The first key was in Toronto at the base of the CN Tower. Chichi told me one morning that I’d find it there. I’d gotten up and was drinking coffee, looking at the internet, a morning routine that most of us do and that I used to do: email, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, RSS news feeds…three cups of coffee then the day really begins. Chichi walked up and said, “You’ll find the key at the base of the CN Tower in Toronto”. Naturally, I was surprised. Then I felt a lot of other emotions. These included but were not limited to fear and apprehension, elation, curiosity, and others. I got dressed in a dark grey suit, blue shirt and leather shoes like I was going to work and I quickly headed downtown. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know how I’d find it. I called the office. Trish picks up and I tell her that I have to book off a couple of hours this morning. I’ll probably be free about 10:30-11:00. If she has anything for me to pick up in downtown Toronto, that’s where I’ll be. Trish is funny. On the phone you get this image of talking to who was that vixen that was married to Humphrey Bogart? You can see her in black and white, only a splash of light across her eyes, like she’s sitting in the dark, with a cigarette and a bourbon. People, lawyers, judges, criminals have asked me about her. This is not my imagination. She’s got a real whiskey voice. Maybe that’s why she answers the phone at Schwartz and Schwartz a full service law firm. I like to check in with Trish, not only because I have this job as their man on the street, but because I like to hear her voice. Traffic is a bitch. Parking is a bitch. I find a $20 lot and park.
Flash ahead one year. A lot has changed. I’m not calling Trish anymore.
I put in a quick call to Mama Wong at the Poontang Gardens to see if I had any messages. She had served the military during the Viet Nam War and she still ran a “barber shop” in smack dab ground zero, the battle zone, the Pat Pong of Taipei, the seediest and most dangerous six square blocks of vice and avarice in Asia. I used Mama Wong for my messages because I didn’t have a phone, I was here in Taiwan temporally, waiting for the next key to reveal itself. Also, I didn’t want to leave any tracks, I needed the filter between me and the general populous. I’d become suspicious and, what’s the word I’m looking for? I didn’t believe in the quest anymore. I had run further down the rabbit hole and things were getting complicated. Things that seemed weird a year ago seemed normal now. There was new weirdness now. We’d upped the anti. The dice were cast and I was in the game, a game with rules that changed and revealed themselves in the way a Scottish road reveals itself, except I’m travelling at breakneck speeds.
When you’re in Asia, everything is confusing. When you read Philip K Dyck novels or see movies about the future, it always seems like Asia. The street scenes, the confusion, the traffic, the people mountain people sea of strangeness like there is a reason, and it’s never to follow a dream, it’s striving to get ahead of the guy you’re next to.
When you’re on a quest, you have to pace yourself. It’s good to get out front, stay around at least the next corner You can stay in the pack, anonymous in it’s numbers, but that is where the confusion lies. It’s better to be out front. That way I can decide on circumstance. It matters to be consistent in your inconsistencies. Mama Wong said I had a message from Vincent. He left a number.
Vincent would lead me to the next key. Vincent was a dog and if Mama Wong knew that she wouldn’t have cared.
In Toronto a year earlier, it’s a cool and windy November day. I walk from the lot to the base of the CN Tower. There’s nothing there. I walk around the base of the tower. Nothing. I walk around again, this time looking at the buildings and the bridge and the traffic. Where is it? What does it look like? I decide it must be in the the garbage can nearest. Well here goes. I take the lid off and start emptying the garbage out piece by piece. It’s a weird thing to do, pick through garbage at 10am on a Toronto morning. Worse is when you don’t find what you’re looking for. Damn. Where would it be? Where would it be. Think? And then a little white dog amble up. “Hi”, he says, “Glad you believe. Many people don’t make it this far. I’m your next stop on a long line of learning. We are going to show you the way. You are embarking on a journey of discovery. The risks are great but so are the rewards. You can stop anytime you wish. As you’ve been told already, (I forgot to mention that Chichi and the little white dog said exactly this), If you tell anyone about this, both you and the person you tell will be harmed in such a way that neither of you will ever tell another soul. Do you understand?” “Yes”, I said. I’d been talking with Chichi for about a month now. Talking with and taking instructions from dogs had already become a regular and normal activity. “We want you to go to Taiwan.” “Taiwan?” “Yeah Taiwan. It’s a breakaway province of China. At the end of the second world war, the Nationalist army retreated there with hopes of someday retaking China.” “Yeah, yeah, I know the history”. I like history. I’d picked up the general history of Asia out of interest, through readings, documentaries, podcast… “Oh sorry”, said the little dog. I don’t know what you know. I only know that I’ve been told to tell you. May I go on?” He went on and told me about the history and climate and geography of Taiwan. I asked him why I had to go all the way to Taiwan for the next key and he said he didn’t know. I asked if he’d ever sent anyone else to Taiwan and he said he was on a quest of his own and that things were always in flux. I took that to mean “no” and assumed that maybe he had never spoken to anyone else before.
Later as I was driving to the offices of Schwartz and Schwartz I was thinking about dogs and how they are man’s best friend. I thought about that old joke about if space aliens were watching earth from afar they would think that dogs are in charge. The joke goes, just think about it. We give them a nice warm home, we feed them and bathe them and we (humans) ask for nothing in return. We even take them for walks and pick up their shit. it really does seem that dogs are in charge.
Eventually he told me that the next key would be found on the boardwalk in the area called Tamshui, a coastal town north of Taipei. He told me I could get there by subway and that I should be there on December 25 at about noon. “December 25. That’s Christmas!” “I know, but Taiwan isn’t a christian country. They don’t celebrate it there.” “Yeah, but I have a family. I can’t just take off…I have responsibilities and Taiwan, that’s crazy…” I went on and on coming up with excuses trying to process the information. The little white dog said, “You better write this down. You have a notebook, a pen, a phone?” I did. I had a phone. “The winning numbers for tonight’s lottery are 2, 5, 23, 28.” I wrote them down. “That’s only four numbers”. “That’s all you get. Do what you will with the money you win. I’d buy my family a trip to Taiwan for the holidays. That’s where your next key is…Or you can just bank the money and it will all end there. Your choice.”
Taiwan was nice. It was busy and confusing and not that easy to get around in. The beaches were rocky and the traffic was horrendous. My family wasn’t really up for an adventure. They asked “Why Taiwan? Why not Dominican Republic or Mexico again?” I just said that the tickets were free and that we were going. And if they didn’t want to go then I was still going.
We arrived on the 22nd and on the 25th I was speaking to another dog. This one wasn’t a little white one. It was a little brown one with black patches and interestingly, he spoke english with a Chinese accent. More on that later.
Here’s what happened between then and now. Here’s what I think I know. Dogs are the key. They are the markers and hold the information that push you forward in your journey. The lottery thing tells me that they have some control over what we think of as random events. I’m not sure what I’m suppose to be learning. I’m thinking that maybe the first few keys might just be a way of warming me up for what comes next. I don’t know what the purpose is.
Let’s jump ahead. At the Hotel Jambo, they serve pancakes and beer all day, every day, any time, starting at six in the morning and ending at two the next morning. They serve them so long as there is beer and as long as there is the makings for pancakes. One thing about africa, the beer trucks always get through. Always, no matter what the weather, the beer trucks get through. The pancake making ingredients truck isn’t as vigil.
When the moon drops behind Monkey Mountain, the night clerk lays down with a sigh on his rattan cot that creaks in front of the front desk, the lunch counter. I’m at a little place on Koh Phangan. It’s several years later now. I’m older but I’m in great shape and have an inner peace that radiates wise knowingness. Well maybe I don’t but it feels like I do. I do. It is about two in the afternoon, and I’m having pancakes and a beer and looking at one of Thailand’s ubiquitous cats laying in the shade, worse for wear, a stray, raggedy looking, scruffy, bedraggled for a cat, moth-eaten, tattered around the edges and with a broken tail. But, all Thai cats have broken tails, I’ve noticed. And when I first ask about it a few weeks ago, the girl says that Thais break cats’ tails so they won’t jump up on everything.
Thailand is a very spiritual country, Buddhist. Most young men upon turning 18, spend six months to a year, or a year and six months as monks, they save their heads and wear the orange robes and pray, I suppose... you see them around. Anyway, as I am looking at this cat with a broken tail, lounging at two in the afternoon, having my beer and pancakes, I think to myself, “no way, they can’t systematically go around breaking all the tails of all the cats, not all cats jump up on counters and furniture, not all cats, it couldn’t be worth such effort”.
Well, I could not accept that it was because cats jump up on stuff, not all cats do and in Thailand, who cares? What kind of stuff have Thais got anyway? No, no no. So, I asked and I asked and some people said they didn’t know and some said they hadn’t noticed and then I got the answer I was looking for. Thais break the tails of cats because the cat is the perfect animal and that is not right. Cats cannot be more perfect than God.
“We don’t like cats, but we’re not God”, a little dog had told me when I asked about it.
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