So­phie was eight when the rebel army took her away. It was al­most Easter, she re­mem­bers.

Four men came into her fam­ily’s hut one night out­side of Gulu, Uganda. They didn’t knock.

Her par­ents stood by, silently.

So­phie says one of the men, pointed a small ma­chete at her and said, “If you don’t cut your brother, we will kill you all.”

“So I did,” she said. “I cut him.”

So­phie cut her brother’s neck. The first time, the rebels didn’t think the cut was deep enough.

They made her do it again.

Charles, her brother, was five. He screamed loud and hard.

So­phie and Charles — bleed­ing down the front of his tat­tered green T-shirt, were loaded into a rick­ety truck where a dozen chil­dren were al­ready crammed in. Hours later, the truck stopped and the chil­dren clam­bered out of the truck, un­sure of what was going to hap­pen. Charles, badly in­jured, was roughly han­dled by the rebels as they wrapped a rope around his an­kles and tied him up­side down in a tree. The rebels laughed as they tied him, So­phie re­calls.

The cap­tured chil­dren were warned that if they ever tried to flee, they too would be tied up in trees.

So­phie’s voice trails off at this part of the story.

“The next day, they took us back to see,” she said. “He was al­ready dead.”

“The red ants had got him.”

There are cer­tain sto­ries you write as a re­porter that con­tinue to haunt you. They are the sto­ries that send you gasp­ing into the night, on a ran­dom Wednes­day evening, in a safe, quiet bed in a safe, quiet coun­try. They are the sto­ries that flood your brain when you are home in North Amer­ica, pick­ing out peanut but­ter of all things, as you stand in the gro­cery store tear­ing up be­cause you can’t fig­ure out which of the 57 op­tions you should buy.

They are, sim­ply put, the sto­ries that mess with your head.

The story of So­phie Akello was one of those sto­ries.

In 2006, I ar­rived in Uganda with a chip on my shoul­der, a small de­sire to help oth­ers, and, above all, a de­sire to see war, to re­port on war, and to gen­er­ally end up like the griz­zled war cor­re­spon­dents I used to see — sun baked and grouchy, with eyes lined by too many hours in ex­otic lo­cales — the kind of per­son I wanted to be, I be­lieved.

It was my first stint as a so-called “war re­porter” (re­ally, I was a rookie that knew noth­ing) and I dove in, spend­ing time in north­ern Uganda, a re­gion em­broiled in a nasty 20-year civil war be­tween a re­li­gious fa­nat­i­cal leader, Joseph Kony, and the Ugan­dan gov­ern­ment. The Lord’s Re­sis­tance Army, a rad­i­cal re­li­gious rebel group, had been ter­ror­iz­ing north­ern Uganda for the bet­ter part of 25 years.

Kony is the cru­elest of lead­ers — 80% of his army is under the age of 12. Chil­dren, as it turns out, make the best sol­diers. They have no fear. They are adapt­able. They be­lieve every­thing.

So­phie’s own story was not unique — she was one of more than 30,000 Ugan­dan chil­dren who have been cap­tured by the Lord’s Re­sis­tance Army. The chil­dren are forced to kill their own peo­ple, often, as in So­phie’s case, their own fam­i­lies.

Many chil­dren, like So­phie, had es­caped the clutches of the Lord’s Re­sis­tance Army and now walked miles and miles every night, from their vil­lages to larger towns, such as Gulu, where they could sleep in safety, hun­dreds of them in­ter­twined on the cold ce­ment floor, a sin­gle guard at the front door.

And that was my job. Write about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in north­ern Uganda. Write about the chal­lenges these chil­dren face — much of which re­volved about the fear of being kid­napped and con­scripted back into a rebel army.

Sadly, it was their fear and the shared ex­pe­ri­ences of con­stantly being ter­ri­fied that cre­ated and fu­eled my ad­dic­tion to ad­ven­ture. Per­haps it is more ap­pro­pri­ate to call it an ad­dic­tion to war.

I did not want to change the world by going to the worst places on earth and writ­ing about them. I was cer­tainly not a com­mit­ted do-gooder. I just wished I was.

I liked the feel­ing of my heart pound­ing in my chest. I liked the feel­ing of hear­ing bul­lets and pre­tend­ing they were fire­works. I even liked the feel­ing of how peo­ple thought I was im­por­tant if I wrote about them. If those peo­ple only knew how lit­tle power or sway I had and how lit­tle words mat­ter. How the pen is not might­ier than the sword, de­spite our best in­ten­tions. If so, we would not have had Rwanda in 1994, or still have Robert Mu­gabe in Zim­babwe. No, the pen is weak and pa­thetic, and yet we still treat it with such rev­er­ence. The sword al­ways wins.

And yet, it was the sword I was ad­dicted to.

The other week, as I was think­ing about where I might like to travel to next, I stopped, dead still, in the mid­dle of the street, a fine driz­zle com­ing down around me. One ques­tion had stopped me cold: what would ever pos­sess a human being to so will­ingly and ex­cit­edly go some­where like the war­zone of north­ern Uganda to tell these sto­ries? The rea­sons why some­one would go to Sudan for a va­ca­tion, to ex­otic sound­ing places like Bu­jum­bura, or Mo­gadishu, or to Goma, where 14-year-old red-eyed drug-crazed boys with Kalash­nikovs man road­blocks that I had to pass through, mul­ti­ple times a day. They are scarcely big­ger than the guns they carry.

Through those years, all around me, peo­ple have died. My life, I be­lieved, was charmed.

Sim­ply put, it was bore­dom. It was a type of sub­ur­ban rest­less­ness that made me leave my com­fort­able home and jump on a plane to East Africa, to a fan­tas­tic, beau­ti­ful war-torn coun­try with wounds so deep, I still won­der if it will ever heal.

Ad­ven­ture is an ad­dic­tion. That con­clu­sion, years later, I have come to.

And yet, in that same phrase, all I can think is: war is also an ad­dic­tion. I jum­ble the words to­gether every chance I get — war, ad­ven­ture — ad­ven­ture, war — and yet at the end of the day the feel­ing is the same and the sto­ries are the same. For me, the terms are in­ter­change­able.

Four years later, it is those war-soaked mem­o­ries that con­tinue to pop up in the most in­con­ve­nient of places all the time. It is on the train in the morn­ing, or in the gro­cery store when I buy peanut but­ter. It is when I hear fire­works and want to hit the ground and cry, while every­one around me is cheer­ing be­cause it’s the Fourth of July. It is when peo­ple at a party say, “Hey, have you seen that movie Blood Di­a­monds? You’re like that girl,” and I se­cretly want to punch them in the face.

Some­times I fear that I will never shake my ad­dic­tion to war and ad­ven­ture. It is a feel­ing that ebbs and flows, de­pend­ing on how my bor­ing sub­ur­ban life is going, de­pend­ing on how much I miss feel­ing that tight­ness in my chest, the feel­ing of blaz­ing adren­a­line, like I can run for miles with­out stop­ping, the feel­ing like some­thing ex­treme could hap­pen at any mo­ment.

It is a feel­ing that I can­not seem to rid my­self of. And years later, as I dream of going back to those war-torn coun­tries, to tell more sto­ries about the peo­ple that live there, I often ask my­self if it was all worth it. Is it bet­ter to be ad­dicted to war and ad­ven­ture than to have never ex­pe­ri­enced it?

The an­swer, thank good­ness, is yes.

It is al­ways worth it.

Por­trait Of A Heavy Sink­ing Feel­ing In Your Gut That Cant Be Ig­nored And Then Your Ears Fall Off - Al­isha Dall'Osto

The music and the cold in­dus­trial ven­ti­la­tion noise of this place ar­rive un­wanted through pipes above my head. The walls are aged wood pan­el­ing, like we were sit­ting out­side by Leopold’s chicken coop home, ex­cept that you can see at the edges that it’s com­pos­ite board. A chan­de­lier is caged in some sort of old fish­ing equip­ment, the table un­der­neath has been care­fully and ar­ti­fi­cially bat­tered to em­u­late the rus­tic farm look. The burnt or­ange vel­vet over­stuffed sofa with gold tas­sel­ing tries to re­mind you of an es­tate sale find but it loses its au­then­tic­ity be­cause there are twenty of these sofas, mixed in with old din­ing chairs pulled up to new metal ta­bles. The over­all ef­fect pro­duces a slight un­ease.

A medium-sized jew­elry box ar­rived last week, with a soft nest of bat­ting ten­derly cradling a frag­ile plas­tic rec­tan­gle. What would I do with a Star­bucks gift card? I’ve come here as an ex­per­i­ment. This cafe is one of their new fake neigh­bor­hood places. It of­fers tea in teapots and lattes in real cups, but I have the feel­ing they’re try­ing to sneak some­thing by me.

Is it snobby to con­sider Star­bucks the epit­ome of cor­po­rate-passe? In many sub­urbs where they are just ar­riv­ing in strip malls, there is no cafe cul­ture to com­pare to. As meet­ing places they are at least bet­ter than fast food restau­rants and maybe even a step up from the built-in cafes in dying big-box book­stores. Here in Seat­tle, Star­bucks is a home­town hero, but its ubiq­uity makes it eas­ily mocked by the young hip­ster artist class seek­ing au­then­tic­ity. Or is that quite it?

Yes­ter­day it was mist­ing, forty, and still dark at six thirty. I was one of the only cus­tomers at the small cor­ner Star­bucks. Thank­fully, since I’d last vis­ited, some­one in the cus­tomer psy­chol­ogy de­part­ment had iden­ti­fied my type — Pro­file: rebels re­fus­ing to learn which sizes grande, venti, and tall cor­re­spond to. The cus­tomer-psy­chol­o­gists fig­ured out that this sub­type is al­ways going to be slightly an­noyed by this and re­spond with an eye-rolling “yeah, what­ever the medium size is,” often in an at­tempt to pro­voke a gen­uinely human con­ver­sa­tion. It is bet­ter for sales to in­stead ei­ther play along or make the drink with­out ad­mon­ish­ment, leav­ing the cus­tomer room to as­sume that they are en­gag­ing in a small de­fi­ance of the man, even as they hand their money over. They must be read­ing Seth Godin a lit­tle. — Thank­fully they also had trained the baris­tas not to re­spond in a nasal, di­dac­tic tone with “do you mean venti?” My order of a “medium” Earl Grey passed with­out com­ment.

I asked “for here,” but my tea came in two nested paper cups, a plas­tic lid and card­board sleeve. They don’t do tea well, how do you keep it from over steep­ing? I perched at the win­dow bench and started to write. Three baris­tas, all about my age, kept up a run­ning pat­ter. Each cus­tomer was greeted with “what can I get started for you this morn­ing?!” as if the cus­tomer was the only other per­son in the world, and each in turn bright­ened, feel­ing spe­cial, though the same line had been used on the guy who’d walked in a minute ear­lier.

Reg­u­lars were served “the usual?” and en­cour­aged to re­count their week­ends. Though all were well re­ceived, the only story that made me lis­ten was about a date. It started with a drink at the bar across from his apart­ment, and then they had “gone back to his place and sang songs to­gether at the piano.” Leav­ing, the dater was al­most skip­ping with hap­pi­ness across the street with his cof­fee. The whole place bright­ened, every­one left in line was smil­ing, and there was lots of coo­ing from the baris­tas.

At seven fif­teen the sky was light­en­ing and I was still the only one sit­ting; every­one else was fu­el­ing on the go. Re­peated crash­ing from out­side: one of the metal chairs on the patio was being hefted over­head and slammed to the ground. A rolling suit­case was plonked down on the table, a lap­top case on top of that. A man wear­ing shades and jeans with a tan rivet web­bing belt from the nineties flopped down into the chair, in­tently run­ning his fin­ger up and down his smart phone. He was not wear­ing a shirt.

He looked like a frat boy turned in­vest­ment banker, his baby pot­belly jig­gled under a thick layer of hair. “Uggh, close your eyes” a barista gig­gled, and there was some si­lence as they tried to fig­ure out what to do with this un­ex­pect­edly shirt­less man on their patio. He wasn’t just a home­less per­son they could yell at and shoo away. He was the owner of ex­pen­sive elec­tron­ics which af­forded him some sta­tus; he would need a more care­fully rea­soned ap­proach.

Per­haps he was here on busi­ness, still drunk after a Sun­day night’s rev­els. Be­hind the bar “it’s pri­vate prop­erty” was par­roted back and forth in in­dig­nant agree­ment. After some time for the draw­ing up of courage, one marched out­side. Con­fronta­tion, she de­liv­ers her line, a short ex­change we all wish we could hear, and she re­turns. He’s pop­ping ear­buds out and lean­ing for­ward, get­ting up, and his shirt goes on. Then sur­pris­ingly she’s de­liv­er­ing him a plas­tic lid­ded cup of water, and he walks away with it, trans­formed. With a shirt and a ca­su­ally slung lap­top bag, he could have been any guy on the street. The story of her tri­umph poured out: “and I said: ‘you have to order some­thing’ and he was like ‘okay I’m just using your wi-fi lady, but I’ll take a water’ and I was like ‘water’s free so that’s not an order’ and he said ‘bring me some water and I’ll leave’ so I did!”

Is meet­ing to talk over drinks in­her­ently good? Does it have to be done in a beau­ti­ful at­mos­phere, or not at all? The thing is, you can order your pain et beurre in French from a real per­son at Cafe Presse, or make eye con­tact with the bearded flan­nel shirted guy be­hind the counter at Stump­town and know that you’re in­ter­act­ing with a human. Once you ex­pe­ri­ence that kind of depth, once you go be­neath the sur­face level of scripted in­ter­ac­tions and processed food and in­dus­tri­ally con­cocted cof­fee, it be­comes im­pos­si­ble to go back.

To peo­ple who haven’t gone deep, we may seem ar­ro­gant, that some­how we (and not they) de­serve real food, real peo­ple, beau­ti­ful places with wood, good chairs, maybe some pressed tin ceil­ings and unique­ness. Why isn’t cor­po­rate good enough for us, aren’t we caught up in being judg­men­tal all the time if what we love to eat, drink and buy can only be fully en­joyed when it is local, in­de­pen­dent, artist-made? It can’t pos­si­bly be worth the work, a friend’s brother ar­gued, de­fend­ing the medi­oc­rity of his black and white pre-framed tulip prints from a big box decor store. Only stuck-up hip­sters care, and they’re too busy judg­ing every­one to be happy. How in­ter­est­ing. Is it true?

If you live in a sub­urb, or if you haven’t yet dis­cov­ered how to eat, how to live, per­haps Star­bucks is re­ally the best op­tion. It is at least a cof­feeshop, and pro­vides a space for con­ver­sa­tion, thought, read­ing, and writ­ing — the in­gre­di­ents for cul­ti­vat­ing aware­ness. The scripted lines from the barista did offer peo­ple in­ter­ac­tions with other peo­ple. Train­ing wheels for the real thing, for when one day you look be­neath the sur­face and see that you’re no longer happy with medi­oc­rity. Once you tried that local restau­rant, indie cof­feeshop, or farmer’s mar­ket, you know there is some­thing more. Maybe you will think that it was lovely to have had such a place to meet and talk and grow, but now you have evolved. You don’t go to real places be­cause you’re stuck up, you go be­cause they’re real, they res­onate with you and noth­ing else is quite good enough.

I usu­ally try to make site vis­its on days when the weather is nice. Not today. Today the com­puter screen was giv­ing me a headache. My cof­fee had turned stale within a half hour and the flu­o­res­cent glow from above was too much to bear. I was squeezed like paint from a tube onto the wet palate of the out­doors.

“See ya in about an hour, Greta.” I grabbed my jacket and rain­coat, stuffed the di­rec­tions into my mes­sen­ger bag and made my es­cape.

The sky read rain and de­liv­ered on its promise just as I stepped out of my car. There was only one other car in the lot. An­other drove through Lake­side Park with four peo­ple in­side, their faces pressed to the glass like they were look­ing for some­thing. Maybe a lost dog? Are they tourists that took a wrong turn? A fam­ily try­ing to pick up their fix and un­able to find the drug dealer? I pulled my hood over my head to shield it from the misty Seat­tle rain and walked north along the path.

Two weeks ago, Heather Chen had con­tacted me by email:Upon hear­ing my reply that yes, this could be pos­si­ble, Heather had Zot’s mother send in a check for the full do­na­tion amount — an un­usu­ally fast check. I pro­posed a few sites in the park that the land­scape ar­chi­tect at the parks de­part­ment had iden­ti­fied, but Heather wasn’t in­ter­ested. She wanted a spe­cific spot where Zot used to spend a lot of time. I asked if she could di­rect me to­ward a site that she pre­ferred.

I didn’t know what she meant when she said “it will need to go by the board” but I en­cour­aged her to tell me where they would like the bench to be lo­cated. The next email con­tained the di­rec­tions.

Tread­ing through the mist, it took me longer than ex­pected to reach the sculp­tures. I wasn’t used to dri­ving to Lake­side Park, and my car was in a far­ther lot. As walked past the closer lot, I con­sid­ered that had I fol­lowed the fam­ily of lost tourists/dog-seek­ers/drug-ad­dicts, I may have been bet­ter off. On the bright side, I’d be out of the of­fice just a lit­tle longer.

The breeze from Lake Wash­ing­ton left faint drops of water in my beard. I saun­tered along the path through a hall­way of sleep­ing gi­ants lulled into dor­mancy by the cold weather. This was my first time in Lake­side Park dur­ing the win­ter. Gone were the chil­dren in bathing suits, chas­ing each other in and out of the water. Their par­ents were ab­sent, too, sit­ting on pic­nic blan­kets and dis­cretely but self-con­sciously sip­ping wine. No­body was play­ing soc­cer in the mead­ows, nor were there any kites chal­leng­ing the wind, teth­ered to their human an­chors on the hill. The raft in the pro­tected swim­ming area where Zot had once life­guarded laid bare. One re­tired cou­ple smiled at me as they walked their dog in the other di­rec­tion. This was not the same park that Zot had spent his sum­mer va­ca­tion in. This park held a quiet beauty in­stead.

I rec­og­nized my land­mark. The giant tails shot out of the grass like fins of black sharks frozen in time as they swarmed around their prey. I passed by un­no­ticed and un­scathed and con­tin­ued on my search for Zot’s spe­cial spot.

After round­ing a bend be­yond the giant sharks, I came upon the di­lap­i­dated struc­ture. It looked more like a ware­house than a home; the front was clearly a load­ing dock. But I wasn’t going to argue with my di­rec­tions and the path clearly came to an end per­haps a cou­ple hun­dred feet ahead.

I made a right turn and started to won­der where ex­actly I was going. Was I on my way to the spot where Zot killed him­self? I had been on a work crew in New York City that had pre­vi­ously found a dead body in High­bridge Park while tear­ing out in­va­sive species one spring. It turned out to be an old man with Alzheimer’s that had man­aged to walk out of his care fa­cil­ity in the fall. The au­thor­i­ties as­sumed he froze and spent the win­ter in the park, wait­ing to be found. Who had found Zot, I won­dered? I shook my head and tried to focus on fol­low­ing the di­rec­tions.

The path was no longer paved, and I was on a foot trail that cut through the brush and bram­bles to­ward the lake. The park is filled with these paths lead­ing to small se­cluded clear­ings on the water’s edge — good places to go swim­ming or enjoy the view of the moun­tains in pri­vacy.

What kind of guy was Zot? Did he like com­ing here be­cause it of­fered a good place to go and get into some trou­ble, or was he a bright, in­no­cent youth, drawn to the quiet clear­ing as a place to clear his head and cool down on a warm sum­mer day?

This is where I began to have some dif­fi­culty. I had no idea where these “sev­eral path­ways” could be. From the struc­ture (which had def­i­nitely never been a house), I fol­lowed one trail and it had led me straight to the water. I was now stand­ing on the beach. The only way north would be to walk along the beach. I looked to the next di­rec­tion for a clue:

Maybe I had al­ready gone too far to the north? I looked up and down the beach for a clear­ing with a fallen tree. North of me, just past a fence, in the off-leash area, was a huge fallen tree. It had been dead so long that the wind had left it smooth like a piece of drift­wood that had been launched ashore by a Lake Wash­ing­ton tidal wave. Could that be Zot’s fallen tree?

Kris­ten Mit­tel­steadt

As I made my way to­ward it, sand col­lected in my top­siders. They were per­haps not the ideal footwear for this sort of trip. I reached the fence but there was no easy way around it and the brush and wil­low trees made the climb un­at­trac­tive. Could there be an­other trail west of me that could bring me into the off-leash area? I started head­ing that di­rec­tion through the scotch broom and thick for­est of wil­lows.

There was no such trail. As I emerged from the brush back onto the paved path I grinned sheep­ishly at the man and his dog walk­ing by. “Don’t mind me,” I thought, “I’m just the guy wear­ing muddy slacks and boat­ing shoes that just emerged from the for­est.” I walked along the path to the ac­tual en­trance of the off-leash area and quickly dis­cov­ered that de­spite the creepi­ness of the tree, there was no ev­i­dence of Zot’s name carved in a tree any­where close by.

How could his clear­ing be such a pain in the ass to find? I was de­ter­mined not to give up how­ever, and headed back to the struc­ture: the last place I knew I had been on the right track. This time, when I di­verged from the paved path, how­ever, I took a trail that was a bit far­ther south and veered south­east as op­posed to north­east. After only about fif­teen steps in, I saw him: “ZOT” carved in two inch let­ters in the trunk. The fallen tree was hardly as dra­matic as I had en­vi­sioned, yet here it was. I had made it. I sat down on the fallen tree and took a deep breath in Zot’s small cor­ner of the world.

“This neigh­bor­hood is so quiet; it feels like it’s been aban­doned.”

“Yeah this feels like a zom­bie movie.”

“I won­der how hu­mans would do against zom­bies.”

“You mean like 28 Days Later zom­bies or Dawn of the Dead zom­bies?”

“Well I mean Dawn of the Dead zom­bies would be easy be­cause you could just walk back­wards and shoot.”

“As long as you looked be­hind you enough; but yeah 28 Days Later zom­bies would be a lot harder. I won­der how good their sta­mina is, like if you could just out­run them. I don’t re­mem­ber in the movie any ex­tended runs.”

“Yeah I don’t know. That’s like my biggest fear though. Being in a huge field with noth­ing around, being chased by fast zom­bies with no trees or any­thing.”

“You feel any­thing yet?”

A car drove around the cor­ner and Eliot filed be­hind John as they walked down the side of the road. They came to the sec­tion of the fence where it was peeled away, the cor­ner droop­ing down like a piece of paper. Under a brown shroud of leaves the ground sloped down to a small stream and up again. The cool air smelled faintly of smoke, as if once the heavy blan­ket of sum­mer heat was re­moved the hid­den truth lin­ger­ing be­hind it was re­vealed.

“What if we come across some re­stricted gov­ern­ment test­ing build­ing and had all these se­cret agents track­ing us be­cause we found out their se­cret?”

“I’m start­ing to feel it. My arms feel like they’re not re­ally mine you know? Like they’re there but not re­ally part of my body.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Sev­eral tree trunks lay fallen over the fence. Some lay as an­gled bridges over sag­ging woven metal and oth­ers left whole sec­tions of fence man­gled on the ground.

They fol­lowed the fence along until it turned and de­scended down into the val­ley again. The two boys stretched out in the leaves each with arms folded be­hind their head. Masses of branches and leaves reached over and to­wards them like the skele­tons of mon­sters.

“I feel like I’m on Endor.”

Eliot laughed. “You know Cantrell’s like ten min­utes that way right?”

John grinned with di­lated eyes and turned from Eliot to­wards the gray­ing sky.

Eliot gazed into the sky be­tween the trees.

“Is it love, again? Dum­b­le­dore’s fa­vorite so­lu­tion? Love?”

“I’m gonna go see if I can climb that tree trunk over the fence over there so I can see if there’s any­thing over there.”

“John I just saw Lord Volde­mort in the sky. Talk­ing to me. I’m so glad I lis­tened to Jim Dale ear­lier today.”

John threw his head back in wild laugh­ter. “That’s awe­some dude. Wanna come with me?”

“Sure. But I’m not climb­ing. I bet you break your leg again.”

“It doesn’t look that bad. I just feel like ex­plor­ing around you know? See the what there is to see.”

“I’m see­ing every­thing in a checker­board of British flags. Your face is cov­ered in them.”

John gig­gled as he shuf­fled along the tree while Eliot watched with arms folded.

“I’m only here so I can get help if you hurt your­self John.”

“I’m fine.”

The tree had bashed the fence down halfway and its end hov­ered three feet over the ground on the other side. In the dis­tance a few houses sat in si­lence amongst the trees.

John hopped lightly to the ground.

“See? No prob­lem.”

“Until some­one comes and shoots you for tres­pass­ing.”

“Hah.”

The boys heard the shuf­fling of leaves and saw a man ap­proach­ing them. He was wear­ing a large brown jacket and car­ried a shot­gun at his side.

“Watchoo boys up to out here?”

“Oh noth­ing, sir, just ex­plor­ing. We were just leav­ing though.”

“Ex­plor­ing? Ain’t nothin’ out here but trees and leaves.”

“Sorry, sir, if we’re both­er­ing you, we cer­tainly don’t mean to harm”

The man raised the gun in the di­rec­tion of John.

“Sir.” John raised his hands with fin­gers ex­tended in front of his face and stepped back against the fence.

“Sir if you just let my friend leave then we’ll get off your prop­erty.”

“And never come back.”

The man smirked. “Why don’t you hop on over and save ‘im?”

Eliot shook the fence with clawed fin­gers.

“C’mon man, just let us leave and we won’t bother you any­more. Just let my friend hop back over the fence and we’ll leave.”

“Yeah, we didn’t mean any —”

The man fired into John’s chest. Eliot watched jets of red burst from his back like curses from a wand.

Eliot screamed and sprinted down the val­ley as the man re­loaded the shot­gun. The clink of metal on metal ac­com­pa­nied the sound of the sec­ond blast and Eliot fell and rolled into a tree. Shrill laugh­ter rang from above. The man ap­proached the fence.

Peer­ing up the hill Eliot saw a grin­ning Lord Volde­mort climb the fence and stroll to­wards him with wand raised.

The trees swayed in the wind, their whis­pers join­ing the whis­pers of the dis­tant cars, as they laid their leaves onto the ground of the empty lot.

Amanda Hein­bockel

Ab­stract

We em­bark on an in­ter­nal jour­ney of bore­dom, at­tempt­ing to stay as bored as pos­si­ble while main­tain­ing aware­ness of the process.  The land­scape is bleak, yet the sub­tle fea­tures of mind pre­sent them­selves to be ex­am­ined and ex­plored.

In­tro­duc­tion

The Bud­dhist phe­nom­e­nol­ogy iden­ti­fies six senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and thought.  Just as sights and sounds bar­rage our eyes and ears, thoughts man­i­fest in our think­ing mind, as sen­sual ex­pe­ri­ences that pass and can­not be owned.  

The bor­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is a tem­po­rary re­lease from en­gage­ment - en­gage­ment with our senses and thoughts.  It is empti­ness and dull­ness with­out depth.  Here, we hy­poth­e­size two main modes of bore­dom.  The first is te­dious and phys­i­cally mis­er­able, often in­duced by wait­ing.  The sec­ond is fer­tile, like the grip­ping pause on top of a cliff, be­fore a big jump into the clear and new.

J. Kr­ish­na­murti writes about see­ing:

"…when you look at a tree or at a cloud of an evening full of light and de­light, do you ac­tu­ally see it, not only with your eyes and in­tel­lec­tu­ally, but to­tally, com­pletely?  Have you ever ex­per­i­mented with look­ing at an ob­jec­tive thing like a tree with­out any of the as­so­ci­a­tions, any of the knowl­edge you have ac­quired about it, with­out any prej­u­dice, any judge­ment, any words form­ing a screen be­tween you and the tree and pre­vent­ing you from see­ing it as it ac­tu­ally is?  Try it and see what ac­tu­ally takes place when you ob­serve the tree with all your being, with the to­tal­ity of your en­ergy."

This type of see­ing - pro­found, deep, and some­times non-dual - often comes from being bored.  To re­ally see a tree, in this way, one sim­ply has to wait out the bore­dom that sets in when we hold our gaze.  This ex­plo­sive move from bore­dom to in­sight may be pleas­ant, but is the main hur­dle to a sus­tained bor­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

This ar­ti­cle de­tails an ad­ven­ture in bore­dom.  We un­der­take to main­tain a state of un­in­ter­rupted bore­dom, turn­ing the bleak­est land­scape into our for­est of dis­cov­ery.  We are si­mul­ta­ne­ously the ob­server (hence­forth the "Wit­ness") and the par­tic­i­pant in this ex­per­i­ment, and, as with all sub­ject/ob­ject du­al­i­ties, this para­dox frames the ex­pe­ri­ence.  In par­tic­u­lar, the ex­per­i­ment is com­pro­mised if the Wit­ness leaves the room; meta-aware­ness must be main­tained at all times, and such meta-aware­ness nec­es­sar­ily in­ter­feres with the think­ing mind's bore­dom.  This re­quires a fur­ther level of meta-meta-aware­ness - the "Au­di­tor" checks in with the Wit­ness oc­ca­sion­ally.  Al­though such lev­els con­tinue in the­ory, in prac­tice these three lev­els have suf­ficed for our crude ex­per­i­ment.

Glos­sary of Terms

These are not uni­ver­sally agreed upon.  We ar­tic­u­late them for the sake of clar­ity within this ar­ti­cle.

Mind - the par­tic­i­pant in the ex­per­i­ment; the think­ing mind and sens­ing mind.

Wit­ness - the ob­server in the ex­per­i­ment; self-re­flec­tion within the Mind.

Au­di­tor - the ob­server of the ob­server; self-re­flec­tion of the Wit­ness.

state of mind - the com­bined states of the Mind, Wit­ness, and Au­di­tor.

in­ter­est, in­ter­ested, in­ter­est­ing - an in­ter­est­ing sen­sa­tion/thought en­gages the Mind and leads it away from bore­dom; trains of thought begin, and must be in­ter­rupted.  Like­wise, in­ter­est­ing meta-thoughts re­gard­ing the Mind may en­gage the Wit­ness too much, and lead away from bore­dom.

look­ing/notic­ing, lis­ten­ing, think­ing - per­cep­tion from sight, sound, and thought.

see­ing, hear­ing, think­ing about - en­gag­ing those per­cep­tions, à la Kr­ish­na­murti, lead­ing to in­ter­est in some ob­ject.

depth - a state of open­ing to an ob­ject or ex­pe­ri­ence, dis­solv­ing the sub­ject/ob­ject du­al­ity and al­low­ing an im­mer­sion in rel­a­tive unity.  The op­po­site of depth is dull­ness.  Depth is be­yond thought, but quickly be­comes in­ter­est­ing, and so the true bored ex­pe­ri­ence has no place for depth.

Ex­per­i­men­tal Setup

The ex­per­i­ment was con­ducted dur­ing a re­cent flight from Boston to Seat­tle - from the At­lantic to the Pa­cific. The au­thor sat still and did noth­ing, for ap­prox­i­mately 5 hours and 45 min­utes.  The first 15 min­utes were de­voted to ana­pana med­i­ta­tion, to calm the Mind, bring focus, and es­tab­lish a strong self-aware Wit­ness.  The last 15 min­utes, dur­ing de­scent, were de­voted to a re­laxed breath-aware­ness, to close out the ex­per­i­ment and re­turn to a more healthy state.  In be­tween, the pri­or­i­ties were as fol­lows:

1. Main­tain the Wit­ness

2. Be as bored as pos­si­ble.  Avoid any in­ter­est­ing sen­sa­tions/thoughts.  If the Wit­ness ob­serves a state of see­ing, hear­ing, or think­ing about, it must dis­en­gage and re­turn the Mind to bore­dom.

3. The Au­di­tor in­ter­venes oc­ca­sion­ally, to ob­serve the Wit­ness and make sure it is not too en­gaged or in­ter­ested.

4. When the state of mind has sta­bi­lized, or is punc­tu­ated, this is doc­u­mented in brief hand-writ­ten notes.

Hy­poth­e­sis

Bore­dom is empti­ness and mean­ing­less­ness, with­out any lib­er­a­tion, in­sight or depth.  It is dull­ness in the abyss.  On its own, bore­dom is empty, but it often re­solves in two ways - one neg­a­tive and one pos­i­tive.  The neg­a­tive is a painful te­dium, a wait­ing, a lonely suf­fer­ing.  The pos­i­tive is an ex­plo­sive re­lease into depth, cre­ativ­ity, or in­sight.  Into the empti­ness, beau­ti­ful thoughts blos­som, new cre­ative ideas are born, sen­si­tiv­ity in­creases, emo­tions sur­face.

Tran­script:

0:00 - plane be­gins to taxi away from the air­port.  begin ana­pana med­i­ta­tion.

0:12 - plane takes off.  stop ana­pana, and begin ex­per­i­ment in bore­dom.

0:15 - the city of Boston was in­ter­est­ing, so I looked away.

0:22 - look­ing at col­ors and shapes, and start­ing to see more, be­com­ing more sen­si­tive.  I dart my eyes, but does this help or hurt the goal of bore­dom?

0:31 - start fid­get­ing.

0:34 - ideas are re­ver­ber­at­ing in the form of phrases.  hear the ideas pull my aware­ness in.  fight it.

0:41 - see­ing so much. flashes of child­hood. feel some drowsi­ness.

0:47 - some fear about what's going to hap­pen in the next five hours.

0:54 - cy­cles of fid­get­ing and star­ing, but of slower fre­quen­cies.  slow­ing down.  feel some peace.

1:05 - the weight be­hind my eyes is gone.  feels like watch­ing a movie. con­cerned that too much low-level breath-aware­ness is putting me into a trance.  how to lose breath-aware­ness?

1:18 - have be­come very sen­si­tive. hard not to be fas­ci­nated by every image, sound, sen­sa­tion. maybe forc­ing aware­ness to move/jump only feeds it with in­ter­est­ing things. maybe need to force it to move to­wards cer­tain things, so the ob­jects are un­in­ter­est­ing.

1:28 - drink a soda.

1:34 - first wave of ni­hilism - empti­ness AND depth, watch­ing the guy hand out snacks.  I want to rel­ish it but don't.  depth not al­lowed.

1:53 - fin­ish soda and snacks.  fid­get­ing stopped. very peace­ful, con­tent.  main­tain­ing the Wit­ness seems to pre­clude the deep lev­els of bore­dom, like I had when rid­ing on the sub­way or wait­ing to board the plane.  should I go for en­durance, not depth of bore­dom?

1:56 - [Au­di­tor steps in.] don't fol­low that last train of thought.  too cu­ri­ous about it.  I am in the ex­per­i­ment, not al­lowed to process the data or alter the course, only ob­serve and doc­u­ment.

2:16 - sec­ond wave - mas­sive - of ni­hilism.  pro­found aware­ness of utter and ab­solute mean­ing­less­ness, when I no­tice woman watch­ing a TV show on jel­ly­fish.  the abyss dis­tracts and com­forts me with sad­ness, fear.  I look away.

2:26 - no­tice her watch­ing a show with Sarah Palin show­shoe­ing across a crevassed glac­ier, roped in and gussied up.  waves of emo­tions and thoughts dis­tract/en­gage me.  not bored, but they're so in­tense they over­whelm the Wit­ness!  I lose con­trol and self-aware­ness.  even­tu­ally the Au­di­tor steps in and re-es­tab­lishes the Wit­ness.

2:41 - came up with a sim­ple way to put the Wit­ness in a less de­mand­ing/en­gag­ing role (else it be­comes too in­ter­ested).  I count.  once the Mind be­comes in­ter­ested in some­thing, I say the next num­ber in my head.  the say­ing is in­ter­est­ing, but af­ter­wards it in­duces a wait­ing-like state of shal­low empti­ness.  once an in­ter­est­ing thought/sen­sa­tion comes up, I say the next num­ber and reset.  seems like maybe I can even make the Wit­ness bored.  By #16 I was VERY sleepy, al­most fell asleep.

3:02 - by #42 I felt a strain from the ef­fort.  the Wit­ness had its arms tied be­hind its back.  was very drowsy and felt a pres­sure in my head.  got wor­ried I might fall asleep.  Switched to a body-scan med­i­ta­tion briefly - mov­ing aware­ness as soon as it en­gaged, but al­low­ing the Wit­ness to be slightly more ac­tive and free in its imag­in­ings.  this woke me up.

3:06 - to bath­room, and walk­ing up and down aisles.  then ate my donut (Boston Creme).

3:42 - in­creas­ing dull­ness until I can't tell if I'm bored or in­ter­ested.  there is no depth of thought, but also no im­pa­tience.  my Mind is dull but the Wit­ness is sharp.  some ex­pan­sive feel­ings of one­ness with the group of us trav­el­ers on the plane - one in con­scious­ness.  but soon it be­comes a thought; I don't pur­sue it.

4:10 - empty with­out depth.  the dull­ness ex­tended to vi­sion, so I just stare with­out any en­gag­ing thoughts aris­ing.  If any depth comes, it has the fla­vor of a sort of out-of-body shar­ing of ex­is­tence - sus­tain­ing the uni­verse - shared with other plane folks.  also, feels like we're close enough to land­ing that wait­ing has kicked in - this fuels the bore­dom.  I've never sus­tained a Wit­ness this long in pub­lic, but I'm not pro­cess­ing that - I let those ob­ser­va­tions go with­out try­ing to learn from them.

4:38 - stared at the tray table for a long time.  "empty, but dull" mantra, works like the count­ing.  noth­ing to re­port.

5:03 - still star­ing.  begin de­scent.

5:19 - my vi­sion is still.  using the sound of the en­gine to gauge when a thought hap­pens.  Wit­ness is more steady.  steady grow­ing urge to think some­thing, read, or move, or hear music.

5:21 - begin to con­clude the ex­per­i­ment.  allow thoughts.  Kr­ish­na­murti-esque see­ing.  beau­ti­ful.  feel awake, alert.  stun­ning.

5:28 - stare in awe at the lights of Seat­tle.  allow depth - coast to coast, lights fill­ing in the voids.

5:37 - plane lands.  rest with breath aware­ness.

5:45 - con­clude ex­per­i­ment.  leave plane.

Con­clu­sion:

After the fid­get­ing of the first two hours, none of the neg­a­tive ef­fects of bore­dom were felt.  The need to main­tain a Wit­ness seemed to pre­clude the deep­est states of mis­er­able bore­dom.  The chal­lenge was to fight off the see­ing, the in­sight, and the depth.  The Wit­ness rose to the chal­lenge, but then often threat­ened to be­come too in­ter­ested in an­a­lyz­ing the ex­per­i­ment.  Over time, we were able to lull the Mind into bored dull­ness while keep­ing the Wit­ness ac­tive yet un­in­ter­ested.  A pos­si­ble next step would be to at­tempt to sus­tain this state while let­ting the Au­di­tor guide the Wit­ness to ex­plore the one­ness that was glimpsed around time 3:42.  This would leave the realm of bore­dom, to em­bark on a new ad­ven­ture.

“Yes, yes, yes, I for­got it too,” sighed Franz over-dra­mat­i­cally. “But we are in luck!” With his index fin­ger pointed at the nox­ious yel­low sky and speak­ing in a charis­matic Ger­man ac­cent, “Since it’s tat­tooed across his shoul­ders, we need only to ‘con­ve­niently drop some­thing’ to the ground for him to pick up. When he bends over we’ll know his name with­out hav­ing to rudely ask a sec­ond time!” Franz acted out his plan with the flower he’d been twirling.

An­thony paid lit­tle at­ten­tion. He was eye­ing the house’s di­verse col­lec­tion of trop­i­cal flora na­tive to a thou­sand Pa­cific Is­lands ex­cept this one; they were just props in some land de­vel­oper’s dream. The thick yel­low smoke waft­ing in from the sugar plan­ta­tions made the flow­ers ap­pear dou­bly ar­ti­fi­cial. From the caus­tic smell of gaso­line-charred cane he could tell they were har­vest­ing up is­land today.

Palm trees swayed ner­vously in the morn­ing breeze. As he wiped sweat from his brow, An­thony thought he felt an early drop of rain from the ris­ing storm. It had show­ered every­day he’d been on this side of the is­land and today was un­likely to be an ex­cep­tion. He picked at the lam­i­nate peel­ing from the faux-bam­boo mail­box while Franz in­tently stroked his beard. Fi­nally Franz re­mem­bered: they were wait­ing for Multi Khan.

In­side the house Mrs. Woof (as An­thony liked to call her) was up and about. She ran her or­ganic farm like one of his for­mer drill sergeants. Her nag­ging was op­pres­sive and in­ces­sant: “Don’t burn the ba­nana bread! Smile for the tour buses! And on days off, don’t let me catch you up in the cow pas­tures!” He was fin­ished work­ing like a dog for one woman’s self­ish vi­sion of trop­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity.

“What­ever his name is, as soon as he comes back let’s get the hell out of here.” An­thony came to the is­land for es­cape: from dis­hon­or­able dis­charge, from his mun­dane life, but mostly from re­al­ity. Franz, with his in­suf­fer­able en­thu­si­asm for life, made a wor­thy com­pan­ion in their quest for Party. “Good times, jah!” So when a wild haired, bare­footed, half-naked man ap­peared along­side the re­mote jun­gle road that morn­ing promis­ing the Moon, they knew just what to do.

Multi Khan reemerged from the for­est. With his curly dark hair, brown skin, and youth­ful step he looked like an African faun; per­haps the Nu­bian cousin of the God Pan. Con­trary to his ap­pear­ance, he claimed di­rect lin­eage from his Mon­gol name­sake. Pink plas­tic twine served as makeshift belt for his soggy cut-off jeans which fit loosely around his slen­der hips (stan­dard issue for a mod­ern day Mon­gol War­rior). He was flanked by his dog Nemo and a very stoned Angel.

In his right hand he was hold­ing a brown paper bag filled to the brim with freshly picked psy­che­delic mush­rooms. His left hand car­ried a bam­boo staff.

An­thony had had a taste of al­tered states of con­scious­ness and fan­cied him­self spir­i­tu­ally in­clined ever since that first joint. The chance meet­ing with a self-de­scribed “Psy­chadelic-War­rior-Shaman-Priest” was a clear sign from the uni­verse to re­sume his as­cent of the Holy Moun­tain.

“Like the chil­dren of Orien, lis­ten care­fully when the mush­rooms speak to you and you shall re­ceive a devine cleans­ing,” Multi Khan in­structed as he handed An­thony the bag. He spoke in a hushed, solemn voice and a Cal­i­for­nia surfer twang that made every­thing he ut­tered sound like a para­ble. The four seated them­selves cross legged while Nemo curled up at the feet of his mas­ter. Franz pro­duced the small bag of ganja they’d promised to ex­change for Angel and Multi Khan’s labors up in the cow pas­tures. Angel ac­cepted it greed­ily.

“It’s truly a beau­ti­ful thing when peo­ple un­der­stand the virtues of shar­ing a boun­ti­ful har­vest,” said Multi Kahn. “We humbly ac­cept your shar­ing of the Earth with us.” An­thony rolled his eyes.

“So about how many of these things should we eat?” he asked. Al­ready Franz had shoved a fist-full into his mouth.

“Tastes like grass,” he said. “Very Earthy.” He was chew­ing like a horse and ca­su­ally in­spect­ing one of these moist spec­i­men.

“Lis­ten to the mush­rooms brother, they will tell you how much to take,” said Multi Khan as he closed his eyes and placed one hand over his heart.

An­thony popped four stems and three caps into his mouth, chewed once and took a hard swal­low.

“You’ve cho­sen to fly on an aus­pi­cious day, broth­ers. Today marks the end of the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade and the en­trance of Jupiter into it’s sev­enth house. To cel­e­brate, I’ll be host­ing the Feast to End All Feasts at my beach.” Multi Kahn’s voice swelled with pride. Rais­ing his staff, he gave care­ful in­struc­tions: “Travel by way of the Red Sand Beach and the Sa­cred Pools. Gather some food of­fer­ings from the dump­sters there and you may be granted per­mis­sion to join the cel­e­bra­tion and re­ceive my ser­mon.” Franz and An­thony un­der­stood this to mean only one thing: Party. Multi Khan, Angel and Nemo dis­ap­peared into the for­est from whence they came.

A few caus­tic drops of rain fell from the sky as Franz and An­thony began to walk down the re­mote jun­gle road. They had packed only the es­sen­tials for their trip: a sandy towel, three joints, matches and a flip phone al­ready low on bat­tery.

As they passed the Church’s weekly rum­mage sale, the vol­un­teers were leav­ing their posts to to go in­side and re­ceive their trop­i­cal gospel. With the con­gre­gants were dis­tracted, An­thony slipped around back and ca­su­ally stole two over-sized Hawai­ian shirts off the densely packed racks. They put on their new clothes and con­tin­ued walk­ing down the jun­gle road. With their psy­che­delic flack jack­ets, they were fi­nally pre­pared for lift off.

Like the rain drops that were now falling steadily, the ef­fects of the mush­rooms landed softly and rhyth­mi­cally on their bod­ies. Franz stopped for a mo­ment and held out his hand, sway­ing while he ob­served the drops land in his palm. An­thony took a deep breath. The nox­ious smell of burn­ing sugar cane rose and fell. At last they reached the beach path.

The Red Sand Beach was walled in by sheer cliffs made of charred vol­canic rock. Lush green veg­e­ta­tion swung down from a dense, im­pos­ing jun­gle that loomed fifty feet above the blood red sands. Waves crash­ing onto the jagged out­crop­ping of boul­ders sent spray soar­ing into the jun­gles above. The boul­der out­crop­ping cre­ated a nat­ural swim­ming pool of vi­o­lent white­wash that teemed with min­er­als and mi­crobes. An­thony noted a young woman bathing nude in the pri­mor­dial soup, her hair tied back in dread locks, as the two de­scended the steep, gnarled path.

Throngs of human lizards were en­joy­ing a salty chem­i­cal bath of acid-rain and sea spray along the shore. Franz was quick to take his place among the rep­tiles but An­thony with­drew cau­tiously. Fear­ing the they might de­tect his al­tered stated of mind, An­thony held his breath and crept along the rock walls until he reached the safety of a low ceil­ing cave op­po­site the en­trance path. He hugged his knees close and felt grat­i­tude for tem­po­rary re­lief from so­cial and sen­sory en­gage­ment. His cell phone, now con­joined to his body, beeped out the end of its life.

Franz, hav­ing re­moved his shirt and fas­tened it into a drift­wood pole, pa­raded his flag around the beach with joy­ous shouts and howls. He planted his flag next to one group of beach goers and joined them in song. Waves con­tin­ued to crash with tremen­dous force and made it ap­pear that their voices, with each breath, un­leashed a tor­rent of air into each oth­ers laugh­ing, wind-swept faces.

The rain started to come down in sheets and every­one re­treated to the shel­ter of the cave. An­thony ner­vously emerged from his shell and wel­comed the soaked masses. Franz took his place to the right of his com­pan­ion while Dread Locks sat to An­thony’s left. She mag­i­cally re­vealed a pur­ple ukulele and handed it to Franz who promptly began to ser­e­nade this pierced nip­ple god­dess. An­thony, now mes­mer­ized by the tat­too of Fred Flint­stone be­neath her right col­lar­bone, fig­ured he must be watch­ing a movie and de­cided to relax for just a mo­ment. He lit up a joint and shared it with the dozen or so cave dwellers.

Sud­denly the clouds broke and sun­light poured through. Every­one slowly emerged from the caved to land softly on a sunny, rain­bow pro­tected beach. With this sign of prov­i­dence, the two friends de­cided to con­tinue along their jour­ney. De­spite mo­men­tar­ily re­call­ing Multi Khan’s re­quest, the two con­tin­ued past the food laden dump­ster with­out skip­ping a beat.

The calm did not last. The skies dark­ened and vi­o­lent winds sprayed salty air as they at­tempted to crawl along the rocky shore to­wards the Sa­cred Pools.

They ar­rived at the site of an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial rites to dis­cover it over run with hea­thens. An­thony, fear­ing the un­holy reg­u­la­tions of a Na­tional Recre­ation Area, hid be­hind a large rock to se­cretly ob­serve the des­e­cra­tion rit­u­als. Tribes of Pen­tax­i­ans, Can­non­ites and Nikonos were po­si­tion­ing their lenses on the exact spot of a thou­sand vir­gin deaths. “Now, smile!” The me­chan­i­cal mouths of their de­vices clicked with de­light.

The word dweezils is often used to de­scribe the ac­tion of going to war with one’s own mind, most often in­cited by po­tent psy­che­delic com­pounds. The dweezils had fi­nally set in for Franz. Pow­er­ful drugs af­fect­ing his brain had talked him out of his re­main­ing cloth­ing and into a state of pri­mal ag­gres­sion. He lay com­pletely naked, clutch­ing a large rock and look­ing men­ac­ingly at the un­know­ing throngs of tourists. “Schaden­freude… ” he softly mum­bled in Ger­man. “Schaden­freude… ” An­thony re­mem­bered that loosely trans­lated to ‘tak­ing plea­sure in an­other’s pain.’

Now fear­ful, he col­lected him­self and wrapped a towel around his con­fused friend. An­thony furtively made his way be­hind a dis­tracted tribe of Can­non­ites and hero­ically stole a sarong to clothe his friend. Fear­ing for their lives, they left the pools.

Calamity had robbed Franz and An­thony of day­light and three of their four san­dals. With night ap­proach­ing and their trip just be­gin­ning, the two de­cided to make their way to a place where the world would make sense again. It began to lightly rain as they started for the Party.

The Plas­tic Beach was lit­tered with the rub­bish and refuse dumped from a nearby five star re­sort. Wood was scarce so they burned what­ever they could find: sty­ro­foam con­tain­ers, plas­tic fold­ing chairs, flip flops, bat­ter­ies, ceil­ing fans, car up­hol­stery, golf club bags, and any other ob­ject ca­pa­ble of a gaso­line bap­tism. The re­sult was an ol­fac­tory ar­maged­don un­sur­passed by any on the is­land.

Franz and An­thony de­scended upon the Party.

Ma­genta fog. Fire. Drum­ming. Beer. Fight­ing. Vomit. Sex. Trash. Nu­dity. Danc­ing. Drugs. Rage. It was raw, un­fet­tered, volatile hu­man­ity dis­tilled into glo­ri­ous shit, piss and blood. They dove straight in, em­brac­ing the mad­ness of it all.

Multi Khan’s hoard was a mot­ley crew of a dozen or so drunks, dropouts, losers and tran­sients who had scraped to­gether enough cash to af­ford a one way ticket to the is­land. These in­vaders lived off the fat of the land, raid­ing dump­sters at the fancy ho­tels and set­ting up camp on the fringes of par­adise. There was the Cougar: a hag­gard Eu­ro­pean who with her bro­ken Eng­lish was al­ways try­ing to se­duce a man about half her age. There was The Tweaker: a young, sa­tanic drug­gie whose pos­sessed yelling was cel­e­brated with laugh­ter. There was The Young Vet­eran: a griz­zly, saronged thirty-some­thing who ap­peared to be suf­fer­ing from PTSD after too many Phish shows. He was ex­am­in­ing a large knife and keep­ing a watch­ful eye on Multi Khan.

Flames rose higher to­wards the dark, omi­nous sky. The once peace­ful Multi Khan was pac­ing around the fire and stew­ing with rage. He had be­come fix­ated on the fail­ure of his vi­sion of shar­ing and broth­er­hood. Hadn’t he given spe­cific in­struc­tions? Every­one was sup­posed to bring an of­fer­ing to share be­fore re­ceiv­ing his ser­mon. Alas, no one brought any­thing.

Fi­nally, he lashed out. “Didn’t any of you ever go to El­e­men­tary School?? Haven’t any of you ever heard of shar­ing!?!” His eyes glowed red through the dark­ness as he shouted with child­ish rage. His bam­boo staff splin­tered as it came crash­ing down into the fire, send­ing em­bers fly­ing to the heav­ens. He con­tin­ued to spit fiery in­sults and curse his friends until at last The Young Vet­eran at­tempted to sub­due him. Multi Khan at­tacked with all of his strength and had him pinned by the throat. At­tempt­ing to break up the fight, Dread Locks ap­peared from the shad­ows and sunk her teeth into The Vet­eran’s leg and it be­came a proper brawl. The drum­ming con­tin­ued as more and more peo­ple piled in.

At last, Nemo let out a long howl. Si­lence. No one spoke, or even moved as they no­ticed the full Moon ris­ing over the pale green ocean.

Multi Khan got up first and pet his loyal dog on the head. He paused, took a long stare at the fire, brushed sand from his beard and at last spoke, “Yo guys, I was trip­pin’. was trip­pin’… I’m sorry, I was trip­pin’.” He forced out a laugh and walked into the shad­ows.

Mutli Khan promptly re­turned with two large green, re-us­able shop­ping bags filled to the brim with dump­ster food. The shiny goods were dis­trib­uted among the masses and a Bac­chian feast en­sued. There was a cor­nu­copia of soggy french fries, half eaten bologna sand­wiches, stale potato chips, bruised ap­ples, frozen waf­fles (still in the pack­age!) and the crumbs of choco­late chip cook­ies mixed with sand. There was sour tuna fish, moldy muffins, and plenty of donuts and pizza crusts to go around. Every­one sat cross legged around the fire and laughed as they shared in the bounty of Multi Khan’s raid.

An­thony hes­i­tated as Angel handed him the con­tainer of sushi. Raw fish? With a scoff, Multi Khan seized the con­tainer. He popped the slick ahi into his mouth, chewed once and took a hard swal­low.

With their bel­lies now filled, every­one was at last ready to hear Multi Khan’s much touted speech. Multi Khan raised him­self in front of the fire.

Pas­sion­ate, in­co­her­ent non­sense is the best way to de­scribed what fol­lowed. Every­one tried to keep up, but this des­per­ate rant was mak­ing every­one a lit­tle sick. Mutli Khan’s eyes darted around search­ing madly for any­one who was en­gaged in his meta­phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual dis­course. Even Nemo let out a yawn. This went on for what could have been hours until at last Multi Khan took off down the beach em­bar­rassed, dou­bled over and look­ing a lit­tle sick. The fire was dying down and one by one the guests ei­ther de­parted or found a quiet spot to curl up and pass out. The party was over.

The sun rose into clear, pris­tine skies. Party goers brushed sleep from their eyes to dis­cover them­selves in peace and har­mony with the earth. A newly wed cou­ple, who had wan­dered too far past the bound­ary of the re­sorts, paused briefly to sur­vey the scene but con­tin­ued strolling.

Not far from the great fire, An­thony and Franz dis­cov­ered Multi Khan’s body. He was lying face down and folded over; his soft cheeks pale blue and life­less. He had choked on his own vomit.

In a somber daze, An­thony and Franz re­called the events of the night and pre­ced­ing day. Now com­pletely purged, they both felt eerily cleansed as they’d been promised. EMTs de­scended upon the scene. A young of­fi­cer took down their de­tails and ques­tioned them about the de­tails of the young man who had just passed away.

Their mem­o­ries still foggy, An­thony and Franz had to read his name off Multi Khan’s back; his fleshy tomb­stone mark­ing the be­gin­ning of the final trip.

Dear friends: below is a 97.1% true story, yet with your clever ad­di­tions, it will ul­ti­mately be a 71.3% true story. Fill in the gaps with the re­quested word choice di­rectly on top of the grey text. It is meant to be light enough to write over. How­ever, if you choose to use this story mul­ti­ple times, it is sug­gested that you use a sep­a­rate sheet of paper on which to write your words. The au­thor un­der­stands that at least two read­ers are re­quired to enjoy this in­ter­ac­tive essay; there­fore it has been sub­di­vided into six parts so each reader can trade off and enjoy both roles of au­thor and scribe (just don’t let your eyes wan­der be­yond the sec­tion at hand!).

It was a adj and cold evening, and fe­male friend and I put on our win­tery su­perla­tive adj at­tire. She im­me­di­ately no­ticed my mis-matched gloves, scoff­ing at the frayed fin­gers and worn holes. They did look kind of like swiss plural noun, but the blown out fin­ger­tips proved use­ful for ac­tions like but­ton­ing sweaters, zip­ping plural noun, and scratch­ing plural noun, so it didn’t bother me. Even be­fore we reached the exit off the in­ter­state, cars were backed up all the way to the mall en­trance, cre­at­ing a large noun of red brake lights ahead of us. At this hour on Christ­mas Eve, this was the su­perla­tive adj party in town.

The first stop was Barnes and Noble… but in order to go in­side, we had to verb. Find­ing a park­ing spot was adj, and as lengthy as the ac­tual shop­ping. The anx­i­ety from the other shop­pers cir­cling like plural an­i­mal for a space to park was palat­able. For a good 30 min­utes we verb (past tense) around the labyrinth, our goal al­ways within sight, but just out of reach. Same fe­male friend said, “uh, … is that a spot?” I said, “I think you should just go for it”. It was clearly il­le­gal, but I wanted to get the hell out of the ve­hi­cle. Even­tu­ally we found a place light years from the store, grabbed our plural noun, but for­got our reusable shop­ping bags. I guess we could just buy an­other one, right?

We form of move­ment (past tense) into Barnes and Noble and I made a bee line for the music sec­tion, find­ing CDs to sam­ple with their music-lis­ten­ing plural noun. I found Susan Boyle’s Christ­mas album, put the plural noun on, briefly thought about the germs on them, then lis­tened away. Sur­pris­ingly, she had cov­ered Lou Reed’s Per­fect Day, so I skipped to that song, but un­for­tu­nately the clip ended be­fore it got to my fa­vorite part. I shifted focus. Up­stairs was a whole other won­der­land of books and plural noun, so I de­cided to as­cend. Ran­domly, I ran into a friend from way back. In fact, this guy, Chris, was the first boy I ever kissed. Yep, we grew up to­gether in Hot plural noun Na­tional Park, Arkansas. Ran­dom. He was shop­ping for a cook­book, and I told him I was look­ing for my friend. It is amaz­ing to think how some things never verb, like los­ing peo­ple in malls. That shit’s been hap­pen­ing since I first stepped a body part from lower half in­side a mall, ex­cept it was much scarier when I was 5. He wasn’t with­out his shop­ping buddy, who was hov­er­ing num­ber feet away. Am I the only one who con­stantly verb end­ing in — s peo­ple in malls? Even­tu­ally I found same fe­male friend, and she found her books, in­clud­ing one for her dad en­ti­tled “Body part in Space: A Guide to As­tral Travel from the Com­forts of Your type of room.” It was a suc­cess­ful stop.

Next? Straight to the in­ter­nal organ of the mall: the trendy-teen-al­ter­na­tive-adj-made-in-coun­try store. I ri­fled through the scarves and key chains and thought about all the times I vis­ited the mall when I was in level of ed­u­ca­tion … want­ing to own all the sparkly plural noun on dis­play, think­ing how it must be so cool to have a job there. I helped same fe­male friend find a t-shirt and de­cide on the per­fect item of cloth­ing for her friend. While check­ing out, I no­ticed the oblig­a­tory but­tons for sale with adj phrases such as “The voices in my body part may not be real, but they have some adj ideas!” An­other suc­cess, then off to the gift wrap store. We walked in and I was feel­ing silly and wanted to find wrap­ping paper to match my mood. I asked the job title for the sil­li­est wrap­ping paper s/he had. S/he seemed puz­zled and pointed me in the di­rec­tion of the birth­day-themed paper. But I had no use for birth­day wrap­ping paper (Jesus’ birth­day hap­pened years ago, duh — we’ve moved on to plural noun and Santa Claus). By the end of the wrap­ping paper fi­asco, I lost same fe­male friend yet again. I guess she had changed her in­ter­nal organ about the gift wrap… or else had snuck away to buy me a gift while I was pre­oc­cu­pied (se­cretly wished my num­ber -year old kid-at-heart).

I hes­i­tantly walked out of the store, nearly being verb (past tense) up in the one-way river of shop­pers. Tak­ing a cou­ple steps di­rec­tion, I care­fully plot­ted my move. I chan­neled my video game skills that have ac­cu­mu­lated over the years and, like frog­ger, hopped per­pen­dic­u­lar to the traf­fic dur­ing a break, paused for num­ber sec­ond(s), then dashed for the mid­dle “safety zone” where other shop­pers had bro­ken from the river to eddy amongst the plural land form of knick-knacks. Re­vert­ing back to mem­o­ries of get­ting lost in the mall when I was a stage of human life, I found a safe spot to idle and keep a body part on the lo­ca­tion where we to­gether last. That safe spot just hap­pened to be right next to the cal­en­dars of sleep­ing pup­pies and kit­tens. I flipped through the pages and gig­gled to my­self, think­ing how strange it would be if cats had cal­en­dars of verb end­ing in — ing peo­ple nes­tled in blan­kets or sprawled on the couch… and then thought I should make a cal­en­dar of furry, burly, sleep­ing men, and sell it right next to the furry, adj, sleep­ing kit­ten cal­en­dar. I looked up to check for same fe­male friend — no sign. A wo/man si­dled up to me, no doubt the job title for the cal­en­dars, and said, “You know, if you laugh that means you have to buy it.” I told her/him the one I re­ally wanted wasn’t for sale.

I looked up again and spot­ted same fe­male friend on the other side of the shop­per river. We were stuck. She ad­verb nav­i­gated her way to me, bump­ing into a cou­ple mall plural an­i­mal on the way. Even­tu­ally re­united, we plowed against the cur­rent and veered off to find an exit. After ad­verb bundling up and step­ping out into the cold night air, a strange se­quence of events hap­pened while out­side by the street fea­ture. Ac­tu­ally, it wasn’t a se­quence. It was a bom­bard­ment. At the same in­stant and all within num­ber feet of us, a woman screamed, a car honked its noun, and a dis­traught man asked us for spare change for the bus. None of these things were re­lated to each other. Same fe­male friend handed him a sin­gle form of cur­rency while I me­an­dered ad­verb to­ward the car, still dis­com­bob­u­lated from the adj syn­chronic­ity of the events and gen­er­ally over stim­u­lated from the mall ex­pe­ri­ence.

The park­ing lot was still packed like sar­dines. We drove away feel­ing a lit­tle less adj and a lit­tle more ADD than be­fore. Moral of the story: Dare to Dream a Dream like Susan Boyle and wit­ness the en­su­ing adj suc­cess.

He lifted me onto the horse whose fore­lock whipped gen­tly in the No­vem­ber breeze. The wind smelled sub­tly of cumin and co­rian­der. I had re­fused to get on at first. I was con­tent with search­ing ir­ra­tionally for the tallest mound of Sa­ha­ran sand from which to watch the sun slip below the hori­zon and paint the sand pink. But when he ap­proached me the sec­ond time, I couldn’t de­cline. He was en­tic­ingly hand­some. His black tagel­must con­cealed every­thing but his dark eyes, whose mys­te­ri­ous­ness seemed to in­di­cate that he was a mi­rage. He spoke not a word but in­stead pulled me onto the horse, gal­loped through the noth­ing­ness, and even­tu­ally brought me back to my nook in the sand. Tunisia epit­o­mized ex­otic ad­ven­ture.

Upon re­turn­ing to the oasis and dis­mount­ing my drom­e­dary, the horse­man and a com­rade trot­ted cir­cles around me. In­spect­ing me with se­vere eyes, he spoke: “Où est mon ar­gent?!” He de­manded pay­ment for the horse ride I’d ini­tially re­jected, awak­en­ing me from my North African dream. I ar­gued with him until he be­came frus­trated, send­ing him scur­ry­ing deeper into the oasis. Later, he’d min­gle with Eu­ro­pean desert-trekkers as they sipped beers at the makeshift bar, dressed in ath­letic gear that com­ple­mented their Hum­mers.

My wan­der­lust has taken me on a se­ries of ad­ven­tures these past five years. I have seen fif­teen coun­tries and half of the United States dur­ing this time, al­ways re­turn­ing home with a new life les­son and ma­tured per­spec­tive.

For ex­am­ple, bungee-jump­ing off the world’s high­est bungee bridge in South Africa brought me to ex­pe­ri­ence si­lence in its purest form. Liv­ing sim­ply in north­ern Uganda al­lowed me to wit­ness hu­man­ity and re­think my role in the world. Road-trip­ping across the U.S. en­abled me to ap­pre­ci­ate free­dom, in every sense of the word.

Each of these ad­ven­tures was an es­cape from the mo­not­ony of home. I set out on quests to eat un­usual food, be­friend lo­cals, dance tra­di­tional dances, and par­tic­i­pate in other clichés, all the while learn­ing more about my­self. I have in­deed gained in­sight from all the typ­i­cal points of in­di­vid­ual and so­ci­etal re­flec­tion that come with travel, but my most pro­found dis­cov­ery was a tragic one: my thirst for ad­ven­ture was un­quench­able. In my de­sire to en­counter some­thing or some­where new, I found that lib­er­a­tion from the fa­mil­iar was a fleet­ing feel­ing.

The bliss fol­low­ing my 708-foot jump in South Africa lasted sec­onds be­fore I began to panic that I was dan­gling hun­dreds of feet above rocks and river. How­ever un­plugged Uganda was, it was wrought with post-con­flict re­cov­ery. And that free­dom I ex­pe­ri­enced on the open road of Amer­ica’s west­ern fron­tier was often spent gaz­ing out the win­dow of my car at the miles of pre­served In­dian reser­va­tions nes­tled among arid land and fast food restau­rants.

My es­cape from fa­mil­iar­ity led me back to just that. The ad­ven­ture was tem­po­rary and never as idyl­lic as it first ap­peared.

A year ago, I put my trav­els on hold and began my most dar­ing ad­ven­ture to date: liv­ing at home. It has been the most painful, mun­dane, and frus­trat­ing ad­ven­ture yet, but the jour­ney has never been more ful­fill­ing. Un­like the utopian fan­tasies that filled my mind prior to my other ad­ven­tures, I began this one ex­pect­ing to be dis­ap­pointed.

The word ad­ven­ture im­plies an ex­pe­ri­ence that in­volves some kind of risk or dan­ger, which leads this ex­pe­ri­ence to be ex­cit­ing. Con­fronting the un­pleas­ant re­al­i­ties of home might not seem as dan­ger­ous as jump­ing off a bridge, but the risk is just as ter­ri­fy­ing. What if some­thing goes wrong?

The ex­cite­ment I’ve felt liv­ing at home has come from tak­ing the risk, ac­cept­ing fail­ure, rec­on­cil­ing with my past, mak­ing de­ci­sions about my fu­ture, and, above all, learn­ing to be pre­sent. My usual ex­pe­ri­ence with home life had en­tailed dwelling on pain, wal­low­ing in bore­dom, and ag­o­niz­ing over the un­cer­tain­ties of my pro­fes­sional and per­sonal lives. Be­cause of this, I had de­vel­oped a habit of think­ing too much — ex­pect­ing too much, fear­ing too much, an­tic­i­pat­ing too much, and so on. It’s that state of dis­con­tent, which comes from an in­abil­ity to value life hap­pen­ings as they come and as they are.

When I began this ad­ven­ture of liv­ing at home, I didn’t have a plan. I’ve had to im­pro­vise and think crit­i­cally. I even put my es­capism into prac­tice again — get­ting lost in my thoughts in the Smoky Moun­tains, jour­nal­ing under a bud­ding tree at the park, re­dis­cov­er­ing the charm of down­town Knoxville. This time, though, I didn’t es­cape with ex­pec­ta­tions; I es­caped to ex­pe­ri­ence some­where. That is, ap­pre­ci­at­ing the beauty of what I saw or felt as I ex­pe­ri­enced it: the moun­tain veg­e­ta­tion, the tran­quil­ity of spring­time shade, the warmth of local ar­ti­sans. Noth­ing more. Noth­ing less.

I had had a habit of not being sat­is­fied with things as they were, and this led me to find mean­ing or beauty where it didn’t nec­es­sar­ily exist. I learned in­stead that the trees did not im­part ad­vice as I walked by. The shade was not read­ing over my shoul­der. The Knoxville ar­ti­sans did not lead per­fectly sim­ple lives. There was beauty, but I came to re­al­ize that there was also un­pleas­ant­ness. All of it was re­al­ity. And that in it­self was worth cher­ish­ing.

I learned to in­cor­po­rate this wis­dom into the life from which I was con­stantly run­ning away. The pain, stress, and te­dium at home didn’t need to be beau­ti­ful for me to ap­pre­ci­ate them. They were fa­mil­iar re­al­i­ties that I needed to ac­cept, work through, and learn from.

In doing this, I have begun to rec­og­nize my role as an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant in my life. I started to find that my yearn­ing for some­thing more than I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing caused me to live a pas­sive life. It was a life I often spent wait­ing to be wowed. As a re­sult, I strug­gled to ac­knowl­edge every­day thrills and tri­als as op­por­tu­ni­ties for self-aware­ness and en­riched per­spec­tive.

Hav­ing this in­sight be­fore­hand would have al­lowed me to un­der­stand that my trip to Tunisia wasn’t going to be a magic car­pet ride. It’s a place with help­ful strangers, scam artists, mini-skirts, busi­ness suits, nat­ural won­ders, sky­scrap­ers, an­cient ar­ti­facts, and tacky nov­elty gifts. Though Tunisia’s essence was unique, its sub­stance re­sem­bled that of many other places I had seen. Had I an­tic­i­pated this in­stead of the fan­tasies I cre­ated of Ara­bian nights in what I thought was an un­touched part of the world, I don’t think I would have been as dis­ap­pointed as I was.

I think per­haps I would have ap­pre­ci­ated the fa­mil­iar­i­ties and neg­a­tive quirks as part of the fab­ric that made Tunisia beau­ti­ful in it­self. If I in­stead found them ugly, that would have been fine, too; they would have been real feel­ings to­wards real ob­ser­va­tions. I would have been pre­sent, let­ting my feet sink into the rust-or­ange sand as the evening breeze rus­tled my own tagel­must and kissed my cheek.

I would not have imag­ined the spices I smelled or the whis­pers of by­gone ad­ven­tur­ers I heard in the wind. In­stead, I would have rec­og­nized the splen­dor of that breeze for what it was: crisp, clean, com­fort­ing. Over mil­lions of years, it had worked the sand into a fine dust.

Per­haps rel­ish­ing this re­al­ity would have drawn my in­ter­est away from the desert-rider. Feel­ing the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble an­tiq­uity of the desert be­neath my feet would’ve been all that I would’ve needed to have been sat­is­fied.

“Travel is only glam­orous in ret­ro­spect,” ac­cord­ing to travel writer Paul Th­er­oux. That had been true of my trav­els. I wrote home about the stereo­types of each des­ti­na­tion, often gloss­ing over or leav­ing out less-in­ter­est­ing truths. It was what I felt my read­ers wanted to read. It is what I felt I would want to read in my jour­nals in rem­i­nis­cence of my youth’s ex­ploits many years from now. More often than not, though, I wit­nessed non-stereo­types, like Eu­ro­peans de­vour­ing Big Macs and Africans chat­ting away on cell phones.

Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing home has en­abled me to em­brace fa­mil­iar­ity as part of an ad­ven­ture’s re­al­ity. In doing so, I have learned to value ex­pe­ri­ences in the pre­sent and look back on them as they re­ally were — glam­orous or not.

Ret­ro­spec­tive long­ing has not only falsely glo­ri­fied my past trav­els, but it has also caused me to an­tic­i­pate this ide­al­ism in sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing my every­day ad­ven­tures. With this knowl­edge, I in­tend to set aside ex­pec­ta­tions and rec­og­nize that ad­ven­ture is not about the ex­otic­ness or the dan­ger or the fairy­tale. The most thrilling ad­ven­ture comes from sa­vor­ing ac­tual beauty, un­der­stand­ing ac­tual ug­li­ness, and trea­sur­ing truth. At that point, an ex­pe­ri­ence doesn’t need to be glam­orous in hind­sight, fore­sight, or at pre­sent; it just needs to be what it is.