How We Build the Byway

Between the cities of San Francisco and Baltimore runs a passage. For more than a year we at the Ghost Paper Archives have traversed its obscure track, palpated its smudged and hoary walls, gathered what fragments we could of its origin stories. At one point we discovered an auxiliary route leading to the borough of Brooklyn where we encountered shiny undulatory beings known as the Sleek Ones. Immediately we entered into collaboration with the archivist who first documented their existence (our friend, Nate Dorr). The Sleek Ones are crepuscular creatures, creatures of the in-between who have guided us ever farther into their interstitial domain. In the process, almost without meaning to, we have elaborated our byway. Here is a reenactment of sorts, of our interpersonal infrastructure project.

SS: I was on a journey I didn’t know I was on. Or rather, I was wandering without foreknowledge of this aimless walk becoming a journey. Suddenly something happened. Very far away—seemingly at the other side of the continent—I spied another figure. Perhaps the appearance of this entity is significant, I mused. Probably it knows things I do not know. But how to span the distance…

NG: I was far in the West chucking rocks at the sunset. My endless wandering had begun to assume the aspects of a journey; a sense of a destination was growing, reconfiguring all the waysigns that had come before. It was then I saw him—another person! He stood far away, beyond a great chasm of fly-over nothingness. He seemed to be speaking in my direction.

I made a megaphone of my hands and shouted: Hello!

Lonely soul that I am, I’ve often helloed into chasms.

SS: Hello! 

NG: My! It was the first time I could recall my hello returning. As though a switch had been thrown in my mind, my thoughts began to turn industriously.

Dear, Wanderer—

Is it too overly familiar for me to point out that we’re the same? We are wanderers, defined by little else. But why must we always wander alone?

I propose something: Let’s wander together.

Or . . . how to explain this? . . . Let us together make a wander. Together let’s construct a wander that will connect me and you.

SS: I accept your proposal, Western Wanderer (or should I say, Double Double-U?), though I have never made a wander (at least not intentionally, nor with another fellow wanderer). But I am intrigued at the prospect of this collective wander closing the distance between us. And so…let us begin, shall we?

As I set out from my origin point I immediately come upon these foamy delicacies all lined up in an irresistible row. 

They glow like angels in the early morning light, beseeching me to partake of their white frosted loveliness. And yet, something holds me back. Perhaps it’s the D-plus I received in Mycology 101, shortly before I parted ways with the biological sciences as an academic discipline to pursue. Beyond even that factor (or perhaps lurking behind it), it is, I think, the gaping chasm of the unknown lying beyond my consumption of said confection(s) that deters me from taking that fateful step. Will I die? Will I travel outside of space and time? Will I meet a white rabbit? Will I wake up naked under a tree? It is too early in the day for such conjecture, I decide.

And so instead I wander on, wondering what my fellow wanderer will make of such an alluring sight so early in this wander. 

NG: I dropped out of a science degree, too! I’d nearly forgotten that part of my early wandering. I had no aptitude for science; I decided I’d rather be the experiment myself. Perhaps you’ve met your white rabbit in Double Double-Me.

Unfortunately I don’t know much about mushrooms either. I associate them with poison, hallucination, decay, and pizza. And yet here they are, offering a way through the grass like stones across a stream. ‘Angels’ you call them—isn’t there a mushroom called the Death Angel? Well, what a proper start! To create we must destroy.

And so hop, hop, hop, and we’re across, seemingly without incident.

But whoaa, here’s a dizzy moment. Am I poisoned? Hallucinating? Or is it just the standard vertigo? Our next leg is a bit weak in the knees as we climb down from heaven on a steep, winding stair. Here’s a cool iron railing that will permit us to rest a moment from our downward spiral. Have you ever noticed how a winding stair likes to tease? How it gives the impression of something always just around the corner, but takes perverse pleasure in never revealing what it is?

SS: I believe there are mushrooms called destroying angels and others called death caps—though I don’t think these are either of those. At least I hope not—I may have taken just the smallest nibble of one. It’s either that or the vertigo you speak of as I teeter at the top of these stairs. And yes! It is perverse how the winding stairs taunt us in that way. It makes me want to rush blindly forward….

Errr…something seems to have gone awry at the end of these stairs. My legs have gone out from under me and now I’m sliding. This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Bart pulls the Super Fun Happy Slide lever on the wall and the stairs to the castle dungeon…well, they do what these stairs appear to have done. Sliding feels freeing, though. There is something childlike about the sensation, just like with spinning in circles and rolling down hills. Probably adults should do more sliding—what say you?

NG: Oh, I completely agree. I, for one, have entirely abandoned myself to sliding and hope never to encounter friction again. In fact I welcome the opportunity, as we build this wander, to relinquish all control and let the wander build itself. It knows best what it likes to be.

I’ll admit this was scary at first, this feeling of being slung around like a puck on an air hockey table by forces greater than myself. But I haven’t wiped out yet and my stomach is up in the back of my mouth, so I’m ingesting this adventure at an incredible rate. And so long as you’re sliding, too, here beside me with your arms windmilling wildly, I feel I have nothing to fear and everything to gain.

But it can’t all be zipping along the path of least resistance can it? We can’t construct a wander without including those sticking points you and I know only too well: the boggy ground of getting nowhere, the tall tyrannical fences of inhibition. I’m giving you a nervous look now. We succeed or fail together and I’m waiting to recognize something in you that won’t let me fail you. But—ack!—now we’re passing into the real test, where it all goes dark, and I’m wondering, Am I alone again? Or, as I hope, has our wander fallen so closely in step that I’ve mistaken the sound of your footfalls for my own?

SS: If this is where we’ve landed I’ll admit to being somewhat alarmed. I can’t see beyond the edge and I’m not sure if we’re hovering above it, weightless, or about to be pitched forth into an unknown abyss. The fence appears to encircle the liquid black hole we’re approaching—but is it to keep would-be intruders from getting in or to keep something from getting out? Have we gone awry here? One pitfall of wandering is the constant chance of a misstep (sticking point!), and yet without taking that risk we forfeit our opportunities for serendipitous discovery. We have at this point committed to this wander in all its woolliness. It may be dark but I don’t think you’re alone. I think I’m still here. I’m not sure where here is, but after passing through that chasm we seem to have arrived nonetheless…

The word desolation comes to mind, although that wreath on the door is, uh, somewhat welcoming, if approached with the right frame of mind at least. Perhaps inside we will find gifts laid out on the floor for us. After you, my friend…

NG: OK but I note that things are getting weird. This decrepit waysign indicates a different sort of progress, not spatial, but temporal. In fact by that measure we seem to have taken our farthest leap yet. But I agree the door-wreath is a nice touch. Assuring. An evergreen wreath is a well-known promise of the circularity of time. And it’s got a nice, shiny bell, too.

So through the battered door we go and into the dim, and the gifts on the warped floor are all squawks and murmurs. They’re quite conversational, these steps we’re taking now. What sort of gifts might they be? It seems to have grown dark again.

Oh wait. Here. Feel this. It feels like a tree. Wait, feel higher, it’s a dead tree. Hm. Well. I guess with the wreath and the gifts laid out I thought…I had oh tannenbaums in mind, but instead it’s Death Angels we have heard on high.

But is it just me or do you feel our tree vibrating? And now that my eyes have adjusted I see our tree is indeed garlanded, if oddly. Perhaps there’s life in it after all? 

This is an exciting new turn, but I’m sorry, I must pause. This wander we are building—I can feel it attracting impulses, signals, encoded communiqués, which are starting to course every direction at once. It’s all very stimulating but I need a moment. I need some perspective. I propose we climb.

Can I entice you to rest at the top of this tree with me?

SS: Indeed you can. A rest we have both well earned by this point. I do feel a slight tingle through my axons and dendrites, though. This odd tree you’ve selected for our repose is definitely juddering and there is no wind to speak of. But look at those colors! The view from up here is fine, very fine. If this is the apex of our wander then it has been worth every pinched moment of uncertainty, not to mention all that time underground in the dark. As I look around I can see each line we’ve written stretching out toward all the other writer-wanderers pacing their own gifted steps in the middle distance.