At long last, and with a lot of work, some fear, and trepidation, my novel, WINTER CITY WOLF MOON is finally live on Amazon. The blurb reads: Burned out gumshoe Lewis Bocarde is sure of one thing: someone is killing Alaska Native women and getting away with it. Weary police officials list the causes of death as “accidental” and “undetermined" and move on to more pressing concerns. On the cold streets of Anchorage, everyone seems to be immune to the city eating up Natives and spitting out the bones. Lewis forms an alliance with a suicidal social worker named Grace, and a band of indigenous contrarians to snare a malignant force slithering like a black snake through the back alleys of the winter city. But now, what they are looking for is looking back. At them.
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[Elvis English note: This is a guest post from my friend Allen Sacharov who, as always, shoots an arrow right into the heart of the matter.] For the second year in a row, I have been asked to appear as Papa Noel. The character is the Peruvian Santa Claus, but here it is something much more profound. Papa Noel is a figure that touches people of all ages, and as the name implies, is a once a year deeply loved member of the family.
Papa Noel started the morning at an upscale private school in Cajamarca, Peru and out came the iphones as all the kids wanted their photo with the big guy in the red suit. But even at this point I first went to the kids at the back of the crowd and gave them a big hug. Papa Noel knew what it was like to be at the back of the crowd in school. He thought the gig had ended, but no, a second act was waiting. The teachers and students in a true act of kindness had purchased gifts for an elementary school in the high sierra outside of town. Papa Noel, along with several teachers and students piled into a van and started the climb. After leaving the carretera, the road we followed was only a road because it was agreed upon that it was a road. The van driver dodged potholes and washouts for over five km. From about 30 m away the kids saw the van coming and crowded the fence. When they saw Papa Noel, pandemonium broke out. This is where magical realism comes into play. In Peru, the phantasmic and the real seamlessly blend. It is why every cab and bus driver has a Virgin Mary icon on his dashboard. It surrounds us. So if a mythical figure shows up in a pueblo where he NEVER came before and is standing in a school yard passing out gifts, of course everyone is going to believe in him. Kids crowded around, each wanting to touch Papa Noel. One little boy threw his arms around him and said, "I love you, Papa Noel." Scores of photos were taken, and in each one there was a look of happiness and wonder. As we left, the kids had opened their presents and were busy sharing them with their pals. In this little school in the middle of nowhere, the students are learning the most important lesson in life - how to act as human beings. Perhaps you have noticed that in this account I always referred to myself as Papa Noel. The reason is that is who I became and that is who I always want to be. The trick to being Papa Noel in December is to live Papa Noel the other 11 months of the year as well. The little boy who hugged Papa Noel wanted to believe in a magical world that was good, kind and loving. And so do I. Siempre, Al On their way to opening up the first authentic burger joint in Lanzhou, China, husband and wife team Josh and Mei Mei, learned a lot about trust. How many fading autumn afternoons have you walked through and felt that melancholy richness pull you deep down into the bottomless canyons of your soul? When I reached the National Wetlands Park in the northern suburbs of Zhangye, I was bottoming out in the most pleasant sort of way. The park functions as a humidifier for Zhangye City and is comprised of 25,995 acres of river, marsh and manmade wetlands. Paths loop around the lake and wander among the trees. The newest addition was a huge Ferris wheel that towered above the adjoining suburbs, a giant cyclopean eye that followed you wherever you went. I had brought along a couple of beers and a bag full of snacks and settled in around a table with a reclining chair on the sand at the edge of the lake, in the shadow of the Ferris wheel. The area was officially closed but the caretaker gracefully ignored me and allowed me to take in the evaporating summer memories that still lingered like poltergeists around the flapping pennants, and the empty plastic beach chairs, and the brightly-colored paddle boat's at rest. The light that shines on travelers is a special kind of light, bestowing upon those living their everyday lives a simple yet powerful kind of evaporating magic. At least this is so in western China where a foreigner can still cause passersby to gape in open-mouthed stupefaction. I was gaped at, gawked at, grinned at, cursed at, welcomed, worshiped, and hello-ed repeatedly, and at least twice on every major street someone would shyly point to their phone requesting to take a photo with me. Those who know me know how much I dislike having my picture taken, but I endured it gracefully, sort of, seeing as how I enjoy taking pictures, I realze have to submit to pictures as well Besides, some teenagers were so happy with their photos they almost exploded with joy and that was nice to witness. I was caught in the ache of late fall. Shortening days, the bite of the wind, crimson memories colliding, the haunting of pumpkin ghosts, but mostly I missed the autumn moon. As a city dweller, the moon appears briefly between buildings, washed out by light, a dull, ice popsicle compared to the real thing. There was a full Hunter's moon coming, and I was going to escape the city and the skyscrapers and the artificially-lit skyline, to soak in it, to moon-bathe in it, to cleanse the soul and ease the ache, out in the Martian desert terrain around Zhangye. So, after a lovely hi-speed train ride described in Part 1, I was there in the center of the city gathered around the Drum Tower. Once, long ago in the folds of time, an ancient ancestor took a stick from the burnt ends of days and drew his life on a cave wall. As we now know, it wasn't an isolated incident, such caves have been discovered all over globe.They stand as monuments to the first documented answers to the call of self-expression, in the dawn of us when we fully, finally, came down from the trees, no longer apes. The handprints left bear silent witness: I Am, I Exist! For me, cave art represents a fork in the evolutionary road between two of the strongest human impulses: the urge to create and the urge to destroy. I can't say I actively chose creativity--it was more like it chose me, and eventually I came to realize my occupation now is what Emily Dickinson called - This - To renew and invigorate my allegiance to - This - I decided to have a cave art mosaic tattooed on my body in time for the New Year, which will be known in China as the Year of the Monkey. My obsessions are beautiful gardens in my mind, twilight gardens lit by the ghost glow of the universe. I am overwhelmed by the smallest of things, overcome by the simplest moments. In stillness joy abounds and I have stubbornly reclaimed my own stillness. Recently, I took my obsessions for a winter walk along the Yellow River; you come too (warning, Robert Frost reference).
When I find an artist that I like, I immerse myself in their work, and on this day I was immersed in Daniela Andrade. She is like a young Joni Mitchell /Ricki Lee Jones by way of Laura Oden. She has that soul wisdom mixed with craziness that I find enlivening. How different China looked with her singing through my headphones. The Toronto waif boldly stood up to the weirdness of China and her spare arrangements left room for the sights along the river to intrude. She is singing, "no one told me the right way to fall deep in love," and I'm thinking how we are taught more about fear than we are about love, more about failure than success, how the ordinary saints are mute, they let the musicians do all the talking. Dazzled by being blasted out of the last of a long series of dark tunnels, the first snowfall was blinding on the late autumn hills as the sleek new bullet train whispered westward past stuttering images of sheep feeding on the frayed edges of summer. Golden Van Gogh cornstalks, gathered and tied in straining bundles, were stacked like muskets taken from surrendering soldiers. Other stalks stood defiant, still rooted to the earth but October-bleached and faded down-down-down into the color of weak tea. Stillness and motion, the high-speed train and the silence of the fields: yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber, Mars orange, viridian, Van Dyke brown . . . gray-metal . . . skies. It’s the night of the Blue Moon in July. Heat wave. Hundred degrees (37.7 c) for seven days in a row. I’m melting, we are all melting. Today I forced myself to take a walk. Wearing shorts. In Costa Rica men don’t wear shorts unless they are going to the beach. I never did either, no matter how hot it got. But today, I am subjecting the good people of China to the sight of me wearing shorts. I was sitting in the Greenhouse Coffee cafe in Xining wondering how many days have been saved by good coffee. I was not only saved but about to flow into one of those Travel-Daze where the world conspires with everyday magic to make the ordinary seem so brand new and alive, when the road is a river and you're letting it just sweep you along, towards nothing and everything. Leaving the brand new, gleaming railway station, the taxi travels down the ancient streets of a city in transition. Whole neighborhoods have been moved, the city looks new, and offers an unusual amount of recently built western coffee shops whose menus feature exotic delights--at least here in western China, such as quesadillas and chicken pesto Panini and wraps and cheesecake, all with great coffee as well. High on the northern Tibetan Plateau, an ancient slab of land that eventually rises up into the attic of the planet, you can get winded just pulling on your socks in the morning. I had traveled to Xining in the Qinghai Province, doormat to the Himalayas with an average elevation of 10,000 feet, a gaping, empty wilderness whose entire population is only five and a half million—most Chinese cities considered small have at least that, yet at 721,000 square kilometers it’s bigger than France and Belgium combined, has been fought over for centuries, lured pioneers and prospectors, and, because of its isolation, became the eventual dumping ground for criminals and political prisoners when the communists set up reeducation camps here. Modern impatience moves like a water spider, hovering on a Google instant answer for a millisecond then flitting away toward the next, new distraction. Sometimes Google, in their beneficence, lead searchers to the Elvis English Diaries to answer the question of why the Yellow River is yellow, but on this site the answer is always in the story and the story is never instant. Sadly, many click away in disgust. Yet there are some of you—yes you!—who stick around longer and for you I will not only answer the question but will also tell you why the Yellow River is the Nile of China and that the ancients believed it began in heaven as a continuation of the Milky Way. New Year’s Eve is usually a savage drunken beast, prowling in loud packs, wearing the latest fashionable war paint, gorging on proximity, possibility, and the power of mass presumption, leaving entire populations weeping, weaving and heaving, anticipation biting like a coiled rattlesnake and the night all out of anti-venom, as the bright butterflies of celebration fade into the dull angry moths of morning after regret. But in China, hardly anyone celebrates the Western New Year, and the streets of Baoji were Wednesday night normal as we made our way to a bar locally known as the ‘Four Sisters’. On a short dead-end road lined with bars it became apparent that no one had told the revelers here that this night was not celebrated in China. Every bar was packed. By this time we were a group of eleven and the Four Sisters couldn’t accommodate us—though they tried, and we finally settled into what I think was called the Che Bar. I remember the owner’s name was Michael and he uprooted the people at the window table and let us settle in. In China you just go along with this; it does no good to protest. They had mini kegs of Heineken and imported scotch and hookahs and a large red banner of the Cuban revolutionary hanging on the wall. I was waiting for my buddy Paul in the Baoji train station and as the minutes ticked by I was thinking how it’s not like him to be late, then also realized I was suffering from traveler’s dementia where you are always feeling that you are waiting in the wrong place, at the wrong gate, on the wrong street, existing in a shadow world apart from how the local people see it. Eventually, just as nonchalant waiting was dissolving into looking around and weighing my options, Paul came trotting up, out of breath. Responding to a call from his girlfriend at 6 A.M. he had been to Xian to take care of some urgency, then raced back to Baoji on a high-speed train that arrived the same time as my train did, but at a different station on the other side of the city. He explained all this as we drove the short distance to his apartment, and once there, displayed the bright treasures procured in Xian: three different kinds of cheeses, cigars, bread, and real British tea imported from the U.K. We immediately started hacking at a wheel of Brie while catching up, waiting for the tea to steep; the cigars would be for tomorrow night. Ah . . . to take this much delight in cheese requires being deprived of it. Describing China as the land of no cheese is right on the money. Sure, you can get it in the big cities, but everywhere else it’s a challenge, and if you do manage to find it, it will most likely be a bland tasteless, chemical equivalent meant to satisfy the uninitiated. You can forget about the sharp bite of real Vermont cheddar or the crumbly mouth burst of Rogue Creamery’s Smokey Blue Cheese. It all leads to a condition I call homeFOODsickness. Most expats suffer from this more than anything else. It comes on you suddenly, completely, and it usually causes you to crave things you were never even in the habit of eating back home. Hot dogs with yellow mustard. Cheeseburgers with ketchup and pickle. Potatoes and gravy. Bacon omelets with home fries. The cravings are as unique as the individuals are. I had one friend who sheepishly admitted to craving SPAM. The other thing most expats suffer from is not being able to speak freely in their mother tongue. To be casually and completely understood without having to stop the flow of a story and explain everything. Anyone who knows me is laughing right now . . . imagining me patiently stopping to explain everything. But at the moment I was eating real cheese and tomorrow I would be seated around a table able to speak freely without explaining. The New Year brought Elvis English nothing but Internet problems. If you had been wondering where I'd gone, the answer is nowhere; I've been here all the while, trying to connect to my site. And trying, and trying. Below is a post written over a month ago. Beneath the worn circus of everyday life, beneath the hyperreality of the relentless advertising media, where the bright clowns and smiling idiots try to render you senseless enough to buy their products, and just under the thick veil of the constant shaming culture--always seeking to scold you back into line, is the real China, a daily surprise, a guise, a mirror, disfigured and wretched and delightful, stark, stubborn, ancient and wise, a smiling calligraphic mystery that feels so close to grasping yet is forever floating away as if you were awakening from the blurred fog of yet another, dissolving morning dream. “Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.” – Frank Lloyd Wright At least four times in my life, I’ve unburdened myself of stuff. Selling, donating, giving away all my hard-won possessions, and instead of feeling loss, I’ve always felt a sublime lifting. Poverty cuts deep into the soul, and humans, preprogrammed hunters and gatherers, overcompensate by hoarding things, as a form of protection. As if things are the measure of us. As if the finer the thing we collect, the finer we are. Status through material gluttony. And in this season, this impulse runs amok, like swarming bats carrying the fruit of reason back to dark caves where it will pose as satisfaction, stuttering as long as this reassurance doesn’t acknowledge its own suspicions. I have been reminded of the way out by Erika, who wrote in this season, “I’ve been sharing with others things that I no longer need and that someone else can use.” And by Loreta J. who sent me this: I never thought I had a lot of stuff, but somehow over the course of time things would find a way into my tiny living space and take up that space. Every now and then I'd think that it would be good to reorganize things, but somehow I ended up shopping for more instead. I was making a Christmas shopping list, running like crazy trying to find presents my nearest and dearest would enjoy, and I got frustrated: Christmas is not about material things. That evening I came home without any presents for others, but with a handbag I had wanted for a long time. I put that bag on the sofa, looked around and realized—now. Although it was almost 10pm, I opened my closet, my drawers and threw everything I had on to the floor in the middle of the bedroom. And then started purging my possessions. I was shocked at how many things I had that I did not use. I looked at the pile and was afraid to even think of how much money was spent on this stuff. And since that day I have been teaching myself to live with less, and to not spend money on things I don't need. It's not always easy, because old habits die hard, but I'm enjoying the process. And come Christmas—this year I'm giving experiences instead of presents. I'm taking my mother on a Christmas trip, going on another trip with my friends and babysitting for another friend who has a family. I think such gifts are more meaningful. It’s time for working on my inner self! This Christmas, let’s give some shit away. Let’s gift what we already have to someone who can use it. Let’s recycle our hoardings and unburden ourselves. Let someone else become the janitor of our possessions. Let’s sing . . . and dance . . . and share. Like stubborn Apaches . . . Ah, Alaska. Not so long ago, Alaska was considered a backwoods relative to the lower 48 states of the USA, separated by a frozen and unknown Canada. The population of the entire state was only 500,000 people and it was considered insignificant, a land of deadbeats, dreamers, frostbitten malcontents, riding dogsleds towards frozen adobes, something best left alone and forgotten.
To the people who lived there, this was just fine; it prevented pesky relatives and associates from making the long journey north and discovering the real and delicious truth that Alaska was truly a one of a kind paradise. Then came reality TV. The Deadliest Catch. Ice Road Truckers. Alaska State Troopers. And the rush began, camera crews were everywhere. There was TV gold in Alaska, literally, and they filmed the plundering. Whenever they were in production meetings in New York or Los Angeles, challenged to reveal what they had planned next, it seemed everyone went nuts about Alaskan projects, the more preposterous the better, and so one led into another, and another, till they arrived recently at MTV’s Slednecks, which is apparently the new Jersey Shore on ice. Same stupidity; same relentless tediousness. Let me proudly introduce you to some real Alaskans, full of vitality and zest, stubbornly changing the way Alaska views itself. Not for profit, not for reality TV revenues, but for the love of it. Let me introduce you to the Alaskan Light Brigade, a loose affiliation of winter low light lunatics determined to enlighten and provoke. Please take four minutes of your time to view their latest video. It is such a worthy, quixotic project: click the link AkLightBrigade, then click on Follow the Light. Light begets light . . . |
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