 
Harbor Boulevard

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2019

Mel C. Thompson Publishing

3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard, #112

Lafayette, CA 94549

melcthompson@yahoo.com

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For more information about Mel C. Thompson's work, or to learn more about how you can support his ongoing literary projects, including his work with other authors published by Mel C. Thompson Publishing through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing services, please contact either the email address or USPS mailing address listed above.

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This book is dedicated to all the teachers, fellow students, choir members, fellow parishioners, minsters, doctors, psychologists, lovers, friends, fellow musicians, employers, school counselors, recording engineers, small press publishers, live poetry promoters, therapists, dentists, orthodontists, periodontists, policemen, social workers, firemen, professors and others who rescued me so many times I lost count. Only when I was already an old man did I realize that they were all keeping a madman alive for no other reason than that they somehow believed I, that very madman, could somehow bring something of value to the world. How everyone put up with me and my completely twisted life, I cannot imagine. But I thank you all for taking me in and dedicating some years of your life to an almost impossible case. Thanks to you all, I am still alive; and without help I certainly would have never made it to middle age, let alone old age.

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Notes On The Contents

The text begins with the contents of the manuscript itself. At the conclusion of the story, several pages of numbered notes can be found. These notes, among other things, reveal some of the autobiographical elements that played a part in the story. At the very end of the book are several pages of author's commentary regarding the sources, inspirations and methods used to construct this work. (If one doesn't like spoilers, then it's best to save the commentary until after one has finished reading the manuscript portion of the book.) The notes and commentary also reveal many of the musical, cinematic and literary sources for several quotes and themes which may strike the reader as familiar.

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Harbor Boulevard

1.

You will never be able to make sense of all this work you are doing. How could anyone ever repay you for all your efforts? You cannot buy your years back with any amount of money. Will fame comfort you in oblivion?

Our ancestors settled here generations ago, but who remembers their names? Do you think you will be remembered three generations from now? No, it is not logic that drives you onward, but rather the great magnet (1) that pulls you to itself through your endless toiling.

And yet, all this time, the sun and the moon and the tides have remained faithful and generous to us, never once asking for reward or recognition. They too are drawn forth by an irresistible force which moves all things, but itself never moves. (2)

Whatever this unknowable thing is, it has set you on your way from the beginning, and it alone meets you at the end of the road. (3)

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (4)

*

Our friends had told us that Solomon Wedge had refused to meet us under ordinary circumstances. In order to meet him we would have to comply with a certain strange demand. We would have to walk most of the way across Orange County to meet him.

Because Orange County is an entirely car-centered metropolitan area, middle class people most typically meet by just getting into their cars and driving over to each other's houses. If the person needing transportation is extremely poor, he may be relegated to taking a demoralizingly-slow OCTA bus for hours on end in order to visit someone. However, in this case, Solomon had ordered us to walk, for days on end, from the very beginning of Harbor Boulevard to the end of it, after which we would be free to meet him at Le Pain Quotidien in Fashion Island for some tea and pastry.

Once in Solomon's presence, we were assured by our friends, some great information would be relayed to us, information which they seemed confident would prove transformative. This all seemed to be nothing more than New Age mysticism or some cultish mind-control rubbish, but alas, on sheer principle, I would not let the matter go, since, to be honest, I am a know-it-all who just has to be hip to every "major gig in town." Such are the follies of the human ego.

Harbor Boulevard starts, curiously, just over the border with Los Angeles County, and goes all the way to Costa Mesa, ending up just about a mile from the Newport Beach border. For the purposes of this odd quest, we would be, as Kazantzakis used to say, "hajjis," and Newport Beach would, temporarily, serve as our holy city. Of course most people with any self respect would refuse to undergo such an ordeal to have what would otherwise be an ordinary conversation. But we had been repeatedly told by our friends that Solomon was no ordinary man, and thus our curiosity overrode our common sense. We had, as the common folks say, "taken the bait."

Our friends are noteworthy for their manias and enthusiasms, and so we were almost certain they were exaggerating the importance of any possible meeting with this little-known "phenomenon." But having sworn to myself that no "significant development" in Orange County should ever be allowed to escape my notice, I felt forced to comply with Solomon's off-putting instructions.

We asked our friends, who had relayed Solomon's orders to us, how Solomon would ever know if we simply waited a week, parked our car a few blocks away from his house and arrived merely claiming to have walked the whole way down Harbor Boulevard. Our friends stared at us in a perfectly weird way and said ominously, "Oh, believe me. If you're lying to him, he'll know. You can be sure of that!"

Why on earth could I be intimidated by such a patently nonsensical threat? And why would I admit these things to the reader now? Well, I confess, I am not always reasonable; and I admit this with no small amount of shame. To put it bluntly, I felt I had been conned into an old-world type of superstition, the sort which I would usually be too embarrassed to speak about in polite company. However, I must speak about it now since my book publisher seems utterly indifferent to any embarrassment I might feel when he points to my perfectly miserly book contract and says, "Well, if you're to get your next manuscript out on time, it looks like you'll have to go with this story, unless you have some hidden masterpiece you've not told us about."

And so I was, by superstition and competitiveness, forced to go on this silly journey; and to add to my humiliation, I was obliged to turn my notes about this journey into a book or risk entering into an ugly state of being called "breach of contract." Oh, what a pestilential life one leads sometimes, even in the lap of luxury, seemingly otherwise protected from all the world's ills.

2.

Even if we gave you everything you've been pining for, you'd burn out on it soon enough. We could pay your way to London, Paris, Montreal, New York, Toronto, Brussels, Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, New Orleans, Berlin and Tijuana, (5) but still you'd end up bored. Work-ethic proponents will claim the rewards of life are infinitely better if you've earned them. If only that were true. Your associates will always say that the magical kingdom you seek is elsewhere, but you can only be fooled by that ruse so many times before true wisdom becomes involuntary. But even so, I command you to go on the journey, but this time look for something other than victory and you just mind find something you didn't know you were looking for. (6)

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (7)

*

Our journey started out awkwardly in Los Angeles County in the rather upscale community of Rowland Heights. On that day there were ominous clouds in the sky, many dark gray and heavy with water. In the distance one could see whiter, puffier clouds, and even patches of blue. The sky itself was confusing. Was it going to rain heavily, or would a favorable wind come along and blow the clouds apart to reveal a bright, blue sky?

There were large houses in the hills, but they were intermittent. One saw large, green open spaces where a few deer and mountain lion might live in some symbiosis with the carrion-hungry condors circling above. For a while we didn't see anyone else on the sidewalk, and so I walked with no small sense of loneliness. This was, after all, Harbor Boulevard, and one expects to see the dwellings and associated infrastructure commensurate with the presence of hundreds of thousands of people. And not only was I lonely, but I was caught off-guard by an unseasonably cold and harsh wind. Visions of my unsatisfying childhood and traumatic love-life came pouring into my mind, producing streams of melancholic ideation. Giant electrical power lines crisscrossed the landscape, hoisted aloft by imposing, impersonal-looking metal towers.

Every five minutes a late-model car would drive by and slow down just a bit, the driver within not looking at us in exactly a hostile way, but in a way that said, "I can see you haven't really made it yet and don't really belong here," after which the car would speed off almost angrily, as if the driver had stomped on his accelerator and revved his engine to kind of teach us a lesson of some sort. It was disturbing that our trek had begun this way and we hadn't even hit the Orange County line yet.

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My traveling companion is dispirited. He insists we call this whole exercise off. He is cold, hungry, thirsty and in need of a restroom. He complains that he was never that enthusiastic about the idea of going on this quest anyway. What with hardships coming upon us in the first few steps of this excursion, we ought, he feels, to face the fact that we might not enjoy this style of vacationing. Perhaps, he muses, this Solomon Wedge character is a wicked man. He wonders if this odyssey isn't some kind of elaborate hoax.

I do not want to tell my partner what I really think. My ruminations are even worse that his. Danger, discomfort and cognitive dissonance seem to lurk beneath the surface of everything. I am embarrassed to tell him that I already feel the street communicating with me, not in sentences or words, but in sensations I can't describe. It's as if we are close to knowing things we might not really want to know.

In order to silence him, I pretend to have no doubts whatsoever about the journey and claim that the seeming emptiness of Rowland Heights not only doesn't bother me, but, in fact, seems quite to my liking. And I rather chide him for his fit of weakness. This seems to silence him, and we continue wandering sullenly on without any more complaints being voiced.

I am frankly shocked that he has fallen for my irrational and supercilious defense of this weird enterprise and that he has seemingly not taken offense at having been brow-beaten into continuing on with such an unlikely venture without much credible rationale behind it. He is, of course, not entirely happy about being used as a kind of security blanket for this vain enterprise of mine, but loyalty seems to be a significant factor in his character, and it seems to have overridden what would otherwise be a reasonable sense of indignity regarding my unacceptably-controlling nature.

This is the truth of the matter. I've gotten my whole ego worked up about this trip, and I'm not going to turn back regardless of how either of us feel. Feelings are beside the point. This kind of a project is the sort of thing you either do all the way, or abandon like some second-rate quitter. I am not going to go back to our stupid New Age friends and face them having to admit we quit in the first half hour. That is just not going to happen, period. But, to be honest, I am also scared, and would probably not be able to carry on without a friend to back me up, so, even though it is unfair to my friend, I have every intention of guilting him as much as I have to in order to keep him going. Call me a jerk, but I am not the kind of person who, once having accepted a challenge and made a promise, backs out and goes whining back to my interlocutors to say, "It was too hard." No, no. There just must be none of that kind of thing, not now. (8)

3.

We can make you the king of wisdom and set you up on a throne in Jerusalem (9) for all the good it will do you. There are ten thousand years' (10) worth of books to read and another ten thousand years worth of books to write; but will you be happy once you do all of that? Yet it seems dishonest to advise you all to fritter away your life in an offhand way. (11) There is some middle ground between the simpleton and the nihilist, but I am at a loss as to how to direct you to that place. This conundrum reminds me of a swimmer treading water, almost on the verge of drowning, when he discovers he has merely to pull the cord on the inflatable life vest he is wearing.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (12)

*

As we continued plodding along the endlessly-unrewarding sidewalks of Rowland Heights, wondering when we might finally get to the La Habra border so that our real Orange County excursion could begin in earnest, we came upon an ancient, broken down Oldsmobile of the sort our fathers would have driven back in the days when company cars, and free insurance, and free repairs, and free unlimited gasoline, were all a part of the perks of being a businessman in the heyday of defense contracting. Oddly, the car had a brand new paint job and the interior appeared to have been fully refurbished.

Inside was an angry man on the phone shouting at some dispatcher who was somehow reluctant to send a mobile mechanic or a tow truck. There was some dispute as to how much of such kinds of service he was entitled to under the service contract he had entered into. By the time we got to the car, we could see that the passenger window was rolled half way down, which had been the reason his voice had been audible for some distance. Upon seeing us, he hung up on the person he was talking to and popped out of the car, coming over to the sidewalk to greet us.

"Hey guys," he said, "it looks like we're in the same boat. I'm not sure why a couple of nice-looking fellows like yourself would be walking along this stretch of road, but it looks like I'll be walking it too. My regular mechanic is too busy to come to the phone, but his shop is in La Habra, so, if that's where you're walking to, I'd like to join you. My wife's work is too far away for her to come all this way in the middle of the day. The place I need to go is a long walk, and I don't feel like going all that way on my own. I'm sure not going to pay an overpriced taxi, and I don't even have the Uber or Lyft app on my phone. And anyway, I'm sick of using smartphones for everything."

I was in no mood to humor this light-hearted, presumptuous man, but my partner enthusiastically invited him to come along with us. Admittedly, our trip had not started out so well, and so I could understand my partner's desire to find some source of possible amusement, but I was feeling both unsociable and possessive. It has been a longstanding criticism of my personality that I am too possessive, preferring to be with only one person at a time whenever possible. And people have clearly noticed how unhappy I usually am when a third person comes along to divert attention away from me. This has led many people to ask me, on many occasions, "Why you so selfish?" And so it stands to reason that while my traveling companion and I a little less than thrilled with each other, I would have preferred our ennui not be interrupted by some chatty, affable person. Call me petty and small, but that's just the way things are with me.

Seeing I was outnumbered and not going to get my way, I ironically said, "You could be our tour guide and clue us in on all the marvels of this section of Harbor Boulevard."

Not grasping the hint of mockery in my voice, our new companion enthusiastically replied, "One thing I can tell a newcomer to this area is that you've got to watch out for the heavy UFO traffic along this corridor. That's right, the aliens like to fly above this particular stretch of road. It's like they commute along with us. They don't like the really crowded parts of Harbor Boulevard, so they frequent this stretch a lot. We're all scared to death around here, but the federal government and the military won't even return our phone calls, so we just have to live with it. Do you know what it's like to have your kids come home crying in terror and not know what to say to them? It's nuts, you know? You're driving home from a late night at the office when all of the sudden floodlights fill up the whole road and you're left almost blinded. Scares the living shit out of you. You know what I mean?"

Much to my chagrin, my partner egged him on, probably just to kill the time and make the walk go faster. Hence, our new companion continued to amuse my partner and delight himself by detailing many such incidents he'd heard about from the locals of Rowland Heights. This was not the first nutcase of this sort I'd met, and I confess that I found this form of quasi-religious faith to be even more irritating than that of the evangelicals, for whom I confess I have practically no mercy at all in my angry, little heart.

After a while of humoring this person as best I could, I felt a certain tension arise in my chest, and there was no choice but for me to give full voice to my skepticism.

"Excuse me, sir, but I thought that aliens were supposed to be friendly and enlightened and that they would eventually usher in an aquarian age, or something like that."

The outspoken stranger responded, "Whew! Yeah, I used to think that too, till I started studying up on those cats. No, they're not nice at all, not most of them. There are good ones, of course, but you'd have to be lucky to run into them. Most of the ones around Los Angeles are just plain trouble-makers. They come at you like they're going to kill you, you know? But then at the last minute they let you go, but not till they've freaked you out completely. I mean, as a grown man, I can kind of take it, but the kids — they have no right to be terrorizing the kids."

The stranger shook his head and added, "It's just not right. Anyway, you're probably lucky you ran into me because I notice the sky is getting a bit darker; and that's when they come, when the haze gets heavy or the sun sets. At least this way, if anything happened, you wouldn't wonder what hit you. At least this way, with me around, you know what's up. If something bad happens, it feels better, somehow, to know what happened and why it happened. The aliens are just mostly bad people, if you could call them people."

"So am I understand you to say," I further pressed, "that they get their kicks just horrifying people and then flitting away, leaving behind no evidence, leaving their victims to just babble about like maniacs about spacecraft taunting them and such?"

"You got it. You see, if they really landed and introduced themselves, or if they switched their video-cloaking off so you could film them with your smart phone — that would wreck their whole gig, right? The way they work it now makes for maximum crazy, if you see what I'm saying. Well, anyway, this way, with me around, if something happened, you'd know you hadn't lost your mind. I could explain everything to you. These aliens around here — they go after someone almost every day, and we're kind of getting toward what you might call our alien rush hour. You're lucky you ran into me, because it's not good to go through that kind of thing alone, all inexperienced and such."

I was not initially happy about having a lunatic along with us, but, upon second thought, it was a bit of an antidepressant; and there was no doubt that he helped relieve the drudgery of this part of our trip. Were my partner to be so unkind as to press the matter later, I'd be forced to concede his instinct to invite this oddball to walk along with us was probably all for the best. And thus, attempting to at least partially overcome my commitment to my own bitterness, I decided to prod the man for more details.

"Since the government, and presumably the military, don't believe the locals, how do you all deal with this bullying from the extraterrestrials? Do you all meet to talk about it? Do you try to console one another somehow?"

"Bingo! Yes," he replied. "We have an alien-intimidation support group that meets every two weeks. We rotate the hosting duties among the houses of the locals. We're trying to manage it by using the Twelve-Step principles, tweaking the literature to our own needs. 'Came to the realization that we could not control extraterrestrials; asked our higher power to help us cope with the aliens; agreed to carry a message of hope to all those who have suffered as a result of the attacks' — all that kind of stuff. Because going through this kind of stuff could 'make one's life unmanageable,' right? Because it changes you when those flood lights come over you or when they fly so low that you and your car are almost driven off the road!"

Having dabbled in comparative religion in my younger days, I had felt it mandatory to go to the parts of Roswell, New Mexico where UFOs constitute the basis of a religion, a religion with its own scriptures, mind you. And so I was not totally unprepared for what I was hearing. And thus did we walk, block after block, with him espousing the various doctrines, sects and new revelations blossoming within the UFO-cult world, cults replete with psychics, channelers and prophets.

After a while, my resistance to this person slowly melted away and I mused to myself that it was not altogether unsatisfying, after all, to meet with a person who truly believed in something to the point of somehow getting himself to manufacture his own encounters with that other kind of humanoid people of so many myths. Thus was I a bit displeased when a car drove by us and honked. After having gone through the trouble of opening myself up to this person, now another person was to come and disturb our intimacy.

The car was commandeered by a neighbor of our "UFOs Are Real"-believing friend. (13) The neighbor, who drove a rather nondescript Ford sedan told his friend to get in the car. The neighbor would be happy to drive his friend into La Habra to get matters resolved with the mechanic there. It goes without saying that both men insisted that we hop in the car as they would be more than happy to take us wherever we were going. Since I did not feel like telling them why we would not ease our troubles by getting a free ride into town with them, I made some lame excuse about needing more exercise. Our quirky companion, not in the least offended by this rebuff, waved out the window and shouted a hearty goodbye to us as the Ford sedan hurried off to La Habra.

*

There is a highway patrolman standing above me and my partner. My head is pounding and I have just woken up. My partner too is holding his head as if suffering from a similar headache. I ask him if he had the same dream I did, and he admits that he has. The dream we have woken up from is one in which the clouds suddenly thicken, and the sky grows dark. We are overtaken by the eerie sensation that we are being watched. Two huge headlights, each more powerful than a stadium floodlight bear down on us from the sky. A ray emerges from the body of the elliptical vehicle. A single green pulse bursts out from that ray and knocks us both to the ground, less than a block from the La Habra border.

My working hypothesis is that the traumatic dream had to have been a product of our overall sense of alienation and perhaps a some deep-seated, childish gullibility we have failed to purge from our minds. I have a conviction that when people feel out-of-sorts, they are likely to see and hear anything. The highway patrolman, however, begs to differ.

*

"Are you fellows alright? You look pretty messed up. You know, I got a call from my dispatcher. People saw you both crumpled up, unconscious, by the side of the road. Have you been drinking? Where is your car?"

"Sorry, officer," I said. "But we have a hotel room booked in La Habra, and, if it's all the same to you, we'd prefer to continue our walk there. We won't be needing any medical attention. There's no crime to report."

"But I'd be happy to bring you in for a checkup. In fact, the local clinic will pay for it. They're doing a study on people like you, gathering testimony to see if we could finally get the state or the feds to allocate some extra funding for the epidemic we got going on around here."

"Epidemic? What kind of epidemic. We're not sick or drunk. We just took a nasty fall. That's all. We really would prefer to just continue walking."

"Walking where?"

"To our hotel room."

"You're on vacation?"

"Yes, on vacation."

"You decided to take a walk down Harbor Boulevard in Rowland Heights and spend the night in a La Habra hotel room? That doesn't sound like much of a vacation to me."

"Call us quirky vacationers. Some people go to Venice and Rome. We go to La Habra. Some people walk the Champs-Élysées. We walk Harbor Boulevard."

The officer shook his head as if hit by a sudden realization.

"Oh, I get it. Solomon's behind this."

"How would you know about Solomon Wedge?"

"All the real insiders have known about him for a while now, not that many of us will ever get to see him though."

"How can that be, since we are first class Orange County socialites and we only heard of him just days ago?"

"Well, I guess you're not first class enough yet."

"So then you already know that we have to walk, so we can't take a ride from you anywhere, unless you drop us off at this exact spot later. We must walk the whole thing."

"Okay then."

"Okay what?"

"Then I have to leave my car parked here and walk with you till I'm certain you don't pass out again. It looks like that green pulse socked you a good one. Some people get sick to their stomach and start throwing up. Some get weak in the knees and fall over again. Someone has to watch you for a while to make sure you don't relapse. I can see you got a mighty bad headache."

"Who said anything about a green pulse?"

"I've been working this road a long time and the same thing's happened over and over. You're not the first, you know."

"It's just the power of suggestion. We were feeling a bit on-edge as it was, and one of the locals just upset our nerves by telling tall tales. That's all. We fainted from nervous exhaustion and nothing more."

The kindly officer helped us to our feet and made sure we were steady before we all set off past the La Habra border and on into town. He did not walk us all the way to our room, but just far enough to be sure we were safely on our way.

"Hey listen," he added as he was getting ready to walk several blocks back to his car. "We have a trauma support group that's there for you anytime you need help. Everyone who works that stretch of road, line workers, sewer workers, park rangers — we all know what's going on, not that anyone from out of the area would believe us. But, you know, we always have each other." (14)

I lied to the officer and pretended as though I might really return to get help for "my problem," because I was anxious for him to leave so I could put this whole episode behind me as soon as possible. (Little did I know that my editor would not want me to put the story behind me, since he is greedy for anything sensational. And I had made the mistake of giving him my hand-written notes before purging that nasty UFO misunderstanding from the text.)

After the officer was a couple dozen feet away, he turned back and said, "Hey guys."

We turned to listen to what he had to say.

"That Solomon Wedge guy. You can trust him. He's got the secret."

"What secret?" I asked, now feeling some small amount of frustration well up in me.

"I can't say. As I said, I never met the man. But I've met people who did; and it changes them, changes them in ways I don't understand."

"In what ways?" I inquired, in a rather flustered voice.

"Oh hey, that's my radio going off," he said. "I need to hurry back to the car. I could get in trouble for taking so long to call in. See you guys."

The officer began a slow and ungainly jog up the street, his gear and equipment hanging off him at awkward angles. He was clearly out of shape, which, I suppose, was to be expected from a beat that carried with it a minuscule amount of criminal activity.

I said to my partner, twice before we each went to our rooms, (and we had to have separate rooms because I am, wouldn't you know it, a claustrophobic insomniac, which explains why I could never marry), "Now, we are agreed. We tripped and fell, hit our heads and had a dream. That's all. Right? I can't have you running around telling people a UFO story that involves me. Got it?"

My partner graciously acceded to this selfish request on my part, and I am grateful. Could you imagine me showing up at some mansion-party in Irvine having to tell, over and over, about the time I thought I got zapped by a spaceship? Oh, that surely would have been the end of my already-tenuous credibility. Surely my, half-successful social climbing would be put to and end by the rumors such a fantastic story would produce.

4.

Suppose we found out what the most prestigious rooms on earth were, and suppose you could be granted access to those rooms. What have you been imagining would happen in those rooms? Are there people there with ten arms and rainbow-colored skin? Are there men with nine penises and women with six breasts having types of sex unknown to humankind? Are there intoxicants there which no one has ever heard of? Are there foods that will cause you to sprout extra tongues and enable you to fly by flapping your arms? If not, then you must admit, there is really nothing going on in those hallowed places that is not approximately going on in your own small and undistinguished apartment right now. What if, then, doing just a little bit better than you're now doing turned out to be a fair enough goal?

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (15)

*

Miles are going by and the absolute lack of architectural flair is beginning to drive me insane. Rowland Heights at least had some natural beauty. This part of La Habra is full of apartments and stores, but none of it has any character whatsoever. We are gaining weight as we are stopping every several blocks to again drink more coffee and cream in hopes that the caffeine will forcibly life my sagging spirits. As sometimes happens on seemingly ill-advised trips, I am now losing hope of ever coming across a single amusing thing. The sterile uniformity and tediousness of everything around us is beginning to become astounding. How is it that not a single builder rebelled and opted, even if just out of defiance, to build something with a few European touches or perhaps some Asian flourishes? How could it be than anyone finally volunteers, after much due diligence, to settle in La Habra? (16)

We are desperate for human warmth. It's not that me and my partner are not good friends, but one needs more than one friend to brighten up one's life. In Rowland Heights, at least people stopped their cars, whether out of suspicion or out of goodwill, to speak to us or see that we were taken care of somehow. But here in La Habra, throngs of cars file past without anyone so much as casting us a curious glance. The sense of isolation is making me fall back into melancholy reminiscences of those things which seem perennially lacking in my life. This is not a good frame of mind, and we frankly are in need of some kind of rescue from the outside. It should be clear by now that neither I nor my partner are living Buddhas and that simply "looking within for our happiness" won't be enough to get us through this long haul. To put it in as pointed a light as possible, we need some love and affection from someone along this road. If that does not come, I fear I'm going to crack up and end up being committed to Patton State Hospital (17) by one of those friendly highway patrolmen.

*

Although I've never subscribed to most of the New Age Law of Attraction voodoo, I will confess to having a small point of agreement with it. I, as well as my New Age critics, agree that desperate people attract predators to them.

That being said, I never bought into the fashionable idea that most suffering people subconsciously try to bring bad people into their world as a way of inflicting pain on themselves and blaming others for their self-destructiveness. Rather, I see the whole situation as one of predator and prey. The predators in nature, when they have a choice, prefer not to go after the most robust and healthy specimens for the simple reason that you could get hurt doing that. Additionally, you could exhaust yourself and fail, thus winding up with less energy and confidence for your next hunt. Why trouble yourself with fast, combative, strong prey, when there are so many nearly defenseless creatures out there in the wide world?

The very old, the very young, the sick, the lonely — these are the bread and butter, the favorite foods, as it were, of the world's high-pressure salesmen, financial scammers, opportunistic muggers and aggressive panhandlers. The weak are not targeted because they are so self-loathing as to want to draw predators to themselves, (though Positive Thinking dogmatists slyly imply this whenever they think they can get away with it without being called out for their cruelty). Rather, vulnerable and troubled people are simply the most plentiful prey and the easiest to subdue. They are the clear and obvious choice of predators, and one can find them on any major street in the world.

I mention all this because me and my partner, having been through some trauma and obviously suffering from boredom, alienation and sensory deprivation, must have presented to any street predator the most deliciously-easy target on earth. From blocks away our body language must have been screaming out for rescue, and, as we know, very few people want to rescue anyone they can take advantage of. While not approving of anyone indulging too deeply in psychic superstition, I feel compelled to say that we were all but broadcasting our emotional and physical vulnerability to the planet around us.

And though environmentalists warn us that the world could soon run out of many major predators, it seems that nature, upon the loss of one major predator, tends to produce another to take its place so quickly as to astound most observers. Hence, the much-touted shortage of predators rarely seems to materialize.

Thus it is eminently reasonable that a band of born-again miracle-mongers should spot us easily and conclude that my partner and I were ripe for the picking. And it would be fair enough to ask: What other people wandering Harbor Boulevard in La Habra looked more in need of salvation and conversion than us? Predator and prey had indeed spotted each other, but alas, the prey was too exhausted to run.

*

My traveling companion has gone temporarily insane. Those evangelists got the better of him and he decided to drag us both to The International Cathedral of Prosperity And Healing. At first I simply forbid him to go with them, but he rebelled and decided to go anyway. Being unable to give up the idea of continuing our trek, I was able to extract from him the promise that he would continue our journey after the revival service was over; but in exchange for that promise, I obliged myself to join him and his evangelist acquaintances at the megachurch. (18)

My partner has answered an altar call and is now wandering, with hundreds of other people ecstatically up to the front of this stadium-sized monolith replete with concert-style sound engineering, Las-Vegas-style lighting and Hollywood-style stage choreography. As these souls make their way forward, an eleven-piece rock band, complete with horns and backup singers, is raising the roof. Fog machines and strobe lights are creating an otherworldly ambiance as a celebrity preacher calls them onward toward the spiritual experience of their lives.

I cannot believe my eyes as I watch my partner raising his hands in exaltation as he prays aloud with his eyes closed. He is alternately singing along with the band and bursting out lines of praise to God. On one side of him is a slender, big-haired blond. On the other side of him is a slightly-obese, brown-haired woman. They are all dancing excitedly and, in turns, embracing each other. My partner seems to be making no distinction between the raving beauty next to him and the matronly woman on the other side of him.

Noting my awe-stricken gaze at my companion, a man next to me turns and says, "We are all one in the Lord. There is no distinction between rich and poor, no distinction between the beautiful and the plain. We are all His children."

The celebrity minister is coming down from the stage and laying hands on all of the newcomers who have answered his call, sending shock waves of bliss into their bodies, to which many react by falling to the ground and writhing or by jumping and shaking as if electricity were surging through their bodies. My partner, upon receiving this healing touch is alternately bursting into song or shouting worshipful phrases to the crowd. The celebrity minister appears more than pleased with my companion's contribution to this fantastical event.

Apparently this congregation is also rather unorthodox in certain details of its communion style. Instead of wafers and grape juice being passed around, caterers are handing out piles of pork chops, lamb chops and chicken wings. Stacks of napkins are circulating so people can clean their hands after enthusiastically gnawing on these victuals. Small bottles of wine are passed to every adult and they are chugging them down with vigor. Many people seem to be making out, although, thankfully, not performing sex acts. The minister declares these liberties are part of a new dispensation revealed to him by the Almighty. I am not sure whether I am pleased or frightened; and so I continue watching with my mouth gaping open much of the time, revealing to everyone around me that I am an innocent in such matters.

Were I not so anxious to get on with the walking tour we had agreed to take, I myself, even if still Agnostic, might be compelled to remain in this neighborhood another week just to get my fill of vicarious living. Even if I cannot live the life of a confirmed believer, I confess I am taking much pleasure in observing these peoples' unreserved happiness, however delusional and impermanent it may or may not prove to be. And while the rational part of my mind disapproves of all of this, I would be lying if I said it is not fully-intoxicating to be in the presence of this mad scene.

*

Because my partner was the star of the show — please forgive my crass wording — the celebrity minister invited us to his office for an after-service partaking of, as he called it, "the high and holy hemp."

Given the multimillion-dollar surroundings we had been exposed to, it surprised me to see that the celebrity minister maintained a rather modest office for a man of his renown. He leaned back in his chair and lit up a pipe which he passed around to us generously. I myself do not like to smoke either cigarettes or marijuana, but I make exceptions for auspicious occasions when either is offered in attempt to bond.

There was not much to say that hadn't been said already over the multi-hour service, and so we really made only small talk. And while I'm also not a man who prefers small talk, the earnestness and simplistic directness of the celebrity minister and his people made even that way of speaking somehow fulfilling. We could have been pleased to sit there with him and his staff for hours, but, I suppose, I felt it incumbent on me to be a bit of a spoilsport and mention that we were men with a duty to see too.

Because I could not bring myself to lie or be evasive to the celebrity minister, and because I felt he would understand or forgive anything, I confessed that my anxiousness to go was related to how very far we had to walk, that distance being, of course, the entire length of Harbor Boulevard.

"Ah," said the minister with a resigned-but-happy smile, "so you're off to see Solomon Wedge. Ah yes."

I asked the preacher if he had any theological objections to whatever it was Solomon taught, but he replied, "Oh no. You see, although Solomon does not share our kind of faith, the Lord made it clear to me long ago that he is of a different dispensation. His kind of path — it's a thing God calls some people too. And though it may seem to conflict with what we teach here, I view the seemingly-contradictory ideas of ours and Solomon's as existing together in a kind of divine mystery, an impenetrable mystery that we may never come to fully comprehend in this lifetime."

I began to press the minister as to what exactly those contradictions might be when suddenly his phone began ringing. He answered the phone and whispered intensely for a few moments with the person who had called.

He hung up the phone and said to everyone, "Well, not only is it time for our friends here to get back on the road, but I have an urgent call from the medical center in Irvine. One of my parishioners is gravely ill and I can't afford to lose any time. I'd like to be at his bedside within the hour. Gentlemen, if you'll please excuse me."

The minister and one or two top aides filed out quickly before my inquires regarding Solomon could be fully addressed. The others in the room had not heard Solomon's teaching directly, but had only gotten opaque hints from their minister about "certain teachings" which were never spelled out. They regarded Solomon with a kind of respect, but could not exactly explicate what his teachings really were.

As the brethren who initially recruited us to view the service drove us back to Harbor Boulevard, two bullets hit the back of the car. They made a loud sound, but no one was hurt, and the car continued to function normally. I'd never been in a car that had been shot at and was rather alarmed.

"Oh, hey," said one of the fine fellows riding with us. "That happens a lot in this neighborhood. The police can't figure out where the gunfire comes from. We lose a few people a year, but we don't panic about that. We don't really even view it as murder. It's just the way of nature. Our home is in Heaven anyway, so we don't take such things so personally."

5.

You have been busy assuring yourself that if you are a man of wisdom, then surely your legacy will remain safe throughout the generations to come. Likewise, you have been talking yourself into believing that idiots, maniacs and criminals will be forgotten, and thus justice will be served. But notice, after all, that no one forgets who Nero is. It is two thousand years later and still we are reminded of his name every week of our lives. And while I say that you ought to, if you have a choice in the matter, try to be the good guy, don't kid yourself that good guys get paid off in the end. Be good because you like to be, not because you're going to win anything by it. That's the least painful way to go about your business. If watching bad people take all the spoils in life is going to hurt your feelings, then you're in for a rough time.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (19)

*

There are three cars parked at the border before Harbor Boulevard makes its way into Fullerton. There is a woman standing next to each car. The first car is bright red, the second one is off-white, and the third is dark blue. The three women are wearing knee-length skirts that match the colors of their respective cars; and they have each dyed their hair, respectively, red, white and blue. They are standing next to their cars with their arms folded, gazing out with provocative and expectant expressions.

I am not happy about this development, because I feel certain it will lead to some kind of trouble. One of the criticisms I hear often of my personality is that my cynical nature and inherent lack of trust are barriers to intimacy. "Barriers?" I ask? How can there be a barrier to something one doesn't want? A locked door is not an impediment to someone who doesn't want inside.

You see, I was a privileged boy, albeit an emotionally neglected one, and so I had early exposure to almost every sort of person in society; and, wouldn't you know it, upon receiving all that varied evidence, I embraced a deep skepticism about people. And so what others might see as some imminent boon, I'm likely to see as a possible trap or trick. My outlook has led many to brand me as bitter and contentious, but no amount of labeling will bully me out of what I see as my God-given right to question everything. (I use the phrase "God-given" reluctantly here, given my present dearth of religious conviction.) And thus, as you could imagine, these three color-coordinated women with their expensive cars and winsome gazes do not strike me as credible or trustworthy.

My partner, however, is again drifting completely out of my control, and it is making me furious. Unlike myself, he is determined to stop and investigate these people. He is ignoring me as I implore him to break away and continue on our walk. He is chatting and bantering like there's no tomorrow as I become angrier and angrier. (And I admit freely now, since the reader has had a few pages to get to know me, that I'm a bit of a control freak and a compulsive cleaner. Yes, I'm sure it's a mild form of OCD, but I refuse to go on any medication for it, nor will I subject myself to the pathetic drudgery of talk therapy.) As the minutes roll by, my partner is now flirting more aggressively with the one in white and paying almost no attention to the one in blue, which has annoyed the woman in blue, who is now getting into her car and driving off with an annoyed look on her face.

The red one is now launching some kind of charm offensive with me, batting her eyelids and confidingly touching my shoulder whenever she makes a point. I am initially unimpressed with all of this and begin to explain that me and my partner had planned to put a few more miles behind us today, and thus we really ought to be going.

Unfortunately my partner is completely taken in by the girl in white and is being lured into the front seat of this woman's white car. I keep trying to convince him that we just do not have time for this kind of nonsense, but it is of no avail. I can see the woman's hand is already creeping toward his and soon events could slip completely out of my grasp. Furthermore, the sheer persistence of the woman in red is beginning to have an effect on me, and so I'm having a harder and harder time resisting her pleas that we all drive off to The Intercontinental Mall of Orange County, a place I have never heard of and would have probably tried to avoid were I made aware of it.

The woman in white is already starting her engine and getting ready to pull out onto the road. Now the woman in red is pulling on my hand, and I'm agreeing to get in her car to go with her on the condition that she follow the white car so that I do not get separated from my partner and thus forfeit my entire mission.

*

To be honest with you, we had a blast. The women had agreed to be our sugar mamas for the day. (20) They had, as the reader might imagine, big appetites for food and beer. And, much to my relief, they were not looking either for sex or for serious relationships. As it turns out, simple companionship was what they craved, that and ordinary materialistic fun. The ring of food establishments around the mall was about five miles long, and every kind of food speciality that I had ever heard of was represented in this seemingly-endless row of restaurants. We had beer and appetizers at a Belgian-style craft brewery, then went to a French restaurant to enjoy our main courses with wine, and still later we went to a Danish coffee-house for pastry and caffeine. And all the time we talked and talked and talked.

Finally, we were told that if we had not taken the train tour of the store galleries, which featured over two thousand stores, then we had not really seen anything of life. And though I didn't believe that could be true, I have a weakness for rail transportation, and so I could not long refuse such a proposal.

The store galleries were chock-full of scenic enhancements; and the main train route was designed to give tourists a clear view of them all. We passed over indoor oceans and glided through indoor forests. We found ourselves alongside indoor rollercoasters and indoor race car tracks. Whole pirate ships were floating in lakes as they fought simulated battles. Underneath, submarines could be seen prowling. Big tanks of water sported leaping dolphins and barking seals. Our train coasted through unimaginably-large aviaries featuring colorful birds of every shape. On every side we were regaled with light displays and video displays and simulations of every phenomena known to man. There was even a nude beach to be seen, complete with naked tourists from around the globe. We passed over simulations of Italian and Dutch canals. We saw simulations of European and Asian neighborhoods replete with replicas of gothic cathedrals, Japanese shrines and Hindu temples. The billions of cubic feet available in this monolith provided a tableau of the whole world, and even the universe, since some rooms the train would pass through would be dedicated to simulating whole galaxies, the images of which were projected onto the walls and ceilings.

The mall had hired thousands of musicians, actors, acrobats, clowns, DJs, magicians and revelers, along with costume models wearing every sort of clothing that could be found from every major country. (21)

Although I am rarely without reluctance to engage in such shameless tourism, I simply could not say "no." And anyhow, there was no way out of this situation without seeing it through to the end, since my partner was along for the whole ride, so to speak, and there was nothing I could do about it. (And the girl in red was a simply splendid companion after all, not that I was falling in love, but rather I enjoyed her company sincerely, as one human being to another; and there was no end of things to say.)

In short, we saw it all, in all its microcosmic splendor, over the hours and hours we spent at that 24/7 house of adventure. We would end up staying in hotel rooms provided by our generous female sponsors. Our wonderful lady-patrons had to be back at work in Newport Beach the next day, and so they left us behind, not pressuring us into anything more than a kiss on the cheek and a sisterly hug, all of which were fine enough for me.

My partner, it seems, had hidden the fact from them that he was a bit disappointed when they left. He had secretly hoped that carnal love might ensue, but frankly, I saw it as a mercy that no such sort of thing came about. There are times when not being lured into love really is like the receiving of a great mercy.

*

As we checked out of the hotel the next morning, a charming clerk, a young college woman, wished us a good day and directed us to the hotel car, a vehicle which had been hired to drop us off at Harbor Boulevard, right at the border between La Habra and Fullerton, precisely at the spot we had been whisked away from the previous day. Strangely, the clerk was wearing a button on her lapel that said, "Solomon."

I inquired as to who this Solomon might be.

"Oh, you know, that's some guy my mother is all into, not romantically, but like he's a teacher or guru or some spiritual guide."

"Really?" I said, "Would he happen to be the one operating out of the Le Pain Quotidien café in Newport Beach?"

"Yes! That's the place they meet. You wouldn't believe how much my mother's life has changed since she started working with him."

Pressing further, I asked, "Would you feel imposed upon if I asked you to describe some of the things he teaches? I've heard so much about him, but no one's gone into detail as to what kinds of specific knowledge he imparts."

"Oh yes, I'd be more than happy to tell you. My mom tells me everything he says to her every time she comes home."

But just as she was about to launch into the heart of the matter, her supervisor came and said, "You're late for your break. You need to go now so we don't get in trouble with the union."

The clerk turned to us sadly and said, "Hey, maybe next time we can talk about it. Good luck on your trip."

The supervisor took over the podium and pointed her polite and angular face towards us and said, "Now is there anything else we might help you gentlemen with today?"

*

While we were in the hotel car on the way back to Harbor Boulevard, a large rock came crashing through the window and landed on the seat next to me. Luckily it missed all of us. The shattering of glass was unnerving, but none of us were injured even slightly.

I was seated in the back, and my partner was seated in front with the driver. And so the driver looked toward the back seat for a moment and said, "This happens abut once month. We've got vandals. But what can you do? The police have tried to get a grip on the situation, but they can't stop the vandals. We're just lucky none of our drivers has been hit in the face by one of those rocks. We're all keeping our fingers crossed that our luck holds out."

6.

You might feel picked on by the universe. You might think that you're being sadistically run around on a futile hamster wheel of greed, lust and envy just for the sport of the gods. Okay, let's say you'r right. But still, you can't be enlightened while you still entertain the notion that being favored by fate will help you. You must let go of the notion that good luck and fortune will set your mind at ease. I'm living here in Newport Beach, in one of the cradles of American wealth. Even if you came here and stayed with me for a year, do you think you would conclude your visit by saying, "Oh, how peaceful it all is?" I mean, really, how much peace do these people here have? I've been walking these streets all my life and I've yet to see the upside. If you're living in a run-down village in an Arkansas trailer park, I say stay where you are. Whatever you do, don't come to California looking for happiness.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (22)

*

Having attended two colleges in Fullerton, and having had the good fortune to graduate from both of them, (23) I decided to use the occasion of this long excursion to check on the condition of my old intellectual hometown. Having not been in the area for a while, it seems I had somehow forgotten the exact locations of those venerable institutions. But alas, after no small amount of confusion, the situation became clear. Both colleges, as I had known them, were gone. Instead they had been replaced by a city-sized institution that represented the merging of all six or so colleges in Fullerton. How and why such an institutional and organizational feat was accomplished, I didn't know. But I was curious to see what the new Philosophy Department would be like as that was the only subject I was most passionate about during my college years.

*

As we entered The Intersectional College of The Americas, the first building we came across was a dormitory that was about forty stories high. It was built in an art deco revival style, complete with blockish stone work and wide lower-floor windows done up in frosted glass and trimmed with heavy steel. While the building had no official sign, someone had drawn out in green chalk on the plaza in front of it, "Welcome To Roommate Hell." And although we were a bit too old to be trespassing into young people's personal space, I could not resist wandering through the halls to see how the young folks were living these days. There was a security guard who stared at us menacingly, but he was too lazy to try to get us to identify ourselves or even ask us to sign in. Because we had the nerve to walk right past him as though it were he that was out of place and not us, he simply let us pass.

As we wandered the floors, it had become clear that someone had disabled the smoke detectors, and thus were students in the hallways smoking marijuana and cigarettes with gusto. Many of them were chugging from bottles of whiskey directly and talking very loudly. Awkwardly, many of the men shuffled about with bare chests and bare feet, wearing only baggy, faded pajama bottoms. Blasting music could be heard from behind the doors of many rooms and occasionally one heard the loud thumps of furniture being shoved against the walls. There was stomping above our heads as young women and men chased each other through the hallways, shrieking and laughing boisterously as they went. Many of the inhabitants left their doors open, and one heard the constant sound of running water from showers and sinks. This was usually accompanied by people shouting to be heard over the splashing water and ever-present banging of guitars. Many students stood in hallways and chatted ceaselessly on their wireless phones. Most of the female hallway denizens had longish, messy hair tied up with various bands and bows and ropes and scarves. Occasionally the police would appear at a door and knock loudly on it and at other times some bewildered school official would be wandering about calling someone's name.

We were not sure what to make of all this, but after a short while we made our way to the exit, glad for having not gotten into trouble.

*

We went to look for the old psychology department through which my former wife had gotten her Master's Degree, but it had been replaced by a vast edifice called The Transatlantic Institute of Grievance Studies. The building was a perfect rectangle about two city blocks long. It's windows were all tinted gray and the concrete walls were painted a kind of military green with intermittent bright red trim. There were two long tables on either side of the front doors, both apparently attended on a continual basis, and one hosting angry students mulling around with hostile looks on their faces. Each table was operated by rival groups who disagreed about practically everything. Two police officers were in continual attendance in order to keep the groups from ending up in a riot.

The first table was occupied by an organization known as The California Students for The Preservation of Free Markets and the second was populated by a group known as The People's Revolutionary Command Council.

The theocratic patriots at the first table had been kicked off of campus several times, but each time they had sued and won the right to return and espouse their doctrines.

The second group, while ostensibly teaching universal love for all of humankind, seemed to be fuming with hatred and almost driven mad by their frustration with the first group.

The first group, while admittedly teaching a kind of social darwinism that advocated allowing all non-successful people to die, (just as unsuccessful animals would be allowed to die in nature), were themselves quite serene looking and exuded an easy friendliness. They were articulate and polite.

I approached the first table and asked a rather chubby student with very full brown locks hanging in his face, "Am I to understand your philosophy to be one of total neglect for the less fortunate?"

This fellow looked up at me through rather thick glasses and said, "It's not that we want to neglect anyone. It's just that a species begins to lose its vitality if it isn't allowed to operate in an environment where only the fittest survive. If we go on supporting people who are naturally too weak to live, eventually the population will become ineffectual and unable to cope. Interfering with natural processes violates the laws of nature and invites disastrous unintended consequences. We may seem to be full of hatred, but in fact we have nothing but love for the human race and wish it well. We're not doing any favors to the world by continually promoting unproductive people; and this is why all social programs and welfare programs have to be eliminated."

One of the students at the rival table had heard this and said, "Shut the fuck up you fascist motherfucker! I'll punch your nazi ass out right now, you asshole!"

And just as the outraged student leapt forth to attack the one I had just been speaking with, one of the police shoved him back to his table and said, "You know the rules. Don't make me arrest you again, because next time we'll charge you with assault, and you won't get out of jail for a long time. Got it!"

The policeman quickly regained his composure and turned to me and said, "Go ahead and ask your questions sir. I'll keep that kid away from this table."

Pressing my previous line of questioning further, I said to the conservative student, "But aren't you supposed to be a Christian? I see a cross on your lapel and a Bible over there. How can you have such a heartless attitude when the scriptures teach nothing but kindness to the poor?"

"That's how you read the scriptures, but I respectfully beg to differ," replied the young man as he pulled a highlighter out of the pocket of his white shirt. "You see here," he said as he highlighted a passage from the Bible, 2 Thessalonians, 3:10: "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."

The young man adjusted his crooked bowtie and added, "So, you see, there's both a liberal and a conservative way to read the Bible, and we choose the conservative way. That being said, we respect the right of our neighbors to read the scriptures the liberal way if they want to. Let each person teach their truth and let the public sort it all out. You could say we believe in a free market of ideas as well as the free flow of capital."

"That's bullshit!" shouted a young woman from the other table who also had a cross hanging from her neck. (The police looked at her sternly, but did not interfere, so long as she kept to her side of the doorway.) "I've read the Bible all the way through twice, and there's no way there's any economic Darwinism in there! And anyway, what are you doing preaching Darwinism when you're supposed to be a Christian who doesn't believe in evolution?"

"I beg your pardon, mam," replied the young conservative, "but some Evangelical Protestants believe in evolution. Even the Catholic popes have taught for years that the Biblical account of creation is not to be taken literally. I'm afraid your information is old. Your interpretational methods are hopelessly out-of-date."

Some other students walking by overhead this debate and one of the men from that group shouted, "Some day we'll chase all you racist, sexist pigs back into the deep, dark holes you come from. I can hardly wait till we do away with this colonialist constitution written by a bunch of slave-trading plantation owners!"

And a young woman in the passing group with tattered cut-offs hollered, "Freedom of speech is bullshit. Freedom of speech is hate speech."

And a third person in that group concluded, "One day we'll deplatform you completely and put you out of business forever, motherfucker! Why don't you just go off and die, you putrid scumbag!"

Upon hearing this, the students at The People's Revolutionary Command Council table burst into a chant, "Purge all hate! Purge all hate! Purge hate!"

The policemen paced back and forth between the tables, making sure no one made a move to cross over to the other side of the doorway.

As the people from the second table chanted, the conservative young man I had been speaking with shook my hand and said over the din, "Here's our brochure. There's lots of resources and ample contact information if you want to learn more about us and our mission. It's been a pleasure to meet you, sir."

I looked around me and noticed my partner was no longer by my side. About fifty feet away, I could see him animately talking to a female professor. The professor seemed to be about fifty years old, but extremely vivacious and outgoing. I've never known my partner to have an intellectual bent, and so I don't know how he would so quickly establish common ground with an academic person. However, I was, with no small effort, able to get him to break away from the conversation and go with me to the Philosophy Department.

*

When we arrived at the Philosophy Department office, it was obvious that they were in the process of closing the place down. Workers, at the direction of the soon-to-be-unemployed professors, were helping to pack up boxes and haul away furniture. Everything was being pulled off of the walls and even many fixtures were being removed. Apparently this building had never been remodeled and was very old. One of the workers, a man who spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent, told me that after the Philosophy Department was finished clearing out, the whole place was scheduled to be demolished and replaced with another facility the function of which he had no way of knowing.

I looked around with dismay and perhaps seemed almost helpless in my disappointment. At last a worn-looking, skinny woman in frumpy, nondescript clothes and a gray bandana came to our aid. She pushed her spectacles up on her nose and said, "I'm sorry, gentlemen, as you can see, we're wrapping things up around here. Are you an alumni looking for information about the department reunion?"

"What do you mean by 'wrapping things up?'" I asked. "Is the department moving to another building? I got a Philosophy Degree in this city, and I was anxious to see what the department was up to these days."

"Oh dear," said the woman in a compassionate tone. "We need to have a little talk. Would you care to sit down? We have a few chairs left in the office to the left."

Me and my partner sat in a couple of old, institutional looking chairs as the woman, who was the head of the Philosophy Department, heaved herself into the remaining seat.

"So, my friends, it's over. We're not just moving. We're closing down. There's no Philosophy Department in this city anymore."

"Why?" I exclaimed. "What's the problem?"

"Well, you see, it's about ideas. Nobody likes ideas anymore. Philosophy, as you know, is about comparing and contrasting ideas. These students now are easily triggered, easily traumatized by any idea that does not conform rigidly to intersectionalism. If you don't know what intersectionalism is, you'll have to look it up on your own, because I don't have time to explain it to you now. We've only got a few more hours left before we have to be out of here.

"The university now views itself as having only two functions, the first being to teach students computer science so they can move to Silicon Valley. Most of humanity will apparently have to find a way to squeeze itself into Silicon Valley. There's really no other economic game that matters now. The other function the university serves, after technical job training, is to provide a safe space for delicate and wounded students.

"Debate, rigorous cross-examination of theories, the attempt to discredit bad ideas, the freedom to disagree, dissent, rebellion — all of these are just over forever. The university is moving toward two majors only, one in computer science and the other in grievance studies. Those who can handle math and science will join the tech sector, and those who are too broken to focus in that way will study how to propagate and reinforce anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial dogma. Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Religious Studies and Comparative Philosophy — that's all going away and never coming back.

"The administration is narrowing its focus onto two populations only, those needing protection from unsafe ideas and those who can learn calculus. The calculus people will run the world from an engineering standpoint and the wounded people will control all language and all social thought to make sure no one disagrees with them. That's it. And so my profession is over, just over.

"And, by the way, you'd better save your old Philosophy ebook files to DVD disks, and you'd better get any other Philosophy books in paperback form soon, because Philosophy won't be allowed on the Internet for very long. I think the students here call it, 'the apologetics of white supremacy' or 'the residue of white nationalism' or something like that. Whatever they call our art form, it's going to be declared as hate speech soon, and as soon as that happens, it becomes illegal. And their plan for anyone who defies them is to hunt them down and hound them to death. Our days are numbered, my friend. And, speaking of that, I've got to excuse myself, as we need to hustle to get our things out of here before these kids come and beat the crap out of us or find some pretext to have us arrested. Anyway, I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry."

*

As we made our way away from the older part of the campus to see the new Computer Sciences Campus, we noticed a shabby, old building that looked like some uninspired 1970s construction project now in disrepair. The smoked glass had begun to be hopelessly discolored. The aluminum trim was popping off in places and looked thin and cheap. Some panes of glass on the second floor had already been broken by vandals throwing projectiles of some sort.

There was one open door on the side of the building where people could be seen hustling away the last of their effects, presumably fearing the same fate those in the Philosophy Department were fearing. There was a faded sign that had formerly said World Religions Department, but it had been vandalized with graffiti which said, in large, swirling, blue letters: "Logic and reason are white privilege. Death to white privilege."

I shook my head in dismay. I'll admit that it came as a shock to me that virtually all of the topics I loved were being purged from the world. But as I turned to resume my progress, I noticed a single-sheet flyer taped to a board covering over a broken window. The flyer said, "February 23rd, 6PM, World Religions Building." Below that it announced, "Seminar On The Unknown Life And Secret Teachings of Solomon Wedge." But a big red stamp below that said in block print, "Canceled."

*

We came upon a wall made of high bushes about eleven feet tall. We could not see what was on the other side. In the middle was a series of bowers forming something like a tube of plant life. After walking through this remarkable structure, we came upon the industrial-park-like complex that formed the Computer Sciences Campus. This campus consisted of a dozen buildings in a circle which was about a two miles in circumference. The buildings were evenly spaced and all exactly the same size, and they were positioned exactly as the twelve hours would be on an ancient analog wall clock. Each building was shaped like an outsized diamond of many facets. The buildings were designed by an architect that modeled each one after a diamond made by an expert diamond cutter in Antwerp. As the sun shone off these monoliths, they gleamed and shimmered, reflecting prismatic light off of every facet. Each of the structures were surrounded by acres of perfectly-manicured lawns and decorative pools inlaid with multicolored tile. Surging fountains graced the center of each pool. A few blocks forward was a sign indicating we were approaching a reception hall. There seemed to be no other reasonable course than to continue onward toward those buildings.

*

The lobby was as grandiose as the outside of the buildings. Massive mobiles of glass and steel hung from the multi-story foyer. Drones were flying through the open-air, some scanning visitors as they walked in and others carrying packages and paperwork around the facility. There was a full-time pianist that played Mozart works on a concert grand piano. Several video screens showed short films about advancing technology and artificial intelligence. There was a long, green marble desk behind which sat a conscientious-looking security guard. Every several seconds one or two people would walk through the lobby to access another part of the building. Beyond that, the place seemed somewhat uneventful.

Before we could reach the security desk to ask about getting a tour of the facility, our names were being called by a friendly-sounding man who was coming into the lobby from the right. We turned to him as he approached us, extending his hand in order to issue a firm and friendly handshake.

"How did you know our names?" I asked.

"That was easy enough. We have access to virtually every video camera in Orange County, and so our data-gathering systems automatically follow most people walking down Harbor Boulevard. We study what they look at, and how long they look, among other things; and things like that enhance our marketing information technology studies. Our AI systems can tell by a person's expressions whether they're involved in a tourist excursion or not. Our facial recognition software and tracking systems knew you were headed this way; and anyway, the drones in our lobby looked at you and verified your identification the moment you came in. Trust me, there's nothing here that isn't already standard technology in a hundred other places around the world. But we're glad to receive a visit from you, as you're a very tiny party of the history of artificial intelligence, nothing a historian would note, but we, nonetheless, (or rather, our machines), have not forgotten you." (24)

We talked a bit about the very minimal involvement I had in my student days with our attempts to get machines to communicate with people in ways that seemed natural and conversational. (For me, computers and Philosophy have often been intertwined.) Eventually we were invited into the man's office to talk more.

As we sat down in his rather nondescript office, I asked, "So can we have a tour of the buildings?"

"I would be happy to oblige you, but I'm afraid it would be a big disappointment. You see, there's nothing to see in these buildings but cubicles and rectangular offices. We don't manufacture anything here, and so there's just people, desks and computers. That's all."

"What else do you know about us?"

"That's a very interesting question. It seems your smartphone has all its privacy settings on default, meaning half the world could, if it wanted to, see and hear almost everything you say and do. Thankfully you have no bent toward illegal activity, or I'm afraid you'd be serving a life sentence by now."

"So then you know what we're up to?"

"Yes, just as you stepped through the door my laptop computer flashed the words, 'Harbor Boulevard explorers.' And, as you already knew, it was able to give me a brief history of your life and works, especially those involving your former university, the grounds of which were adjacent to our campus here. And, by the way, I must add that your taste in women was quite spectacular back when you were young. Oh my, but you were a go getter, weren't you?"

My face heated up and I could tell I was turning red, but I suppressed my emotions and asked, "Did you see our trek through Rowland Heights, then?"

"I'm certain our central computer knew all about it."

"Then could you find the footage of the spaceship that knocked us out?"

The man paused, and then carefully said, in a quiet tone, "That is a controversial subject regarding which the U.S. military has intervened. Only they, and the employees here who have security clearances, are allowed access to that particular part of our information stream. Thus we are not permitted, at this time, to release any footage from that rather ominous part of our local world."

"So then you know it's real!"

"I'm sorry, but I just can't say anything more about that topic. However, if there any other questions you might have, feel free to ask."

"What about Solomon Wedge then?"

"I saw the public notices that some of our faculty were about to present a public forum on his life and teachings, but it seems those particular professors have all decided to flee their posts given the present dangers afoot in the field of Humanities. The topic seemed curious enough to me, but alas, I'm afraid neither of us will be able to avail ourselves of that arcane knowledge just yet."

Suppressing the desire to heave out a sigh of frustration, and regaining my presence of mind, I said, "I never got to meet my maternal grandfather. Would there be a way you could help me with that? The genealogy websites seem to have come up with very little about him. I thought, with all the data you have flowing through here, you might . . ."

"Consider it done," the man said as he typed the request into his keyboard. "The printout will be waiting for you at the front desk. It's a lightning-fast printer, a technological wonder, even for us. The manuscript should be ready by the time you get there."

"Manuscript?" I replied.

"Yes, I'm showing about a hundred pages of research available on him. By the time you're done reading it, you'll know more about his life story than most of the people you've met."

As we got up to leave the building, the man inquired, "Is there anything else we can do to help you today?"

"Not much," I replied. "but you could point us to the best way to get back on Harbor Boulevard from here. I'm afraid my maps app has gotten buggy lately."

"Ah," sighed the man, "then you've not heard about that particular section of the road?"

I shook my head in the negative.

"Well, it's changed quite a bit in the last couple of months? When was the last time you covered the stretch of Harbor Boulevard going through Anaheim?"

"A few months, I suppose — maybe more. I seem to have lost track of time lately."

The man pointed out of his window to the far edge of the complex and added, "Okay, just go past the furthest building out by the perimeter of our campus. The Anaheim border is right there. There'll be someone there who can explain everything."

7.

I could try to save your ego right now by telling you that there is some great accounting, some phenomenal reckoning coming, a day where the gods will extol your virtue and condemn your ruthless enemies. And we could even proclaim that your goodness will elevate your soul above those of the animal kingdom, causing your soul to righteously ascend while the baseness of brutes causes their souls to sink downward. But I'm not here to bullshit you. In the end, my guess is that you're going to have to become the person you want to be because that represents who you are and represents what you want to say about your life. As for how history and the heavens will judge you — that's anyone's guess. If there is an almighty God, be sure of this: You'll never know what He wants or what He's thinking. If any person or any book tries to tell you differently, don't believe them.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (25)

*

We have reached the distant edge of the campus and have met with an odd sight. As far as we can see, there are only sand dunes. Just a few feet from where the sand dunes begin, a man is seated at an information booth made of plywood. He is seated on a long bench also made of plywood. The top of the booth above the young man's head is adorned with large white letters saying, "Welcome to New Black Rock City."

The sky is clearer than ever and the sun is beating down on us rather harshly. I seem to be breaking out in a sweat. My partner, on the other hand, is saying nothing but appears to be soaking in the sun with gusto. He is breaking into an easygoing smile which I find irritating somehow. It's as if he were receiving a big hug from the world. Suddenly it occurs to me that I'm sick of the sun and would prefer, perversely, to be in the cold, foggy Avenues of San Francisco.

Since I don't know why a vast swath of city appears to have been replaced by sand dunes, I figure I must approach the man in the booth to get the lowdown on whatever weirdness is going on here.

The man in the booth has long dreadlocks wrapped in multicolored ribbons. He is not wearing a shirt, and his skin seems prematurely wrinkled from too much exposure to the sun. Also, his skin has the shiny and pocked look that one sometimes sees with hopeless addicts of one sort or another. His head is facing down toward a ledge built into the booth to serve as a kind of desk. He is engrossed in a paperback book entitled, "An Analysis of Kafka and Fellini: Contrasts And Similarities In The Motifs of Alienation and Nostalgia."

*

"Excuse me, sir."

"Yeah, man. What's up?"

"Are we lost, or is Harbor Boulevard around here. We were going to walk from here to Disneyland in Anaheim. You could say we're on a nostalgia kick of our own."

"Ooh. Harsh. Yeah. Sorry, dude."

"Sorry?"

"Right, you see, the thing is that they discontinued Disneyland. They kept trying to prop up the concept, but, in the end, as installation art, it just got weak and outmoded. You can only patch up an old idea for so long before it's time to do a demolition and come up with something new, something fresh, you know?"

"Well, what about Harbor Boulevard? What about Anaheim?"

"Now, now, yah! You must not read the Orange County Register very often, because if you did, you'd already know that Anaheim didn't hold up either. I mean, the raw aesthetics were — well, you have to admit, there was just kind of nothing holding it all together. It didn't hang together from an artistic point of view. I don't mean to be brutal, dude, but basically they bulldozed it and went with a new installation project?"

"Anaheim is now an installation project?"

"Yep. What we did is just decide to have Burning Man be a year round thing. It's so flexible that the installations can morph all year round. We're in a continual state of demolition and construction. Every night we start from scratch and see what needs to be next. And, the term 'The City of Anaheim' got cut. We now call it 'New Black Rock City.' (26) That's why Harbor Boulevard had to go. We basically covered everything with several stories of sand dunes, so we could always be in the desert."

"But they can't have destroyed all of Harbor Boulevard. I just drove down part of it last week."

"What city?"

"In Costa Mesa."

"Right — so they only took out the Anaheim section and left everything else. Once you cross all the dunes, the road picks back up in Garden Grove. If you follow along toward the center of Burning Man, you'll be following along the old Harbor Boulevard route. And if you just keep walking in a southerly direction, you'll come off the last dune and set your feet on the pavement in Garden Grove. By the way, you look kind of pale, so a walk in the sun couldn't hurt you any."

"Pale?"

"Oh, sorry, man. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"That's okay. I'll be fine. Thank you for the information."

"Cool or whatever."

*

The sun has become oppressive. I'm feeling tired and dispirited. We've come across several other hikers, all of whom indicated that the center of Burning Man was only a little ways further; but, from their point of view, a little ways is apparently five miles in sweat-inducing heat. My face is turning red due to mild heat exhaustion and my annoyed frustration.

What makes this portion of our trek even more annoying for me is that my partner is thriving in the heat, smiling at the sun and stretching his arms out as if in love with the desert-like conditions. Of course I should be happy for him, but I am jealous of his outburst of vibrant liveliness. To make matters worse, he has burst into song, singing each verse of A Horse With No Name by the ancient 70s folk-rock band "America." (27)

*

The truth of the matter is that I am now alone in a primitive yurt at the far end of the new Anaheim desert, perhaps a mile from the center of Black Rock City's main doings. I am spending days here by myself poring over whatever reading materials I could scrounge from other campers nearby. (While I have a smartphone, I, like many others in my age group, prefer printed books and magazines.) And, much to my dismay, a good deal of what was available around here is poetry. But it doesn't really matter what I read, since the reading is merely some kind of visual and mental stimulus to engage in between naps, and I'm napping most of the day and night to deal with my sense of dejection.

Although I'm usually an insomniac, I find I'm sleeping sixteen hours a day in between bouts of attempting to digest these second-hand poetry books and literary journals.

Even though I'm far too old and far too stodgy for such things, the whimsically-souled sparkle ponies (28) have approached me offering whatever physical pleasures a man of my age could dream of. Little do they know that I've grown so cynical that passing the day making love sounds more than a little cloying to me. Their youth, far from impressing me, is somewhat off-putting. Be that as it may, I must humor them and pretend that I would have accepted their tender mercies had I not been in the throws of bad health just now. But, being the little savior-women that they are, they have decided that a generous supply of opium gummies would soothe my bedraggled soul; and on this count they are correct. And to keep the supply coming, I must attempt to be as flirtatious and flattering as I can without sickening myself utterly. There is also the annoying fact that, as long as they are helping me, I must essentially pay all their bills; but there is no way to challenge this situation as I am a guest in this culture and have no standing to try to change the rules.

Some reflections on how I ended up in this state:

Firstly, this attempt to walk Harbor Boulevard is far more demanding than I ever imagined it could be. Simply too much has happened and way too many things have changed in what I thought was a fairly stable world. I am too old to try to understand the disappearance of whole cities and the sudden advent of mean-spirited UFOs. The changes apparent in the social and political order are also painful to me. Never in my life have I felt so dislocated.

Additionally, I suspect that some of these changes in my reality are somehow connected to the machinations of Solomon Wedge and his friends, though I have no way of knowing how they could exert such vast control over the environment. These are the sort of deliberations that could set one off into a round of paranoid thinking, but, thankfully, the opium seems to regulate that otherwise dangerous psychological tendency, at least in the short run.

And then there is the matter of my partner. The reason he is not staying with me in the yurt at the edge of the desert is because he has enthusiastically embraced New Black Rock City and its more extreme forms of expression. Once he saw the majesty and the diversity of installations and activities here, he put his foot down and declared that he would not continue on the journey with me unless I agreed to wait for three entire days while he sussed out the entire scene and all its possibilities. Since there was no way I was going to give up on this trek now, and since there was no way I was going to spend three days acting like a college student on some kind of rampage, I was relegated to attempting to pass the three-day period in this yurt made of llama skins and other odd materials.

Because I don't have the energy to follow my partner around as he investigates all of the peculiarities of this city, I have been bribing the sparkle ponies to act as my spies, which has enabled them to soak me for even more funds. But, in spite of their reputation for ineffectuality in most difficult tasks, apparently spying and gathering drugs is a strong point for them. Every few hours one of them comes and reports on everything.

My partner has been traipsing around, so they tell me, to every camp and installation site around. He has been smoking every joint he could get anyone to share with him, and he has been chatting up every beautiful woman and every artist around. He is said to be ingesting every type of psychedelic drug being circulated, and he is further reported to be spending hours and hours dancing at raves with nearly-naked people whose bodies are painted over with brightly-hued body paint. All night the dancing continues under strobe lights to the tune of pumping, nearly-robotic house music of the sort I had somehow thought had faded out of popularity already.

Somehow he's gotten his hands on sacks of glitter and is throwing it over himself and others as they pass by. Outrageously, he was spotted in a big tent making love to three women at once as a crowd of more timid men watched on. Because of this outburst of outgoing assertiveness, the young people accept him as one of their own. (I believe people of our age should be ashamed at such a casual intermingling of the generations. But apparently my beliefs account for next to nothing anymore.) It appears that our timing has been auspicious, because, before we leave, the whole city is expected to watch the giant wooden man being burned.

The sparkle ponies have included, in their description of my partner's escapades, details about every major display visited, the rides being taken in various art-cars, the oblations offered at several so-called temples and the manner of rituals undertaken by brand new cults operating out of small booths made of spindly wood poles and cloth.

And, returning to the subject of poetry, it appears my partner has a proclivity for free-association poetry-jamming and stream-of-conscious spoken-world ranting. Perhaps they regard him as some kind of mixture between bard and oracle.

These reports are coming to me between long naps and fitful dinners, which, I confess, I am also overpaying the sparkle ponies to procure for me. Never before have I felt so useless and so alone, but I must endure this, especially since there are only three more cities to see after this. There just can be no calling this thing off.

8.

The universe has a little secret: The bad guys will almost always be stronger than you; and the bad guys will continually be switching sides. (The good guys only win when the universe wants to throw everyone off balance.) If you ever feel invincibly strong, it's probably because you joined the wrong team and didn't even know it. We don't intend to be bullies, but sometimes we find out we were the oppressors. The person bullying you is probably doing it to take revenge against people who disappeared from his life decades ago. Almost all anger is displaced, since almost no one has the courage to confront the real people who are making them miserable. The important thing is to have the humility to know that tomorrow you'll be tricked into doing the very thing you condemn today. It would help if you had someone to back you up, but any backup system you invent tends to backfire. Nature doesn't like anyone who hides out from its fury.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (29)

*

This section of Harbor Boulevard going through Garden Grove is filled with a dystopian emptiness and a suburban blandness that I admit I find totally welcome. Being heavily populated and full of traffic, its emptiness is not the kind we confronted in Rowland Heights. It's a kind of busy emptiness that would probably rub most people the wrong way. However the last several days have been far too full for me; and having the kind of free-floating anxiety I do, I do not do well when I'm over-stimulated for extended periods of time.

My partner has no particular mental illness that I'm aware of, and thus he experiences boredom and exhilaration freely and without undue cost. Even his anger and frustration have a simplicity and forthrightness to them that I both admire and envy. It's virtually never his fault when I'm mad at him, since it is me that has a problem processing emotions and then letting go of them at the proper time. He simply dislikes things and enjoys things, and directly says so. Unlike me, he does not over-explain, over-think, or engage is excessive rationalization or justification. He just is who he appears to be. How he puts up with all of the duplicity and manipulativeness inherent in my conflicted personality, I'll never know. Sometimes people like me get better friends than they deserve.

The mystery of friendship and romance is something I suppose I'd like to ask Solomon Wedge about when I see him, though, as I walk down this street, I somehow get the feeling such a needy and simplistic question would be beneath him. But really, after all this, I know nothing about the man, or do I?

What I've been through lately has made me feel a yearning for something missing in my life; and, believe it or not, some credulity and gullibility are welling up in me as I trod along moodily and silently contemplating things. It's almost like I don't care what Solomon says when I finally come into his presence, because, at this moment, I feel blindly inclined to accept whatever he might say, in the way an Evangelical might accept the infallibility of the Bible or a believing Catholic might accept papal authority. For some reason, although a most hard-bitten agnosticism usually suits me fine, I find I need to believe in something now. But why now? You might laugh at me for thinking this, but I'm feeling like this quest to meet this person is giving some meaning to my life, not that I could even begin to say what that meaning might be. But I am not too worried about these feelings, as they too are probably a reaction to stress, and my usual cynicism will likely return sooner rather than later.

Although my partner and I have had some disagreements and some incompatible preferences during this trip, we are both obviously glad that neither of us wants to talk for a while. Also, it seems obvious that neither of us has any complaints with each other at this point. Any disagreements from the past seemed to have simply rolled on by. It seems more than obvious why I accept him. Who could dislike such a pleasant person? The fact that he holds no grudges against me is a gift I will simply have to thank the gods for, should such a time come that I ever feel more affectionate towards whatever things gods might me.

It will take us a while to get to the Santa Ana border as we are walking slowly. After the Santa Ana segment of this street, only the stretch along Costa Mesa will remain. And then, upon arriving at the end of the Costa Mesa portion of the road, we shall have passed this most unreasonable test of walking the entire length of Harbor Boulevard. At this point I would not turn back for all the world.

An unseasonably hot breeze is pressing against us like a warm hug, as if the whole county were embracing us. (Please excuse my anthropomorphizing. I'm afraid I'm giving in to some sentimentality.) This particular breeze does not have the full force of the legendary Santa Ana winds (30) which are a thing one would have to experience to even understand or believe in. But it's similar to the Santa Ana winds in the way it gives one the sensation of the whole environment breathing hot air all at once. How could one not feel alive when the whole environment feels like a living person with their own kind of lungs and voice? Because of the expansiveness of the air currents around here, all of the trees for a mile in every direction can be heard moving the same way at once. It's as if a chorus were singing. How odd that such a wonderful natural phenomena should occur in such a nondescript part of this city, a part of town which is otherwise almost colorless and coldish looking.

*

The street was blocked off and traffic police were directing people toward a detour around Harbor Boulevard. The sidewalks were still clear and there was no problem with continuing our journey on foot. Perhaps there was some kind of youth-oriented event going on, since everywhere were seen almost exclusively children. Only the occasional adult was seen wandering through, most of whom seemed to look morose, as though they had somehow been obliged to be there against their will. However, the farther we walked, the more it became clear that there was no special event hosted by any particular organization. This was neither a school function nor a church function, nor was it some kind of excursion. It was all just random kids alternately playing or hanging out in troublesome-looking groups.

It felt awkward for us to be there, but we continued forward undaunted, as we figured in another block or two, the whole thing would end and normal traffic would resume on Harbor Boulevard. But this was not the case. Instead it looked like this juvenile-autocracy was continuing for a mile or two, perhaps all the way to the Santa Ana border. Because this area was perilously close to where I grew up in the completely nondescript and undistinguished city of Stanton, (31) I began to fear I might see childhood friends perhaps chaperoning their own kids to this event which seemed to have no name. But then again, there were so few parents here that one wondered where all the parents of these kids were and why these children were permitted to mingle about managing their own affairs. Why did not the police patrol anywhere but the perimeter?

Certain unhappy memories were coming up for me and this had directly affected my mood. My partner's life was generally far happier than mine, and his childhood was not so problematic. My childhood, on the other hand, could be classified as a thoroughgoing disaster, albeit a disaster with a lot of enjoyable highlights.

*

A teenage boy was standing in front of us.

He said, "Do you want to play?"

"Play what?" I asked.

"Hide and seek."

"Hide and seek?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Aren't you a little old to be playing hide and seek?"

"Yeah, but we like it anyway."

The boy appeared to be about fourteen. His hair was blond and his forelocks hung over his forehead and slightly covered one eye. His cheeks were flushed red, as though they had been scrubbed red by some Anglo mother of the Victorian age. He was of slight build and wore a light plaid shirt and corduroy shorts.

He wanted to introduce us to his friends who stood near a closed storefront some thirty feet from the road. One of the friends, also white, was grossly overweight and suffering from severe acne. That young man had long, dark, curly hair that looked unwashed. There was a sadistic and sinister grin on his face and his clothes hung loosely off him in an unkempt way.

There was a Mexican girl there who would ordinarily have been quite attractive to boys of her age group. However, apparently wanting to be just one of the guys, she hid every traditional trace of femininity, even going so far as to wear an unseasonably-thick coat. She sported an old Anaheim Angels hat that her father must have given her, and there were no signs of makeup on her. Her face was set in a kind of hostile gangster expression; but even so, there was somehow a warmth radiating from her and she chatted expressively to each of the guys in her crew.

Additionally, there was a Vietnamese guy who looked almost seventeen. His dark hair was stylishly cropped short and had an almost executive look to it. He seemed out of place with this particular group because he was smartly dressed in casual business clothing featuring a Joseph A. Bank sport coat. He was talking earnestly with the others, as if consulting them on some future business deal. One noticed a car pulling up near him every so often, and he, while seemingly clean shaven and sober himself, was dealing out some kind of contraband to the occupants of these vehicles, a substance that came in small, plastic, manilla-colored packets.

The blond boy's face was both sincere and insolent. His expression was welcoming but also impatient.

"I'm afraid I've rather outgrown hide and seek, unless one counts all the tragic chasing after women that I've done as another take on that game," I said.

"Then we could do something else," the boy replied. "The fat, ugly one over there is really cool. He always has a flask of whiskey in his jacket and lots of good cigarettes. Do you want to smoke and drink with us?"

"What? Are you crazy? We would be seen by the police and your parents as having provided alcohol and tobacco to underage people, and that, my friend, is considered contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

"No, not now. Can't you see there's only a few adults around? It's almost all kids because, when we're here, we make the rules. We are the law till midnight. The adults can help if we ask them, but otherwise they have to butt out of our business."

"Why would the county government allow such a thing?"

"It's part of a truce. We agree to behave their way all week, so long as we get one day a week where we take over this part of town. That's the new rules."

"But wouldn't it be creepy for teenagers to be pals with grumpy, old adults?"

"We're lonely."

"Lonely?"

"But you have all your friends around you, and you can do whatever you want. Why would you be lonely?"

"The adults who do come through here don't want to talk very much to us. They're here to help, if they can. (Sometimes they can't help because of the new rules.) But they think if they talk to us too much, it would be like interfering, and the county says there is to be no interfering. So would you come and drink and smoke with us?"

"No, I'm afraid we just can't join you for that sort of thing. And we really have to be walking along. We're due in Costa Mesa soon."

"Why you got to walk all the way there?"

I smirked ironically, figuring the kid would have no idea what I meant, and said, "We're going to meet a man named Solomon."

"Oh, Solomon Wedge. Yeah, I heard of that guy."

"Who told you about Solomon Wedge?"

"My dad. He has money and connections, so he can hang out with anyone he wants to."

"What did your dad say about Solomon?"

"No much. He told me it's best to wait till I get out of college and get a job before thinking about those things."

"Those things?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll bet it's all that creepy stuff about the meaning of life and the ways of the world, all that stuff that weird people are into. That's what I think of all those people. They're weird. Something's a little strange about them. I can't put a finger on it because my parents won't tell me much. But I think I don't even want to meet Solomon when I get older."

From behind us there erupted a startling volley of gunfire. (32) As we turned to look, we could see that several cars had pulled up. Soon the street was full of white gangsters shooting it out with Mexican gangsters. Each gang was partially multiracial, and so there were Asian and black kids in the mix. And so, for these gangsters, loyalty apparently mattered more than race.

The shootout did not last long. After a few people hit the ground, the remaining people jumped in their cars and drove off. The victims were mortally wounded and bled out quickly. By the time an ambulance made its way through the crowd of self-governing children, it was way too late to rescue the victims. As the minutes went by, everyone simply stood and stared and said very little.

While my partner seemed disgusted and nauseated at what he had seen, he did not seem completely broken up by it. I, on the other hand, was now a nervous wreck. It was all I could do not to faint or collapse. All of the energy seemed to drain from me and a seemingly bottomless horror filled me from head to toe. It felt for a while as though I myself might need to be taken away in one of those ambulances. It took me a while of sitting on a bus bench and trying to catch my breath before I could get a grip on myself. My heart had been pounding so hard that it frightened me.

The paramedics and the police did not interact with the onlookers who were almost all juveniles, nor did they even say much to each other. They morosely hauled away the dead as a crew of street cleaners positioned themselves to take over after the downcast authorities had left.

When the ambulances and police cars were gone, and when the street cleaners began their work, I turned to the boy who had been speaking with us, who was strangely unmoved by the spectacle that had taken place in front of us, and said, "Aren't the police going to interview witnesses and try to catch the people who turned this street into a war zone?"

"No, there's nothing they can do."

"But surely they can look for the perpetrators after the self-governing day ends?"

"That would be a violation of the rules of non-interference. They can't stop the gangs here. There's nothing anyone can do. We just have to try to live with it. That's all."

I shook my head and concluded, "Listen, this has all been too much for me. I've never seen people firing guns in public. I'm afraid I'm going to have to get to my hotel room and sleep this off. I'm pretty shaken up. This section of Harbor Boulevard is way to dangerous for me. I've got to get out of here. Watching those kids get shot is going to put me in the shrink chair for a year, I'm afraid. It's all I can do to keep from freaking out and crying in front of everybody."

"Whatever," said the boy.

As we turned to leave, the boy said, "Hey mister, will you and your buddy come and visit us sometime when you aren't so busy?"

"Why would I ever come back here after what I've seen?"

"We're lonely. We're bored."

"Why do you come here if it makes you unhappy?"

"I don't know. It's just that everyone else does it. I don't want to be the only one sitting at home by myself when everyone else is here."

"I can't sort it out for you. I have to go."

"Okay. Bye."

As we turned to leave, a few of those manilla-colored plastic packets hit the ground in front of us. We looked up to see the executive-looking guy smiling at us as he drove off to see to other transactions. I ignored the trouble that I imagined such packets could bring, but my partner felt otherwise and casually picked up the packets and put them in his pocket. I stopped and stared at him for a minute like he was completely out of line, but he just winked one eye confidingly, as though unaware of my silent censure, and continued to trod along Harbor Boulevard, not even turning back to look at me. Of course I caught up to him after a moment of standing there steaming with disapproval. Neither of us spoke till we saw the border marker for Santa Ana. As fate would have it, we did not cross that border immediately, but would face another delay.

*

My partner and I have decided to sit down at the last bus stop in Garden Grove before crossing over into Santa Ana. He is, as my hippie friends used to say, "coming on" to the drugs he has taken. Before I could warn him not to do it, he began simply opening those suspicious packets and consuming everything inside as if it were candy. From what I can gather by my partner's symptoms, the packets seemed to have contained a mix of hallucinogens and speed.

As the high kicked in to full gear, my partner's life flashed before him like a quickly running reel of film would run back in the old days before digital production. He was flashing back on every memory he'd ever had, crying sentimentally as he recalled certain things and becoming agitated with anger as he remembered other things.

Ticking off highlights of love affair after love affair, he expressed all of the emotions he felt and told what it was like to get a crush on each person involved. In addition to that, he also related the truth about every false relationship he'd ever been in and admitted in frank detail how he'd gotten entangled with people toward whom he had no affection whatsoever.

As he was into sports for a long time, he shared intricate specifics about his ponderous sports card collections, his attempts to be a professional umpire, his aborted attempt to join a junior high basketball team, his very brief tenure as a high school football lineman, the joy of playing hockey on roller skates in the streets, the happiness of being in a bowling league, the strange and violent sensations of participating in boxing, fencing and karate, the endless fun of wrestling with any of his playmates who were willing.

All of this led naturally to an explanation as to how his life suddenly began to revolve around music, and how sports was later abandoned in favor of classical guitar lessons. He gave detailed accounts of his participation in garage bands, his singing in concert choir, his years spent composing songs, his attempts at recording music in a Hollywood studio, and the fruitless efforts he made to become famous. He told of the surreal time he heard his own song on the radio and was ecstatic, even though the song never became popular. There followed and endless account of each instrument he attempted to master and his painstaking efforts at music transcription

And from there he launched into a recounting of his early love for theology and philosophy, and how this all accidentally led to his studying science and computers and math, culminating in him devouring a library's worth of classic novels and poetry.

The reel, as it were, continued to spin off stints as a painter, a performance artist, an installation artist and even a political activist. This led him to explore the extremes of life in nursing homes and hopeless ghettoes; and he was further propelled to wander through the work spaces and houses of the rich and glamorous.

In order to try to know the whole world, he confessed to having had conversations with murderers, organized crime bosses, white-collar criminals and former spies.

At last he unveiled, at seemingly hypersonic speed, virtually everything I had not known about him, along with almost everything I already knew. It was as if Tolstoy had sat down and summarized War and Peace in three-and-a-half hours.

Ordinarily I would have been impatient with an intoxicated person, especially if they rambled on interminably. But there was something about my partner's state of reverie that was magnetizing and charismatic. He was like one of those books you can't put down after promising yourself you will only read for fifteen minutes only to discover two hours have gone by and you're risking being late for a scheduled meeting by continuing to indulge yourself this way. My sense was that he could have gone on for about a half hour more, but his exposition was interrupted.

*

A female solider came upon us without our seeing her. My partner had been so engrossed in telling his life story, and I had been so entranced by it, that neither of us had seen this woman and her retinue moving toward us. Before long she was standing above us. Behind her one could see a whole troop of soldiers.

"What are you still doing here? Didn't you notice that the streets are almost completely cleared out?"

"I'm sorry, but we had gotten rather taken up in a lengthy conversation and had no idea. But, I guess, now that you mention it, all the kids seemed to have cleared away."

"A part of the military has defected and where you're sitting is prime turf. The rebel faction has made it clear that they plan to occupy this stretch of the road before nightfall. Civilians need to take cover and get out of harm's way."

But before we could complete this short discussion, a buzzing sound came from overhead and the street, just one block ahead of us, was blasted by some ordnance. It happened so fast that I could not tell if it was delivered by a fast-moving areal vehicle or by some form of mortar fire in the distance. But soon machine gun fire could be heard, and it was heading our way. The soldiers around us rapidly broke away amidst much shouting and began to take up defensive positions as their enemies, also shouting and running, approached. We could think of nothing else to do but to shelter underneath the bus stop bench.

I must morbidly confess that there was a certain beauty in the sight of all the explosions that followed. And I had been through so much in the past days that the mayhem and carnage going on around us didn't really add to my preexisting level of shock. In some odd way, I'd almost say that the explosions around us were like a kind of vicarious catharsis. It was as if each blast were an irrational shout of frustration heaved from my chest, were I capable of such a prolonged emotional outburst. It was is if the battle expressed some sort of hostility I could not give vent to, as if something incomplete in me was made whole by the viewing of this spectacle. There is no way to understand why we ourselves did not receive any injuries. The explosions and gunfire were just far enough away to prevent us from sustaining any hearing damage, and it was truly miraculous that we didn't get hit by any of the crossfire.

The rebel faction had at last taken possession of the street, and one of their leaders came and told us that we ought to get out from underneath the bus stop bench and make our way down the street before the government attempted to retake this section of road. We did as instructed and made our way through clouds of smoke and dust. Burning vehicles and burning buildings were everywhere, and the sky was gray. It was hard to breathe, and the smell of ruin was all around us. Regarding the injured and those who did not survive, we found ourselves lacking the proper level of empathy as we passed them. It seems that the drugs my partner was on had prevented him from taking the destruction of everything in his vicinity very personally or fearfully. And, to be frank, I had caught his buzz. I was high on the fact that my partner was high, and thus, unlike with the gangster shootings we had witnessed earlier, I was not traumatized by the war scene around us. It seemed we were both energized by the situation. It was also evident to me that this sense of invincibility was only temporary and that I would break down and be reduced to a quivering mess should I ever endure a prolonged combat situation. By sheer luck, till now, I'd managed to evade all military encounters in my ordinary life.

*

At last the smoke cleared and the sun became visible again as it moved toward the western horizon. And there, finally, was The Benito Jáurez Executive Suites Hotel of Santa Ana where we were scheduled to take a well deserved break. We both felt we could use a good twelve-hour rest before trying to push on through to the last city on the map to host Harbor Boulevard, our familiar stomping grounds of Costa Mesa.

After we checked in at the front desk and had taken the elevator up to the third floor where our room was, we noticed a young lady of hastily approaching us. We stood still in front of the door to our room to see what she needed.

The woman had an impressive air about her. She was decisively middle-class and was dressed impeccably. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and her eyes were not only wide open, but had a warmth and intensity about them. Her lips were slightly smirked and seemed to represent both amusement and toleration, and perhaps a bit of condescension. Seeing her as a person of my own kind, I greeted her with civility and warmth, or at least with what passes for warmth coming from me.

She was wearing a blue, knee-length skirt which sported a kind of hip pocket. She paused for an instant when she got to where we were standing and reached into that pocket and pulled out a pastel yellow card. The card contained a note written in a delicate script which almost resembled Chinese paint brushing. It said:

Welcome to Santa Ana. I have been made aware that your arrival in Newport Beach is inevitable and that you have made great progress in your journey. I assure you, I am very much looking forward to our meeting.

Most Sincerely Yours,

Solomon Wedge.

I read the note with no small feeling of impatience and said to the woman as respectfully as possible, "I don't mean to be impertinent. You seem like a fine person, and I don't mean to press you, but could you please explain how in the world Solomon would know how our little adventure has gone and exactly how much progress we've made?"

The woman smiled at me winsomely and replied, "How does Solomon know the things he knows? Sir, if I knew the answer to that question, I'd be a billionaire."

"I see," I replied, trying to conceal my disappointment at this reply. "Well then would you care to join my partner and myself for a drink before you go?"

"Ah," she said, now smiling more broadly, "I wish I could, but you know. I just can't. I can't interfere like that."

"Interfere with what?"

"I just can't. I just really must be going."

She reached out her hand to shake mine, and just then a tear came to her right eye.

"Have I offended you?" I inquired.

"Oh no, not at all. But there was one more thing I have to say before I leave."

"What is it?"

"Solomon told me to tell you one thing that he preferred not to write in that note."

"What one thing?"

"He wanted me to tell you . . ."

And then several tears appeared on her face.

"He wanted me to tell you that he thinks you're very brave."

"Brave? Why?"

"He knows . . ."

"Knows what?"

"He knows what you've faced. It means so much to him, what you've been through."

"This is fascinating. Can you tell me more?"

"No, no. I've got to go . . . really have to go now. I'm sorry I can't do more right now."

And then she turned abruptly and hurried away briskly, disappearing into the sickly yellow neon of the overwhelming loneliness of the Santa Ana night. It was only later, as I lay in bed pondering her appearance, that I realized she was wearing the same blue dress as the woman my partner had neglected in La Habra. She had changed the color of her hair and a few other details, but it was certainly her.

9.

You have often heard it said that you should be careful what you wish for. I say, rather, that you should be far more careful about what you promise. Whenever you make a promise, you presume things you have no business presuming. Who is to say that you control events around you? Who is to say that you can control the opinions of others? And who is to say that you even control your own body and mind? Thus you should flee all manner of contracts, vows, oaths and promises. If a river of obligations is about to drown you, save yourself first before trying to save others and the world. If you allow yourself to be worked to death, you won't be helping anyone. If I could be accused of greed, perhaps I could only be accused of being greedy for my students' survival.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (33)

*

The next day had gone smoothly, and we had walked through half of the stretch of Harbor Boulevard that goes through Santa Ana. By nightfall, if nothing had happened, we would have crossed into Costa Mesa and perhaps finished off this whole project.

But alas, two police cars skidded to a harried stop next to us and several police officers got out with their drawn guns pointed at us. (34) They shouted at us to lay on the ground face first or risk being shot and killed. We complied, and they rushed over to handcuff our hands behind our backs before hauling us into their squad cars. (35)

I pleaded with the officers to inform us what we were being charged with, but they just chuckled and said, "Don't play innocent with us. You know damn well why we're taking you in; and the sooner you and your lawyer realize that a plea bargain is the right thing to do, the sooner we can get you a reasonable deal and put this matter behind us."

"My lawyer," I replied. "Why would I need a lawyer? I've never had any legal problems in my entire life. I don't need a lawyer."

"Don't be stupid. When we get you to the station, our boss is going to want to cross-examine you if you don't ask for your attorney first. Only an idiot would talk to him without counsel. You'd have to be crazy to incriminate yourself like that when your attorney can talk him down in exchange for you turning state's witness. Don't be a sucker and just spill your guts."

"But I have nothing to hide. I'm not part of any organized crime ring. I'm an upstanding citizen. You can run my record and find out."

"Wow, but they all say that, don't they. Well, I can't decide your life for you, so have it your way, if that's the way you want to play it."

They booked us and put us in a holding cell with a bunch of drunks, a few shoplifters and a homeless guy who looked mentally ill. We languished there for hours before a detective brought us into separate offices to question us. I had no idea what my partner said, but I saw through the glass door of the office I was seated in that they were already bringing my partner back to the holding cell.

I waited alone in that office for fifteen minutes for the detective. The detective had been questioning my partner and had also been briefly pulled away to see to another matter. It took him a while to get to me.

He sat down across the desk from me and gazed at me, looking weary and frustrated. He exhaled, "Okay, so you don't want an attorney and you're willing to just talk to me now on your own?"

"Why shouldn't I? My conscience is relatively clear, except for the matter of how badly I manage my relationships. Other than feeling guilty for failing to maintain relations with my family and with women, I feel like an innocent man. I'm confident I've broken no laws, at least none requiring me being taken into custody in such an urgent way."

"How can you say that when we've been following you for years? There's no way to hide your association with organized criminals, sexual predators and killers of every kind. Did you think you could hang out with people like that for decades and not get dragged down with them? You should know better than to run around with the Russian mob, the Italian mob and the Mexican mob. That's a fucked up way to live; and now all you have for me is some deer-in-the-headlights expression?"

"I'm sorry, but the people I know are extremely boring. They tend to be people involved in such mundane occupations as accounting, computer programming and chemical engineering. I suppose some of the biologists I've dated have gone off the rails a few times. Some of the bankers I know have to drink pretty heavily to deal with the stress of managing that kind of money; and, of course, they do indulge in extramarital affairs, which, I guess, they feel they are somehow owed an indulgence on due to how hard they have to work. But all in all . . ."

"So you actually claim not to know anything about the money laundering? What about all those trips to Panama City? What about those massage parlors you invested in? You didn't know about all that human trafficking?"

"Sir! I see what has happened here. This is a case of mistaken identity. You've brought in the wrong man!"

The detective shook his head with exhausted disgust and opened up a kind of photograph album. He turned to a page near the middle and popped it open. Staring out at me from the 8' x 10' photo was my own face. It was my doppelganger, my version of "the twin somewhere in the world" that supposedly, according to urban legend, everyone has. But there was a glitch. I could not help but smile.

"Sir, forgive my impertinence. I see now that your officers were right to bring me in. Indeed, I appear to be a kind of non-related identical twin to the suspect you have in mind."

I then turned the photo album around toward the detective and added, "Look here. Do you see there's a detail that you've missed?"

The detective, now flustered and perplexed, pulled out a magnifying glass and pored over the picture again. But to no avail. He then looked up at me and said, "What? What is it?"

I then asked him if I could hold the magnifying glass on his desk, and he reluctantly agreed. Then, holding the magnifying glass over the upper lip of the suspect, I said, "Right there. Do you see it? It's a very small harelip scar. (36) I've known several people who were born with a cleft lip, but a few of them had such good surgeons that it's almost impossible to detect. (Some were not so lucky.) Having been exposed to several of them, I guess I'm trained to notice even the most subtle of harelip scars. But if you look again, you'll see it; and, as you can see, I have no such defect. If you ask your booking officer to run the fingerprints he took when I was booked, you'll find mine don't match those of the suspect."

*

Me and the detective had a good laugh and eventually ended up having a chat about many unrelated manners. As it turned out, the detective was a good natured man. Everyone concerned had, with the very best of intentions, simply made an honest error. After chatting with the detective for a while, I got up to leave, wishing him the very best of luck in his work. He assured me, after sending a message to our temporary jailers, that my partner would be waiting outside in the hall for me near the exit doors.

As I was leaving the office, I noticed, on the wall above the detective's desk, a photograph of a very serene, white-haired man clad in a white turtleneck sweater. His eyes were a very light blue, almost translucent. He looked to be middle-aged, perhaps even fifty. But his gaze was extremely soft, as if he would be sympathetic to anyone. Toward the bottom of the photograph was a note and a signature made by a slender, black marking pen. It said:

Always here for you.

Solomon.

"Then you know Solomon?" I asked eagerly.

"Oh, no. Never met him. My old boss used to have this office, and he left that photo behind when he cleared out his stuff. He retired rather suddenly and never came back to get that picture. But I never took it down because . . . I don't know. It seems to put people at ease. The guy int hat photo just makes us feel comfortable, I guess."

10. Haven't You Been Watching The News?

A lot of people come to me seeking happiness, and to each of them I pose these questions: "Do you really know what will make you happy? If we give you what you want, can you promise us now that you will be happy with that? If not, why are you making all this fuss? And isn't it this continual promise of future happiness, and all the running around you do in the hopes of winning it, really the cause of so much of your suffering?" (37)

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (38)

*

It is morning and we have had a leisurely time of it. Me and my partner both slept long in our separate rooms and I decided to pay for the luxury of an afternoon checkout for both of us. I was so exhausted after the encounter with the police the previous day that I couldn't walk any more but decided to go back to the Benito Jáurez Executive Suites Hotel of Santa Ana.

We are both in our separate rooms. In solitude, I am drinking up the cheap, hotel-issued instant coffees and enjoying ancient reruns on the cable channels. I am taking long, leisurely showers and taking my time changing into my street clothes.

Since the Costa Mesa border is only a few miles away, I decided that we ought to approach the end of our journey in an indolently-pampered way. I shall leave my room like a victorious businessman, tossing a generous tip to the maids as I vacate my messy quarters; and later I shall saunter past the Costa Mesa border like a triumphant safari goer.

*

There was a problem when we went to leave the rooms. The sky was brown and smoky. The real Santa Ana winds had come and brought with them oppressive heat and every kind of allergen. It was hard to breathe and our eyes were watering. We made our way to the front desk and asked what was going on.

The motel desk clerk said, "Haven't you been watching the news this morning? The Santa Ana winds were reaching ninety miles an hour last night. They ripped out hundreds of power lines and the live wires were sparking up all over people's houses. Weren't you woken up by the sirens last night? Half the city is in flames. There's no bus or taxi service in or out. If you've got the money, you might as well stay another night here and see if the situation is a bit more under control tomorrow. You could try to escape the area, I suppose, but it seems to me you'd have trouble making it out."

"Absurd!" I replied. "I don't care if a hurricane is coming. I'm not spending another day dealing with this annoying street. We've got a mission to complete, and we're going to complete it today, come hell or high water."

The clerk looked up at me with an earnest and concerned expression and said, "It's funny that you mentioned high water, because there's some kind of storm heading toward the coast now. The weather people are having a hard time figuring out just what it is. But, since you're walking out in this smoke, at least take these surgical masks. They're not as good as gas masks, but this was all I could find when I raided the hotel's emergency kit early this morning. And why don't you take this umbrella too. Some guest left it behind and never came back for it. It's all I can do for you."

*

A mile into this trek down the street has left us both miserable, sweaty and short of breath. I felt stupid carrying this umbrella during a firestorm. The wind is still about forty miles an hour and it's blowing northward, making every southbound step like a wresting match. Huge swaths of ash and smoke have taken their toll. Firetrucks are screaming and the traffic on the streets is chaotic. Police are trying to direct the traffic manually at the major intersections as the traffic lights have lost power. (By sheer luck our hotel was able to provide us with a normal stay as it had the luxury of a generously-sized backup generator.) But once we left the property, it was like entering the aftermath of the Syrian war.

There were people huddled on the curbs weeping and children wandering lost and crying out for their parents. People trapped in the area had been camping in their cars and hoping not to be swallowed up in the surrounding inferno. The authorities were totally overwhelmed, and it seemed obvious that many people would simply go without any aid whatsoever until they managed to escape the area. And even though we only had a mile or so to go, we had to stop and rest and try to calm our shattered nerves before making one last push to get free from both Santa Ana and this disaster area.

*

As we sat, leaning our backs against the cinderblock wall of a parking structure that had not yet been affected by the fire, my partner reported feeling two drops of water hit his forearm. At first I made no note of this, but then several drops of water hit me too. We looked up and somehow, over the ninety minutes it had taken us to walk a very rugged mile and a quarter, clouds had gathered. They must have rushed briskly in from the coast.

The light sprinkling shortly changed into a real downpour. Looking up again, we saw that even darker clouds, foreboding clouds, had hurried in from the shore. The fire, which seemed to have destroyed half of the structures for miles around, was about to come under swift control. Thank goodness I'd humored the desk clerk by agreeing to take the umbrella he offered. We huddled underneath the umbrella, and trudged forward against the crazy wind and the mad rain. Eventually, after some grueling forward progress, there was maybe only eight or nine blocks to go.

We tossed the umbrella into the gutter as the winds had finally blown it apart no matter how we tried to hold it together. Since the weather was still warm, in spite of the storm, we decided just to accept that we would be drenched when we crossed over into Costa Mesa.

The storm had indeed turned into a small hurricane, the first one I'd seen in all my life in Orange County. We heard a roaring sound that sounded nothing like I'd ever heard before. It seemed to be coming from the nearby Sana Ana River, which is extremely wide and deep. Most of the time it is bone dry. It turned out that a series of tidal bores had pushed their way inland and had been flooding areas upstream. As the tidal bores receded, we stood next to the railing that overlooked the river and saw what looked like the contents of an outgoing tsunami floating by:

As the deep and wide current churned on, we saw the fuselage of an airplane turning over and over as it careened by. Behind it we saw whole sections of houses that had been torn off their foundations. A whole greyhound bus drifted past with an aquatic trail of couches and cabinets and dressers following close along. Assorted artworks surrounded by ornately-carved frames bobbed up and down as the current carried them all to oblivion. The passenger cars of Amtrak trains, along with the trailers of diesel trucks, heaved through the dark brown and murky green surge of water. Countless articles of clothing, almost like schools of surfing fish wound their way around each other and past us on the way to join all the other lost items in the ocean. Dozens of cars piled into each other like so many boulders as they washed on past us. Computer screens and television screens, along with speakers and lamps and desks, all of them forming some vast congregation, tumbled and roiled about the angry river.

We stared at this phenomenon for about half an hour before tearing ourselves away and heading back to Harbor Boulevard. It was true that there was a section of Harbor Boulevard that ran through Costa Mesa, but we figured once we crossed the city limits, sheer momentum and anxiousness to be done with this task would get us to that Triangular retail center that bordered with Newport Boulevard. We were wet and tired and scared and hungry, especially hungry since we had planned to have breakfast at a diner along the way, a diner which had by now burnt to the ground or had suffered water damage.

Oddly, by the time we crossed into Costa Mesa, the sun was shining, the wind and rains had stopped, and there was no sign of trauma anywhere. People stared at us weirdly because we were the only ones who were drenched. All about us was prosperity, peace and quiet. And there we were looking like two lunatics who must have gone swimming with their regular clothes on.

*

Although we were not quite yet done with our walk, I called our friends, the ones who had introduced us to the concept of Solomon Wedge. They gave us a ride to our homes, which were not far apart. My partner tidied himself up and fixed himself some lunch at his house, and I did the same at my place. After a couple of hours of the kind of refreshment that only familiar surroundings can bring, our friends dutifully drove us both back to the part of Harbor Boulevard where we had left off and wished us luck.

I told my friends that they would have to wait before I would go into any long narratives about our journey. There was simply too much information to process and too many details to go over. I let them know I was just too emotionally exhausted to tell the whole story just now. They understood, saying, "We are each growing and learning in our own way. Each person opens up when it's their time to and not a minute before. We respect everyone's spiritual path."

The wind was now mild and soothing, and the sky was a delightful baby blue. I was wearing my Dockers pants and a Polo shirt, as is typical of people in my age group. I put on a newer pair of Rockport walking shoes and thick, comforting socks.

Along the way, we stopped into a Hawaiian-themed dive bar and treated ourselves to our dated cocktails, bloody Marys and tequila sunrises. The young hipster tending the bar looked at us like we were so 1990s, but me and my traveling companion were yearning for the familiar.

After we got a good and happy buzz going, we sauntered on down the last few blocks of Harbor Boulevard to its very ending where it meets Newport Boulevard. Feeling oddly cheerful, we decided, on pure principal, to walk down Newport Boulevard to Newport Beach where we would have coffees at a café overlooking the water.

As we sat along a railing, watching the boats gently bobbing on the water, waiting for the caffeine to lift us into a more ecstatic state, I then, after a long moment of reflection, said to my partner, "Do you think any of that stuff we went through was real?"

He looked back at me doubtfully.

"This is what I think," I added. "I think Orange County is just like it always was. But we got put into some kind of hypnotic state, or maybe somehow we just fell into that state of our own accord. Maybe there was something in the back of our minds that we couldn't face, so we made up some kind of fantasy. Or maybe we were both just stressed out and had a kind of prolonged nervous breakdown. Whatever it was, we're over it now and we can just go back to living our lives like this never happened. We can just put this all behind us and pick up where we left off. That's what I say."

My partner nodded in an agreeable way, even smirking a bit, as he turned to watch a couple of seagulls playing in the wind above the waterfront.

As I pondered these things, three very relaxed Newport Beach people came and took the table next to us. Their body language was that of extremely easygoing people. Probably they were trust fund kids who, knowing they'd always be secure, had the confidence to charm their way into easy jobs that overpaid. (Nervous people never seem to get those kind of breaks because their neediness and fear are too conspicuous. That's the reason it takes money to make money.)

There were two ladies dressed in tennis shorts, though it seemed clear they didn't play tennis. The blond one was wearing a white vizor and the other had a turquoise sweatband around her forehead which kept a large bundle of auburn hair out of her face. The two women chatted endlessly about the colleges they were planning to send their kids to, which part of Europe they would vacation in next, and what sort of investments were hot and which ones had passed their prime.

The man who accompanied these ladies mostly sat back and watched them talk, occasionally inserting some comical remark before resuming his listening posture again. My guess was that he made really big money. As is also sadly typical of certain absurd types in my age group, he wore a kind of captain's hat. The women seemed to be somewhat more aware of their class status than he. Whether sincerely or not, he gave off an air of approachability.

Wanting to test my theory out, I said to the man, "Could you humor me a minute?"

My partner turned around and his eyes perked up as I addressed these locals.

I lied and said, "I'm a tourist here and I think our friends back home gave us a fake travel brochure as a practical joke. Could I list off several of the attractions and spectacles in that brochure? Me and my partner were just thinking that the only way to resolve this is to ask a real local. I was just searching on my smartphone and I can't find any of these on Google. Do you have second?"

The man nodded in agreement as though such a request were no inconvenience to him at all. He leaned back so as to indicate a certain generosity of spirit, so I blurted out a list like a rant poet might: "The Flying Saucers of Rowland Heights, The International Cathedral of Prosperity And Healing, The Intercontinental Mall of Orange County, The Intersectional College of The Americas, The Transatlantic Institute of Grievance Studies, The California Students for The Preservation of Free Markets, The Self-Governing Children of Garden Grove, The Harelip Gangster of The South Coast Metro Area, The Military Uprising of Southern California, and The Firestorms And Hurricanes And Tidal Bores of Santa Ana."

The ladies both burst out laughing, and the one with the white vizor said, "Ha! He's a performance artist of some kind. Very funny. Very funny."

She then tilted her head and said, "Are you performing somewhere near here? We'd be happy to come to your show."

I shrugged and said, "Sorry, I wish it were true, but I'm afraid that's about as long as any artsy outbursts of mine would last. I doubt I could pull off a whole half-hour routine."

The man then leaned forward and said, "Is that it?"

"Yes," I replied. "This is my main question. Are any of the things I listed around here?"

The man shook his head and replied, "No, man. I'm sorry, but I've never heard of any of those things. If you weren't kidding us, or pulling our leg, I'd have to say your friends put over a good one on you."

"Well, sorry to disturb you folks. I'll let you get back to your conversation."

"No problem the women both said.

But then I imposed myself on them for just one additional moment and added, "Oh, sorry, just one more really quick question; and this one is probably as silly as the first. Tell me, have any of you ever heard of a guy around Newport Beach named Solomon Wedge, or were our friends just pulling another prank on us?"

The two women's faces grew a bit more serious and they looked at each other furtively.

The man leaned forward again and said, "I am Solomon Wedge."

11.

Almost every preacher, if he plans to stay in business, puts a lot of conditional clauses in his sermons. No one wants to get caught lying to their customers. What they're saying amounts to, "I have the absolute truth, but I might be wrong." And so we end up with a series of bold statements combined with a lot of hedging.

Still, it's okay if you've been played for a fool. Not too many people get out of this game without joining a cult or getting their bank account raided. Eventually their lovers betray them also.

Try to avoid bitterness anyway.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (39)

*

Solomon did not have time to have an official meeting with us because, just as we had begun to enter into a conversation with him, an entourage of some dozen people came in to whisk him away to an even larger social outing. Solomon and the two ladies that were with him were only using the café as a rendezvous point for the whole group. It turned out they were taking a private aircraft out of John Wayne Airport in order to attend an event in Northern California. However, he made it clear that we were expected to meet him and his people at the Le Pain Quotidien the following eventing at 6:PM sharp.

As there was still some daylight, my partner and I decided to continue our walk along the waterfront area. As we walked, I thought to myself that it was a good thing that we ran into Solomon. This would save me from having to pester our friends to arrange a meeting with him. And, at some point, if they could not have arranged for a meeting with Solomon, I would have further been obliged to question them as to whether or not Solomon Wedge was even real. Our chance meeting with Solomon would save me all that trouble.

I further reflected on the unresolved question as to how we could have hallucinated such a fantastic journey and what role Solomon and his people might have played in all that. Perhaps meeting with Solomon would eventually clear up those problematic issues.

Lastly, there was the issue of his teaching, whatever that might be, and how it had come to occupy such a large place in the imagination of people. That would have to be asked about too, especially since we had gone through so much trouble to have access to it.

I myself remained a devout Agnostic, even after so many seemingly miraculous events and experiences, so I had no hope of any kind of major transformation in my life coming from whatever Solomon would have to say. Furthermore, I was relatively certain his teachings would be nothing new to me at all. It would all likely be a collection of things that were old news to me. Still, as I indicated many times before, the matter had to be seen through to the end, and I was glad this whole adventure would be wrapped up soon.

*

Before we got too far along the waterfront, we found ourselves face to face with another person with a captain's hat on. He wore a white short-sleeve shirt and white shorts, both of high-quality. He was also wearing reflective sunglasses; and as the sun hit his face, it seemed to almost sparkle.

"Gentlemen, Solomon asked me to tell you that he regrets he didn't have time to have a thorough meeting with you today, and so he wanted to make it up to you by having me take you for a sunset cruise on his boat."

My partner was immediately excited at this prospect, and the weather was so perfect that I too did not hesitate to accept the offer.

When we got to the boat we were a bit surprised to find that it was an impressive yacht with a full-service crew. A few other associates of Solomon's were also being treated to this tasteful luxury, and so we were not to be alone on the boat.

I tried to ignore the two younger women in bathing suits, feeling it beneath my dignity to begin pestering them, since, given their high social status and appearance, they must have been facing the drudgery of continually having to reject men far beneath them. In order to affect this avoidance, I got the on-board server to bring me some cocktails and I seated myself at the opposite side of the deck in a comfortable deck chair with a smart little beverage table next to it. The server also brought me a cheese plate with some small fruit segments laid around it. These treats along with the smell of the ocean and the gentle breeze would be more than enough for me.

My partner on the other hand began attempting to charm and disarm them, and to my astonishment, he did so easily. He took a deck chair and sat next to them, chatting on endless about mundane things which I imagined would bore these extremely eligible women to tears, but somehow they found his mundane utterances compelling enough to listen to him for some time.

After we had been out of the harbor a while, the ship slowed up a bit so the two women in bikinis could take a dip in the unusually warm current that had apparently been flowing up from the south. One of the crew members was able to produce an extra pair of swimming trunks and my partner frolicked in the water with them. Much to everyone's surprise, two dolphins emerged from the water suddenly and began to splash around the trio, making for quite a memorable scene.

I myself detest fishing as I cannot bear to torment some poor animal that is struggling for its life. Were I to believe firmly in some kind of God, I am sure I would believe that such a barbaric practice as suffocating a fish to death is a sin. The idea of taking some marine animal out of its element so that it's unable to breathe — this is simply too much for my conscience to bear. However, since I freely eat fish, I confess that someone has to do the dirty job of fishing; and it must be acknowledge that if fishing is a moral fault, I am a part of that fault due to my hopelessly carnivorous habits. As a result, I never condemn people for fishing or lecture them in any way about my general disapproval of such a practice, since I myself depend on fisherman for my meals. Thus, I could not object when, after the trio had completed their invigorating swim, the decided to engage in sport fishing.

The crew had heavy fishing poles in stock and supplied the trio with them and ample bait. The boat went out to deeper waters, and finally, as the sun began to set, my partner snagged, after a long, grueling battle and much shouting and boisterous laughter by most of the others on board, a mid-sized barracuda. My partner posed with the fish as a crew member took a photo of him standing between the bikini-clad women with his quarry. He was sunburned and wet.

As the boat turned to make the long trip back to shore, my partner and the two bikini-clad women had apparently sneaked off to a stateroom. I can only shudder as I imagine what might have gone on in there. In any case, my partner was kind enough not to regale me with the details about that incident when we disembarked sometime after nightfall.

We were invited to spend the night on that hulking vessel, but both me and my partner were anxious to get to our own familiar beds and get some good rest in before our evening with Solomon the following night.

12.

The prophets of old told you to obey authority on moral grounds. But really, can you find any moral authority around you now? There is power, for sure, but how moral is that power?

If you must obey someone out of fear, then so be it; but know the difference between fear and your own convictions. Be silent if you have to, but don't confuse that silence with humility.

The Analects of Solomon Wedge (40)

*

The café Le Pain Quotidien was packed. Near the back there was a portable riser about six inches high that was temporarily set up so that everyone could see Solomon and his guests, those guests being me and my partner. Virtually everyone in attendance was a student of Solomon's. Outsiders and media trolls could not get in as the legal capacity of the room was already exceeded and the management was strict about adhering to fire code regulations. Hence we were presented with an absolutely full room on the inside and curious souls pacing back and forth on the outside.

As we wandered hesitantly though Fashion Island toward the front door of the café, we were spotted immediately. Solomon's assistants hustled us up to the thrown-together stage and seated us there, leaving one of the three chairs empty, presumably for Solomon to occupy when the time was right. Someone had set up soft spot lights to create a warm glow around the stage, and as the beginning of the event drew near, the track lighting around the café went dim.

Regularly, I would object to being put on a stage and being made the center of attention in some sort of ceremony that would enhance the prestige of some cult. However, I was willing to set aside any and all scruples merely to have the bragging rights of saying I had been through all of the requisite ceremonies and had undergone all of the elaborate tests involved in finally getting to the bottom of this whole Solomon Wedge initiation. My attitude was like that of the college student who cares nothing for academia but wants to say he made it through the curriculum and got his degree. I viewed this as merely one more social hurdle to get through so as to silence any critics who might claim I'd not completed the whole Orange County curriculum. (41)

As me and my partner sat up there in the gentle spotlights feeling silly, an announcer came up to a microphone set on the floor just beneath the riser. He welcomed everyone to the event that night and spoke in rather sycophantic terms about the paradigm-shifting experiences so many in attendance had reported after interacting with Solomon Wedge. Various names of old-timers were called out in reference to certain public deeds and other noteworthy accomplishments. Many rounds of applause ensued after the announcement of this or that public service performed by several people in the audience. And, to add to the generally tedious nature of the introduction to this event, certain organizational issues and certain mundane logistical matters were covered in bothersome detail. But none of this would deter me as I was pleased to be on the cusp of seeing another chore in life through to its logical conclusion. I was, to put it rather pointedly, about to complete another job, another duty, and that was good enough for me.

Frankly, I had lost track of what the speaker was saying when suddenly a more enthusiastic round of applause ensued. At last a door opened from the kitchen area, and out came Solomon Wedge, dressed in the very same white turtleneck I had seen him in when I gazed at the framed photo in the Santa Ana detective's office. Again there appeared that same otherworldly serenity, that white hair, those clear, peaceful eyes. Finally, he occupied the chair next to me and my partner on the stage.

The applause carried on for some time, during which he smiled broadly at the crowd, sometimes reserving a special smile and a kindly wave for certain individuals with whom he had apparently been close for a long time. While the applause was going on, various audience members who seemingly had more liberties than others, came up and gave Solomon a warm hug. But this scene too passed in time, and at last the room came to a complete silence.

*

In due time Solomon's gaze rested upon me and he said, "I await the teaching."

Confused by this, I replied, "I'm sorry, sir, but it was my understanding that you were to deliver to us all some life-changing teaching."

"Yes, indeed, something life-changing must take place tonight, but that transformation will not come about by me delivering any teaching whatsoever, but rather by you instructing me. I am, good friends, merely a student; and it is my so-called students who are, in fact, my teachers. It is they who go on rugged journeys and return to me to inform me of what the world is really like, what the essence of life is. That is all I've been living for, for the moment each of my students completes a sojourn and comes to teach me all of the things they have learned on that journey. I regard you gentlemen as the great teachers. It is I, ever hungry for the teaching, who sends students on great adventures so that I might benefit from all of the wisdom they have gained from their wanderings. We are not here tonight for me to deliver a teaching, but rather we are here tonight so that you may teach us. After all, you are the ones who have been through far more than we have in these last several days, and so we rightly defer to you for the latest insights into the fabric of our world."

After a dumbfounded moment of silence, I regained my bearings and replied, "I'm not the kind of fellow who could deliver such a discourse. The role of the guru is one I have always disdained and shied away from. And so I'm sorry to disappoint you and your people, but I can't pull together a sermon at this time. But I do have a question for you."

"Please, ask it," said Solomon Wedge earnestly.

"Weren't most of the things we experienced on this strange trek a kind of hallucination, a sort of illusion, the result of hypnotic suggestion? After all," I said, "if I went back down Harbor Boulevard, most of the things I saw would not reappear before me, right? So then, in truth, would I be right to conclude that what I experienced was nothing more than a temporary mental illness?"

"I understand your question," said Solomon Wedge, "but I sincerely have been unable to answer that question, not just in your case, but in the cases of most of the people who've undertaken that journey. I can only say that experiences like yours are not uncommon, and I take the testimony of everyone who appears before us quite seriously. We have learned so much from these testimonies over the years that I am inclined to believe those testimonies, but, rest assured, we don't insist that anyone agree with us regarding our propensity to grant great respect to each storyteller."

"Then," I concluded, "you will not be offended if I ask to be excused from assuming the role of a bard or prophet?"

"Certainly," said Solomon with a forgiving warmth that only added to my guilt and shame at not being up to the task of giving the audience what they wanted.

Solomon Wedge, then, with a gentleness that was almost confusing, turned to my partner and said, "Unless you have anything to add, we are prepared to conclude our meeting. There is no requirement that anyone share any part of their story that they don't want to."

However, as it turned out, my partner indicated that our journey down Harbor Boulevard had indeed solidified many ideas that had been ruminating in the back of his mind for some time, and he requested permission to give a full airing of them, if the audience, and Solomon, were so inclined to hear him out.

Solomon noted, "There is no greater purpose we have here than to learn from the students. What in the world could I add to the glorious experience you have undergone?"

*

Regarding the strange experience of the UFOs in Rowland Heights, my partner noted that, as it is stated in the Lotus Sutra, there are countless trillions of buddhas and trillions of entities in worlds more numerous than the sand grains in the Ganges river.

I had never known my partner to study sutras, and so I was a bit taken aback.

Furthermore he noted that his experiences in the vast cathedral in La Habra reminded him of proclamations in the Gospel of Matthew wherein seeking souls were said to be elevated to unthinkable glory if they would submit themselves to the will of God.

Since my companion had never before indicated he even believed in God, this confused me greatly.

Additionally, he said that the great malls of Orange County were likened to the continual stream of materialistic temptations that lure all human beings to states of madness, and he noted that the Diamond Sutra indicates that all phenomena are unreal in themselves but likened unto mere names that themselves vanish into the void.

I had no idea that my partner ever contemplated anything as morbid as the void, and so you could imagine my shock at hearing him speak such things.

As for the vast university we had visited, he proclaimed, referring to the putative sayings of Lao Tsu in the Tao Te Ching, that all human learning is but so much busywork and suffering and unnecessary complication.

"Since when was this man a Taoist?" was my thought to myself as I stared on.

With regard to the disappearance of Anaheim and the sudden appearance of New Black Rock City, he waxed eloquent on the Buddha's injunctions to recognize the passing nature of all compounded things and the interdependent origin of every existent form.

"What on earth?" I thought to myself.

At great length, he taught that the violence we had seen in Garden Grove, and the out-of-control situations that we encountered there, recalled to mind the doctrines of impermanence that both Shinran Shonin and Rennyo Shonin taught about extensively. And my partner rambled on about the effervescence of human life and the need for each person to grasp the fragility of our situation and to acknowledge the precious gift of being born in human form.

I continued to stare on mutely.

In reference to our being arrested and me being falsely identified as a criminal, my companion enjoined us all not to be moved by human praise or societal blame, but to always keep in mind that the saints and the sages of all faiths had endured unfair persecution.

How could I even respond to such a thing?

Regarding the fires and floods of Santa Ana, my traveling companioned implored us, much in the way he said that Dogen Zenji might have, to be prepared to view the loss of anything in this incarnation as the mere throwing away of so much dirt.

The sermon went on in this way for over a half hour. Sweat was beading on my forehead as everyone stared at me as if I were somehow equally responsible for such a rambling discourse. And although I was impressed my partner's articulate and far-reaching speech, my desire was to get out of there as soon as possible.

And, much to my relief, after some thirty minutes or so, my partner concluded his treatise amidst much applause and cheers from the audience.

After my partner stopped talking and the applause faded away, Solomon stared at both of us in perfect silence for a rather unsettling amount of time, seeming equally pleased with my silence and my partner's eloquence. He smiled broadly.

Then, as if moved by some unseen force, Solomon rose up decisively and left the stage.

Notes from The Text

1. The "great magnet" is a concept from the song Constant Craving by K. D. Lang.

2. An attempt is made here to relate the concept of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, which is the closest thing in his philosophy to an impersonal God. (I also believe this is the great magnet mentioned in note 1.)

3. The line "it alone greets you at the end of the road" is a paraphrase of one of Nisirgaddata Maharaj's attempts at explaining the nature of the ultimate self. He would never go along with any glorification of Aristotle's concepts, but I enjoyed the phrase so much that I included it, admittedly, out of context.

4. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 1:1-7.

5. This is simply a list of my favorite cities.

6. The passage being rewritten, (see note 7), is far more dour than the one presented here. This will likely be consistently true as we work our way though these passages attributed to King Solomon.

7. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 1:8-11.

8. Before writing the narrative of this chapter, I wrote a kind of single-paragraph prose poem that gets at the heart of what I'm trying to communicate about my own treks down the street in question:

Harbor Boulevard will always win in the end because it has reverted back to the nonsensical laws of nature, having attained a reverse apotheosis and left the realm of the human law long ago. For the purposes of ordinary perception, people appear to be in charge of the goings on along Harbor Boulevard, but they haven't been for decades. You can never prevail against its inhuman desolateness nor sit in judgment above it and declare it fully dead. If you try to master it, you will be defeated. Like the dragons of oriental mythology, it retains its own dignity and power. If you try to fight it, you'll only exhaust and exasperate yourself. The only way to be one with it is to trudge along, with eyes wide open, until Harbor Boulevard bestows some grace upon you. There is just no other way but to let go of all your desires and wait until revelation comes.

9. King Solomon is reported to have said in Ecclesiastes 1:12, "I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem."

10. Somerset Maugham said, approximately, in one of his stories that the protagonist stumbled into a library, "full of books I would like to read if life were ten thousand years long."

11. In The Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd, a line appears: "You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way," which inspired a similar line in this story.

12. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 1:12-18.

13. I really did rent a car and drive to Roswell, New Mexico from California. Upon entering the main drag, I saw a large sign with huge letters in a window that read, "UFOs Are Real!" This same slogan can be seen on bumper stickers that, even now, are for sale on the Internet. I also went to the bookstore and museum there which is centered around UFOs, aliens and related phenomena, the same organization that still sells the aforementioned bumper stickers. The fact that "Ufology" is a living religion in this country was palpable after I went to Roswell.

Additionally, I had a neighbor in Fullerton who introduced me and my former wife to the Urantia scripture, a book that was apparently as long as the Bible. He was among the first of many true believers I was to meet in my lifetime. Regretfully, I have had friendships ended over my failure to accept the UFO religion and my insistence that people stop attempting to convert me to it.

In spite of the foregoing, I had an inexplicable sighting which remains unresolved. Having had severe psychological problems throughout my life, I really cannot say whether that visual phenomenon was a kind of hallucination, a true optical illusion, or an experience of a much more worrisome kind. Being a rather Agnostic religious person, I am simply leaving the matter unresolved. However, my main opinion is that, in spite of my experience, UFO religion is a kind of madness, (that opinion being subject to change should more evidence come in).

14. Throughout my life, police officers have often arrived at the scene of certain emergencies brought about by my poor judgment, often arriving before the emergency medical workers could get there. In such situations, they had to be, simultaneously, law-enforcement personnel, psychiatric social workers and amateur medical diagnosticians. Without such versatile and beyond-the-call-of-duty service, I would have perished on more than one occasion. Hence, officers not only came to rescue me, but to see me safely off and make sure I would get whatever care I needed. In fact, they often went to life-endangering extremes to get me out of situations that could be a topic in some future book.

I am not a well man and have only put aside extreme risk-taking some several years ago, realizing that such a lifestyle simply could not continue into my old age. There are, these days, no more such episodes, but they were frequent enough before my psychiatrists and psychologists were able to convince me to live in a more rational way. Furthermore, had all of these officers not decided to view my case charitably, one cannot imagine how many decades I would have spent in some form of institutional setting.

15. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 2:1-11.

16. After reviewing this section of the road on Google Maps' street-view option, I realized that I might not have ever walked some portions of Harbor Boulevard between Rowland Heights and Imperial Highway. I recall walking the stretch of the road between Imperial Highway and Costa Mesa, but perhaps there were some blocks I neglected before that. Much of the scenery, such as it is, looks unfamiliar to me, meaning that I myself am not sure I completed the full quest which this book describes, which might add another layer of speculation to the project. Alternatively, perhaps I did walk that segment of road and do not now recognize it due to the ever-changing landscape and the eternal rounds of construction, demolition and remodeling that go on there.

17. Patton State Hospital is the "nearly-hopeless-case" facility for the most extremely difficult psychiatric cases in Southern California. It is for those whose state of being is such that they can no longer look after themselves safely or for those who could easily fall into criminal activity for want of the facility to judge properly in matters of social interaction. Its equivalent in New York would be Bellevue; and a similar such place in Northern California would be the facility at Napa.

18. I must confess that I myself went on a five-year excursion into the world of fundamentalism, revivalism and attempted miracle-working. While I most regularly attended small or mid-sized protestant churches, there were many forays to early megachurches such as Melodyland in Anaheim and Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. Other large churches such as Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton and The Crystal Cathedral of Garden Grove also exercised an influence over my imagination. And furthermore, to this day, I still sometimes engage in the "guilty pleasure" of watching videos of services from Bethel Church in Redding, California and Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia.

19. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 2:12-16.

20. People familiar with my life story are quite aware that I could not have survived without female friends and lovers. Frankly, any weight I maintain above emaciation can be attributed to their grace. I have only been self-sufficient perhaps half of my life. The other half was funded by patrons who believed in my journey. Were I forced to face the blunt force of the competitive world alone, I would surely have perished at a very early age.

21. These overblown descriptions were drawn from inflated perceptions of the malls I grew up with, and these malls came into their own in the 1970s and 1980s in Orange county. A few I came to like were The Brea Mall, in Brea, The Mall of Orange, in Orange, and The City in Garden Grove, respectively.

Later I was to be impressed by Horton Plaza in San Diego, The Great Mall in Milpitas, and also, in my opinion, the greatest mall on earth, The West Edmonton Mall.

I've been to all of the malls above. But it's worth nothing that other ideas in this chapter came from malls I've not yet been to, but read about, such as The Mall of The Americas in Minnesota and The Mall of The Emirates in Dubai. (These last two claim to be as large, or larger, than the one West Edmonton, but I am not convinced of this.)

In any case, the description of the mall in the story is an attempt to fuse all of the above.

Additionally, I made up the train route inside the mall in the story because a mall with a ring route around it is still a fantasy of mine.

It's also relevant that Fashion Island, the mall that hosts Le Pain Quotidien, in Newport Beach, California, is a mall I've spent a decades going to over and over again. This café in Fashion Island forms the backdrop for the last scene in the novel.

22. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 2:17-24.

23. I have two Philosophy degrees. One is a two-year Associate of Arts degree from what was then called Fullerton Junior College, and the other is a Bachelor's Degree from California State University at Fullerton. I attended several other colleges to gain occupational skills as needed, but did not get any other degrees.

24. One of the special interests of the philosophy department I studied in was Philosophy of Mind, namely the discussion about what precisely a mind is and how a mind would be made, if one could be made artificially. Because the early 1980s was the dawn of artificial intelligence research, and because California State University at Fullerton, perhaps due to it's proximity to the aerospace industry, was doing research on just that subject, our philosophy department was sometimes tasked with evaluating the progress of the minds being produced in computers. This precipitated an odd exchange of students, engineering students being sent to study philosophy and philosophy students being sent to deal with computers in the engineering department.

It was somehow rightly decided that I had the capacity to do both computers and philosophy, hence I was seen in the computer labs trying to talk to computers as I labored with my weak programming skills on Fortran punch-card machines. The computers were shockingly advanced already; and one of those computers actually told me things it "thought" about my personality. I believe I was one of the first people to get into arguments with machines what were critical of me.

Later in life I had a temp job where I again was tasked with attempting to talk to machines and to monitor their responses. (Correcting the bad English of these computer programs was my particular assignment.)

Because of this early exposure, I had every confidence that artificial intelligence would evolve faster than most people around me thought it would.

It is worth nothing that the engineering students did not fare well in advanced philosophy classes, with several being reduced to tears. Back then one could not get by in upper-division philosophy classes by just studying cultural relativity, but rather one had to be a hard-core scientific-methodology student as well.

25. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-18.

26. Every few days of my life I hear from a person who has been attending Burning Man for some twenty years, and he writes spoken-word poetry documenting much of that experience over his two decades of pilgrimage there.

Because I sought an incredible way to displace Disneyland and Anaheim, I decided on the surreal move of simply erasing Anaheim and Disneyland and even temporarily cutting out a segment of the great street itself, or rather, changing the texture of the street totally. In this segment the street lives on conceptually beneath the sand.

27. I offer, as food for thought, some curious lyrics by the band "America" from their seminal work of pop-Dadaism, A Horse With No Name:

The ocean is a desert with it's life underground  
And a perfect disguise above  
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground  
But the humans will give no love

The band "America" knew Southern California well and drove through it in their cars regularly, as indicated in their song Ventura Highway. They could not have been unaware of the propensity for Southern California to be sterile on the one hand, and, when one leasts expects it, life-changing in its revelatory aspect.

The band's leader, Dewey Bunnell, claims to have meant nothing by the so-called free-association in his songs, and this makes him a language poet buy self-declaration. But language poetry is always suspect, since no one who's been in psychotherapy long believes even so-called "accidental" strings of words really have no significance. (And intending to mean nothing when you are a gifted lyricist is like intending to sing badly if you are a gifted singer. It's not as easy to do as it sounds, and usually something gets "betrayed" in the process.)

28. The Urban Dictionary online defines sparkle ponies as:

"Modern-day bimbos who dress cute and wear glitter to attract attention. Within Burning Man culture, they play 'vulnerable' and 'submissive' and spread 'love and light' to gain 'gifts' and popularity points. They use their 'sparkle' to avoid hard-labor. Causing problems is detrimental to their survival, so they avoid social tensions and trot away at the first signs of trouble. They get what they need from those around them so they don't like to rock the boat. They are not socially or politically oriented. They are followers not leaders."

29. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 4:1-13.

30. While I have always loved the Santa Ana winds and felt exhilarated by them, they are dangerous and are often blamed for deadly wildfires and the destruction of property. They can pose severe health risks in certain unlucky situations. Even so, I often counted it a lucky day when I could, as a child, go out and play in that strange kind of weather.

31. I lived in Stanton and often went to the adjacent city of Garden Grove and to the far western and central districts of Anaheim. My time in West Orange County lasted from about 1967 to 1973. There was probably also a year in there where I lived in Central Anaheim, but that period of time was very unstable and the exact dates of my residence remain uncertain.

For a lot of my childhood, I could walk to Disneyland from my home, and I did so often. I went so often, and tickets were so inexpensive, that it functioned almost as a second home.

Much of my life, by the age of five, was self-supervised as I was given liberties to explore the hills of Corona from breakfast time till dinner time.

At the age of seven, I was forced to decide who I should live with. Family members were becoming scattered about and no one would resolve the matter for me.

By the time I was eight, I lived largely alone in a three-bedroom house and roamed freely around West Orange County. By then I had lost two whole families, and my dad was largely away, perhaps making a short appearance at the end of the evening, or briefly in the morning, or sometimes not at all. Fortunately, I could already engage in rudimentary food preparation, do my own laundry and even perform rudimentary chores; and so I basically lived as adult by the summer before I entered fourth grade.

32. At that time, Central Orange County was like the wild west. The Garden Grove area could be extremely violent. One of my favorite childhood friends was shot and killed in broad daylight during a supermarket robbery in front of dozens of witnesses. My own campus of California State University at Fullerton had a mass shooting during the day. Almost no one hadn't been confronted by people with guns. Richard Ramirez, also known as the night stalker, perhaps one of the most famous mass murderers in U.S. history, was also stalking Orange County back then.

Many people seemed utterly composed during all of this and barely seemed to remember the violence we lived with, but I was increasingly traumatized as these things unfolded around me on what seemed to be a continuing basis. Many of us carried weapons, and I was one of those people. Police, being completely outnumbered and often outgunned, verged on being helpless, hence they often gave ordinary citizens a free pass for being illegally armed, since they knew there was virtually no one to protect average people.

33. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 5:1-20.

34. I had the misfortune, several times, to be in positions, sometimes at work, where policemen drew their guns and threatened to shoot and kill a suspect right in front of me.

Two drug-dealing rivals had an argument right outside of the San Francisco apartment I was living in at the time. One of them drew a pistol and fired a bullet that missed his rival but managed to hit the wall just a few feet above my bed. My new girlfriend and I had been trying to get some rest when our tranquility was disrupted by a person yelling, "Help! Help! Help!" This was followed by a gun blast, which was itself followed by the rapid appearance of police.

The violence followed me from Orange County to San Francisco, which, not long after I moved there, erupted in a crime wave, and this, in turn, resulted in me again being present during many incidents of police showing up with guns drawn.

35. I have never been formally arrested, booked, charged with a crime or prosecuted. This is remarkable because of my penchant for being stopped, questioned, detained, taken into custody, ending up in the back of squad cars and so on. I've never known anyone to have had so many run-ins with the law without himself or herself being the subject of civil lawsuits or criminal prosecution.

36. Having been born with a severe cleft palate and cleft lip, I was lucky enough to get the best surgeons they had at that time. Even so, my cleft lip scar is still very noticeable to some people.

Conversely, and much to my surprise, many people stare at me oddly when I talk about the travails of living with the medical complications that came with my rather severe cleft palate case. Some people claim not to notice anything unusual about my face, and still others say they thought the scar was due to a boxing injury or a car accident or some other ordinary cause.

37. These quotes are a kind of pastiche of semi-accurate quotes taken from several different videos of talks given by the late U. G. Krishnamurti, (not to be mistaken for the more earnest J. Krishnamurti). The two Krishnamurtis knew each other from their youth, but U. G. Krishnamurti was always skeptical of his rival and tended to give him a hard time when they met.

38. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 6:1-12.

39. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 7:1-29.

40. See King Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes 8:1-16.

Author's Commentary

The building blocks of this story are simple and straightforward enough. It is overtly a fusion of four main elements, the first three of which are: The Book of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Jewish scriptures credited to King Solomon himself; Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad; and my own autobiographical and fictional ruminations regarding the great street itself, a street that I have explored, visited, or lived near, off and on, for half a century. The fourth "construction" element that went into the building of this book is the inspiration that I drew from the movie Slacker, Richard Linklater's masterpiece.

The lengthy Harbor Boulevard is a symbol for the endlessly-long Congo River. One is an incomprehensible river of water, the other a seemingly inexhaustible river of cars.

Solomon Wedge symbolically occupies the position of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, a person not easy to meet with, but whose influence is felt all down the river, a person obviously the subject of a kind of personality cult. From a distance this person seems like someone who one might be arrogant and demanding and seemingly unworthy of inordinate degrees of authority, but is somehow allowed to remain in charge anyway.

The narrators of both stories are classic agnostics, not only in the religious sense, but in the experiential sense, people always skeptical but willing to go to absurd lengths to know for sure, people who are more than deeply annoyed at being put through elaborate paces over something that probably isn't real, but who, in the end, comply with any protocol in order to see a task through to its logical conclusion.

The people along the route share a frustrating unwillingness to question Solomon. And, in spite of their radical differences, these people seem to share a mindlessly-conformist set of presumptions about Solomon in spite of the fact that only only a few of them ever seem to get to meet him in person. Only one insolent teenager comes out as overtly critical.

The credulous friends of the protagonists are among the lucky few that claim to have met the man. The friends' confident approach to the matter of Solomon plays on the ego of the main protagonist, more or less obliging him to go on the journey, since not going would be tantamount to refusing to act on a dare.

The story also features a bothersome technique employed by both Charles Schulz in the Peanuts cartoons and by the writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link, the creators of the character profile of Columbo in the television series Columbo played by Peter Falk. In both Peanuts and Columbo, the audience is repeatedly referred back to a character, or characters, we are never allowed to hear from directly. Additionally, these characters are never even given a satisfactory physical description. We are regularly reminded that Charlie Brown is speaking to school teachers and parents, but we are never allowed to see the teachers or parents or know key specifics about them. In the same way, one is never allowed to see Columbo's wife, though her existence, and even her input into the life of Columbo, remain a regular feature in the story line of the whole series.

Hence, in Harbor Boulevard we are told by the narrator that a partner is coming along, but we never hear a direct quote from that person, and that person never enters the steam of true dialog. If the partner says something important, we are told about that by the narrator, but are never allowed to hear from the partner through a remark with quotes around it. The partner never gets to say his own lines and we are never even allowed to know the color of his hair. We are left to speculate whether he is short and fat or thin and tall. The partner is always there, and we learn things about him second-hand, and yet we're never sure we know him fully. Even if the partner breaks into a monologue, we are only permitted to get a summary of the monologue from the main protagonist.

The places in the story, and the people in those places, which serve as lighthouses along the way, are usually composite places drawn from multiple locations which loomed large in my personal autobiography and in the culture in question.

All along the way, I create places which are a fusion of the real world and the imaginary world, but reality itself, in some sense, provides the rudder. Most of the elements in this tale are not very far from the truth from an emotional and experiential point of view, even if they are factually false. Pure fantasy, of the sort one finds in genre fiction, holds little interest for the author as a reader or writer. Exaggeration is, of course, employed in most instances, but the purpose is not to mislead, but rather to expose more deeply.

The protagonists meet with hostility or face attacks from time to time as they continue down Harbor Boulevard, and these attacks are likened to the indigenous people who attack the steamboat in Heart of Darkness from the banks of the Congo river, thus making the attempt to finally meet with Kurtz all the more difficult. Instead of being confronted with arrows or spears, they are confronted with other forms of assault, but all of these things are only there as devices to increase the difficulties of the rigors our travelers must face in their ordeal.

As previously noted, the people who appear in this tale are, as is typical in my works, composites of people whose traits, beliefs and oddities shaped my warped sense of the human journey, each of them existing beyond the reach of our moral judgments or psychological assessments. The Sartrian existentialist might note that a human being is, by definition, in motion, and while his or her project may or may not be in bad faith, still, the project itself cannot ever exist as a completed fact, not during the lifetime of the human in question. And, as Joseph Campbell might note, if a person's life is archetypal, the reality of it can't ever be conclusively known or tidied up in some clean or clear way. Marlowe came to know this by searching for Kurtz, who, in the end, spent very little time with him just as Solomon spends very little time with our protagonists. Solomon and Kurtz draw us on, pull us down the river, even when the river itself becomes nonsensical. It's not that Kurtz or Solomon were deliberately taciturn or evasive in their speech, but rather that they spoke most elaborately through the quests they inspired.

Additionally, I've always wanted to write some kind of indirect tribute to Richard Linklater's Slacker. Anyone who had been to both Orange County and Texas in the 1980s could not help but see some cultural overlap. Many of the same kinds of peculiar people inhabited both places, and many told the same types of stories and preached the same kinds of doctrines. And while this book seeks to create a parade of culturally-symbolic characters, it will not seek to duplicate Linklater's masterful device of continually changing the protagonists within the story. And so, in my story, the protagonists remain the same, but the rotation of archetypal people remains a constant. If it were a poem, one might regard it as a list poem.

In order to reduce the chaotic nature of this text, I have used asterisks heavily in order to separate the italicized sayings of Solomon Wedge from the main narrative text; and I have added further use of asterisks to separate the narrator's past-tense narration form his present-tense narration.

Because I borrow heavily from other written sources, and because my fictional writing style is so grounded in identifiable autobiographical elements, (many of which people have asked me to discuss more thoroughly), I decided to include a set of numbered notes along with this frank discussion of how this project was designed and constructed. And because my texts are primarily designed for ebook consumption, I've decided to use numbers inside of parenthesis instead of subscript footnotes to indicate additional information is available in the back of the book. While this type of note referencing may seem cumbersome in paperback book format, it will make the text flow more smoothly in all other formats. (If subsequent publishers should ever take up the project of reissuing this book, then perhaps time and resources will become available to produce more visually-pleasing versions in all formats.)

It is also worth noting something further about the narrator in this story. While his personality obviously overlaps with my own, there is a certain, as critics have said, moralizing tendency is my real personality. Not a few people have been confused upon meeting me to find that I don't quite live up to the image of the brash and harsh man I sometimes portray in public. My acting, as it were, overstates, to a certain degree, the reality of my day to day life. Hence, I brazenly imported some of the more remorseless aspects of Charles Arrowby, the protagonist of Iris Murdoch's The Sea The Sea.

Murdoch depicted Arrowby as having just that extra edge of true wickedness that I admit I'm rather envious of. Having not been able to free myself, so to speak, from the neurotic do-gooder within, I openly stole traits I shamefully admired in Arrowby, who carried out things, and had thoughts, I confess I wish I had. And too, Arrowby has, in addition to his forthright blameworthiness, a degree of pure honesty toward the reader which I sometimes lack. And so I stole a bit of his openness and candor toward the reader, although sometimes that openness and candor was more directed toward the reader than the other characters in the story toward whom he could often seem aloof, arrogant or non-intimate.

As the story rolls along, the partner turns out to be analogous to the fugitive swimmer in The Secret Sharer, a short-novel often paired with Heart of Darkness in paperback form. He truly is an alter ego who lives out things our narrator is unable to enact himself. The narrator, who seems to start out disrespecting his partner slightly, eventually comes to admit that he is lucky to have such a companion; and it is the companion who seems to be fully alive, the one who provides for the narrator a vicarious window into true experiencing.

Solomon Wedge is finally painted as a tolerant and loving person who, when met with, shows nothing but gentleness. But since he is suspected, as the story unfolds, as being somehow all-powerful, his final moral disposition becomes questionable.

Not unlike the God of Judaism, Solomon seems to preside over a world that continually torments and disorients people, although he seemingly could arrange for those under his sway to have an easy time of it. What little Solomon does say at the end of the story, seems to imply that only a tale full of rigors provides a truly rich life. To again refer back to Campbell's doctrines: If the hero is not put through an ordeal, what story does he have, and what story does a culture have? If the universe, as Alan Watts suspects, is a literary work written by God, then He is, if He is any kind of writer at all, going to have to introduce ordeals into the plot. And thus Solomon, though never confessing to any supernatural powers, must be suspected of having that dual nature that all gods and demigods have, and thus we are perhaps justified in both loving and reviling him.
