How Many Infinities?

Horner was driving an incredible, beat-up Toyota van with 200,000 miles on it and a manual transmission, which shuddered and wheezed up and down the San Francisco hills. It was Milo’s van, but Milo wasn’t here, and Horner was the only one who could drive a stick. At first, it was just him and Alan, on their way up the coast to meet the others. The dancers. They’d pick up Milo in Marin, where he’d been working, and proceed to Jughandle Farm. Hannah had gone ahead of them with Rachel and Kyle.

But when they finally wound up and down the hills of Marin to pick up Milo, he didn’t feel like getting behind the wheel, and so just piled into the back with a knapsack of clothes and his guitar, while Horner drove. Alan dozed in the backseat. Milo rolled cigarettes from a pack of Drum tobacco and read to Horner from his 4th grade journal: “Today was a good day. It’s Friday, so like every Friday I get out of school one hour early, at 1:30. So today was a very good day…”

Alan eventually woke from his nap, and they fell into talking about books and music, launching into a huge discussion of all the embarrassing bands they used to listen to in high school. They all admitted to listening to Rush as kids — and even still liking them, if they had to be honest. It grew dark and they missed the exit to Highway 128, driving half an hour into wine country before finally stopping at a roadhouse full of bikers who’d flocked there for barbecue.

They stopped to piss in the woods and then grabbed a six pack, turning around to head back the right way. By the time they reached the 128 they’d lost an hour, but Milo and Horner passed the time talking about Kerouac and Kafka, while Alan sat in the back seat, consulting directions that had been hastily scribbled by Hannah onto the back of a receipt. The road wound crazily, ribboning around the foothills, making the van wheeze and whine. The ride truly would have been harrowing if it weren’t for the animated conversation between Milo and Horner, which kept their minds off the endless series of hair-pin turns with a sheer cliff yawning beside them.

Finally, they rolled into Mendocino, unsure of the directions to the farmhouse but too stubborn to admit it. Once again, they got lost. Horner took a crack at examining the directions, but could make no sense of them. They inched along a dark country road, ocean to their left, looming hills to their right. They were supposed to turn into the second driveway after the something-or-other; later it would turn out that Hannah herself had been standing at the end of the driveway trying to flag them down, but they barreled right past her. Horner pulled into an old inn and consulted with the proprietor, who explained how to get to the farmhouse in clear detail.

A few minutes later they staggered into the farmhouse at last, only to discover that their arrival had displaced a family who’d been staying in one of the rooms. Now, in the middle of the night, these folks had to pack all of their stuff and transplant themselves, father, mother, and child, into one of the smaller cabins on the property, grumbling sleepily as they did so. Perusing the guest book the next morning, Horner discovered they’d been there all week, likely resenting this intrusion of a bunch of bohemians from San Francisco.

They’d been warned that it was an old farmhouse, and to bring sleeping bags, conjuring visions of a rickety structure with a warped wooden porch groaning around it, holes in the walls, perhaps the lowing of cows reaching them from a barn outside. It was an old structure, full of wood paneling and staircases, an upright piano, a wood-burning stove, brass lamps and ornate rugs thrown over the floors. But it had been converted into a sort of bed and breakfast. Not far from the house were several smaller cabins, tucked here and there along a winding trail. There was a small garden, but no farm, as such. The earth was too hilly for that, the soil too salty, with the ocean only about a hundred yards away, accessible via a trail cut into a steep hill underneath the highway bridge.

There was a completely refurbished kitchen, featuring a lodge-style dining area, and upstairs were all the rooms, some of them simple, private bedrooms, others dorm-style with bunks and twin beds. Horner rushed right up and claimed a bedroom for himself, luxuriating in a bed larger than any he’d slept on in months. They had the house to themselves, except for the kitchen and dining area and the showers, which were communal and open to those in the cabins, including the disgruntled family they’d displaced.

To mitigate some of the cost of their stay at Jughandle, they were each expected to contribute an hour’s worth of chores every day. Waking up the next morning, Horner set out to split wood for the fireplace and wood-burning stove; but, with this being the most desirable task for all of the able-bodied guests, a great pile of wood had already been cut. Instead, he helped another man named Bruce haul the logs in a wheelbarrow up to the woodshed. Then Horner took the axe, which turned out to be much heavier than it looked, and tried to split an enormous piece of wood on the chopping block. Bruce explained how to do it: gripping the base of the handle with your left hand, then placing your right hand up near the hatchet head to lift it, quickly sliding it along the handle to produce a whipping motion on the way down.

Horner found that he wasn’t very good at this task. He managed to hack off a few solid chunks, but mostly just splintered the top of the wood into toothpicks. He worked stubbornly at it for half an hour, but finally gave up when he realized he was spent.

After breakfast, they began rehearsing. But it was hard to say what this actually meant. Some of what they did might be categorized as warming up; some was simply goofing around. They started off practicing “alternate breathing” — several of the party preferred to call it “ultimate breathing” — in which they breathed in and out quickly through one nostril, pinching the other one closed, and then switched sides; this was supposed to open the diaphragm. Then they sat in a circle on the floor in the lotus position and chanted, “Ommm shanti shanti shanti” several times. Immediately after that, they plunged into a long “toning” exercise.

The whole group kept the tone going and going. Eventually, Horner’s voice began to feel like hands pressing against the walls of all the other voices, walls that moved — swelling, sinking walls, lifting him up and pressing him down. Cloud walls, rain walls, walls of grass and living wood. And then the group tone degenerated into whooping and snorting and coughing, finally diabolical laughter; the point was to let go so that everything could come tumbling out. Horner thought they must have sounded like maniacs to the other guests, who tiptoed behind the circle to use the bathroom for their morning rituals.

Next, they took turns, splitting off into pairs to engage in tonal dialogues. Two by two, they stood up in front of the others and tried to communicate, using only grunts and hums and gestures and facial expressions — a strange sort of blending of improvisational theater and primal therapy. The object was to eventually come to some kind of resolution, or understanding, ending up with a word or sound or movement upon which they’d tacitly agreed. They all threw themselves gamely into this exercise, although, with the others watching, there was increasing pressure to make it funny or somehow “good,” which led to a certain stiffness at times. Milo, as if embarrassed by the whole thing, sat down at the upright piano, softly plunking the keys and scat-singing in accompaniment.

Horner found himself paired with Kayla. Though a close confidant of Hannah — perhaps, in the ever-shifting hierarchy of the project, her second in command — Horner felt she did not take herself too seriously, with her short, curly red hair and a hilarious twinkle in her eye, and he was instantly drawn to her.

He began solemnly as a monk, chanting whatever came into his head. This turned out to be the phrase, “Go down to the ocean at the place you are,” though in the spirit of the game he deliberately distorted the words, garbling his voice so that no one could understand exactly what he was chanting. He and Kayla stood facing each other, nodding and shaking their heads, moaning, gesturing as if in explanation, throwing pillows… finally they wound up kneeling, prostrating themselves as if in desperate supplication, thumping the floor with their fists, chanting over and over,“HOW MANY INFINITIES…”

This could have gone on indefinitely if they hadn’t happened to glance up and catch sight of a little girl, still wearing her pajamas, her eyes wide and mouth open as she gaped at them from behind the wooden railing of the staircase leading up to the bathroom.

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