David's Inferno (9 page)

March 21, 2006: Phoenix, Arizona to Santa Monica, California. 402 Miles
. The trouble with listening to books on CD is that if I miss a single sentence, I have to go back and play it again. And again. And again. Until I can keep my attention there for the entire five seconds it takes to comprehend it. A combination of obsession and a tenuous grasp on the literal.

Susan Orlean has traveled more and to stranger places than I ever will. And writes about them better:

I hear that, burst into tears, pull into the next rest area, and look at the display maps of Arizona Highways, hoping that somehow they'll tell me where I've been and where I'm going.

Something in me just hasn't surrendered yet. There's too much to take in … too much to know. You can't know every little thing. You can't be aware of every little thing. I have a Talmudic brain and I'm trying to grasp instead of experiencing. I'm trying to remember
things without even seeing them. I'm worrying my way across America, trying to parse out the lives of all the people I see … and mine. What are they doing? Why? What am I doing. Why?

Most of the time I don't know where I am. I don't know where I'm going to sleep. I don't know where I'm going to get a cup of decent coffee. I don't know the names of the plants. I don't know the names of the mountain ranges. The people in the cars passing and being passed feel so insubstantial.

It's a fool's errand. But who better?

March 22, 2006: Santa Monica, California
. I emerge from the Arizona desert late in the afternoon, white-knuckle the van down various LA expressways at rush hour and find my way to my cousin's house in Santa Monica. The next morning we take a walk in the Santa Monica hills with her jet-black retriever.

Like most geographically-distant relatives, we rarely see each other, but are inexpressibly close. Once we get past the basics—in particular, what our kids are doing and how they should meet each other someday but probably never will—we get down to the serious business of our shared emotional gene pool. My father described it thirty years ago, in a welcome-to-the-world letter to her one-year-old son: “I guess what I'm trying to say, and I'm not saying it very well, is that this family is emotional, but tries to keep the fact a secret.” (My dad treated all children as adults—he wasn't always so generous with actual adults.)

Secret isn't really the right word. We can be extremely sensitive and compassionate. We just don't wear our hearts on our sleeves and aren't all that fond of public displays of psychosis. More important, we're all committed to finding humor in virtually any situation, no matter how dark. So, while my cousin and I both have a vague idea of what the other has gone through over the years, neither of us is aware of the severity or how our respective families dealt (or are dealing) with it.

We also spend some time speculating about the degree to which our siblings, cousins, and children avoided that particular family
gene (up to 100%) and trying to track it back through several generations.

“Remember how
he
used to sit there in that chair like he had never moved and never intended to …?”

“
Her
? She died before I was born, but I have this picture … she's standing with her hand on some kind of wrought iron gatepost holding flowers—so beautiful—but her head is tilted a little left and down, and those eyes … I know those eyes … I
have
those eyes.”

“Now
that
guy … he was never depressed a day in his life! Probably adopted!”

“I used to wonder about
her
. But that wasn't depression. Or if it was, she channeled it into the fine art of loving intolerance.”

“Now
he was
a drunk. No question …”

“Cut him some slack … he was married to
her
.”

And so we laugh our way through our family tree.

We don't bother talking about the so-called Depression Gene (5-HTTLPR) which, allegedly, makes it easier to transform stress into major depression. Considering that some of these ancestors took considerable risks getting out of Lithuania and Romania during 19
^th
C
. pogroms, there was certainly plenty of stress going around.

But we know that nurture and nature are just two of
many
sides of a three-dimensional coin. And we've both paid our dues.

March 23, 2006 to March 26, 2006: Anaheim & Laguna Beach, California
. You'd think that a Natural Foods Expo going on within a precious-crystal's throw of Daffy and Grumpy, wouldn't be the best place for a manic-depressive. But, actually, as outer events go, it goes pretty well.

First of all, things happen way faster than my brain can keep up with or run away from. So, I'm constantly distracted from the discomforting signals being sent by errant neurons.

Second, there are a lot of people selling products that use top-secret natural processes to extract top-secret vital components that contain top-secret energetic vibrations that, if taken in precisely
the correct top-secret dosages and sequences can help even a blatant psychotic like myself. (While I don't have a chance to try everything, the free ice cream and chips cheer me up quite a bit.)

People constantly come up to our booth and ask deeply perplexing philosophical questions about the products my partner and I are selling: “Is it all natural?” “Does it have _______?” (Fill in blank with whatever natural ingredient some magazine just said would either shorten or increase your lifespan.) “Is it cruelty-free?”

In spite of my beleaguered cranium, I feel compelled to inject these repetitive conversations with some contrarian, albeit well-meaning insights.

“Well, depends what you mean by all natural,” I respond. “You know … no artificial ingredients … stuff made from petrochemicals,” they explain. “Petrochemicals come from way-ancient plants, you know,” I point out, feeling an uncommon solidarity with primordial ooze.

“Ingredient X?” I respond thoughtfully. “It's hard to get it out of the formula, because it's one of the primary ingredients in water. Besides, what did oxidants ever do to you?” (It even takes me a few seconds to understand what I mean by that.) “Cruelty?” I ask with, I admit, a certain degree of indignation. “Have you ever heard a flower scream when you pick it? Believe me, it ain't pretty.”

When the next person comes up, I switch gears and explain that
our
products actually are all natural, cruelty free, and don't have
any
of that nasty ingredient. I'm not trying to deceive anyone. I just like entertaining different points of view—if you haven't noticed.

Just up from downtown Laguna Beach, California there's a long, narrow oasis of calm in the midst of the touristy storm. It's called Brown's Park. You'd think it was just an ordinary alley except for the mosaic brickwork wall and the bronzed chairs, table, and book at the entrance. The boardwalked alley leads to a low ironwork
railing that looks out over the Pacific. In the center is a poem that's written in wrought iron and set in a stained-glass frame:

I come upon this railing just before sunrise one morning in March 2006 during my jittery daily stroll. The poem … the view … the sounds of that surf … I know I should feel some fleeting extravagant respite. But I don't. It's like being given a gift you can't figure out how to unwrap. If anything, the experience just emphasizes the divide between the poem's spirit and my own.

I try, really I do. I take ten deep breaths with my eyes closed and then open them to the “booming surf.” I do a few basic t'ai chi moves, with a yoga Salute to the Sun thrown in for good measure (even though the sun is in the opposite direction). Ultimately, all I can do is take a lot of pictures to try to at least capture the experience I seem incapable of having. If only I could focus on the outer scenery as ferociously as I do the inner.

March 27, 2006: Laguna Beach, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. 290 Miles
. Las Vegas is a great place for an agitated depressive. Shaken, not stirred. Because the agitation you feel inside manifests all around you—that insistent drive for the next moment, born of intense dissatisfaction with this one. Just as the vibration in my solar plexus is on alert 24/7 to demand “just one last” gasp from my exhausted adrenals, so the town is always trigger-hair ready to demand just one last gasp from the slightest human fascination, compulsion, addiction, or obsession. The town truly never sleeps. Even at dawn, it tosses and turns. I feel right at home: The endless piped-in music. The insistent smell of fake flowers. The dazzling pumped-up colors of real ones. Guys polishing floors. Dealers polishing chips one by one.

Monuments to and from the past rise again—daring you to mock their pretensions. The Arc de Triomphe. Eiffel Tower. Caesar's Palace. Luxor Pyramid.

Bob Dylan is playing here soon. Waylon Jennings is playing here soon. Wayne Newton, Don Rickles, Barry Manilow and guys I've never heard of are playing here soon. What, no women? I walk into The Imperial and G-l-o-r-i-a is playing right now.

Revolving doors keep opening for you. Taxis keep waiting for you. Ramps and stairways keep appearing to shuttle you back and forth across the Strip.

Guys keep handing out cards with pictures of naked women. They'll come to you. Direct to your room. Totally nude. $49. Special. Anything you want.

Anything? What I lust for is a trick I doubt they've ever turned.

March 28, 2006: Las Vegas, Nevada to Zion National Park, Utah. 175 Miles
. I love picking up hitchhikers. I know people think it's dangerous. But, most of the ones I pick up are in far more desperate physical and psychological straits than I am. We exchange the usual pleasantries: Where you going? Salt Lake City. I'm going over toward Zion. Just drop me at Route 9. Can I smoke? Sure. You want one? No, quit a while ago. But you go ahead.

He then lights up and dives in without further preamble: