What is the meaning of this trip?!
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
So there we were, me and my favourite architect Rem Whiteyes Koolhaas, just about to experience epiphany. He looked at me in the way he looks at people and he said: You know, we should go on a trip of sorts...
I was this close to slapping him with my huge dictionary of post-modern architecture, a hardcover tome I just bought so I could draw mustaches on buildings and on the pseudo-artistic face shots of the architects that erected them, when a shiver came down my spine. Rem was right. A trip of sorts is what we needed.
Looking at him eating tulip buds and discussing fractal variations found in tree saplings, I just knew he needed it as badly as I did.
We began packing up in a frantic scurry for air and meaning and we were halfway done when one of us said: You know, I think we are just about to experience epiphany...
Plunging behind the couch, with a lit cigarette dangling dangerously from my lip, I put on my sunglasses and gave Rem his, just as the gush of air that shattered the glass in the windows was drawing spirals about our heads, whispering infamy.
Epiphany had come and left; it was gone, but Rem had caught up its scent. It took us exactly 3 seconds to unwind and finish our bags and we jumped the first taxi cab to the train station.
Now of course, seeing two guys dressed in black suits, sporting khaki rucksacks with wooden handles jutting out from every nook and cranny, smoking Lucky Strikes and huffing tulip buds, wearing gray army surplus boots, yelling about Borges and his Zephyr while trying to fit two wooden boxes with esoteric symbols on them in the boot of a taxi; would scare any Romanian cabby half out of his wits.
Which it did, but anyway, our driver did not need to know who and what he was ferrying to the train station.
We had accumulated, Rem and I, a good deal of stuff for our esoteric journey towards epiphany. Stuff we carefully put in our esoteric boxes.
There was a myriad of lore sprinkled with bits and pieces of humor and insanity. We had books, bullets and shotgun shells, candlesticks, a brick from an art nouveau building Rem lifted last year, a copy of Finnegans Wake, stakes for killing vampires, a Romanian travel guide, gallons of vodka, cartons of Lucky Strikes, crucifixes, a double edged battleaxe, four horseshoes, a Cyrillic for Dummies almanac and a book on the Life of Cyril, one gallon of red wine, two gallons of white wine, chisels, shovels and other such paraphernalia.
Also we had on our persons, our objects of power.
Rem had brought along his trusty rapier/t-ruler which was inconspicuously hanging on his back in its black leather scabbard, ready to unleash its troubled soul on Romania's buildings made up of post-communist kitsch and schizophrenic perversion. As Rem put it so gallantly: I will strike them down with the edge of my hand.
I had brought along my black magic Zippo, my traveler's notebook, my luck and charming persona as well as a double barreled shotgun, just in case...
So there we were, in the cab, cutting through traffic like a blunt razor blade through poorly set bitumen, heading into the concrete jungle.
As I looked at Rem riding shotgun, chewing tulip buds and talking trash to the cabby, his sudden gaunt countenance reminded me of the lawyer Kobayashi and I had the sudden feeling that I was Verbal Kint as he turned back and grinned, saying he was thinking the exact opposite.
We felt stranded for a moment in the post-communist waiting room, mingling amongst the peasantry, the gentiles and the emerging middle class, the students on summer vacation humping knapsacks full of misshaped dreams, clothing, bad music and shaky futures.
We faced the grins of vagabonds and refused to give cigarettes. Things almost got out of hand and I was reaching for my shotgun when Rem took down his shades and gave them the Koolhaas Look, and our would be adversaries understood the meaning of Whiteyes so they gently and honorably retracted without losing too much face.
Taking time to think things through, I began to shudder at our great endeavor but Rem said:
As your architect, I suggest you let everything to me and go buy us some train tickets.
I left him, heading for the ticket booth, not realizing he had reached for his rapier. As I returned with our tickets, he was hacking at a corner of the main building, taking out chunks at a time, as if he was chopping down the roots of a great concrete Leviathan. I joined in for a while, but to no avail. It could not be done by a two-man team, in the middle of the day.
We shooed the onlookers away, settled in on the platform, sipping coffee and smoking Lucky Strikes, waiting for the train to Craiova. Rem was frantically sniffing the air but he began napping and I for one knew that everything would turn out okay.
Awoken suddenly by the truculent train ride, I yawned and kicked the synthetic fabric of the chair I had been slipping off rather than sleeping on. Rem had scared everyone else out of our train compartment and was trying to open a window when the conductor walked in.
When he saw us, his brain started retracting in fear of the sight. I was greasing my shotgun, ready to blow up those useless train seats in order to rearrange the space for a little R&R and Rem had just unsheathed his rapier, ready to chop some holes in the ceiling, in order to supply decent ventilation to the place.
The conductor meekly asked for the tickets when speech returned to his numbed and terrified synapses. Rem was about to snap at him in Frisian dialect when I produced the tickets. The conductor asked about my companion and I suggested he is a crazy westerner come here to our wonderful country of plenty to steal our women and sell off the rest for scrap.
Missing altogether my double entendre full of nationalistic bigotry and ironic playfulness, the conductor smirked at Rem and winked at me, validated out tickets and disappeared as a papier mache figurine would if it had melted under hot air.
Rem was desperate for air, I myself was feeling the sting of nicotine addiction so we paced the train car for a while and we decided suddenly to jump out of the train, baggage, esoteric boxes and all.
Rolling through the dirt and the overgrown vegetation that jutted humongous beside the train tracks, we recovered our senses slowly, taking big gasps of air and tobacco smoke respectively.
The night was young and we were still alive. We had jumped train a little before midnight and we were fully in country now, the sound of hounds in the distance. Pacing the country side slowly, humping our rucksacks and dragging our boxes, we spoke and spoke, sometimes just hearing and the other times really listening to what the other had to say.
Rem was glancing at the night sky and we discussed constellations on the side of a country road, huddled together at a crossroads.
A large donkey – drawn cart materialized in front of us, a big black man holding the reins of the long eared animal that was baying into the night and the moon.
We shivered with expectation and when the dark tall man offered a ride we humped our luggage so fast into his cart, he did not even get the chance to say we shouldn't.
He said he was the devil and we believed him. He told me: Reach into that sack, there's a guitar there, hand it to me so that I may tune it for you.
Rem took off his glasses and the Devil knew we meant business.
The devil tuned the guitar and gave it to me saying: Now, play. The road is long and we might still be able to reach daylight before one of us tries to steal the others' soul.
I sang the tunes of devilry and respite, rattled by the cart while Rem and Satan discussed Gogol and Russian literature as a whole, enumerating its strong points and the big disappointment represented by Chekhov.
By morning we were all quiet and the guitar turned to wax and began melting in the middle of the song as the devil took his leave from us, just outside the train station in Filiași. He said that not even the Prince of Light would let himself get entangled with the horrors of the Filiași train station in the morning.
We scowled at his cowardice and made dirty jokes as he began sublimating between the first rays of light. As he came, he went, and there was nothing Rem or I could say more.
Dragging and stumbling, we followed the train tracks into the station and almost immediately turned away in horror. Such a sight we had never seen as even Rem's rapier recoiled in its scabbard out of sheer horror. It was an experiment gone horribly wrong. Everything was misshapen and chaotic. A surrealistic rendering of a mental asylum in Hell, but with all the wards fled into volcanic darkness.
We were left facing the deep stench filled magma of Hades, and the ferry man was nowhere in sight.
Settling in on the platform, watching the wrecked steam machinery that once powered the trains of the Belle Epoque, I was close to weeping when Rem patted my shoulder and said: It is alright, those days will come again.
The station seemed like the underside of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, its overstated homo-eroticism of Transsexual Transylvania, sans nudity and avec the dry feeling one gets when hitting the service end of a vodka induced coma.
Everything was dust and dust was dirt turned into sludge as even the vagabond dogs seemed more healthy than the humans inhabiting this Romanian ninth circle of Hell that is the station in Filiași.
We passed through the waiting room, bumping into some architecture students that seemed so out of place Rem almost tried slapping one into its senses when I dragged him off out into the sunlight. We saw the vampires feasting on the synthetic vodka of the poor man. Their faces had the color of soylent green and their souls had been all but sipped clean by the bottles that were drinking out of them and not the other way around.
Salvation seemed to have passed us by while we were journeying with the Devil, but Rem caught the scent of epiphany once more so we settled near the architecture students and started ranting at them, until we began talking to each other, more or less.
They were going on an educational trip of sorts. Rem retorted: Hm! So are we. Who is the one that leads?
One Born of Sky said the students. I know of that one, Rem said to me. He is also on the search for epiphany. We will go with and I will show him my rapier.
The students were scared, I could see, so I turned on my natural charm and quieted them down, telling them that Rem meant well, although he might seem a bit nutty.
Not believing a word we said, they took leave, heading for a train. We stayed behind and jumped in the train the moment it began to move.
The hunt is on, Rem said, the whiteness of his eyes shining behind the dark lenses of his shades.
We got off in Tîrgu Jiu and began following the students but they escaped us just out side the bus station.
No worries! They can run, but they cannot hide, said Rem. Their scent is fresh in my senses. Let us instead see the works of The Brîncuși and meditate on the true meaning of your country and its natural flow.
Heading through the town, a great feeling of apprehension passed between the two of us as we began steadily pacing towards art, Rem sniffing as we went, laughing as he sniffed.
He is an old devil, this one, Rem said. The Brîncuși is one who understands.
We entered the complex, treading holy ground, catching the scent of spring flowers in the wake of beauty, bobbing our heads under gates, stopping to gaze at trees and enunciating opinions of sculptures, of what we liked best or worst.
As we reached it on the bank of the river, we fell to our knees in awe, letting our glasses droop from our eyes, blinded by the sun. I reached for my pack of Luckies when I caught sight of Rem breaking into a run, hitting the Column at full speed, molding himself on the lines of the stone, clambering as he could, higher and higher until he reached the top.
There he was. Rem Whiteyes Koolhaas, on top of the Column of Infinity, the Star of post-modernity on top of the pillar of my ancestors, yelling with all his might into the sun: PANTA RHEI!!! Everything flows... It was beautiful.
He got down and after a while we slept on the grass. Awoken by the mid-noon heat, we gathered our stuff and continued to track epiphany.
The tracks of the child-students lead us out of the city towards the mountains. I recalled history and told Rem of everything I could remember. Without knowing it, we were soon upon Born of Sky's domain.
We entered this Romanian salle d'attente but the Magus was absent. Fearing for the mental health of the child-students, we became invisible and decided not to make our presence felt.
The place was magnificent. Old but still fresh, with horses grazing and the manor glittering white. I marveled at its defensive position, how well it had been crafted out of stone, its military effectiveness and its pleasant presence. Awe inspiring and comfy at the same time.
We bathed in the shade of trees and drank the acidic water of the well, we enjoyed the presence of the boyars of old and took a tour of the church, laid meadow flowers by the graves and played with the hounds.
Rem sketched and I wrote down gibberish poetry not even I could fully understand. We talked to the watchman, a certain Thomas the Turk, a rugged man with a childish face, a killer smile and a crazy glitter in his eye. A liar, as all great storytellers were, we bathed in the depths of the night fires and discussed fairies, treasures and legend.
The Milky Way shone bright in The Born of Sky's Little Court of Old, listening to old gypsies play their lutes under the thunderstorm that came right before the sunrise.
Nymphs were laughing behind the trees, right beyond the recesses of the fires, and Rem asked one if it would dance. It mumbled in its supernatural sounds but Rem was not a man to fear old superstition. I know a beautiful woman when I see one, he said.
They danced the dance of old under thunder and wind, horses neighing in the twilight of lightning whilst I and The Turk drank to olden times.
We talked of gold ferried by monks, stolen by Muslims, hoarded by outlaws, crafted by the Dacian tribes, payed in tribute, stolen in retribution, mixed with the blood of peoples and ages, lost to us and ours but come to life in the stories of the old Watchman of The Little Court.
Our entourage grew as Rem yelled at the moon and began drinking alongside us. We saw Polish nobles sporting Teutonic trinkets gained in battle against the Germans, merchants from Lithuania and Krakow, the moneylenders from Leipzig and the Jewish alchemists from Prague.
We were drinking ancient history like old wine, slowly and only slightly watered down. Thomas talked of invisibility, witchcraft, treasure hunts and old lies. All of a sudden he stopped, gazed at the moon in its zenith, howled and turned into a werewolf, the Sparkle-Hound of old. He vanished.
Rem smiled and said: You are all crazy in this country are you not?
Only the ones that are truly sane, I said.
Before falling asleep we decided we would go our own way and that if Born of Sky would meet us, we would meet him.
Surely he will come to us, Rem said, if he too seeks what we are hunting.
I fell asleep dreaming of epiphany.
Without knowing it, as soon as we left the Little Court of Old for the foothills of the ancient mountains, the hunt was on.
We trekked the vast expanses, we slept in the meadows and dreamed under the shade of apple orchards, Rem talked of Eden and I discussed Luther's Bible. It was most hilarious.
Jumping trains, feeling the heat, talking to the people, we went our way, going headstrong into the territory of my ancestors. Nothing could stop us. The hunt was developing before our eyes and we could not shirk from its gaze. It had mesmerized our senses and we weren't about to stop until we drew first blood.
The child-students had also started their trek, their noble endeavor to save what remained to be saved after 50 years of ruthless regimes and 20 years of cowardice and greed was doomed to fail, but I and Rem were rooting for them nonetheless. We were the ones who always sought the causes of the lost.
Needless to say our respect for the Born of Sky grew as we nervously awaited his appearance.
Rem and I visited the villages and listened to the lore of old women, the keepers of chickens and dark secrets the old men would never have the courage to part with.
They named for us the patches of valley and forest we were about to pass through. Walnut Valley, Highwayman's Creek, Up the Hills and Down from the Valley. The churches and the graveyards were silent and awe inspiring, overgrown with age, choked by the undergrowth and shaded by the fir trees.
Washing off the dirt by wells dug in the sides of hills, Rem and I watched the shadows that jumped at the forest's edge, protected by the fires. This was the kind of country even the Devil would have feared crossing without a bodyguard.
The women woke up in the mornings and gave us food as they passed us by, going to work and singing as long as the sun burnt the earth dry before setting behind the mountains.
Sunsets passed us by in the wilderness and Rem was quieted down by the wind as I told him stories laying near the fire.
Our senses were numbed. Epiphany seemed to be everywhere, but Rem said we should not be fooled by its many essences. She was one in its entirety and we were searching for her and her alone. Her emanations were for the lesser sires of her youth.
I fell asleep each night dreaming history, seeing Turkish marauders, legionaries of the Gemina crossing under strict marching orders in their blue tunics, carrying the Lion, their lost colors flying high in the noon sun. They chanted of death, happy their flanks were protected by olive skinned Syrians and the bearded Sarmatians. I listened into the hearth talk of the Mongolian tribes and watched the Ostrogoth play with gold. The Crusaders tried to sell me trinkets before heading for Albania. An imam told me about the Light under the Veil and the Valachian highwaymen almost took me off into night. Humming the songs of old, Rem looked at me and was scared but I told him all was good. I was finally tapping into the deepest soil of my soul and the womb of my country's history was calm as ever.
I dream-talked of revolutions, spinning from one dialect to another and Rem later told me it seemed as if I was exorcising myself and was laughing all the time, at the same instant understanding everything I and my country had went through.
It was morning when some German soldiers stole my horses and a few minutes later I was retreating with the last airlift out of Stalingrad, a Romanian woman pilot giving me a Griffa just before the morphine, the auburn haired doctor gave me, kicked in.
They took me to the camps in Siberia right after the war but I managed to learn Russian just outside Novosibirsk and they shipped me off, out of Vladivostok, reaching home just ahead of the Cultural Revolution.
I screamed with the first rays of the sun and Rem smiled.
You have passed it, he said. Now you are born anew.
Everything flows, I said. And fell back to sleep.
Rem was laughing as I woke. I had drank the essences. They did not side-track or kill me and I knew now that I was ready for the real thing.
A man stood by us after he took leave of the child-students. He stopped and stared. Rem was ready to head-butt the visitor. Instead, he only gently reached out his right hand clasping the man's and shaking it vigorously.
The Born of Sky met us under the hills of old. We feasted and wrestled until we grew accustomed to each other. Rem ceremoniously gave his rapier to Born and he accepted gratefully.
They jabbered of architecture, so I watched, barely listening, smoking my Luckies and thinking of epiphany. Born's endeavor was not going well but Rem trusted his campaign of awareness, as did I. He seemed a man with a mission. Rem and I only hoped he would not get side-tracked by the perils of our land and the petty thieves that jump at the throats of the innocent. But the Born of Sky had the sad smell of experience about him. It would be a matter of time before he would come out swinging. So I hoped at least.
For all the mercenaries I and Rem were, we could not but respect this valiant knight come back to rescue what he could. We pledged allegiance wholeheartedly.
We hoped the signs of duress would not turn Born into one with a sad countenance.
All was silent, night had come and the moon was still not shining. We drank heavily from our esoteric boxes but a foul air began looming.
Born of Sky knew of the hunt, it was obvious, but he did not seem to believe in it with all his being.
A poem came to mind:
A prince of the Levant, longing for to hunt
Paced through deep forest shadow.
Stopping and stumbling and hitting the bark,
Whispering through his flute into dark:
It is the Magic Silver Tusked Boar that I wish hunt...
but I did not utter the words. The poem for all its beauty, had a worthless and pathetic end that was Slavic and not Dacian in its core. And Moscow in the 50s, with too much vodka and nobody to shoot at anymore, is Moscow in the 50s and not this country throughout its 5000 years of history.
Looking at the Born of Sky, his countenance starting to droop under his thoughts, I knew the answer to the dark impish questions that ate at his heart. Child-students are too small a game and academia is like a garden of gardenias in comparison to The Hunt. But he did not think that.
He thought that by eradicating the emanations of dark soil from whence his heart bloomed under the moon that shone beneath the trees of this country's forests, would make the questions be muted by the light of reason. He thought that was the thing that ate at this country most. The lack of light in its folk. I knew that the dirt that was in our eyes was the reason for the irk. And you can only see darkness after 70 years of sitting in the cave-gulag. I assure you, it is not dark, it is light. They are not shadows, they are others stumbling in sunlight. Enough of excuses and intellectuality, lest I draw more mustaches in my wake!
This country has had enough of dirt turned into sludge. What it needs is an avalanche of dark soil trapping its senses so that things may begin to be planted anew. We need our forests of old, before we chop them down unwittingly, not knowing where our true problems really lie.
Rem understood perfectly what I was about to say. He muted me with a gesture of the wrist, slapped the Born of Sky so hard his glasses fell into the fire. His eye-glasses began melting.
You won't need those where we are going, Rem said. Now get on your feet. Take the rapier and follow us.
He turned and walked into the darkness of the forest as the moon began shining over the hills. I followed looking back. The Born of Sky was with us.
It was beautiful. The trees were silent under the leaves rustling in our wake. The light had diamond skin. I was seeing trapped photons exploding on the tree-bark.
We were surrounded by wisps. Tree nymphs were showing us their bosoms, offering comfort for our weariness, but neither of us was in the mood.
Enough of essences. We were hunting the real thing. The Born of Sky was shivering under the cool air of the silvan landscape but he was with us.
Everyone is afraid, you know, Rem whispered. I was about to light another cigarette, but Rem gave me the look, so I cursed him with a smirk and refrained my indulgences. This was serious business after all.
We caught scent of it first and our senses drew keener as we spotted the tracks. Passing a creek, the light grew as we saw it in a clearing.
It was humongous, it smelled eerie as it was grunting through the leaves, looking for walnuts.
Rem's eyes turned white and we were reeking of fear, but luckily we were down-wind from the beast.
Turning, its tusks shone of ivory in the smooth evanescent light.
We jumped it under an old chestnut by the creek. I stared into its eye and squealed, trying to laugh but actually keeping myself from crying out of fear. Rem yelped as it stepped on his sketching hand and the Born of Sky was trying to unsheathe the rapier while cursing vigorously.
It dragged us through the forest trying to shake us off but we were holding on for dear life, trying to tire it down.
Born of Sky grappled on the hairs of its back and was on the animal before it knew. The blade shone and made the moon go pale.
The scream made the forest freeze. The air fell on the ground, hitting the leaves like a grand piano falling from the top of Everest. It was the sound of a symphony exploding like a piece of glass heated white.
The moan went through the trees and whirlwinds spiraled, cutting down and shaping rock. Streams ejaculated white and water turned into clouds of steam.
For a brief moment I saw the woman I loved planting lavender in a window, keeping the dream scorpions away from our house on the hill. She was adorning desert figs to her long hair while singing the songs all women of my country sing when they become tree nymphs trying to get out of their shells.
Rem was cursing, I was dreaming and Born was stabbing the beast with all his might.
It was dead now. We had killed it. We had invented a new poem for ourselves. We were spent.
Rem cut out its liver and I and Born bit into it, feeling the iron in its blood, feasting on its soul. My totem animal appeared before me.
The old bear looked me in the eyes and growled. I knew it was time to leave. Rem understood why.
I shook Koolhass' hand and kissed him on the forehead, blocked him before he could head-butt me. I looked into Born of Sky's sad eyes. He knew we had not reached epiphany.
But I knew he knew he was on its tracks. His nostrils began sniffing the air before he realized.
Everything flows gentlemen, I said before turning my back on them, heading out of the forest into the sunrise.
Rem was beginning to teach Born how to wield the rapier right. All was good.
Weird memories travel my skull on this strange night when my journey begins in earnest. Weird dreams and strange faces come to me as I rest. I put on my sun-glasses and follow.
No more fear and loathing. It is time for dreams unfolding. For riding the Peking Wave.
It comes to me now, clear and longing.
All is good in the forest. Awaiting the next hunt.
Epiphany calls. I am on its tracks. Remember to bring Lucky Strikes.
Out.
P.S: This is bat country!
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
All characters, locations, references, words, expressions, dreams and innuendos are fictitious and should be taken as such.
If you cannot take the hint than gently fuck off lest you will understand the meaning of Whiteyes before losing too much of your face.
Thank you and fuck you too!
