially thought. If you practice, it gets a lot easier. The juices start flowing whenever you sit down at that keyboard. Some days are incredible, of course, and some are downright rotten; but you start to get the hang of getting the pure, immaculate picture in your head down on the page.

Second, you begin to let go of your search for perfection. As a stream-enterer, you were obsessed with getting things right the first time, and you savagely eviscerated any sentence, paragraph or page which didn't sing to you. There was nothing for you beyond the writing itself: no editing, no revision. You wanted it all down in one go, a finished product in the first draft. But when you got to the end and started looking over what you'd done, it all appeared puerile and hackneyed. So you tore it up, burned it, threw it out the window. Now, as a once-returner, you have a wider perspective. You may still edit as you go, and power to you; but you're more sanguine about letting things slide, checking them over in the editing, tweaking and pinching and shuffling things about. Writing is now about getting ideas and concepts down on the page; the revision process is where you tease out the fossils and unearth the gold.

Heaven only knows how long you remain in the second stage. I was there for almost three novel manuscripts and an unholy number of abortive attempts at short fiction. Now I'm not sure where I am: I think I'm sufficiently enlightened to embark upon Stage Three, but my short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writings are just sucky enough to hold me back.

But let me explain the epiphany I had:

Relaxation.

Complete, utter, total relaxation.

This is my second NaNoWriMo. My first one was horrendous. I had all sorts of time, because Miss H was home in the states and I was still working at a hagwon, so I had the morning and a bit of the afternoon to write, write, write. But it was my first time writing on a schedule...and a rigid and demanding schedule at that. Earlier I had recognized the need to write on a daily basis, and get a sort of mental routine going; but I had been rather dissolute about implementing it. NaNoWriMo was a slap in the face, a wake-up call.

Now I have embarked upon a second year's NaNoWriMo. I'm being casual about it. I haven't logged in to the website. I haven't posted excerpts or word counts. I'm not keeping track of any of my fellow writers. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. And it's easy.

You know why? 'Cause I'm chill.

Chiller than I've ever been before.

I outlined this book ages ago. It's the third installment of my magnum opus, my epic sci-fi action-adventure alternative history series. (Does that description get you excited? It does me.) For as many hours as I've spent actually writing the first three books of the series, I've spent at least ten times as many scribbling notes, random snippets of dialogue, and sketches of maps, vehicles, weapons, creatures, and characters in my various and assorted notebooks—dozens of them. I have hundreds of thousands of words in Notepad files and Microsoft Word documents: outlines, character bios, vignettes, timelines, back stories, synopses, summaries of events taking place before and after the main storyline, lists of vital statistics (names, birth dates, hair colors, eye colors, ages, nationalities, etc)...on and on and on. I have planned this shit out. Small wonder this third installment is rolling off my fingertips like Twinkies from an assembly line.

But it's more than that, though. I've learned to relax. I've learned not to worry about the many minor style errors, awkward grammatical constructions, contradictory characterizations, wooden lines of dialogue, shoehorned circumstance and contrived coincidence which worm their way into my writing. I reread at the beginning of every writing session, and my eyes unerringly find the problems and correct them. I've learned. And I'm still learning, a bit every day. I wouldn't say that I've developed my own signature style yet, but the gears are turning. I've come so far from the days when I would write drivel and fail to catch it in the editing. I'm starting to feel—to sense what great writing is, and how to approach it. I think I've even touched it on occasion. I've kept up with my reading: I finished Brave New World and am halfway through Part Two of Anna Karenina. Excellent works both. Read great writing, and ye shall produce great writing. Relax, and ye shall proceed. Take long walks (and go to the gym in the evenings) and your mind shall be cleared of clutter. Don't stress too much about your job or your filthy apartment or your poor lonely parents or your yellow teeth or your crazy cat, and you'll make out all right.

The third stage of writing enlightenment is learning to let go. Quit stressing about what Strunk and White scream in your ears. Don't disregard them, just don't let them intimidate you. Don't forget or forsake the rest of your life; don't be afraid to put down the pen and pursue it, either. Get a routine going, but keep your schedule open for introspective walks in the autumn sunshine, or a glass of beer with a friend, or a cup of tea on a rainy morning, or an afternoon with a pipe and a good book.

Relax. Chill out. You'll finish in due time. Have fun with the process. Keep working, keep practicing. Keep your feet on the path.

That was my epiphany.

Thanks to it, I think I'm at Stage Three: Anāgāmī. That means "non-returner." This is one who does not return to any human world after death. Having overcome sensuality, non-returners are reborn into five special worlds, the Pure Abodes. They are closing in on their goal: they have abandoned five out of the ten mortal fetters. They are well advanced.

I have two novel manuscripts completed, two more in the works, dozens of finished short stories, a smattering of novellas and novelettes, and even a couple of poems floating around. These were my stepping stones, my first tentative steps toward enlightenment, my awkward initiation into a larger world. Back then, writing was a chore, a nerve-wracking and embarrassing ordeal, like taking an exam that you hadn't studied for or having a conversation in a foreign language. Now it's like grabbing the tail of a runaway tiger—or a comet—and taking the ride of your life.

From here on out, the material I produce will continue to improve. I will tweak the stories I can tweak, abandon the ones I can't, and strive to climb higher up the ladder to the final stage. I aim to become an Arahant: a fully-awakened person. He has broken all ten fetters which bind souls to the cycle of rebirth, and will never be reborn into any plane or world again. These are the Faulkners, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Frosts. These are the guys who just get it. As a second- or third-level acolyte, I can only imagine what the fourth stage has in store for me, but I can hazard a guess. I think that it's nothing more than the ability to sit down in front of a keyboard with a notebook, a pen, a dictionary and a thesaurus, bang out a really good novel and whip it into publishable shape in a month or so. No distractions, no (major) frustrations, no ineptitude, no self-consciousness, no insecurity, no hack writing, no fear, no harm, no foul: just skill. Talent. Practice. Ability. Perseverance. And well-deserved triumph.

The Arahant writer is like a master potter: able to walk up to a wheel and, with his bare hands, muscle memory, and a lifetime of hard-won knowledge and wisdom in his head, create a masterpiece. He may turn out a few stinkers now and then, but he'll be consistently good. And sometimes he'll be damn near perfect.

True craftsmanship, in other words.

That's the writer's enlightenment.

And that's what I'm shooting for. Wish me luck.

flexing the "write" muscles

Though I crammed a lot of books into my suitcase before I left for Korea in February 2012, I've gradually come to realize that I didn't bring nearly enough. I don't know what possessed me to leave my unread copy of The Idiot; but I did, and I'm intellectually poorer for it.

There were some nonfiction works I shouldn't have left behind, either. One of them was The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises by Brian Kiteley. Kiteley, a novelist and writing teacher, makes a big promise with that "uncommon" part in the title. But, as one Amazon reviewer states, "he lives up to it." What little I remember from skimming through it last February was promising. They were, indeed, uncommon and thought-provoking activities. I wish I had that book with me now. My prose could use some more pizzazz.

That said, I'm being more productive. I recently finished that big overhaul of the novel that I embarked upon so many months ago, and I am currently about 5,000 words into my current WIP (which is Novel #2 in the same series). Miss H is my beta reader for Novel #1. I'm nervous but excited. It's finally ready for her eyes. I don't feel ashamed anymore.

...but I am ashamed of how lax I've been with my travel writing career.  I haven't sold anything in over a year. But hope is on the horizon, even as trees leaf out and flowers bloom in Olympic Park. When the weather warms up, the sun climbs high and Spring rears her lovely head, Seoul starts effervescing with parties and events. Case in point, I'm heading to the Spring Beer Fest in Itaewon on May 4, and I'm super jazzed. Mass-market Korean beer has driven me to distraction. I'm beyond ready to sample the best suds this country's microbreweries and home-brewers can dish up. I'll have my old Geordie friend Adam (from Geoje Island) beside me, so he and I will paint the town on Saturday afternoon. YEAH!

...the practical upshot of this is that I'll get a humdinger of a travel article out of it. I just need to find a beery magazine to publish it in after the dust settles. Trust me, I'm researching markets as you read this.

And now I'll leave you with a little something. I wrote it early last year, before I left for Korea. I was involved in a writing workshop with a poet, musician and writing teacher (the mother of one of my old high school buddies). This is one of the things which it produced. It was a writing exercise in which we...um...in which we...

You know what? I've completely forgotten what the point was. Perhaps it was to choose a characteristic and then create a character based on that characteristic. Perhaps it was to choose an important piece of information about a character, but keep it concealed from the audience until the very end. Whatever the assignment's original intent, I've reproduced my response for you below. Enjoy.

CHARACTER STUDY #1

     The sun beat down upon the hard, dusty earth.  The air was dry enough to suck the juice out of any living thing, and was hotter than hell to boot.  Not a breeze disturbed the arid landscape, with its piles of white-hot rocks, the waterless streambeds, the stiff and desiccated plants.  The only sound was the lonesome cry of a solitary hawk winging its way through the boiling updrafts.  Silence and desolation reigned over the land.

     In the midst of this parched wasteland was a pathetic cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings as bleached and bone-dry as the country which surrounded it.  Ten or eleven structures straddled a wide main avenue, which came from nowhere and led to more of the same.  “Monson’s General Store” one shop front was labeled.  “Chinese Laundry” hailed another.  “The Golden Horn Saloon” was a third, and it was here that most of the town’s meager activity was centered.  Skinny, rawboned folk, their faces beaten into a mass of crusty wrinkles and wind-burned lines, moved in and out of the creaking batwings at the saloon’s entrance.  Potbellied men with greasy hair, beady eyes and clothes bleached to a grimy no-color escorted women as slender and wispy as straw.

    The bartender stood behind the worn and long-suffering bar, endlessly wiping whiskey bottles free of the choking dust.  Beads of sweat stood out on his furrowed brow.  The air of desperation was thick enough to cut with a knife.  He heard a particularly loud creak from the batwings and looked up from his work. 

     Standing at the door was a man so thickset and long of limb that he looked like an ape on its hind legs.  The entire saloon fell quiet at the amazing sight.  The stranger loped across the room with an easy, lolloping gait, like a man accustomed to venturing into strange and hostile places.   He swung up to the bar and planted himself on a stool.  The bartender stared.  The stranger met his eyes and opened his mouth, speaking in the hard, gravelly tone of a hard-bitten trailblazer.

     “Gimme a whiskey.”

     The bartender put his eyes back in.  He reached around, retrieved a half-full bottle of red-eye from below the mirror, set a shot glass on the bar and poured a gulp.  The stranger took it, knocked it back, and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.

     “Mister?” the bartender began, hesitantly, straining his courage to its limit.

     “Yeah?”

     “Why you wearing a clown suit?”

let the countdown begin!

Technically it's already begun—you've probably noticed that cute little widget over on the right. However, the gears have finally meshed. Two days ago I received my passport back from the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, stamped with a shiny new E-2 work visa classifying me as a "foreign instructor," and guaranteeing me a one-year sojourn. This was the last piece of paperwork that I needed. I can flash this little honey in the faces of the Korean immigration officials, waltz through customs, and enter South Korea as a legal immigrant. All of my ducks are in a row. I could leave tomorrow if they wanted me.

But they want me on February 7. After a little jockeying, some back-and-forth nonsense, a glut of vacillation and a smidgen of misinformation, the date of my departure was finalized. I am, needless to say, tremendously excited. The contents of my room (stuffed into way too many heavy cardboard boxes) are safely tucked away in a storage unit in town. My suitcases are half-packed, and all the equipment I'm bringing with me has been inventoried and set aside. Decks of cards (three normal decks and a pinochle set); my grooming kit; shoeshine supplies; hat brushes; journals and notebooks; battery chargers; plug adapters; packs of gum; medicines and taco seasoning; and, perhaps most important of all, books. I've got all my cocktail recipe books with me, and some stuff about card games, and my Worst Case Scenario: Travel guide.

And then are the works of fiction I've selected. Sapsucker that I am, I neglected to choose these volumes before packing up my personal library, so I had to go back through the boxes and mine these buggers out of the tenebrous depths.

They are:

• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, which I'm reading now.

I've read Heart of Darkness before, but that was years ago, in school, and I didn't pay it much attention because I was too busy trying to avoid having my upper body dunked into a trash can. Like Moby-Dick, I have attempted to read Frankenstein repeatedly, but always petered out near the end of the first chapter. The Great Shark Hunt (also known as The Gonzo Papers, Volume One) is Thompson's true account of his adventures as a drug-addled gonzo journalist in a country turned upside-down by chemicals, counterculture, rock 'n' roll, political corruption, and war. (The Sixties, in other words.) Skeletons on the Zahara is likewise nonfiction: a tale of woe, desperation, suffering and privation regarding the crew of the American brig Commerce, shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in 1814 and sold into slavery by Saharan nomads.  It's pretty good so far. Should be a good read on the plane, if I don't finish it before that.

Speaking of books, I am so far behind on my book reviews that it ain't even funny. Okay, maybe it is a bit funny. But that's beside the point. I'll spare you a long, dull, wordy series of reviews that you undoubtedly wouldn't have the patience to read. Instead, I'll review each book in one sentence:

• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: A breathlessly suspenseful epic and yet also a sinewy and hard-lined analysis of patriotism, military service, war, and human conflict, in the guise of a rollicking good science fiction tale about well-trained space soldiers in powered armor battling hideous alien bugs. 9/10
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Journalist and inveterate traveler Krakauer details and examines the life, motivations, adventures and ultimate downfall of the ill-fated super-tramp Christopher McCandless. 9/10
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson: An excoriating satire of drug culture, chemically-enhanced ramblings, and late 20th-century vice in the world's most sinful city—sportswriter Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, speed off to Las Vegas in a giant red convertible and a trunk full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. 8/10
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: A powerful, gut-wrenching, no-holds-barred peek into the lives of black folks in the American South in 1959...seen through the eyes of white novelist Griffin himself, who darkened his skin artificially and set off to the South to find out the truth about the "Negro Problem." The truth is viscerally shocking. 7/10

There. Now you know what I've been reading. Incidentally, I've never read any of these books before. I don't know what took me so long to get around to Starship Troopers. Perhaps it was the awful movie adaptation. Thankfully I set my prejudice aside and read the book, which, as I understand, is required reading at West Point, and a great favorite among the 75th Ranger Battalion (the guys who fought through hell in Mogadishu in 1993). Now if only Barack Obama and the Democratic Party would read it...[sigh]...

And finally, since I will become an immigrant (emigrant?) in ten days, I'll leave you with a little song. Yes, yes, I know. I should be using "The Final Countdown" or something, but I hate that song. So take it away, Zep.

recommended reading

Some changes have occurred.

I've picked up some new reading material in preparation for my (eventual) departure to East Asia—a lot of new reading material, actually.

Also, I need to tell you what I've gotten through lately.

First, I've dropped The Dinosaur Heresies. No offense to the good Dr. Bakker, but I had to prioritize. A weighty scientific volume might make good reference material or even some didactic bedtime reading, but I'm really delaying the rest of my reading list by committing to it. Plus...well, I hesitate to admit it, but compared to the other stuff I could be reading, Heresies is just a little bit dull. Bakker is witty, light-hearted, and occasionally sardonic, which puts him head and shoulders above such stuffy characters as Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, but the fact remains that he's writing a book about why dinosaurs are more avian than reptilian. Compared to something like Starship Troopers or Black Hawk Down, with explosions and gunfire and war machines and whatnot, paleontology goes flat.

(I won't even really need to brush up on the avian-reptilian dinosaur debate until I sit down to write the sixth book in my series, where I introduce the reptilian-avian character. Remember this, children. You can reference this post when I get accused of retroactive continuity.)

That having been decided, I launched myself into one of my more recent acquisitions, something I picked up at the used bookstore earlier this summer and had never heard of before: David Houston's Alien Perspective.

And this is the cool part: the copy I bought has been signed by the author.

Pretty nifty, eh? Even if I've never heard of the dude, it's nice to know he made enough of a name for himself to sign somebody's book. It's something else for me to strive for, as long as science fiction as I know it doesn't go by the wayside by the time I get published.

Ahem...

Alien Perspective has one of the neatest and most unique plots I've come across in a SF novel, despite being packaged as just another five-dollar paperback. It concerns not one, but two alien ships—exploratory vessels sent from a dying planet to seek out new worlds to colonize. Well, they did—except one of them picked up a greyish, gooey parasite that stifles and kills everything it comes in contact with. After a few deaths, the first ship gracefully decides to commit suicide and render itself a harmless, drifting hulk. The problem is, some of the precocious alien children on board decide they're too young to die, lock the adults out of the command center, and take control of the ship. Not knowing what to do about the parasite, the alien children elect to land on the closest inhabited planet and ask for help.

The closest inhabited planet just happens to be called "Earth."

It was a supremely suspenseful story. The taglines and synopsis I read on the back cover totally belied the pace of the book. The aliens don't even land on Earth until three-quarters of the way through the book. The first 75 percent of Alien Perspective is split between two points-of-view: that of Himi, the alien captain of the second exploratory vessel, who is trying to figure out why the first vessel didn't rendezvous with him as planned; and human astrophysicist William Reid and his colleagues, who are trying to figure out who the aliens are and what they want. Complications arise in the form of Senator Copalin, known as "The Black Blot" for his habit of slashing funds to any program he deems "unnecessary" (Reid's project is at the top of the list); and Leon Hillary, an eccentric millionaire and the leader of the Alienites, a cult which fervently believes that the incoming aliens are our divine creators.

A suitably entertaining tale of intrigue, mystery, adventure, trials, errors, and unseen perils ensues.

For myself, I was somewhat let down at the end. Perhaps I've grown too accustomed to reading James Rollins, whose adventure novels are jam-packed with explosions, monsters, sinister third parties, and imminent catastrophes. By comparison, Houston's book proceeded rather calmly. That being said, there was enough to hold my interest. Alien Perspective reminded me why I love good old-fashioned science fiction: the breathtaking beauty of space is undiminished; the physiology and culture of alien nations is speculated upon; amazing technological marvels abound (both above the Earth's surface and upon it); and I can confidently say, without spoiling the ending, that a rapport is established between human and alien at the end. I never fail to find such themes refreshing. At its heart, Alien Perspective is classic, true-to-form sci-fi: ordinary people battling extraordinary obstacles with advanced technology, backed by the power of logic and reason. 

Satisfied?

All right, here's a list of new works I've acquired over the past few months. Some of them I bought; others I dug out of boxes. Some of these I've mentioned here before, but I want to list them again, since I'll be taking them to Korea with me and I'll undoubtedly review them later.

To begin, some classic fiction:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  
• Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
• Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
• The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
  

Next, some sci-fi, both well-known and unknown:

•  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt
  
• Into the Storm (Destroyermen, Book One) by Taylor Anderson
• The Seventh Carrier by Peter Albano
• Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant
• Phaid the Gambler by Mick Farren

And finally, some promising nonfiction:

• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
• The Great Shark Hunt (The Gonzo  Papers, Vol. 1) by Hunter S. Thompson

This should be adequate literary sustenance to nourish my mind on bus rides, international flights, and subway trains, not to mention my tiny apartment in Seoul on those quiet weekday evenings. I can't wait.

To be clear, I read Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies in high school. That was almost ten years ago, though. I feel the need to reacquaint myself with these works in a more, ah, enlightened frame of mind.

The Sand Pebbles is the newest addition to the list. I found it in a box which my parents were planning to take to the thrift store (??!?!!). It looks incredible, and I can tell it's infecting me with an obsession with all things naval and Chinese. The book concerns Jake Holman, a young sailor, who is assigned to the aging gunboat San Pablo on the Yangtze River...right before the Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition of 1926, which will eventually lead to the fall of the Beiyang Government and the unification of China.

Sounds kind of tame, right?

It isn't.

China explodes into war. Racial tensions and anti-foreign sentiment boils over, and Jake (who has been gradually forming a mostly positive opinion of the country) is now ordered, along with the San Pablo, to battle his way upriver and rescue two white Catholic missionaries from an oncoming horde of Nationalists. In the midst of this madness, Jake must contend with his shipmates (who believe him to be a Jonah, and would like nothing better than to throw him overboard) and his own heart (which has fallen for the missionary's pretty daughter).

The story is a sweeping historical epic, which beautifully and masterfully encompasses the political, cultural and social landscape of China in the mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a down-home American boy. It also skewers the superstition and ignorance of the uneducated; exalts the loyalty and determination of lower-class Chinese over the bigotry of the Westerner; and divulges triumph and tragedy, despair and hope, honor and depravity in a single stroke.

It was made into a 1966 movie with Steve McQueen, but the book looks like it's going to be better. Books always are.

Riding the Iron Rooster is another latecomer. I picked it up for two bucks in a used bookstore in San Diego. It was written by one of my favorite travel authors (perhaps my very favorite), Paul Theroux. Where most travel writers wax poetic, florid, or downright sappy, Theroux remains delightfully crotchety. He hates people. He loves trains. So he rides trains, venerates trains (and the lands they pass through) and denigrates the passengers. Riding the Iron Rooster is an account of Theroux's passage through China, as part of a larger train trip through Asia (which he recounted in The Great Railway Bazaar, a book I read and loved). Just the title gets me going. Riding trains is fascinating and fun even in a familiar setting, but throw in the mysterious, misty, mountainous terrain of China, a country thousands of years old, with food and customs as otherworldly as can be, and—

—ooh, I've got goosebumps.

See what I mean? I'm getting China on the brain. Next thing you know I'll be forgiving the Chinese for being dirty Communists and sucking up all our national debt and limiting their poor citizens to one child per couple and being greedy, callous, polluted, industrialized buggers in general.

Anyway, that's the list. If you see anything on there you're curious about, drop me a line and I'll give you the skinny. I heartily encourage you to Google (or better yet, Amazon) some of these and see if they're worth checking into. I'm sure you'll find something you like.

One last thing:

Now that I'm done with Alien Perspective, I'm quite stumped as to what I should read next. I did Moby-Dick, followed it up with a few works of science fiction, took a short detour into scientific discourse, and then tripped lightly back into SF.

Where next? Suggestions, please.

recommended reading

There's some serious catching-up in order.

Therefore, I won't tell you about what I'm reading right now. I'm taking a break and just doing some stuff for business and pleasure. I'm busting through a couple of sci-fi anthologies (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I and IIB), which I hope will help me write better sci-fi, and also are a damn lot of fun. I might even tell you about some of the stories I've read, if you behave yourselves.

In addition to that, I'm slowly plowing through Dr. Robert Bakker's paradigm shifter The Dinosaur Heresies, in which the scruffy, courageous maverick first put forth his controversial theory that dinosaurs were not pea-brained, slow-moving, swamp-dwelling sluggards, but were dynamic, lively, active, agile, bird-like and intelligent. This bombshell challenged hundreds of years of universally accepted scientific thought on the terrible lizards. Bakker's discoveries, though initially criticized, withstood all tests and vitriol. Today, when we think "dinosaurs," we imagine the terrifyingly smart and agile Velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park. We have Bakker to thank for that (even though the paleontological consultant to Spielberg's film was Jack Horner, Bakker's bitter enemy, who believed that T-Rex was a scavenger [?!?!?!?]).

I haven't enlightened you about what I've already read, though, and that's why we're here. I have to review a couple of works I completed after finishing Moby-Dick a few months back.

I didn't waste any time sitting on my laurels after conquering Melville's leviathan. I was over at Miss H's place when I spotted Elie Wiesel's seminal work Night on her bookshelf. I asked to borrow it, and before the day was out, I had finished and returned it. It's a little book, but filled with the scope of human tragedy, suffering, cruelty and horror.

I could speak of how Elie and hundreds of other Romanian Jews were removed from their villages by brutal Hungarian policemen, cudgeled into lines, and marched away from their only home...

The last glimpse Elie had of his mother and sister as they were led into the gates of Auschwitz...

The loss of Elie's faith as he witnessed the hanging of a twelve-year-old boy...

How even the rabbis were reduced to blank, staring, godless husks by the horrors of starvation, torture, and brutality...

The long, cold, desperate flight from one camp to another as Allied armies drew near, and how the Jewish prisoners were forced to run through the snow and the darkness, and any who straggled or fell were shot...

...but that would probably spoil the book for you, so I won't.

Wiesel is on the second row up from the floor, seventh from left.

I'll just say this: more than any other work I've ever reviewed—fiction or nonfiction, printed or televised—Night brought home the horrors of the Holocaust most grimly and truthfully. It's a literal punch to the gut. For once it's no surprise that a particular work won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And now on to more cheerful territory...
Have you ever wondered if maybe the scientists were wrong, and the interior of the world wasn't just a mass of molten rock, but was hollow and cool and airy and possibly filled with prehistoric beasts?

Well, even if you haven't, Edgar Rice Burroughs sure did. And he wrote At the Earth's Core just to show the world what he thought.

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a scientist. Make a sponge of your mind and you'll soak up a lot of mental detritus. As an added perk, your scientist chum may even let you give his gizmo the first test ride.

Such is the case with David Innes, the wealthy heir to a mining empire who, attempting to make a good show of his father's business enterprise, invests in the invention of his scientist friend, Abner Perry. The invention is the "iron mole" a sort of segmented steel worm with a huge drill on the front, which Perry insists will increase efficiency one million percent. As the principle investor, Innes is given the privilege of riding shotgun in the device while Abner takes it on the maiden voyage.

Everything goes downhill from there, so to speak.

The giant iron mole burrows into the ground like a...like a...well, like giant iron mole. Alarmed, Professor Perry tries to turn the beast aside and regain the surface; but no such luck. Both men strain at the helm until they're blue in the face, but the mole cannot be turned; it's heading straight down at a tremendous rate. Perry and Innes give themselves up for lost, resigning themselves to falling into the Earth's molten mantle and perishing in the blaze.

...but they don't.

Five hundred miles down the mole suddenly bursts out of the ground again. A fresh, cool breeze streams through the cracks. The Professor has collapsed from heat and exhaustion, but Innes is able to crack open the hatch and look outside.

He sees trees. Hills. A beach. An ocean. And a horizon which curves up instead of down. He can see mountains and oceans in the distance, turned on their ends, as though he was seeing from above.

Gradually, the men figure it out. They're standing on the inside of a huge sphere.

They are inside the Earth.

The Earth, it turns out, is hollow. And what's more, it's inhabited.

Welcome to Pellucidar, the savage land at the Earth's core.

All the better to massage you with, my sweet!

Perry and Innes are soon drawn into a millennia-long conflict between the primitive humans who reside in Pellucidar and the vicious Mahars, telepathic reptilian monsters who keep humans as draft animals...and livestock. Along the way they encounter sabertooth cats, dinosaurs, sea monsters, and all manner of nasties, dwelling in a land of eternal sunlight.

At the Earth's Core was first published serially in 1914, and released in book form in 1922. Since then, it has attained a small cult following, but remains largely obscure, probably due to more well-known stories like Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Nonetheless, it's an astounding tale. The concept is intriguing, if totally bogus. (Hey, that's why they call it science fiction, right?) First off, there's no way there'd be eternal sunlightg at the center of the planet, weird electrical phenomena notwithstanding. Second, gravity's pull would be considerably less at the center of the Earth, but it would still pull you toward the center. You could not "walk about" on the inside curve of a chamber inside the globe unless the planet was spinning a lot faster, like a centrifuge. Third, the air would be so dense 500 miles down that it'd be tantamount to breathing water. Human lungs would collapse.

But I didn't come here to pick the science apart. I came to tell you how awesome the story was. And it was awesome. Burroughs sure knows how to write a gripping fight scene (and there's a boatload of fight scenes). The plot rapidly becomes more complex and convoluted as human traitors, mindless monsters, and a ravishing love interest make their appearance. There are desperate scrapes, close shaves, narrow escapes, rousing victories, moments of unbridled joy and plenty of stark, quivering terror. And at the end, there is a very human feeling.

Everything that makes good, rousing science fiction, in my opinion.

You might have a little trouble getting into it, as Burroughs does have what critics called a "stilted, florid style"...but it's nowhere near as bad as Jules Verne. You'll do fine.

And finally, as an interesting sidenote...

In At the Earth's Core, the Mahars (those evil reptilian beings) employ the thuggish gorilla-esque Sagoths to do their dirty work for them, rounding up slaves and enforcing the rules. At the Earth's Core had an enormous influence on another of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft's book At the Mountains of Madness, he introduced the shoggoths, huge, slimy, amorphous blobs, also the servants of a master race. These were inspired in name and function by the Sagoths of Burroughs's story. Shoggoths have proven as influential to other writers as the Sagoths were for Lovecraft: the beastly things have appeared in countless works of fiction, sci-fi and horror over the decades. One of these works, notably, was Robert Bloch's Notebook Found in a Deserted House, which is widely accepted to be one of the cardinal inspirations for the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

That concludes this edition of "Six Degrees of (Literary) Separation."

Is he bursting out of the hillside in a mindless rage? Or did he lose his toboggan?

Until next time...

fireside chat

I was reading something on Jon Paul's blog Where Sky Meets Ground about how this one blogger has surpassed 100 followers after blogging for just two months. Why? Because her content is amazing, he says. I've run across several blogs which other folks label "amazing," and I'm still not sure exactly what the common factor might be. As near as I can figure out, though, these "amazing" blogs are popular because they speak the truth. They resonate. They tell stories everyone can relate to. They showcase the human condition in some evocative way. They're simply written, intimately personal, refreshingly honest, and often eerily familiar. Jon Paul has declared his intention to begin publishing stories about the lessons he's learned during his eighteen-plus years in the military, specifically in regards to writing. That should resonate with any male between the ages of 13 and 99; plus a vast cross-section of the population who are interested in writing, or need help with some of the particularly trying aspects of it. Now, I'm not saying that I blog just to garner followers. No worthwhile blogger does. That's not the point. Having a zillion followers is good in some ways; feedback, community-building, and (for writers) literary criticism. But it's an added bonus, not the ends of the means. That being said, I wouldn't object to appealing to a wider audience. Right now, I suppose, this blog is pretty esoteric: booze, literature, aviation, travel. If you're an earthbound, jingoistic, illiterate teetotaller, the Sententious Vaunter will hold no interest for you. What am I missing? Those stories. Those relatable, resonant, intriguing vignettes. Those intimate, whimsical glimpses into people's lives that I (and many others) love to read. Dumb dogs. Vanishing passports. People who forget their gender after a few drinks. After all, people don't live on book reviews alone. Unfortunately for me, I don't get drunk often enough to tell war stories about myself and Wild Turkey. I'm not living in a foreign country, unless you consider my room the home ground and the rest of Mom and Dad's house alien territory. Nothing much ever happens in this town besides murders, rapes, gang fights, drug deals, and sexual predation. Most of the stuff I do with my friends is pretty typical: we watch movies, go to dinner parties, drink beer, go off-roading, etc. (Actually, THAT might be worth blogging about...something really interesting happened. We were driving back down Pilot Rock Road after failing to reach Fawnskin the back way due to heavy slush when a dirtbiker flagged us down, and...) But fear not! I may have failed to judiciously post current events and thus keep my blog timely, but I shall not fail in this. I hereby resolve to devote a few more posts to personal stories. I bloviate a lot, but I don't reminisce enough. So I'm going to tell you some of the funny, interesting, whimsical, didactic, touching, enlightening, enrapturing and hilarious things that have happened to me. If nothing funny, interesting, whimsical, didactic (etc.) has happened recently, I'll draw on something from previous years, college life or childhood. We'll have ourselves a little fireside chat every now and again. Should be a good time. Stay tuned. And if you like what you see, follow along. It'll probably get better.

recommended reading

Well, I figured it's about time to do this again, even if not much has changed since last we spoke. I'm still working my way through Yagyū Munenori's Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War, which is bound up in the same volume as The Book of Five Rings, remember? And when I say that I'm still working my way through it, I mean that it's sitting on my nightstand with a bookmark stuck in it, humming idly to itself. I've been doing other things, you see. Like flying. And editing. And...uh...well, flying and editing. And chores! Dad and I are in the midst of painting the garage. Half of it is now properly white instead of the sickening, jaundiced bone-white it used to be. Dad and I also painted the shed a while back. First I painted it by myself. A few years ago, we'd painted it a slightly pink, mostly orange color, but in those few years, the blasphemous desert sun bleached and cracked that paint into oblivion. So, at my parents' behest, I went out and repainted it last month. (I'm much too good a son to refuse a request like that, particularly since I'm living under their roof and snarfing all their food.) First I primed it, then painted it a darkish orangey-brown, but the desiccated wood was so thirsty that it sucked up two coats of paint, and I had to wait to be resupplied by my folks during one of their errand-runs into town. In the interim I painted a big frowny-face on the unpainted east side of the shed, where it would be visible from the road. (Our neighbors got a kick out of it.) That darkish orangey-brown color didn't sit too well with Mom, so she selected a new color, and Dad and I went out and repainted it again a couple of weeks ago (I just finished trimming it in white a week back). The color that Mom picked was called Sundance. What's Sundance, you ask? Good question. This is one of those things that irritates the hemorrhaging f___ out of me. The bloody paint companies all have to come up with these so-called "edgy, creative" names for paint hues now, don't they? So instead of "blue," "yellow," "green," and "brown," we get a bazillion different shades of each, all with names like "Saratoga Sand," "Paris Perfume," "River Road," "Sundance," "Firewood," "Gaucho," "Darby Creek," "Sphinx," "White Oak," "Saddlebury," "Ottertail," "Mushroom Taupe," "Nutmeg Frost," "Antique Lace," and "Horny Schoolgirl." Okay, yeah, I made that last one up. Wishful thinking. But still, all the rest of them are actual names of paint hues, taken from paint chips my mother has lying around. Does anybody out there have any clue about what color these monikers might represent without actually looking at the chips themselves? You might be able to figure out that Saratoga Sand is a soft sort of light yellow, and that Paris Perfume is slightly pink (mostly orange). You might even know that taupe is generally grayish. But what the hell is Mushroom Taupe?! Would that be different from Thunderhead Taupe, or Elephant Taupe, or Abortion Debate Taupe? Enough about paint, this is making me sick. Especially since I'm not finished painting the garage. Thank God the label on the paint can reads simply "WHITE." Anyway, the point is this: I've not progressed any farther in The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War. Took me a while to get that out, didn't it? I have, however, kicked in with a few other volumes. Let's start with Little Women. You would not believe how many queer looks and interrogatives I've been receiving from those to whom I've announced I am reading this book. (Boy, THAT was an awkward sentence. I think I'll leave it there just so people can trip over it.) They seem to think that my masculinity is in doubt, and merely touching this book has made me into some kind of metrosexual. Soon as I get those two title words out, I can see the "ohmigod COOTIES" look in people's eyes. I'm not sure what to make of this, really. Last I heard, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women was a classic piece of literature: an uplifting, heartwarming glance into the lives of the four daughters of a U.S. Army chaplain during the Civil War. I've heard that the book is funny, cute, intelligent, wise, and has a plethora of profound insight to offer. Okay, yeah, sure, the protagonists are all girls. So what? If it's a good book, I'll read it. I'll read anything I think I can learn from or get something out of. Just because I'm a man and I'm reading what was once called a "girl's book" doesn't mean my sexual orientation should be questioned. Jeez, if I'd read Nancy Drew instead of The Hardy Boys when I was a kid, would you have played the cooties card? Huh? Would you? I thought not. Moving on... I'm only a couple chapters in, but so far Little Women is proving to be everything I've heard, and how. I'll keep you posted. Next up: a book that's been on my parents' shelves for time immemorial, but I've never picked up and taken a serious look at until now. It's called Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt. First published in 1932, it is a personal account of the life of Black Elk, a great chief of the Oglala Sioux tribe, a second cousin of Crazy Horse, and a veteran of the Indian Wars (including the Battle of the Little Bighorn). Again, I'm only a couple of chapters in. The first two chapters are, respectively, Black Elk's opening invocation to the Great Spirit (which eerily resembles an ancient Greek poet's invocation to the Muses before the commencement of a magnum opus), and his childhood. Black Elk lived through and saw some heavy stuff. He was only a boy when the Fetterman Fight occurred, when Captain William J. Fetterman and nearly 100 soldiers were killed (I hesitate to say "massacred") by a much larger force of Indians near Fort Phil Kearney in the Dakota territory in 1866. This is as far as I've read, but later, as I understand it, Black Elk receives a monumental vision from the Great Spirit and is told that he will deliver his people from oppression to prosperity. In this way he becomes a great chief, a spiritual leader, an Indian Messiah, if you will. Along the way he fights in the Indian Wars, journeys to England, and does a whole bunch of other amazing stuff. And in the end...well, we'll get there when we get there. In the meantime, I'm utterly fascinated. Black Elk, like most Native Americans, has a direct and earthy way of speaking that is almost intoxicating. Spirituality and practicality are so tightly interwoven it's difficult to tell one from the other. Black Elk accepts that what he sees isn't all there is to the story, but he keeps his feet planted on the ground. Inherently sensible, that's how his speech (translated by Black Elk's son, Ben, and recorded and transcribed by Neihardt) strikes me. Already I'm charmed by Black Elk's description of his childhood: roaming the plains, making friends, and playing awesome games that would never, ever be allowed on a school playground. For instance, he describes one pastime that the older boys pursued:

And the big boys played the game called Throwing-Them-Off-Their-Horses, which is a battle all but the killing; and sometimes they got hurt. The horsebacks from the different bands would line up and charge upon each other, yelling; and when the ponies came together on the run, they would rear and flounder and scream in a big dust, and the riders would seize each other, wrestling until one side had lost all its men, for those who fell upon the ground were counted dead. When I was older, I, too, often played this game. We were always naked when we played it, just as warriors are when they go into battle if it is not too cold, because they are swifter without clothes. Once I fell off on my back right in the middle of a bed of prickly pears, and it took my mother a long while to pick all the stickers out of me.

Man, except for the nakedness, the prickly pears, and imminent threat of horrible death, Throwing-Them-Off-Their-Horses sounds pretty cool. Soon, Black Elk's speech turns to graver matters: the coming of the Wasichus, for instance. ("Wasichu" is the Sioux word for "white men"; however, to the Indians' credit, no reference is made to skin color within the actual definition of the word itself.) Black Elk talks of soldiers coming and building "towns of logs" (forts), and driving roads through his tribe's hunting grounds. I can only imagine what's to come, and I can't wait. As I've mentioned before, Black Elk is a hell of a narrator. I have no illusions that some of it will be tragic; and it'll be hard to read about the slaughter of U.S. Army soldiers, no matter what the cause; but reading about the Indian Wars from the other side's perspective is going to be enlightening and maturing, I just know it. That's about it for the moment. All bets are off as when I'll actually finish this stuff, seeing as how I'm so [cough] busy and all. But once I do, you can bet you'll be the first to know. Postman out.