I gracefully entered waking life around 5:30am. Heavy rain. I lazily stared into the mountains as usual for a few moments. The whipped cream seemed to have crawled into lower elevations overnite despite a week of steady snow melt.

Yesterday was mostly devoted to strategizing with Brain, who suggested speaking to his attorney before making any more noise at the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs. I waited all day for word on when to see his attorney. I also failed to get through to Nazarimer (the brother in law of the foreign minister, herein reffered to as Noz). Around 7pm, and after no word from Brain or a response from Noz, I decided to stop drinking coffee and check out some theater downtown. I discovered a world of comic relief and physical theater at City Theater, which offers 4 large spaces that resemble Berkeley Rep and Geary Theater (SF) in their capacity and stage presentation. The building was erected during Shah’s time before 1979 and reflected a national drive to establish Tehran as a popular dance and theater hub in the Middle East (according to a traffic cop out front with a lisp).
A range of talent excavated the space. The show: “The ships of Satan.” The slurred evolution of sound and motion during the trancy piece reminded me of Japanese Noh Theater with off-Broadway dabs of abstractions; the story featured eerie noises, piles of sand, and the island life of women fending off the “Satanic ship” that would hypnotize and steal souls during quarter moons, by nearing the shoreline and incomprehensibly flirting with nearby humans. Due to the psychedlic soundtrack and monotonous execution of words, it was difficult to follow.

Nearly 3 hours later, and after 4 different M.F.A offices and 5 cups of tea, I was directed to proceed to Visa services to present a folder which contained a request, among other documents, for processing Tyler’s visa. I was lost in the MFA maze of building 3. When I finally made it to Visa services, there was an urgency to all the workers. A terse man took my file and had me sit down for 11 minutes. He returned with, “We got everything. Check back in two weeks.” I intercepted his dash into another room with, “Wait bud, that’s not good enough. Does this mean the visa will be processed or what?”

“Even if you have a letter from the president, you need be cleared through us.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No”

Captain finally located the brother-in-law of the Foreign Minister, an old childhood friend of his. We traveled northeast to meet him, a 7 hour car ride to the land of ancient persian mythology: Gorgan, a city in the Mazandaran provice, near the Caspian Sea. The area is well known for its magical mythical forces and dragons well documented in the (Shahnameh) Book Of Kings, by Ferdusi (a fine weave of sacred and profane Iranian history).

Gorgan also happens to be the city where my mother grew up and my grandfather had a jewelery store for several years; though back then, it was just a small town, well known only for its verdant forests that offer nice backpacking terrain and occult nomads.

On March 31st, I woke up to snow. Blizzard conditions. I stared out towards the Alborz mountains wondering if its Christmas or if I died and became an elf.

It didn’t matter either way. I realized that I didn’t have to rock and roll in a toilet bowl as usual upon waking, and that’s all that counted at the moment. I rubbed above my navel and mumbled “Inunchuk”.

The previous 5 days had been a wandering blur of involuntary fasting and self-desolation. Not being able to eat anything, frequent bathroom visits, and fending off drugs and vague familiar faces incessantly recommending IVs; this had become my life. Then the last 48 hours were especially notable for:  increased diarrhea and extremely exagerrated farts, ranging from 9-12 seconds on average. Was I becoming a ruminant? Was I beginning to emit butyric, acetic, and propionic acid? My gastro-intestinal tract was being terrorized by Iranian pathogens!

I opened the front door to a somewhat haggard but glowy eyed Saydonlu carrying a heavy duty samsonite brief case. An enormous smile. “Bobak jaan. Salaam…” He was over two hours late, but the man came through. And that’s all that counts.  Hope.

It was 10:17pm. I poured tea and whipped out my wild card, an award winning walnut cake just out of the oven.

Training for a 1000+K run in Tehran traffic is like playing foosball blindfolded. You never know when you’ll make contact. Traffic is afflicted with permanent rush hour syndrome. With the exception of about 221pm to 3:04pm, the streets are packed with cars, oversized trucks, motorcycles heading into oncoming traffic with babies on board, short highpitched honkig (like the Roadrunner), small trucks carrying 9 times their weight (reminding me of worker ants), civilians crossing everywhere at will, and a brilliantly gauged combo of fine-tuned alertness, optimistic momentum, and well mannered agitation.