The History of Love (as a Software Product)
In the 1980s and 1990s, software companies issued their software complete with a history of the changes from the previous releases. This let buyers read about the features introduced with each version. It also gave purchasers a sense of how the product was progressing.
In the 1990s, I wrote my first description of Love as a software product, complete with its software history. It was a satire about the world of my employment.
I got the idea on the day before Valentine's. Ignoring work and homework - I was in the Computer Science master's program - I dashed off the prank software release to three people. The next year, I planned in advance. This time, I sent an expanded edition to a full dozen. Then the joke seemed to grow stale. I skipped a year. I skipped another. More foolishness happened in the IT business world. I got inspired again by it and sent out an update of the Love Newsletter.
Then, of course, life happened. I forgot about it for years.
When I found the Love software release again. I updated it for the Not Zen blog. A year later, I updated it again. And one more time. And now.
Love: The Corporate Release History
From Monolithic
Press Release: Love Version 12
Special Reporting by Secret Hippie
A Word to Our Users
from Monolithic Software
The Newest Release of Love (TM)
Product History
Love 1.0: By today's hardware standards, there were many deficiencies in the first release of Love, a product designed entirely with the New Parent market in mind. It was a strong, basic operating system - adequate for its time - but it has grown tremendously since. It should be noted that Love's basic foundation was solid, as has been proven over many years and billions of customers.
Love 1.1: Several features were added due to early consumer demand. These included Love for Pre-Adolescents, Love for Seniors, Love for Siblings, and Love for In-Laws and Other Relations.
Love 1.2: Due to complaints from users with special, problem In-Laws, patches were added to the 1.1 version code in an attempt to fix their situation.
Love 1.4: The Monolithic team added Love for Pets. It was an instant hit. This popular feature has been carried forward in all releases. Further patches to the In-Laws code were issued with this release.
Love 2.0: Critics applauded the new, friendlier interface for Love, which divided the program into five sections: Agape, Eros, Narcissus, Familia, and Platonia. Users found it easier to get all sorts of Love. This was the version which made the product a household word. There were a few system crashes caused by users attempting to make the product achieve things the designers did not anticipate.
Love 2.02: Patches to the 2.0 code were installed to prevent affection crashes under unusual circumstances.
Love 2.03: An Arranged-Marriage module was added. Love for Pre-Adolescents was extended to cover adolescents.
Love 2.1: A same-sex "lifelong" feature was added. The In-Laws section was re-coded and renamed 'Extended Familia.'
Love 2.3: This release was issued by mistake. (The version number is unofficial.) A tool in it featured several programmer shortcuts which, when abused by inexperienced Lovers, often resulted in complete affection destruction. It was briefly popular. Pirate copies of this version still exist.
Love 3.0: Single parents greeted this release with joy at the new Step-Parents feature in Agape. This module (still recognized as superbly written, despite competitors' attempts to offer alternative arrangements in the same market) is in use in its original form in the most recent release. Unfortunately, this particular Love sold poorly and had to be pulled from circulation due to difficulties in the interface.
Love 3.1: Errors in interface design were fixed in response to customer complaints. A move toward standardization of the hardware situation (in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas) made stable code seem within reach to our programmers. The drive toward "perfect" code started.
Love 3.2: A safety feature was added to prevent Lovers from disfiguring themselves (a common occurrence with early affection engines). Additional safety features are now available in Love. No product can be perfectly safe; caution with affections is always advised.
Love 3.3: Despite some inadequacies with respect to modern hardware, this version of Love has proven very robust; it was the result of the attempt (now recognized as impossible) to create perfect code. In fact, 3.3 is still in use in many regions of the globe. This was the most popular release of Love, partly due to pirate copies. All of the main features for which Love is famous are present in 3.3, though some special tasks may prove unreasonably difficult to achieve. Upgrade from this version is strongly recommended.
Love 4.0: The evolution of the user environment prompted an entirely new look at the Love operating system. Hardware began to last longer and require more intricate management. The Eros and Familia sections had to be modified. Twenty-three new modules were added in an attempt to supply Love to "expandable" systems designed to stand the tests of time. The overall package was revolutionary. Unfortunately, some copies (no one knows how many) of 4.0 were released with a virus.
Love 4.01: A patch was added in the form of basic virus-protection. This protection, it should be noted, is now regarded as inadequate in today's environment. Monolithic corporation urges users to upgrade or to buy third-party protection if they intend to continue running any outdated release.
Love 4.1: The Extended Familia feature was disabled. A Distance Relationship package was offered in its place. (Mapping functions and travel recommendations from Monolithic were included.)
Love 4.4: A special War-Time Love edition. Very rare. Included are all the familiar Love features but the sum total was repackaged and offered to service families at a lower price. One notable change was the Distance Relationship module, which was expanded to include all possible permutations at the time (a feat made possible by the brilliance and dedication of war-time programmers and engineers). Distance Relationships are still an important affection market and Love is still the overarching provider.
Love 5.0: This is one of a handful of versions considered to be “classic.” It is very stable in most of its features. However, the new and completely-revised In-Law module failed under certain hardware configurations.
Love 5.03: This is the free upgrade version distributed to purchasers of Love 5.0. Special handlers in the In-Law module prevented most crashes. Some of the code in this section worked slowly. Users were advised to be patient with In-Laws.
Love 5.5: In this edition, a special Commuter module was added to the Distance Relationship package. Contrary to popular rumor, this module was not 'stolen' from the Traveling Salesman package offered by a rival company. (Note: the company in question is no longer in existence. Monolithic has acquired the Traveling Salesperson responsibility.)
Love 6.0: With changes in hardware becoming more frequent, Love stepped up to the speed challenge.
Love 6.1: Special Love Compression software arrived. With heart space at a premium, code reduction schemes allowed for the queuing and unpacking of various emotions necessary to run the new, more-complete In-Laws module. The lack of necessary affection channels in most hardware kept these modules from being practical, previously.
Love 6.2: Due to lawsuits involving the Love Compression engine, this version shipped without it. The In-Law module available in 6.1 continued to be offered but with a special disclaimer in the setup program as to the extra space needed to house the unpacked code.
Love 99: This release presented a radical change from previous versions. Lovers benefited from a smoother interface. Allegations arose that the look and feel were unfairly similar to the Adore (now iAdore) package. Fortunately, court decisions sided with the Love designers. The Monolithic interface to emotions continued to grow.
Love XL: A new generation of lovers required extra large devotion with additional features. As a bonus, the Love XL package came with the ability to troll for compliments at leading social sites like MyPassion.
Love Visa: Designers allowed for an improvement in touch interface. However, this version did not perform well with the newest generation of hardware. In this release, the company lost market share for the first time.
Love 7.0: This release achieved “classic” status in the opinions of many reviewers. The new Love Expander module competed strongly with iAdore and won back market share. Thanks to a more efficient Nepotism affection engine, the In-Laws module cemented its hold in business relationships.
Love 8.0: In the era during which MyPassion gave way to LikeFace and gSpot, Love concentrated on reaching out via mobile phones. A new generation of Lovers got a new interface.
Love 8.1: Improvements arrived to Love telecommunications. Many of those found their way into traditional Love hardware. Popular business apps like Quickie and LinkedUp stimulated offices around the globe. Small companies made games like HeartRace and Lovey Birds compatible with the Monolithic environment. Developers made antivirus protection part of the standard Love feature set.
Love 10: Love was everywhere. Most especially, it was in the air with LoveCloud. As demanded by our business customers and as a free add-on feature for our single Lovers (with a small monthly maintenance charge), a new wave of technology arrived to spread Love even farther. With LoveCloud, affections grew shared more widely and more securely. Customers used LoveCloud in business, during official and recreational travel, and at home.
Love 10.1: Cumulative patches to the LoveCloud service allowed for more security. Users reported the benefits to having their Love tracked more precisely. Advertising associated with affections grew more targeted.
Love 10.2: Some governments tracked forbidden affections too closely. With this version, LoveCloud became unavailable in some nations. The ever/present service experienced outages in some parts of the United States.
Love 10.3: Love as a Monolithic SaaS grew. However, our terms of service changed. With this release, the company added extra security so that unsubscribing required an in-person call to verify the transaction. More types of multifactor authentication were integrated into the subscription process.
Love 11: LoveBugs
Who doesn't love getting swarmed by LoveBugs? With this release, the corporation gave Love a set of AI subroutines. Each module possessed independent intelligence in the style of a robot. This did not make Love agentic in modern terms but the results greatly improved the speed of affection. If the sibling module could not attach, often three or four pet modules stepped in and took its place. This was a qualitative leap forward in Love.
Love 11.1: Love B&D with Love Prompts
As it turns out, a few people didn't like the idea of getting swarmed by LoveBugs. The initial release 11 remained popular but the name and the low intelligence of the LoveBugs drew ire from affectionware hobbyists. An improved release of Love, 'Backpropagation & Deep' was chosen as an upgrade to the technology and also as an alternative branding.
Love 11.2: Love S&M
Monolithic delivered patches into production speedily for the next upgrade, Love, Structured and Modeled. Natural Language Processing assisted users who wanted to adjust their terms of service. More to the point, most users achieved a deeper, more reliable affection with this release. However, within a month, the branding would change. Also, Monolithic dismissed the head of the marketing team responsible for choosing product names.
Love 11.3: LoveLearner
This was the final rebranding of the version 11 release. Monolithic downplayed the LoveRAG and the Love training. Nevertheless, people all around the world enjoyed the features they provide. Love Learner, fortunately, turned out to be an excellent branding. Everyone loves to learn about love.
Love Generation
Monolithic corporation heard the call of the public for Artificial Love. We acquired the LoveChat engine, which we combined with our powerful LoveCloud to form our Love Generation. The LoveGen (TM) service offered more intelligent matching, catfish games, special distance add-ons, premium services, and custom writing. (Motto: "Whether it's your words going out or their words coming back or an enhanced version of your mutual chat, you will definitely find yourself in Love!")
NOW INTRODUCING
Love 13: LoveAgent
With this release we have the Agent of Love!
A Love Agent can take your ideas (or even a sketch) and generate cards that you would have written if you'd had the time. The special person in your life deserves a handwritten, individual message. Now you can give them one every day.
Love Agent can take the love you’ve got and make it better. It can take love you might feel is getting stale and make it new again. Love Agent has learned from millions of stories of love. That's why it can make your love into the most moving story there is, as everyone wishes theirs could be.
Note: in testing, we had occasional complaints of hallucinations. However, you can do worse than to hallucinate you are in love.
AS ALWAYS
FreeLove is Not Monolithic
As always, we must issue this disclaimer: You may have heard of an open source product called FreeLove, originally produced by a former employee of ours using many modules of our original code. This hobbyist product is under legal dispute and it is not covered under Monolithic terms of use. It is strictly an imitation. You should be warned there have been complaints about the FreeLove line of affections. FreeLove has design flaws and bugs in implementation. Of course, it is free and you may think it is a good bargain until it ruins some important relationship. Remember that you end up paying for what you get.
Stories on life, death, enlightenment, zen buddhism, religion, philosophy, stoicism, meditation, daoism, kindness but not meekness, and samsara.
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Not Even Not Zen 432: The History of Love (as a Software Product)
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Not Even Not Traveling 72: Hawaii - Did I Learn Anything?
During our many dinner discussions with other passengers, I was consistently surprised by how instructive other people's lives could be. Everyone’s choices had an internal coherence. Sometimes you had to wait until you understood their logic, but still. These people had survived a long time, sometimes in challenging businesses, and the ones who made it to the cruise life had done well. They had made their choices, dealt with the consequences, learned, and kept going.
There were a couple of engineers: One was a retired military and civil engineer who moved to Nevada to lower his cost of living, specifically to fund his world travel. He and his wife had been everywhere from Antarctica to the Panama Canal.
We met professional guides: Nick and Lori had lived as Hawaiian tour guides, luau hosts, Las Vegas card dealers, and golf package sellers. They never got rich but they always seemed to find a way to finance what they wanted, even if they had to play golf as the course hosts, not as the guests.
The health concerns: We met folks with partial paralysis, with deafness, and with serious medical problems in their past. After all, about two thirds of the passengers were elderly. The most difficult may have been David, a retiree who had been the life of the party, once. Now he was mostly deaf. He felt frustrated about it because was unable to be his previous self. He couldn't catch the jokes and stories at the table; he couldn't return with his own banter. He watched lips carefully but often, he had to tap his wife to translate. He seethed about it.
We met lots of Canadians: Multiple couples, like Paul and Joanne, had retired from government jobs with pensions. Half of them had no children, which might have been a financial benefit that allowed them to travel. A few owned small businesses - but, after all, a small lumber business is still a profitable one.
In Summary:
- After a week, I stopped liking buffet food. It's more limiting than you might think.
- Canadians civil servants can retire to the cruising life.
- Americans who are in a position to start their own businesses are living by different rules. (Admittedly, I kind of knew this.)
- Mexico, at least in the lands around Ensenada, is more beautiful than Hawaii.
- Snorkeling should be sort of mandatory. There are kinds of fun that everyone should have and snorkeling may be one of them.
- No one should go to Honolulu or Waikiki. Maybe if you're staying there and can walk to where you want, it could be acceptable. But if you're trying to drive around the area to see the sights, no.
- Hawaii is so expensive that taking a cruise might be the cheapest way to stay in the islands.
- The defense of Hawaii against the Japanese attacks in World War II made the islanders and mainlanders come together. Basically, the USA mutual defense made Hawaii a state.
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Not Even Not Traveling 71: Hawaii - Kona
We had circled most of the island chain and returned to the big island of Hawai'i. This time, the Zaandam landed on the western shore, at Kona.
Passengers had to disembark by tendering, this time. In case you haven't done it, you tender from a cruise ship because you've arrived at a port where the water is too shallow or the pier is too small for a large ship to dock. The alternative used by cruise lines in such situations is a fleet of smaller boats made for transporting passengers to shore. The boats were once called 'tenders' and were supplied by the ports.
Nowadays, there are no specially-built tender vessels. Cruise ships like the Zaandam long ago upgraded from emergency rafts to tender boats as their standard. In any real emergency, one with time to deploy the boats, everyone would be better off than in emergencies of ages past. Tender boats have two decks, modern engines, heated cabins, and supplies to last a week. We bounced from our ship to the dock in relative comfort.
The Refuge
For local Hawaiians, sheltering in Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau was analogous to a medieval peasant taking shelter in a Catholic Church. Your pursuers were not allowed to harm you at the holy site. If you had broken the kapu (sacred laws) or your army had been defeated or you were pursued for debts or vengeance, you could go to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau and try to live there until it was safe to come out. The park supports a half-dozen traditional structures, although they are sometimes roped off, meant to be seen more than played in. (I think there are only so many times tourists can get in a dugout canoe without breaking it.)
We could have hopped back in the car and raced to the southmost tip of the island, afterwards. We would have not made it back for dinner aboard the Zandaam but, if we had been determined, we could have stood at the southmost point in the United States (since that is what the southern tip of Hawai'i is) and skipped a meal.
The Coffee
Although I mentioned I was sick for the whole voyage and don't find it worth dwelling on, here's where it played a factor for us, though. I didn't want to spend that much time driving anyways. Feeling ill and run-down sealed the decision.
"Let's stop for coffee," I said.
"Maybe we can give ourselves a coffee tour." Diane consulted her tourist pamphlets, maps, and GPS.
On the way back to Kona - nearly there, in fact, overlooking the city from its nearest mountain - we stopped at a local coffee house. On the slopes behind it, the shop owners had a two-acre coffee plantation. They were growing and processing their own coffee and chocolate.
Diane and I sat in the back of the restaurant at a large window overlooking the plants. We ordered a couple of lattes, talked at length with the staff, and watched the plantation guide give a tour to people we recognized.
"Those folks are from the Zaandam," said Diane, pointing out the window to faces I recognized.
"We could go out there, trail behind them, and get the same tour for free." She grinned and leaned her chin in her hand as she studied the crowd walking through the coffee bushes. We knew they had paid two hundred apiece for the tour.
"Nah." It was an attractive idea but I was too run down, physically. I needed the coffee I was drinking.
We helped ourselves to another round of lattes, a shared sandwich, and a chocolate bar.
Monday, April 6, 2026
Not Even Not Traveling 70: Tiny Guitar of Doom
(A Heartwarming Tale of Forty-Five Adults Failing to Clap in Unison)
Day G
On Friday, the second day of our voyage, I noticed a free ukulele lesson on the schedule of ship events. So did forty-five other passengers. When I arrived in the crow's nest, the twenty-four class seats were full. I had to steal a stool from the bar next door and improvise a place in the back row.
The instructors, a wife and husband team, had brought a crate of brand-new soprano ukuleles. That seemed like a happy event. I hopped up to get mine before they all disappeared.
"You won't get to keep them," warned the instructor, a middle-aged Hawaiian woman. "We will take them back and my husband will tune them all tonight."
The tiny ukuleles had arrived out of tune, and — because their strings were new — they refused to hold a note for more than a few seconds. Strumming on them was easy enough. Trying to confirm the sound of a chord in a room full of forty-five out-of-tune instruments playing at the same time, though, was an intellectual exercise, not a musical one, so much.
I learned to play a simple song in our first hour. That's what I thought; it sure was hard to verify.
Day C
On Saturday, the instructors raised the stakes. They gave us chord charts for "Mele Kalikimaka" and "Here Comes Santa in a Red Canoe." They told us we would be performing both songs on the World Stage on the night before docking in Hawaii.
I'd never heard the second song before but it had a hook I found appealing. They were both going to be fun, I thought, World Stage or not. But we weren't given melody notes for either piece. We were expected to memorize the singing by ear, which is easy enough, I suppose. Most of the men had to sing an octave down from the instructor, though, and she sang at a low alto. Maybe a fifth of us could make the octave. One silent man behind me chuckled.
"Sing louder," he told me.
"Yeah," agreed the musician to my right, one of those who had brought his own instrument.
We had two days to learn songs for the concert. Fine. Given the ease of the ukulele, I knew it was possible. I wanted a few other men to sing, though. Plus I couldn't see how the group was going to get the timing of the ukuleles right. We weren't strumming in anywhere close to the same rhythm. We seemed to have a cadre of music students who liked to race to the end.
"We keep speeding up," I complained.
"It's not happening in these seats," said the musician.
"Next rehearsal, maybe they'll chill out." That was my hope.
"Maybe they'll get even more excited," he countered. I gave him some side-eye.
"Everyone likes Flight of the Bumblebee," said the woman to my left. Okay, so it was musical humor of a sort. We turned to her. She tossed back her frizzy, blonde hair and and flashed us both a smile.
Day E
After workout and lunch, I went to my ukulele lesson (ratio: still one teacher per forty-five students) and I sat in the middle row of seats. A man who had brought his own instrument took a spot next to me. In the previous lessons, I'd noticed at least three other musicians who had brought their own. We had musical prodigies in the crowd as well, including a boy of twelve or thirteen. The boy, when he picked up his ukulele for the first time, tuned it in a few seconds and then plucked out all the scales on it by ear. Within a minute, he was playing chords and breaking the chords into components, plucked in syncopated rhythms.
This time, the boy and even more real musicians sat next to me. The grown man with the most beautiful concert-quality instrument rested it on his knee, leaned over, and said, "It sounds like you've played ukulele before."
I didn't know what to tell him. I had taught myself one song for a poetry event years back. Could an experienced musician pick up a single experience like that? And do it in a room full of other musicians? I felt like he was making a mistake. But in a nice way. I tried to let him down easy while I heard, to my right, the boy pick out part of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
He was really putting "Here Comes Santa in a Red Canoe" in perspective.
After a decent practice, I got nods from a few other folks I knew by sight. One of the gestures came from the military engineer I'd eaten lunch with a couple days earlier. At the time, he'd been severe. He had refused to drink coffee or alcohol. He'd pointedly said that he and his wife came from Utah. Despite his apparent disapproval then, he seemed satisfied with the music.
His wife had clapped in time when it was demanded. He had not clapped.
Day A
The Undressed Rehearsal
(It's only a metaphor - we kept our clothes on)
Our next ukulele lesson panicked me. Our timing, as we strummed, was worse than dancers on a boat in a gale. We were down to forty individuals now but still we had no common sense of time. Half a dozen players kept picking up speed as we played.
The wife and husband instruction team kept arguing. The wife was the leader. She knew her part. She was going to direct the performance. But together, they didn't seem coordinated. They argued for about a third of the class. And they weren't concerned about looking bad on stage. I begged the group to return to the parts we hadn't gotten right. And we did. Still, we didn't nail them. And the instructor was not worried at all.
At dinner, Diane and I hit the Pinnacle Lounge, the most expensive and exclusive restaurant on the ship. Toward the end of dinner, Tim and Wendy sat down at a table nearby. They were our dining mates a few days back and now here they were again.
"I haven't seen you at ukulele lessons," I mentioned.
Tim laughed.
"I've given up on that," he admitted. "We'll do the hula dance. That's our part."
I had to admit, it was a reasonable strategy.
This Chord
Overnight, I practiced for the Hawaiian Cultural Festival. We had been allowed to take the soprano ukuleles to our cabins. Thanks to my wife's generous offer to head to the spa and let me strum, I knew our two songs. I knew I could hit the low notes while singing and keep time with the instrument. As a group, though, well, I remembered our run-through the day before.
Practice, practice. I even practiced the native Hawaiian chant, only one word and a few claps since a Cultural Leader was doing the rest. But I nailed it.
The next day, I barely noticed my lunch because I was concentrating on the dress rehearsal coming up on the World Stage.
The Dress Rehearsal
If you opt to learn about Hawaiian culture on a HollandAmerica cruise, you have to be prepared to be part of the show. The Zaandam had four cultural advisors traveling with us. They had taught music, hula dance, and lectured to us about Hawaiian island life. One of them got up on the World Stage and led us in a practice of the opening chant.
A Hawaiian welcoming ceremony had been gently adapted (or so I suspected) for us as passengers. It was simple and friendly. To my surprise, the rehearsal went well. We got our timing right. When we were singing, we took a formation that placed me in the middle. Aside from the men who hadn't sung, there were a few women who felt unsure about their voice roles. In the last rehearsal before this one, I had gently assisted the women’s melody.
"Are you going to sing soprano?" whispered the woman next to me. I knew she meant was I going to softly croon to the female voice line.
"Do you want me to?"
"Yes." She looked at her feet.
I told myself it would be okay as long as I stayed gentle. When the verse came around, I added a quiet line of notes. My ukulele friend and two other women close by nodded in approval. Good, because I needed approval.
The Hawaiian Cultural Festival
Well, it helps to perform in front of a friendly audience, which we were definitely doing. We clapped to the traditional chant in the correct rhythm (okay, except for one person). We applauded for the acrobatics and the drumming that took the place of a fire ceremony, which admittedly would be hard to hold aboard a modern ship due to well, fire alarms if nothing else.
We sang Melé Kalikimaka and Here Comes Santa in a Red Canoe. Many of us kept time correctly, even. We moved aside to accommodate the hula dancers. But then we sang along to accompany the hula. Honestly, I think we were the least cultured part of the Cultural Festival.
But the audience, composed of our friends and fellow passengers, stood and clapped. And then most of the people hugged, usually with the family member involved in the performance but not always.
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Not Even Not Zen 431: Aleksi, Note 4 - Oh Yeah, Art
Oh Yeah, Art
In the summer of 2015, Diane and I brought our family on a driving vacation. Our two youngest kids were still interested in traveling with us, so we aimed to take them to new places. We consulted our extended families and acquaintances. We tried Mapquest. After a lot of thought and tracing out the possible routes, I decided I would rather see friends than anything else.
Okay, so I pretty much always would choose to visit friends if I could. It wasn't a one-sided decision. We knew that college friends of mine, Donna and Aleksi, were living north of Toronto with their son, Ensor, who happened to be around the same age as our kids. They all said yes to a visit. They seemed interested, even.
Diane planned our driving route. It was going to be great. Well, the first leg was going to be long. But Canada is, as everyone points out, a lot like a version of the United States where people don't litter. Folks are polite. Geese are aggressive. We made our way along Route 403 to Toronto and then beyond. No hotel for us, this time. At least, not yet. Donna and Aleksi had generously offered to put us up in their home, which is the kind of thing great friends do and most other citizens pretend they would also do if only things were different, like we all owned multiple houses.
An hour after we arrived, Al and Donna whisked us off to see the sights of Toronto. Ens gave the trip a tolerant smile. We took a train. It was clean. In fact, the art district downtown was fairly spectacular. The conversation was the best part, though. Sharing opinions and memories is what makes friends worth crossing international borders for, maybe.
When we got back to their place, Aleksi settled us in and turned on the kind of television and sound system I'd never had. He asked if he could play us one of his pieces. Normally, I wince when people offer to show me their work - too many writing workshops with bad writers, I guess - but I remembered Aleksi's sense of art in college as being a strong one. He'd shown passion and determination. He'd had ideas about abstract art. He had since then worked his art into Hollywood movies, too, so I knew I was going to see something polished.
Aleksi dimmed the lights. Music from Bach filled the room. Streaks of light and patterns began to flash on the screen.
Seeing his animation, feeling it move me, not always knowing quite why I had the emotional responses, feeling my mind go out in unusual directions - this was different but it was familiar, too. This was art.
"This piece played for a while at a German art museum," he said. "It was in the lobby. People saw it as they came in."
"It was for a celebration of Bach," Donna added.
Next, he played a second piece, another abstract visualization of a sonata. I noticed my kids fidgeting a little during it but not much, not enough for me to worry. Once more I felt the animation move me. It made me remember how Aleksi strongly envisioned his art. It really was art. It had been a long time since I had seen art for the sake of its inspiration, since I had seen it so pure and naked.
This was not commercialized, did not compromise much with techniques or with the need to communicate. It was driven by an inspired vision. Oh yeah, this was the real stuff. This was art.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Not Even Not Zen 430: Aleksi, Note 3 - Remissions and Decisions
Remissions and Decisions
In the spring of 1989, I got a call from Donna. I'd known about Aleksi's cancer since about a week after I met him, so it had been five years. It had become, in my mind, another part of who he was. He was always dealing with cancer.
For all those years, he had been treating it through an envisioning practice. Basically, when tumors got bad, he would envision them getting small. He would picture his body, his whole self, as healthy. By force of will, he succeeded with some tumors. At least, that's how it seemed to me. I'd used envisioning techniques myself for a decade with good results — conquering my fear of heights, for one — but my modest successes didn't stop me from worrying about Aleksi. After all, visualizing yourself stepping up to a cliff edge is a different proposition than visualizing yourself beating cancer.
Aleksi didn't want to hear about any of the standard, prescription medicines. As it turned out, he had good reasons for that. What was available for his cancer was known to be crap.
Although a few cancer treatments had started to work in the mid 1970s, after decades of development, no treatment had been devised that was able to beat the type of lymph node carcinoma Aleksi had. Relying on doctors to find a successful treatment in his lifetime was an uncertain hope at best. Except for Donna’s support, he was really on his own.
In addition, Aleksi knew the available treatments meant getting mustard gassed - not metaphorically, but literally. Chemotherapies in the 1980s were a series of attacks on the body. They descended in spirit (and in science) from World War I, when doctors learned that mustard gas destroyed white blood cells. The ideas developed more during World War II, when doctors found that nitrogen mustard reduced tumors. From those initial observations, and after a lot of trial and error, researchers pioneered the first medically tested chemotherapy. The treatment killed enormous numbers of body cells. The hope was to kill the cancer cells among them, then let the body regenerate. Aleksi didn't relish the idea of subjecting his body to the attack when there had never been a successful treatment.
But when Donna called me, she told me there was something new.
“This is for Al's type of cancer,” she said. “Specifically. Someone has lived through the treatment. The patient has gone into remission.”
"Fantastic!" It was a huge surprise. I had never wanted to voice pessimism but I'd also never believed we would all make it to this point. "He’s enrolling in a trial, right?”
“We have already enrolled him. That means we're coming down to your area."
"Can we see you?" My spirits soared at the idea and I could feel my eyebrows go up. "When?"
"We’ll be busy with the cancer treatments a lot of the time," Donna sounded thoughtful. "But, yeah, that's why I'm calling. We want to see you. We want to drop by your place. And we want you to come by the hospital and visit."
I asked if I could talk with Aleksi. Donna admitted he was reluctant to speak with anyone. He was still in shock, apparently, about the existence of a real treatment and its single but important success. He heard us talking, though, and his voice grew closer as he asked for the handset. When he got on the phone, Al said only a few words. But he sounded committed to going to the NIH. He reassured me despite the hesitation I heard in his voice. He seemed to be still catching up to the fact this was happening.
In Maryland, we got a brief visit from Donna and Aleksi. At the end of it, they told us they would be busy for a while but they would keep in touch. It took me a couple of weeks before I broke down and made the call to them so I could find out what was going on.
After a long conversation, confusing for me, we arranged a trip. It was not for them to visit us, as we had originally planned, but for us to drive down to them in Bethesda
"Your place in Frederick is a little farther from the NIH than I pictured, at home," Donna admitted.
I was a long highway trip but to me, it didn't seem too bad. I had grown up in the area, loosely speaking. To my girlfriend it was a bigger deal but she never complained. We scheduled it, planned for coffee during the drive, and after a few wrong turns at the end, we managed to visit Aleksi and Donna at a Bethesda apartment.
After our initial visit, we kept making phone calls. Eventually, we arranged another visit, this time to see Aleksi in his hospital room.
"I have to warn you," Donna said. "He seems sort of down. Sometimes he gets cranky."
That's why we're visiting, I thought. He can be cranky at us instead of Donna or his nurses. Or we can just take his mind off the treatments for a while.
Donna was right. When we got there, Aleksi looked tired. It had been a confusing drive, too. The sign outside the hospital said National Naval Medical Center, not National Institutes of Health. I didn't understand. I had to guess they were the same thing. (In fact, there had been an overflow of beds in the NIH Clinical Center, so Aleksi had been moved to the Naval Medical building. The two institutions cooperated often and, although Donna probably told me about it, the fact didn't sink in. I had no clear concept of what was going on.)
This was how I got to know the NIH for the first time. I sat in a hospital room. We talked about how the treatment was proceeding. Aleksi sounded upbeat, actually, or maybe he simply felt better for having friends visit. In every aspect of his progress, he had good observations to make. He felt well treated. Donna thought he was getting attentive care. Aleski said he stood a good chance of beating his cancer.
I left feeling better about him. On the way home, my girlfriend and I reinforced our cautious optimism.
After more time and more phone calls, we met again. This time, we gathered with a couple other friends of Aleksi, although they were strangers to me, and we started by sitting on chairs and chatting around a coffee table. Donna and Al had coordinated an event. After we discussed what we were going to do, we started an organized support session.
Aleksi had lost his hair. He still looked healthy, otherwise, if a bit worn down. He lay on the floor in a comfortable position while the rest of us lent him energy, touching him or not, and we all envisioned him feeling better and getting healthier. For his part, he did the same. He tried to feel the human connection and love. He tried to feel his body getting better.
It went on for what seemed like a long time, although it was probably only fifteen minutes. I did a lot of holding Aleski's right hand. I tried to send him all the healing I could. I remember feeling very in tune with my surroundings and my desire for Aleski to heal - to attain a sense of complete well-being. I think I slipped off into a trance state for a while, just maintaining contact and giving, as simply as possible, from my spirit.
Somehow, I think with signals passing between Donna and Aleski, Donna managed to call an end to the session. Everyone backed off by a step. Aleksi took a spot on a sofa with Donna by his left side.
"I felt really good energy from someone holding my hand," he said.
Everyone pointed at me. I had no idea if they were right. I knew what I wanted for Aleksi, though. I walked over to him. He took my hand again.
"Thank you," He nodded.
We socialized for a while. However, Aleski had limits. He was in the toughest cycle of his chemotherapy. It felt like barely a minute later that Donna started escorting people out. My girlfriend handed me my jacket.
A few years later, I got my Master's of Computer Science degree. I had gone through a lot of girlfriends in the meantime. I'd decided I wanted to have children and a family, a reversal of my previous mindset, and my previous mostly-goth crowd didn't seem to harbor many women who agreed with my new goal. I had to learn to socialize with different sets of people. Then I got a young woman pregnant, got married, and bought a house, It was time to go out on the job market and try to pay bills.
A head-hunting company said they had two offers for me, one working for the Department of Defense, the other working for the National Institutes of Health. At the NIH, I would be making less money, I interviewed there, anyway. I could see the work there was good. In my previous interview for the Defense department, I saw I'd have to evaluate computer configurations for a company delivering and maintaining military systems. At the NIH, I would get to be in the hospital and in the labs. I would fix the machines with patient data and make it possible for the doctors to take medical images of their patients.
And I remembered Al in his hospital bed. I remembered his remission. And I thought about having something to do with that, anything at all. And I said yes to the NIH and trying to do my part.
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Not Even Not Zen 429: Aleksi, Note 2 - The Only Handball Incident
The Only Handball Incident
We got up early to play. My girlfriend wrung her hands, either panicked or enthusiastic about me going off without her. But of course she came along partway. That was a pattern we were developing without knowing it. We drove together to Donna and Aleksi's house in Northampton. There, I put on tennis-club shorts so I could play handball with Aleksi. I had never played before.
"I don't have a spare glove," he said. "But I don't think it'll matter."
Aleksi drove us to a gym, where I discovered that a handball court is the same as a racquetball court. At least, it was at his club in Massachusetts. The room he had reserved looked good, three walls of smooth, painted concrete and a fourth of inch-thick glass. It was a gleaming space. Across the polished, wood floor ran a single red line, the serving line.
"Drop once, then serve," he said, moving his arms to show me. He smacked the ball across the room.
"Wow!" I said, sort of meaning 'ow' when I served a second later.
The lessons continued despite the hot ouch of hitting the ball without a glove. We practiced different shots. Aleksi taught me how to play the corners, which ended up being the important part. The best bounces hit three walls close together, so the ball returns in a weird direction. You had to learn to expect the direction. Even the best players got fooled sometimes; and I was a beginner.
I'd say I learned the rules and we played a game but I think, in fact, we started a game and worked on the rules together. But I did learn. And we did play. And we kept on. We kept hitting and running and laughing at the crazy angles of the rebounds.
"Good shot!" Aleksi said every now and then. "You're getting it."
In half an hour, the encouragement turned to, "Excellent anticipation!" and "You've got it."
We played and played, game after game. In theory, we were waiting for a handball friend of Aleksi's. A couple of times, Al wondered aloud about where the fellow was. Eventually, the man arrived, not quite an hour late. He turned out to be a medium-sized, dark-haired young fellow. He wore a charcoal grey shirt, unusual for a club setting, and had longish hair like a college student. He gave a strong handshake and seemed to have a practical, skeptical approach to everything, more like one of the locals than a typical freshman.
"Where's your glove?" he asked me after the handshake.
"First time," I said.
"I figured I'd let him decide if he likes it before buying equipment," Al chipped in. His friend raised an eyebrow, which should have been a clue.
"The ball is hard," he observed. "Doesn't it hurt to hit it with a bare hand?"
"Yeah," I admitted.
We all shrugged. After another warm-up session, we started playing competitive games. And we kept on, game after game. Eventually, Aleksi's friend walked to over to his watch, which he had left next to his bag.
"It's been an hour," he announced. He glanced at me. "How's your hand?"
"Well, it hurt when I started playing. Then it got buzzing, all tingly," I said. "Now I can't feel it."
"Huh."
He put down his watch, took a drink, and returned to play. We kept on going. Aleksi's friend was an experienced player. He won most of the matches. Al got a couple. A few times, my score got close. At the end of one game, my arm felt tired. It must have shown.
"I think it's time for you to stop," said Aleksi's friend. "Probably we all should stop."
"Why?" Aleksi asked.
"I don't like him playing without a glove," the fellow replied. "I don't trust it."
When we got back, Donna and my girlfriend treated us to an early dinner. Donna mentioned how I was eating left handed. The fingers on my right hand were shaking too much. Once I made the switch, though, I didn't much notice. Afterward, we played cards for a while. I felt fine.
The next morning, I woke up to find my right hand replaced by a grapefruit. It was a lump of purple flesh that throbbed. Ugh. Fortunately, I had busted my right hand a lot like this in high school. I knew how to handle it. My left hand would do most of the work for the day, no problem. The most difficult part was the involuntary horror on people's faces when they noticed my purple grapefruit.
By the evening, I realized this might go on for a while. Sure enough, on Monday morning I could drive but I had to report to work one-handed. I was installing computer systems in a bookstore. The staff, all older women, responded with an outpouring of motherly sympathy. They made me hot chocolate. They did the typing. (I did a little left-handed work.) All in all, it promised to be an entertaining week. My hand, beaten like a cheap steak as it was, returned to normal over the course of a few days. The next time I saw Donna and Aleksi, I had full movement in my fingers.
My girlfriend couldn't resist describing the lump that had been the purple grapefruit, though. Aleksi frowned, apologized, and never invited me to handball again.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Not Even Not Zen 428: Aleksi, Note 1 - Cosmic Encounters
Cosmic Encounters
It was a Saturday afternoon in early spring, warm enough (for Massachusetts) to enjoy being outside, but free of pollen (because it was Massachusetts). My girlfriend had some of her friends over, which meant by social logic, I invited my friends, too, even though I was not one of my girlfriend's nine roommates. So for my part, I'd invited Aleksi and Donna.
This is pretty much the way it works in your twenties. You inherit social groups the way you inherit old furniture. Sure, you didn't choose it exactly but here it is and it's pretty comfortable. At this point, I'd graduated and moved back to Massachusetts because, in its way, it was comfortable. I only sometimes slept in my girlfriend's mod. (Note: she called her group home a 'mod' because the term at our college was short for 'modular houses.' She lived in one of a row of apartments designed with the sort of bold minimalism that says, 'We had a budget of eighty dollars and a dream.')
However, there's only so much socializing you can do over a meal before your pants file a formal complaint. I've always preferred games. They give you something to do with your hands while you talk. We played spades, hearts, and rummy around the mod dining room table for about an hour. Then Aleksi got out something he'd brought by pre-arrangement, a board game called Cosmic Encounters. He said he had played it once before and it was great. He said it wouldn't take long to learn. This is, of course, what people always tell you about new games, although the learning curve for a game is sand in the gears of fun. As it turned out, though, Al was right. He had prepared. By the time we had set up the hex-grid board, he was done ensuring we knew the rules.
I was all for it. This was yet another social thing. And even though I'd never played, I assumed I'd do well. I usually pick up social games pretty quickly because I grew up with them. They were as good as bowling or, nowadays, as axe throwing.
"Is that whiskey?" Al asked when I sat back down with a glass. Because my girlfriend encouraged me to drink, I had fallen off the wagon. Anyway, it was a college environment in the 1980s. A little smoking and drinking could be taken for granted although, in the mod, hardly anyone did actually smoke except for a little weed behind closed doors or an occasional tobacco cigarette outside.
"Do you want some?" I offered.
He shook his head. "Not today."
Two of my girlfriend's roommates sat down to play with us, while others did what people do on a relaxed college Saturday. They drifted in and out of the room, raided the fridge, and maybe leaned against the kitchen counter to watch for a while. Sitting at the board, I concentrated for a few minutes. In Space Empires, each player gets two alien races, and each race comes with its own special powers. That's the game's way of giving everyone a fighting chance while also, it turns out, giving me a completely unfair advantage because about two minutes in, I saw how my two races were a good match. It was like they'd been waiting for each other their whole fictional, alien lives. After a couple of turns figuring out how movement worked, I started to methodically wipe the map with everybody.
Toward the end, the social pressure started to mount. My girlfriend was making sad eyes at me. Her roommates were sighing with quiet dignity. I felt I'd gotten caught up in my winning strategy so much I'd forgotten to be nice to everyone.
I had six captured systems and needed seven to win, so I did the usual, good-winner thing I often did: I eased off to let everyone catch up. I declined to take the seventh system - although I figured I would take it in another turn or two.
I had not, however, been paying any attention to Aleksi. He had been lurking in the middle of the pack. I got up to make myself another drink, returned to stand over the board with my glass in hand, and discovered Al building up a huge space force. Then it was his turn to wipe the map with everyone. I sat down and tried to stop him. But he used his special alien powers. Really.
He won. He crushed everyone and knocked me back from a winning move at the same time. On his next turn, he expanded to nine systems. There was no way to bust him back to six. I hadn't encountered anything like this in years.
"Why did you ease up?" he asked me at the end. He placed his final piece on a hex.
"To be nice?"
"Well, it's not so nice." He hunched his shoulders a little.
I knew Al enjoyed the social aspect of games. I had never realized how much he liked to compete.
"I had to teach you not to do that," he said. "I mean, if I could. I had to get lucky, too."
He hadn't been lucky, though. And that was something for me to remember.
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Not Even Not Traveling 70: Hawaii - Oahu, Pearl Harbor
We were headed to a place where ride-share drivers can't get in and cell service goes to die. When ten thousand people are trying to use a cell tower simultaneously, neither ET nor you can phone home. (I believe this is also how the Hawaiian tourism board keeps people from checking their email.)
Our bus driver checked our identification and handed us our tickets — not for the bus ride, but for our Navy transport to the U.S.S. Arizona. Those were the reason Diane had booked us with a cheesy little tourist company with a red, double-decker bus.
We stepped aboard as the first bus passengers. Unlike many others from the Zaandam, we hadn't waited until the day of the tour to try to get into the memorial. From the dock, we rode in pre-arranged bliss - not splendor but still, it wasn't bad - diagonally across a third of Oahu, picking up other visitors along the way.
The Arizona
We arrived at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial with time to spare, confirmed our reservations, and toured the park and museums before getting in line. Finally, the Navy called us up. We sat in a theatre and watched a newsreel about the U.S.S. Arizona. The basic theme was: this is a gravesite. Be respectful.
When we boarded the Navy transport to the sunken grave, that was the theme, too.
"You are not expected to be silent," said the Lieutenant to the crowded seats in the main cabin. "However, you will be escorted from the memorial if your behavior is loud or irreverent. Remember, there are passengers coming to visit their relatives who died here. There are over nine hundred men buried in the ship due to the battle. We have the remains of forty-eight men who have died since. They have chosen to be buried with their comrades, serving in the eternal duty, as is their right."
Our transport was a small, partly open vehicle. Even from my seat, I could see how shockingly shallow the harbor was. We coasted less than forty feet above the silt-covered bottom. How had cruisers and aircraft carriers ever navigated through here? There must be deeper channels somewhere, though the whole place seems to have the nautical depth of a wading pool. No wonder the attack used only mini-subs — a full-sized sub would have gotten stuck like a bathtub toy in the sink. No wonder so many American ships got grounded here, too. Even the U.S.S. Nevada, which escaped during the attack, deliberately ran aground near Hospital Point. The crew had no choice; they had to beach their damaged battleship or risk blocking the harbor channel.
The memorial itself was a small building, spare and scrubbed, set in calm position above the sunken ship. Walking up the ramp, the crowd fell quiet. Inside, even the children stayed subdued — which, if you have taken children anywhere solemn, you know is miraculous. Yes, everyone had been warned. But warnings and children have a complicated relationship. This time, at least, they listened.
We filed into the place with a long pause to look down at the rusty remains of the U.S.S. Arizona. Then we nudged ourselves forward and went to pay our respects. We stood in the sanctum with the list of names carved in marble. We read them all, slowly. Then we looked for family names. We noticed a Naylor, a Hess, and several Roberts who died that day. There were six of the Roberts clan, in fact, and the lieutenant had mentioned to us, in an offhand way, how some sailors had been entertaining approved visitors when the surprise attack began. It looked like the Roberts family had been in attendance and the guests had died here along with the sailors.
The Pearl Harbor Museum
Back on land, we spent a lot of time reading about the attack. We watched footage, too. Hundreds of people told their stories, including children who survived, a few of the Japanese-American soldiers, the husband and wife teams in the military, the Japanese-Americans who were classified as 4-C and weren’t allowed to serve, the firemen who tried to stop the blazes and got shot by both Japanese and American forces, a pilot who had managed to get his plane off the ground, and another pilot who flew in from an aircraft carrier and was shot by his own side.
We both liked the interview footage. In one of the museum buildings, interviews played on a loop. Each film captured the stories of soldiers (American and Japanese), civilians, children, and Hawaiians of all backgrounds as they were affected by the opening attack of a war. These were firsthand accounts. True, they were mostly captured forty or fifty years after the incident but at least someone thought to record the stories.
Personally, I was peeved that the codebreaker display in the museum was broken. There was a decoding device available, a flimsy cardboard-and-plastic thing about a yard long filled with dialed numbers. It was possibly a replica of the Purple Machine. But no one could get it to work. A gear inside had stripped and no operator could dial up the decoding sequences.
However, I enjoyed the statistical displays, including the military demographic ones. At the time of the attack, the Japanese had a much greater military force than the United States. Seeing the forces graphed side by side helped make the disparity clear. You could understand why Japan's leadership felt it was reasonable to try to knock the United States out of the action. They could dispense with America as a second-place opposing power in one shot. That may have been wishful thinking, of course. Some Japanese leaders thought so at the time. But the military advantages Japan possessed apparently convinced the rest.
And Japan did succeed. At the end of the day on December 7, the United States Navy had only three aircraft carriers left. Those were out on a routine patrol, so they missed the action. Add to those the four cruisers, a couple submarines, and a few smaller ships always on patrol, and the U.S. had a tiny fleet, too small to offer a serious fight. The Pearl Harbor attack led to as good an outcome as the Japanese military could have hoped. Yet it wasn't enough.
The Submarine Museum
We only saw the outside of the U.S.S. Bowfin, a beautiful submarine, because we'd miscalculated our time. After the Pearl Harbor museum, we walked over to find we had half an hour before our tour bus left.
"We could run through," I suggested.
"Pretty sure they won't let us," said Diane.
We had time to walk around the submarine memorial outside and read the plaques. While I did, I tried to learn what we were missing. Life aboard submarines had always seemed claustrophobic to me, and after reading about it — yep, it was absolutely awful. Submariners lived in a sealed metal tube with no sunlight, no privacy, and no way out, like an open-plan office building but with torpedoes.
What I did enjoy learning about was the evolution of submarine technology. The improvements were remarkable; running an early submarine required either extraordinary bravery or a complete failure to read the brochure.
The Navy built the U.S.S. Bowfin as an upgrade to the fleet. It launched exactly one year after the Pearl Harbor attack and went on to become one of the most decorated submarines of the Pacific Theater. It earned credit for sinking thirty enemy craft and damaging seven more. Like the U.S.S. Missouri, the Bowfin is now open to the public. And the museum attached to it has four thousand or so submarine-related mementos. It's got a dissected Poseidon missile. It includes an audio tour so you can get a good idea of what the relics mean and how they were used. But we mostly toured the Waterfront Memorial.
The Navy can't recover the remains of those lost when a submarine gets destroyed. Instead, they have a memorial outside the submarine museum for those people. The site arranges fifty-two plaques in a semi-circle. It offers specifics on each of the lost submarines, including the names of the crew members.
Close by on the park grounds, the Navy displays more war relics. You can look through a periscope from the USS Parche. You can see parts of a Japanese Kaiten, which was a manned torpedo. As one might imagine, the pilots of the Kaiten had to be pretty dedicated. Due to a manufacturing problem, water leaked into the operator and engine compartments. Solving the problem was never a priority. Instead, Japan issued the pilots a self-destruct mechanism in case, for some reason - like taking in too much water - they missed their target.
More Oahu
Well, Honolulu is unlike anything else in Hawaii because it's a true city, not a town, and it's anchored by a world-class international harbor, Kulolia. Pearl Harbor, too, is set apart from the rest, although in spirit it felt to me a little like Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau, the City of Refuge on the big island. They are both places shaped by the hardships endured there and the sacrifices made. Maybe that's the only connection they have but, to me personally, one reminded me of the other.
The attack on Pearl Harbor changed Hawaii's place in America. Before December 7, 1941, Hawaiians had reason to doubt whether the mainland would stand by them in a crisis. After that day, they knew. America had felt struck when Hawaii was struck. Mainlanders had come to the aid of the islands.
Before the war, there hadn't been much sentiment one way or another about making Hawaii a state. After it, the question of statehood was almost redundant. Most citizens knew their answer. Hawaiians were Americans.
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Not Even Not Traveling 69: Hawaii - Actually Mexico
I'm not sure why we pulled into a port in Mexico. We were coming from Hawaii. Our destination was San Diego. But we docked in the blue waters of a wide, arcing bay south of the U.S. border. The countryside around us started from low, white sand beaches and rose up the slopes to meet houses, hotels, a business district, and tall apartment buildings. A mile or two in the distance, beyond the city, the land rose higher into a range of coastal mountains spotted with green, semi-desert shrubs. I stared at the mountains and the bay for a long time.
At dawn, the temperature rose into the 60s and stayed there, a cool, slightly-breezy January day. I knew Diane had opted for us to take a package tour because she had given me a choice of tour options. Although I had been tempted by the tequila tasting, I felt I'd done that plenty in college. So I picked the mountain ziplining. It was a way to see the countryside on our only day in Mexico.
Later, I found out one of the passengers bailed out when we pulled up. She made her decision as the rest of us dressed. She switched to the tequila tour.
Meanwhile, Diane and I clambered into the gear along with a dozen others, leg straps, shoulders, helmet, and harness. We passed inspection and hopped into another bus, this one headed up a mountain peak. In a minute, our second bus turned off the road and grinded up a volcanic trail of broken basalt, rocks, and clay. The trail disappeared. It looked like it had been washed out and filled in, by hand, with rocks and gravel. Eventually, maybe two hundred feet from the top, the bus could get no further. The trail ended in desert scrub. We had to get out and hike the rest of the way. Fortunately, we could see the huge zipline cables and the launch platform above. We had something to aim at.
We lost another person on the first climb. The guide said one of our tour members returned to the bus and asked to be taken back to the tequila house.
Even though it was December and we were high up in the air currents, Ensenada by the Pacific coast was warm like an early spring day in Maryland. I was fine in my t-shirt and zipline gear. Diane had to billow her jacket to let in more cool mountain breezes. Eventually, she took it off and tied it around her waist.
The zipline looked easy. Still, we could see it ran from mountaintop to mountaintop. The nervous folks knew what was coming. The hike up to the launch site let our bodies know how it was going to be. We all understood, if we were struggling to climb the last five hundred feet, our reality. We knew what lay ahead, more. Our legs understood. Our lungs did, too. Our eyes saw the depths of the valleys. Our skin felt cool, hair-whipping gusts.
The sun glinted off the ocean to the distant west and far, far below. We hadn't seen the ocean for hours on the rides to get here. We stared at it now, from on high.
"Go ahead of me," said the older man in front, tall and thin. I had been climbing slowly and patiently but nevertheless I had caught him. When he noticed, he stopped on the trail. He wiped his brow.
I hiked past him, worried we might lose another zipline partner. We hadn't even begun.
At the launch point, four college-aged tourists waited with me for the rest of our group. When I started to stroll forward to the launch platform, two of them hopped to the front. Okay, so I wouldn't go first down the mountain. That was a good thing, probably. The guide called me forward when it was my turn. He strapped me in.
My first impression when I took my running leap from the launch deck was not about the height. So I've beaten that old phobia, I guess. It wasn't the wind, either. It was the sense of being on a desert peak half-covered by scrubby trees. It was a 'Gosh, I'm on a mountain' moment.
The world went quiet. I traveled at the same speed as the wind. My hands vibrated. A whining sound rose from the pulley on the steel cable. The pitch got higher as I gained speed. Close to the end, a cross-breeze swept in and threatened to twist me backwards but I pointed my feet, aimed, and I landed fine. In front of me, the same gust had blown a woman sideways. Our guide decided to give us advice.
He had waited for a pair of older women to arrive before he repeated himself. One of them gave us a brave smile, showing us her teeth. The idea of letting go sounded crazy to her, I could tell. And to me. Extending my arms meant trusting the equipment more than my grip. But rationally, I knew I was already dependent on the harness. This wasn't different, just another step in a trusting direction.
The guide locked me into the harness for the next ride and told me to, "Wait." We watched the other instructor at the front. The guide reached out to me and repeated, "Wait, wait."
"Okay." And I thought, an impulse is not just a decision but a real pulse, a kick off.
I kicked off. The air felt warm but fresh to my skin. I had the sense of floating above the trees. I could smell them. I could feel their moisture in the dusty, mountain-desert air.
A blast of wind swept me side to side for a moment. My body turned. I spread my arms. But it wasn't working. Then I pulled in my right and stuck my left out. The roaring air spun me back to facing forward. I lowered my hands, pointed my feet, and narrowed myself like a bicycle racer down a mountain. The wind rushed faster.
As I approached the landing platform, I extended my toes. I could see where the instructor had landed. I remembered when I was eighteen, parachuting, and I didn't stick the landing because no one had told me it was possible. Well, now I knew it was possible. I wanted to nail the right spot.
"Whoa," said the instructor as I dodged him and set my feet down hard, next to his. "Oh, okay."
And so it went down the ziplines, from mountain to mountain.
On the bus ride back, we had to stop for a farmer taking his cows across the dirt road. Everyone waited patiently. Someone wondered aloud about the tequila tour.