The 15th of March, according to the Julian calendar; the Julian calendar amended the Roman calendar; the Julian calendar was born in 46 B.C.; two years after the creation of the Julian calendar, its founder was slaughtered; the Liberatores who assassinated Julius Caesar committed, in their words, “tyrannicide”; a couple years ago, I found myself in Washington D.C. during the Ides of March; my friend Pamela, who was working at the Smithsonian, told me about a secret collection of seized war art—owned by the U.S. military; she asked if I’d like to see the secret art collection; I said yes, of course; the collection was in the basement of an anonymous D.C. office building (standing between a hotel and a Starbucks); the collection was viewable by special appointment only; after checking in at a security desk and leaving our driver’s licenses, we were led to the basement by a talkative, middle-aged curator; we passed through a series of doors and finally arrived at a set of thick metal doors requiring a security code; our guide typed the code and we entered the storeroom; the sight was a mundane nightmare: hundreds of Nazi propaganda paintings seized at the end of World War II (featuring Adolph Hitler in various Norman Rockwell-esque portraits, standing in Bavarian town squares, surrounded by a crowd of children with ice cream cones and adorable puppies, to whom Herr Wolf was no doubt telling a rousing joke about strudel, or gypsies); in the corner was a massive steel bust of Hitler’s face, sitting on its side, with a yellow note card reading: “Hitler head, artist unknown”; there were also paintings of Saddam Hussein seized during the first and second Gulf Wars; the curator took joy in watching Pamela and I try to make sense of the startling collection; after 45 minutes, the curator quietly asked: “Want to see the prize of the collection?”; we silently nodded, and were led through another set of locked doors into a cramped room with a filing cabinet against the wall; the curator unlocked one of the drawers and slid it open, revealing six watercolors painted by a young art student named Adolph; the watercolors were all postcard-sized images of nature settings and town squares; these paintings were competent, realistic renderings, a bit stale, but not bad; I was reminded of the title of Hannah Arendt’s most famous work: “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”; I then ascended the steps and went to get a Venti Americano at Starbucks; I called my then-girlfriend to tell her about the breathtaking tour; she answered the phone from an airport in Houston, crying; I had no idea why she was in an airport; she said she was flying to San Francisco to see her cousins; she was distraught; “I need to be with people who love me,” she said; she then turned off her phone and flew to Atlanta; she spent the next five days with her ex-boyfriend; this was not a good time for me; it ended badly, and too late; St. Ides is a popular malt liquor marketed towards African-Americans and enjoyed across America by teenage suburban poseurs; about St. Ides, the Notorious B.I.G. rhymed: “I used to be a hustla/now I’m a 22 brew guzzla”; Ice Cube, in one of his numerous raps shilling St. Ides, spat the line: “Yes, it’s the S-T Crooked I-D-E-S”; Elliot Smith, who died too young (stabbed like a suicidal Samurai), sang: “When I walk around here drunk every night/with an open container from 7-11/In St. Ides Heaven/I’ve been out haunting the neighborhood/and everybody can see I’m no good”; my favorite line of dialogue from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is said to Cassius by Brutus in Act V, Scene I: “…this same day/Must end that work the Ides of March begun./And whether we shall meet again I know not./Therefore our everlasting farewell take:/ Forever and forever farewell, Cassius!/ If we do not meet again, why, we shall smile;/ If not, why, then this parting was well made.”

Located in downtown Brussels, Belgium, L’Archiduc is a hip, U-shaped Art Deco jazz bar with a dark history and a buzzer at the steel front door (which must be rung to gain entrance); opened in 1937, L’Archiduc was popular with Nazis during the occupation, though people do not talk about that much now, instead preferring to discuss the jazz ghosts who haunt the walls and famed 1929 piano at the center of room: Miles Davis, Django Reinhart, and Stan Brenders (icon of Belgian jazz, former owner of L’Archiduc); what sort of barflies would populate L’Archiduc at 4 a.m. on a random Thursday morning (while Scott Walker howls on the stereo), you may wonder; well, I will tell you: my old college friends, Shelly and Travis (who arrived that afternoon from Paris and London; Shelly is writing a book on the history of espionage in France; Travis slept with 17 women his freshman and sophomore years of college; walking back from a sushi restaurant one chilly night in October of our junior year, Travis confessed that he was gay, and had known since he was twelve years old; when I asked Travis why he’d kept it a secret for so long, he replied: “It was easier that way”), Francisco (a Chilean film projectionist who gave me an autographed copy of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”; the autograph belongs to Francisco, not Ms. Klein), Anique (who learned English while studying for a year in Canterbury, and subsequently has a British accent when she converses in English; most of Anique’s family, who are Polish, were killed during the Holocaust; Anique’s great-grandmother survived by starting a fire while making soup in one of the camp kitchens; she fled with six others during the commotion; Anique’s mother is a noted sexologist in Brussels; both Anique and her well-known mother see the same astrologist, religiously), Julie (who works with the deaf, and explained to me that American Sign Language is different than sign language used in Belgium; sign language used in Belgium is different than sign language used in France; I do not know if the Flemish have their own sign language; Julie is also a puppeteer at the famous marionette theater, Toone); there were others, but I will never know their names; these include the drunken, stumbling, elderly woman, who kept saying “I am from Maine” (with a Belgian accent), the flamboyant cripple with the V-neck Cable sweater and a cowboy hat who kissed everyone in the bar on the lips, the cool Moroccan who chain-smoked Gauloises by the piano, the Adidas-clad Japanese B-boy who nodded to the music with closed eyes, and the shy peroxide blonde who snuck over to the piano and began to clumsily, beautifully play “We Are the Champions”; Queen never sounded so fragile and dreamy; that pre-dawn moment—when everybody in the bar looked with tired eyes at the piano-playing girl, and we all wanted her to play well, to astound us, even if her fingers were not up to the task, and we clapped like lunatics when she self-consciously stopped mid-way through the song—made me feel both at home and grateful to be a tourist; believe me: at L’Archiduc, smoke still gets in your eyes.

A colorful Christmas-themed amusement park located in Sky Forest—a tiny San Bernandino Mountain community near the ski resort of Lake Arrowhead, California—Santa’s Village opened on Memorial Day weekend, 1955 (over a month before the opening of nearby Disneyland); the 15 acre, Technicolor dreamland of Santa’s Village—with ginger bread houses and toy shops—felt like a real world approximation of the Burl Ives narrated, stop-motion classic, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”; of course, the inexplicable giant mushrooms that dotted Santa’s Village also gave it the appearance of Japanese psychedelia, as if Mario and Luigi traveled to the North Pole; earlier this year, I found myself knee-deep in a “bad patch” of Odyssean proportions; I was not much good to anyone; to riff on “Laid,” the mid-90’s, minor hit by the British band, James: I was so depressed that I was becoming a bore; my friend Kate wanted to cheer me up, so she asked if I’d like to take a trip to her childhood home—Lake Arrowhead; I did; this was my first time visiting Lake Arrowhead, and I was excited; I had known Kate for a couple years, but in that time, it had always been a peripheral friendship; I felt like I knew the shell—not the yolk—of her personality; Kate has a gentle demeanor, full of smiles and laughter and skilled, subtle evasive tactics that allow her to leap-frog over any conversation topic that is even vaguely personal; Kate and I left after lunch and arrived in Lake Arrowhead in the mid-afternoon; Kate told me, “I lived in 18 houses before I was 18 years old”; I was given the full tour of this fake Bavaria—which evoked similar theme-towns like Solvang and Helen—from Kate’s childhood homes to the lake, the mini-golf course, and Rim of the World High School; Kate was a fine tour guide—it felt like she’d given the tour many times before; as the sun set over Lake Arrowhead, Kate lobbed a bomb: “On the outskirts of town, there’s a place called Santa’s Village. I went there a ton during my childhood, but it shut down ten years ago. Then it burned. Now it’s abandoned. There’s a lot of melted plastic reindeer and stuff”; I insisted that we go there immediately; fifteen minutes later, we parked our car in the parking lot of Santa’s Village, which was being used as a lumber yard; with the twilight sun peeking through the pines, we tip-toed into the abandoned Village; it was stunning: buildings made of candy and ginger bread, an anthropomorphic Bumble Bee monorail—all filthy, rusted, and overgrown with weeds; this place resembled the North Pole—in the middle of a Nuclear Winter; location scouts for horror films need look no further than Santa’s Village; then, when I thought it could not get any more surreal, Kate opened up; “My parents met here,” she began; Kate, who had revealed of all two or three childhood details in the years I had known her, continued her story; Kate’s mother moved to California with her twin sister when they graduated high school, and when her sibling began stripping in Los Angeles, she left for the mountains; with no friends or family in Lake Arrowhead, Kate’s mother took a job at Santa’s Village, tending the reindeer; she soon fell in love with a fellow employee—a local boy who sold hot chocolate—and within the year, she was pregnant; Kate’s father had a cheating heart, and before Kate turned five he was kicked out of the house for numerous affairs with women and men; he caught hepatitis C, went to prison for robbing liquor stores with a 10-guage shotgun, and died in his cell; meanwhile, Kate suffered through her mother’s numerous abusive boyfriends, who made a habit of paying the rent—but also raping the pre-pubescent Kate and occasionally holding her down so their teenage sons could learn about sex; Kate still has a problem with people touching her armpits and shoulders; Kate’s mother moved to Apple Valley, found God, and married a Pentacostalist; Kate spoke in tongues until she was 15, when she promptly emancipated herself and caught a bus for Los Angeles; Kate got a fake ID and began stripping in Hollywood as well as finding work on the Renaissance Fair circuit as a “wench”; with money in her pocket, Kate set her sights on a childhood dream of acting and working in a dentist office; with no formal education, Kate worked as a dental assistant in Sherman Oaks, occasionally drilling cavities and putting silver fillings in the mouths of patients; Kate also declared herself a vegan and started an animal rescue business, living in an apartment with two other strippers and a half-dozen feral cats, dogs, and a tropical parrot; I knew none of this when I met Kate; to my knowledge, she was an actress with a couple pets; with the sun disappearing behind Santa’s Village, the shadows multiplying, Kate finished the story of her life, and we walked back to her Kia; we didn’t say much on the drive back; “Tusk,” by Fleetwood Mac, played three times before I turned if off and opted for a hip-hop radio station; I thanked Kate for the tour of Lake Arrowhead, but didn’t mention her story; when she dropped me off, I gave her a hug and said, “See ya soon”; I slept badly that night; I wasn’t sure whether I was more shaken by Kate’s story or the ghostly Village, which felt suffused with the collective emotions of four decades of eager, joyous children and their parents, now all adults (or dead); after searching the internet the next morning, I found an image of an early-1960’s postcard from Santa’s Village that shows a group of attractive, female “elves” waving at the camera, the candy-cane headline reading: “You’ll lose your heart!”; Santa’s Village was famously open 364 days a year—every day except Christmas; you can learn a lot about a person by how they celebrate the holidays.

“Four corners and a void” is how one critic described “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit”—the 1882 portrait of sisters by the 26 year old American expatriate, John Singer Sargent; influenced by Velazquez, this shadowy painting depicts the four Boit sisters (Julia, Mary Louisa, Jane, and Florence), none of whom seem to find much pleasure in posing—or in life; in “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” Sargent—the “accentless mongrel”—seems as fascinated by the massive, twin Chinese vases as he does by the young females; grimly psychic, the painting forecasted the girls’ future; none of the sisters would marry, and the eldest two—who cower in the rear, hiding from Sargent’s gaze—suffered from mental illness later in life; Stanley Kubrick must have studied this penetrative painting when he was in pre-production for “The Shining”; I saw “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” in 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; that summer, my ex-girlfriend was working at “The Atlantic Monthly,” and I was staying with her, blocks from Harvard Square; I grew up in a college town, and July in Cambridge—with summer students, hackey sacks, and bad street performers—makes me nostalgic for childhood; one Saturday, we went to the MFA with our friend, Eve; when we turned the corner in the museum to find the Boit sisters staring back at us, I felt my breath stutter; the girls appear profoundly afraid of their depictor, their eyes begging (“Take us with you!”) and their awkward posture revealing: “You’re just a painter. You have no idea how bad it gets sometimes”; my ex-girlfriend had her own demons, and though she denied them, they owned real estate on her face; I once took a photograph of her getting dressed behind a lamp in a Boston Hilton, and when I showed the photo to Thomas Roma—a talented, honest New York photographer—he said it was the best work of mine he had seen; Roma also said the image appeared to be from the point of view of a predator; he suggested I read a Don DeLillo story called “Baader-Meinhof” that had just appeared in “The New Yorker”; it was a creepy, stalker story set in an art gallery, and while I enjoyed the writing, I found the suggestion a tad bit unflattering; in The Modern Lovers song, “Girlfriend,” Jonathan Richman sings: “If I were to walk to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston/Well, first I’d go to the room where they keep the Cezanne/But if I had by my side a girlfriend/Then I could look through the paintings/I could look right through them/Because I’d have found something that I understand/I understand a girlfriend”; I once saw Vic Chesnutt—no stranger to pain—open for Jonathan Richman at the Bowery Ballroom; in his nasally drawl, Vic said, “I’m a nihilist. And Jonathan is a smile-ist”; some people like to have somebody to talk with while looking at art in a museum; they enjoy debating meaning, naming cities and dates; not me; I prefer just to hold hands and stare; if it comes down to a blinking contest, I always win; but those Boit girls have got me licked; they can stare forever.

The iconic 1960 album, “Satan is Real,” was recorded by Country Music Hall of Famers, Ira and Charlie Loudermilk, known popularly as the Louvin Brothers; innovators in gospel and close harmony, the Louvin Brothers’ collaboration was stunted by their 1963 breakup, and permanently ended in 1965 when Ira was killed in a car accident; “Satan is Real” is most recognized in certain quarters for its eccentric album cover, which depicts the singing Louvin Brothers wearing identical white linen suits in a rock quarry, surrounded by flaming tires, and, looming behind them, a fire-red, twelve foot tall plywood Satan; the album is transcendent; on the title track of “Satan is Real,” Ira tells a story with the foreboding message: “We know that Heaven is a real place where joy shall never end. But sinner friend, if you’re here today, Satan is real too. And Hell is a real place. A place of everlasting punishment”; after the story, the Louvin Brothers repeat the song’s angelic chorus; not too long ago, I went with my friend Katelina to see a concert by the still-spry Charlie Louvin; Katelina stopped by the music venue several hours before the show to purchase a ticket; when Katelina left, she noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on the bumper of a pickup truck, smoking a cigarette; without hesitation, she said, “Mr. Louvin?”; the fella looked up and replied, “Yes, ma’m”; Katelina told Charlie Louvin that she had, in her possession, a ticket to see him perform that evening; Charlie Louvin asked her, “Are you bringing your boyfriend?”; she smiled and answered, “No. He lives in Atlanta, and besides, he’s only a part-time lover”; Charlie Louvin then removed his hat, leaned towards Katelina, and said, “Well, ma’m, I’d like to be your lover the other part of the time”; the concert that night was excellent; I enjoyed a locally brewed beer and a bowl of pimento cheese before the show; afterwards, Charlie autographed a photograph of himself with Elvis Presley (who, in 1955, was the opening act for the Louvin Brothers); on July 7th, 2008, Charlie Louvin celebrated his 81st birthday.

Located in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Glen Echo, Maryland, Glen Echo Park thrived through 1968, when it promptly closed; with a history dating back to the late 19th century, the amusement park’s highlights included a carousel, bumper cars, and the Crystal Pool; Glen Echo Park’s extinction was due to pressure from local white citizens, who preferred that the park close rather than racially integrate; for the majority of its existence, Glen Echo Park was a whites-only establishment; the greater Washington D.C. area has a rich tradition of both politics and racism, and if you would like a firsthand view, plan an afternoon walk from the White House to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in the historic neighborhood of Anacostia; after departing the President’s home, take note of the staggering segregation when you arrive in the almost exclusively African-American Anacostia; while there is an upsetting level of poverty and violence in Anacostia, the neighborhood also has a vibrant cultural history, which is spotlighted at the Anacostia Community Museum; former residents of Anacostia include Frederick Douglass, Marvin Gaye, and Ezra Pound; in 1971, the abandoned and decaying Glen Echo Park became property of the National Park Service; the park is now used for cultural events, such as painting, glass blowing, and Contra and Square Dancing; Glen Echo Park has maintained a ramshackle, forgotten appearance, and evokes the feeling of a magical Ray Bradbury or Steven Millhauser story; if there was a remake of the terrifying, bizarre 1962 film, “Carnival of Souls,” Glen Echo Park would be a fine setting; I have no idea who would play the haunted, mysterious lead that was definitively embodied by Candace Hilligoss; Candace Hilligoss was the greatest horror film actress ever, and it is a shame that her career was so brief; say the name “Candace Hilligoss” out loud ten times, and you will believe you have conjured a demon—a Waspy demon; during my junior year in college, I had my heart broken, and while I deserved to have my heart broken, it still incapacitated me for several months; in an effort to get over the breakup, I spent Spring break driving down the east coast of the United States with two of my best friends; we planned to tour the South and smoke a lot of pot; we wanted “adventures”; we found an unplanned and traumatic adventure in Memphis, but several days before that disaster, we spent a night in Bethesda, Maryland; residents of Bethesda are proud to have the National Institutes of Health and the highest percentage of restaurants-per-capita in the United States; Bethesda is also the home of a pixyish brunette who hosted us while in Bethesda; we got tipsy with her, watched “Buena Vista Social Club,” then she took us to Glen Echo Park; it was late, the moon was full, and we were trespassing; we smoked and boozed and ran around the ancient wooden and metal amusement park rides, which seemed like frozen dinosaurs from the future; the Pixie dragged me by the wrist to the Bumper Car Pavilion, where she wordlessly held me close; she seemed to know without any explanation that I was confused and self-pitying and lonely; when we left the Pixie the next day, she kissed me and asked me to call her from the road; I did, and soon we began to date, spending time together in New England and England; it was a full eight months before our relationship fell apart; now she lives across the planet and writes for a Cambodian newspaper; I hear that she learned to ride across rivers on Thai elephants; her family still lives in Bethesda, and I imagine she visits them during certain Jewish holidays.

A utopian community originally located near Asheville, North Carolina, MY GIANT took its name from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”; the exact quote from “Self-Reliance” is: “Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go”; blending Emersonian transcendentalism with various Eastern philosophies (including the “Bhagavad Gita” and “I Ching”), MY GIANT was started by a group of recent graduates from the visionary Black Mountain College in the late 1930’s; founded in 1933 and lasting only 25 years, Black Mountain College was a remarkable institution, responsible for much of the American avant-garde; the faculty of Black Mountain College included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Josef Albers, and Buckminster Fuller; famous alumni of Black Mountain College include Robert Rauschenberg, Arthur Penn, Robert DeNiro, Sr., Cy Twombly, and the eleven members of MY GIANT; soon after graduation, the co-ed members of MY GIANT—six men and five women—took over an abandoned cotton mill in the mountains outside Asheville; I have visited Asheville—the “Paris of the South”—many times, and toured the lovely 1920’s art deco office buildings, Biltmore Estate, Masonic Temple, Thomas Wolfe House, O. Henry’s grave in Riverside Cemetery, and searched for the remains of the MY GIANT cotton mill, but could not find its location; the MY GIANT commune thrived in its North Carolina location for five years; in 1944, ten of the eleven member of MY GIANT decided to relocate to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village; the members of MY GIANT, who spent most of their time in North Carolina painting, debating, making field recordings of insects and birds, and gardening, moved into a cramped New York apartment on Bedford Street (near Chumley’s); Chumley’s, a beloved former speakeasy, is located at 86 Bedford Street, and legend maintains that the phrase “eighty-six”—as in, “Eighty-six that punk,” or, “We’re eighty-six on prosciutto-wrapped shrimp”—came from Prohibition, when patrons of Chumley’s would run out the door during a police raid; in a strained effort to earn enough money for New York City rent, several members of MY GIANT took jobs in Chumley’s; formerly teetotalers, the MY GIANT members began drinking with gusto, enjoying the glitz and gab of the West Village literary-establishment regulars (including Papa Hemingway); most damaging to the stability of MY GIANT was the rejection of Eastern philosophy and Emerson’s writings, which were replaced with the famed economist John Maynard Keynes’ epic “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”; capitalism became the new philosophy of MY GIANT, but as its members were trained as visual artists, they quickly fell victim to greed, petty in-fighting, and overspending on shoes and hats; they were incompetent wage-earners; MY GIANT went bankrupt—financially and philosophically—and its members scattered, a few returning to North Carolina, but most remaining in the northeast; MY GIANT vanished into obscurity, but for a fleeting moment, this tiny egalitarian society managed to live and create art together without bickering about the “Keynesian multiplier”; “My Giant” is also the name of a 1998 film romp starring Billy Crystal.

Located in Death Valley, California, Badwater is the lowest point in North America; Badwater is 282 feet below sea level; while much of Death Valley is scalding hot, dry, and covered in salt, Badwater has a small, ancient spring; in the pool at Badwater lives the Death Valley pupfish, also known as Cyprinodon salinus; the Death Valley pupfish is a remnant of the last Ice Age, and the only species of its kind left on Earth; the hottest temperature ever recorded in North America is 134 degrees Fahrenheit—on July 10th, 1913, in Death Valley; I was in Death Valley for two days this past February; my parents flew to Las Vegas, then planned to visit Death Valley; a surprising amount of Fall and Winter rain in California resulted in the greatest floral growth in Death Valley in almost a century; my parents are the sort to fly across America to look at flowers growing in the desert; I am their youngest child; even though I was not initially invited, I decided to join my parents; I drove alone five hours northeast from Los Angeles; I left too late in the day, and by the time I turned right from US-395 North to CA-190 East, it was around nine o’clock at night; CA-190 takes you over 70 miles into Death Valley, and at night, it is dark, barren, and if you are alone, spooky; there is nothing; I was listening to a podcast of Thom Yorke on NPR, but my iPod finally died while on CA-190; with no human voices to keep me company, I felt incredibly lonely; somehow, my cell phone still got reception; I called my friend Elliot in Brooklyn, and when I asked what he was doing, he said he was watching the lunar eclipse from his rooftop; I told him I did not see a lunar eclipse, but when I looked up and to my right, there it was: a full moon, the color of blood; I got off the phone, and spent the rest of the trip following the maroon moon; the last time I saw a lunar eclipse was in October of 2004, and I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; I was meeting a friend at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas to see a late screening of the Alexander Payne film, “Sideways”; when I emerged from the Columbus Circle subway at 59th street, there were hundreds of people standing still on the sidewalk, staring at the night sky; I thought Manhattan was under attack again, but then I realized these people were collectively craning their necks to see the lunar eclipse; it seemed like mass hypnosis, a gaggle of Manhattan Moonies; when I made my way deep into the heart of Death Valley, I thought I had come upon a desert sea; the light from the moon reflected off the desert floor, glimmering, like a body of water full of bioluminescent plankton; I stopped my car in the middle of the highway, turned to the side, and flashed on my high-beams; there were no cars, no lights, nothing—so I got out of my car and walked off the highway; the ground beneath my feet crunched like snow; there was no water: this was an ocean of salt; I checked into our hotel—the Furnace Creek Inn—and met my parents; the next day, we picked armfuls of Desert Gold (a vibrant yellow flower) and explored Zabriskie Point—which was overrun with fannypack-wearing German tourists—as well as Badwater; I saw a school of tiny pupfish, and fantasized about reaching into the spring, grabbing one, and swallowing the salty desert sardine whole; I restrained myself; my parents and I walked a couple hundred yards past the spring, into the center of a salt field, and my father had me pose for photographs; we argued about the photos, because he wanted mountains behind me, but this position required me to stare directly into the sun; I gave in; this was not an uncommon fight for us; a month later, the half-dozen photos that my father took of me arrived in the mail; in the photographs, I am wearing a yellow shirt, blue hat—and glaring; I look like I want to fistfight; it is a desert mugshot; this is not how I want to think of myself, or how I want my parents to think of me; is this really how I look?; this is also not how I want to remember Death Valley; examining these photos of myself, I can not help but think of a poem a friend recently sent me (“Archaic Torso of Apollo,” by Rainer Maria Rilke); in the final stanza of Rilke’s poem about a headless statue, he writes: “…would not, from all borders of itself, / burst like a star: for here there is no place/ that does not see you. You must change your life.”

Japanese noise musician Masami Akita, who performs under the name “Merzbow,” specializes in music that sounds like massive titanium robots copulating; a bondage/fetishism enthusiast as well as a vegan animal rights activist (who dedicated the albums “Minazo Vol. 1 & 2” to an elephant seal), Merbow takes his moniker from Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbau”; I discovered Merzbow while in a state of depression, and listened to his music for days at a time; Merzbow was, for me, the sound of all my frustration and rage (towards myself, the world) buzzing into the ether like an auditory Tesla coil; you see, while the music played it felt like the depression was out of my body and drifting towards the ceiling; I am not depressed anymore, but I still appreciate Merzbow—in smaller doses—and think that his life’s work has been a noble attempt at sonically representing the electric drone of contemporary culture; I genuinely believe that if you listen to any three discs from Merbow’s 50-disc boxed set “Merzbox”—or read Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”—you will begin to regard your household appliances with a newfound respect and/or fear; consider that while Japan has given birth to ambitious death cults (Aum Shinrikyo), rape and “futanari”/shemale comics (“manga”), an epidemic of male shut-ins (“hikikomori”) and teen suicide, as well as the misunderstood noise-artist known as Merzbow, 63 years ago the United States used two explosive devices to instantaneously, arbitrarily slaughter over 200,000 Japanese civilians; there is no elegant way for a culture to move forward from such an event; you could try to forget, but that would be futile, and besides, unexorcisable ghosts would keep appearing in your forests, photo albums, and artwork; Dr. Raymond Kurzweil, a leading futurist and Transhumanist, believes that at some point in the next 50 years, we will attain “Singularity,” a state where: “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality”; if this terrifies you, do not be afraid: these adaptations towards a posthuman existence will occur not in a giant leap, but in a series of swift, continual baby steps, such that you will not be taken aback when your grandchild needs to be recharged like a cell phone; sometimes, the future has already occurred, but it takes years for a hesitant public to shed its past; if you would like to be inspired by noise that feels like a handful of glitter and thumbtacks, I suggest listening to Jimi Hendrix’s live performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969, followed by “3 Types of Industrial Pollution” from Merzbow’s 1986 album, “Antimonument.”

Located on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Weeki Wachee Springs is the only city of live mermaids; Weeki Wachee was founded in 1947 by former Navy frogman, Newt Perry; the original mermaids were called “Aquabelles”; Weeki Wachee is one of the finest tourist attractions in the United States, and the entire operation—an underwater mermaid aquarium and a water park called Buccaneer Bay—is built on a natural spring; the spring is deep; if you go to Weeki Wachee—and you should go to Weeki Wachee—you will see mermaids, and you will gape like a prepubescent child; Weeki Wachee is a necessary destination in what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America”; early last year, I met a girl—a young woman; I saw the girl perform in a Donna Reed dress, and she made me smile; let me clarify: I was on a semi-date, but when this girl walked on stage, everybody else in the room ceased to exist (including the semi-date, whose name I can not recall); soon after, this girl and I met for lunch in a park; I arrived before her, and as I waited, I wondered how I would appear to a beautiful girl in a car as she drove up; she arrived, then immediately went to the public restroom; I wondered if she was nervous too; probably not, I concluded; we sat down on a bench and talked for hours; I could have listened to her for days; when she spoke, I noticed a gentle lilt that reminded me perhaps of southern gentility—or Julie Andrews; I inquired about her accent, and she confessed that she stuttered as a child; years of practicing proper speech had created a curious enunciation of words; the resulting effect is that she seems like a kindergarten teacher, and you are her student; it is comforting; this girl’s stories meandered and circled and gave birth to other stories, like the tributary system of the Amazon River; I thought to myself: “What a lovely, odd girl”; at one moment in our conversation, her gaze drifted past me; she then said, “That squirrel looks like he’s reading a newspaper”; I turned to see a squirrel standing on hind legs, holding a scrap of paper in his front paws; the squirrel did look like he was reading a newspaper; the girl said that when she sees something so unbearably cute, it makes her want to grind her teeth; I understood what she meant (later, the same teeth-grinding issue arose with hummingbirds, except when they flew close she had a strange desire to pluck them from mid-air, like flying fruit); stop it! too cute!; our conversation in the park then drifted to Weeki Wachee, which was near her childhood home; I had heard that Weeki Wachee was celebrating its 60th anniversary, and the original mermaids would be performing a reunion show; we both talked about how fun it would be to go to the show; when we left the park, I wondered when I would see this girl again; soon, I hoped; I left for North Carolina the next day to visit friends in the military who were preparing to deploy for the Middle East; a week later, while in Wilmington, I received a phone call from the girl; she said that she was serious about going to Weeki Wachee, and wanted to know if I was just as serious; I was; I spent the summer getting to know this girl; we became friends; she liked to garden, and I once took a photo of her standing proudly with a handful of weeds, the sun setting behind her; she has the unique capacity to discover—in manual labor—the opportunity for magic; it is infectious; if this girl told you that hidden in the dirt and weeds was a wooden box full of gold, you would immediately grab a shovel and dig; I imagine her gorgeous mind as a Rube Goldberg machine, as Pee-Wee’s bedroom—an elaborate workshop of springs and sprockets and wee beasties tugging on levers, revealing rainbows and ghosts; late that summer, we flew to Florida and visited Weeki Wachee; we befriended some of the mermaids, and were even able to swim in the springs; she mastered using the oxygen tubes used by the mermaids and swam to the bottom (she was a natural, an Esther Williams—and the mermaids tried to recruit her to join their ranks); she outclassed me in the water; I watched from the surface as she fed bananas to floating turtles thirty feet below; I could not figure out how to breathe from those tubes—except in short spurts—but I loved being in the water, and while the girl swam below, her oxygen bubbles bursting around me, I thought: “I could not possibly feel more alive”; it was a couple months before the girl and I kissed; a year has passed, and I have since traveled to other cities to be with the girl, but still, when I am with her I feel so alive—and like I am floating; during “The Little Mermaid” show, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee sing: “We’re not like other women/We don’t have to clean an oven/And we never will grow old/We’ve got the world by the tail!”; when you go to Weeki Wachee—and you will go to Weeki Wachee—be sure to have your photo taken with a mermaid; mermaids are camera-friendly; you will never see a mermaid without her tail, and it is a given that she will be smiling; you will want photographic evidence of your visit; people will not believe that you met such a woman; you will need proof; have you ever been to a place so otherworldly you are sure you are dreaming?; I have.