sequoias

in the night we were happy with our own knowledge we already had and other new knowledge we had acquired in the mountains.
- ernest hemingway, a movable feast

do you understand?
- the bangles, eternal flame

jesus, where are my manners? i keep starting stories and not finishing them. i've been busy but more on that some other time. for now, the sequoia story i started three weeks ago.

1. sweet
ON THE MORNING of new year's eve we piled into a car and drove and drove and drove and drove. by 'we' i mean me and tigger pony and gus and dave and que. who? say you and me i can see i must needs get all dramatis personae on your asses: behold!

- DRAMATIS PERSONAE -

DAVE AND QUE: one of those attractive and talented couples everyone likes, including me
GUS: a fucking champ
TIGGER PONY: a small dog
ME: your host and narrator. hi everybody! hiiiiiiiiii!

we were going to a state park, not a national park, so tigger pony was allowed to come. he climbed around the car as i drove it. he looked worried, but that's just the way his face is shaped. he always looks worried, even when his tail is wagging. sweet lil tigger pony.


2. mayonnaise
THE DAY BEFORE new year's eve i'd gone to a barbecue. i met a man there who argued that mayonnaise goes with everything. i decided to test both the theory and his willingness to argue it, like so: i went and poured a glass of beer and spooned a dollop of mayonnaise into it and took it to him. he looked worried but he drank it anyway. his face was big and it creased with the force of his curiosities. he angled it at me.

'actually.. it's not bad,' he said. he opened his eyes wide while i looked at him. 'i mean, i wouldn't drink it out of choice, but it doesn't taste bad. you couldn't say it doesn't go,' he said.

i was annoyed and so i went and made a small bowl of toasted muesli and dolloped mayonnaise on that, too. i took it to him and he ate that as well.

'you know, that's even better than the beer,' he said. 'it's kind of like yoghurt.'

at the time i was even more annoyed but now this rhetorical yoghurt was far behind me in time and space. things had moved on since then and there was no yoghurt anymore.


3. we drove through geelong, home of the gordon institute: a one-stop shop for all your gordon needs.

4.
WE DROVE ROADS that wired up and down the mountains and finally we got to the place and we got out and walked around. it was very hot. hot.

we walked around and we walked around but we couldn't find our friends. they were somewhere we couldn't see. there was a grove of sequoias though, so we went in there.

reader: we were instantly transformed into elves. hard to believe, i know, but it's true. the sequoia grove was enchanted somehow with the magic of the ancient and noble faerie races who are not always kind and the air was cool and still and everything was quiet. everyone we saw looked serene and happy. they were under enchantment too. outside the faerie grove time moved at a different rate. maybe when we went back everyone we knew would have passed into history and the bright world beyond life, passed centuries ago while we feasted with the faerie kings, aging slowly like those who travel near light's holy speed.

the ground was soft with fallen fronds. everything sounded different. there were ferns. the trees were so tall. everything was ancient and jurassic and had found its final template longlongago.


5.
WE FOUND OUR friends encamped about two silent dry tributaries to a winter-cold stream. the air was quiet. sometimes it moved but it always moved quietly so as not to activate the wrath of the faerie who can be capricious and cruel. the faerie are constituted differently from us and our morality is not theirs. their morality is more like that of the wind or the sea: they move irresistibly to shape the world and they care not what they crush. the sea just moves upon the world: that's all.


6.
FUCK WE HAD a good time! while the world around baked and sweated we were cool and gamboled about those jurassic ferny grades. the light was just so and everything was beautiful.

tigger pony found some older dogs. he was happy to see them and spent as much time as he could licking their penises. the older dogs stood and withstood his eager fellatios with stoic looks.


7. interesting sugar
A CERTAIN TIME arrived. there were about 12 of us camped around there altogether and one of us had a professorial look and he pulled out a little box and we looked at the box.

'in this box is some interesting sugar,' he said. 'it's just like regular sugar but it's been treated with a substance to make it more interesting. a friend of mine knows a guy who knows a guy who is obsessed with making sugar more interesting. he said he could make it interesting like 1967 for the purists or he could make it interesting like 1968 for those who like things a little bit different from the purists.'

'which kind is this?' i said.

'this sugar is the 1967 kind. it's interesting like 1967 sugar. now who wants to try some of this interesting sugar? i'm going to try a little of this interesting sugar to see what happens,' he said and opened the box. lo! there was sugar inside, thoughtfully arranged into cubes. they looked pretty interesting and we ate them to see what would happen: weee! i took extensive notes and can confidently report that god is love: whew-that-was-close! i'd started to wonder if god might be something else but apparently everything is made out of love and god is the name for the whole vast assembly of it all, in case you was wondering.

mike
xxxx