New Spirits

The following travel sketch is of a complex event of sorts, one both outlandish and coherent, worthy of mockery and of consideration. Perhaps, if we wish to understand such an event, a weird event, we must temporarily defer our trust to the likewise weird. Yes, to understand the ambiguous, let us trust characters of equal ambiguity – the comedic heroes who are alternately confused either as tragic clowns or foolish heroes. Rely on them, the characters of great disproportions. Let us see the perceptions of such a figure.

. . .

They park the car, which has felt seats, in the lot next to the large tree whose branches are still wet. Everything is wet, because it is only nine in the morning and the sun is not yet hot. The wet is on the hills with brown grass that looks like hay, on the gold Buddha placed on the grass and on the deer that do not move when Max walks by them. It is the wet on the eyeballs of someone who has stayed up until dawn.

A wooden staircase, besides two silver hybrid cars, leads to an open door, above which the sign says “gifts.” The book sold include: “Zen Buddhism: In Search of Self,” “The Path: A Spiritual Journey,” and “The Laws of Spirit: A Tale of Transformation." A carved stick surrounded by purple velvet with a crystal attached is on sale. Everything is expensive, but to make a purchase one need only to drop money into the basket.

They walk up the road and see a man with a flannel shirt and a red beard from his ears to his chin. He is singing solemnly on a stump and his face is rather like a bush with a smile.

“We’re here for the teen sweatlodge?”

“Yes, wonderful,” he says. “Scott on the stage is here for the lodge too.” They are setting up for the day, he tells them, and he points to the woods, to a dome cage not tall enough to stand within but at least twenty feet long. It is made of thin saplings like bones.

Jan leaves in the car. She leaves beyond the wet. Now Max is left with only ambiguous allies: the bush faced man, Scott, who wears tight jeans with small spots of bleach that are cut beneath his kness, Eloise his friend, and – above all – the image of thin saplings bent into a skeletal frame which he saw distant in the woods. It is this picture, like a ribcage from the ground, like a glance at his own innards, which remains fixed in his mind while he waits.

Max explains that he is taking a year off before college and that he is from New York. Soon he will be in Latin America. “I do not know what I am going to do there, but maybe I will learn to trust what happens when I do not know what will happen.” Perhaps this trust that his experiences will precede his understanding is why he is here today, sitting with affluent teenagers, preparing to pray to voodoo gods.

The group is fourteen and these kids seem so tender. They are almost naked as they walk to the woods. By the fire, they sit. Eloise sits cross-legged, her short hair combed back behind her ears. Max, searching for her gaze, makes conversation. “People like the South Californian shores,” she says as she turns. “They are quietly beautiful, but I don’t like them. Point Reyes beaches are wild, wind and fog – their beauty is intense.” Much the same could be said about her eyes, which are wild and foggy blue.

After they walk the perimeter of the wood frame, deferential to the mystical energy that connects the fire to the altar to the entrance, they crouch inside. Hot stones are shoveled from the outside light into the darkness. The dark is hot and malicious; steam rises from the stones that are still vaguely red. The chanting begins: “Higha, lowhowa, higha, heelow.” Strange echoes fill the lungs, lingers on the skin, skin huddled in that small cavern, burns. People shout confession: “You know, creator, if you want Lou to die, let her die with beauty,” Ho! they shout when truth is said or they cry. “You know, creator, if she should live, creator let her live with beauty.” The steam hisses like whispers and at some moment, imperceptibly, the red from the stones disappears and the darkness is total. Everything is hot with breath, hot with skin, hot with wet.

It is at this moment of total blindness that Max feels the great wet cover his body. This awkward lodge is the womb.

Outside, they sit on rocks and drink lemonade and Eloise asks him how he feels. The breeze stings against his body, which is still wet. He says he is cold, but feels very alive. She looks at him. He thinks for a moment that the milky white has receded from her eyes, and that these wild eyes are no longer foggy, but blue like the sky...

But surely that is impossible! Max after all is still an impostor – though perhaps a little less than before.