"I hope I don't cheapen it by saying it so much but I do love you and want you to get through this too. We walk through the dark forest on hot coals together. We walk towards the glimmer of light we can see through the trees. You and me, we are going to go to Finland. We are going to enjoy our lives and have adventures before we leave this world. I am kissing you with my mind and my heart. Sleep well my love."
Kara's text to me the night of her colostomy surgery, Sept. 10, 2019
There is so much to say about the time we went to Oulu, Finland. The time Kara took us across the world to a coastal city sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle. You might want to know what compelled her to make such a far-flung excursion. Could it be the Northern Lights? Rejuvenation? Saunas? Ubiquitous natural beauty? Reindeer burgers? Some of these things appealed to her, certainly (though not reindeer burgers), but only as perks of her overarching ambition. No, what called my wife to Finland was the chance to wave her hands for sixty seconds in front of a rain-drenched crowd at an event that used to be part of a music festival, a.k.a., the World Air Guitar Championships. This would be their nineteenth year of promoting the humanitarian ideals of nothingness... and Kara wanted us to be part of it.
The year was 2015. That winter, she proposed that we make a serious effort to experience the homeland, the very Mecca, of air guitar. Knowing the tickets were outrageous (about $1,500 a pop), I kept shrugging her off whenever she brought up this quixotic-even-for-her enterprise. Then finally, she threw down the gauntlet. "Charles," she said, "if I can get us tickets to Finland, would you compete in the Dark Horse?" Two points here: One, the Dark Horse is the qualifying event that determines who joins the national champions onstage in the world finals... and two, although I had "competed" in air guitar before, I had always gotten myself disqualified to save my ego from not only embarrassing myself by my own volition, but walking away, no pun intended, empty-handed. Or, to state the matter bluntly--no way did I want to compete in the Dark Horse!
But of course, the point was moot, seeing as Kara didn't stand a chance of getting us tickets to Finland without cheating with her credit card. Or so I figured. Which is why I snickered and promptly agreed, "Sure, I'll compete... if you get us to Finland." I was even naive enough to think this might be the last I would hear about Finland for a while. By Ilmatar, Finnish goddess of the air, woe be to the man oozing self-satisfied sarcasm before his Norse wife-goddess! For a few weeks later, as I was puttering around in the kitchen, Kara breezed in and announced that we were going to Finland that summer. "What... Finland? How," I said, my face stiffening into a mask of confusion. With an unrestrained air of triumph, she explained that two of her closest clients had just fronted her $3,000 in cash so she could pursue her ambition of internationally acclaimed fake rock stardom!
The mind boggled--my wife was literally going to massage our way five-thousand miles across the globe to attend the World Air Guitar Championships! It was as if Mark Twain had cozied up to her higher self to coauthor her current incarnation on earth. With Joseph Conrad signing up to be my spirit guide in the physical realm. We were going to Finland at the end of summer? By Anagolay, Filipino goddess of lost things, this meant I would have to obliterate my ego in the Dark Horse! The horror, the horror! A thought, accompanied by quickening pulse and serious biothermal spike in my frontal bone region, which was quickly discerned by my partner of twenty-six years, for she beamed from ear to ear and said: "Yep, Charles, we are going to Finland... better start working on your performance!"
Long story short, we did make it to Finland that August. The sad part was that my mother had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer the month before. We all agreed, however, that Kara and I would keep our extensive travel plans rather than throw away a special opportunity for a problem that neither of us could solve. We also took it as validation that Mom was still able to keep up her physical therapy and even make a trip around the block with her walker. In an unceremonious parting, we told her that we would see her when we got back from our eight-day escapade, and that we would keep in touch with my sister through Facebook in the meantime. Then we packed all relevant essentials (e.g., papier-mâché severed head, fake blood, spiked leather collar) into two carry-on items each, and went onto experience the magic of Finland with our air guitar family.
Bike tours. Saunas. Jurassic-looking teeter-totter rides. All-you-can-eat pickled fish. Karaoke. Our beautiful housemates, Beth, Justin, Eric, and Dave, my Asian comrade, who walked around everywhere with a loaf of bread and all the fixins' for a ham sandwich in the event of a sudden hunger pang. The time Kara had a chat with another air guitarist that would impact the organization of U.S. Air Guitar while sausages roasted pungently nearby over a sauna stove. The time a group of Finnish nationalists almost beat me up in a bar because they thought I was Syrian, more and more of them circling around us as my wife charmingly and cluelessly preached the peacemaking themes of air guitar to the skullcapped, bespectacled leader leaning on the half-wall beside us. "Make air, not war!" Kara cheered. "I hate Black people!" The Finnish demagogue seethed. "Let's get the hell out of here!" I pleaded, visions of Spencer Tracy searching for his missing Japanese-American friend in Bad Day at Black Rock flashing through my mind.
Image based on photos by Juuso Haraala
And, of course, the Dark Horse, where Kara invoked the Valkyrie of her Norse ancestors, and I prayed to any Filipino god from any island at any time in my people's history to guide me through the notorious music venue, the 45 Special, with its cattle chute of empty-handed rock-and-roll gladiators, its leather-clad master of ceremonies, and its troglodytic throng of drunken spectators like a wave of sentient meat in a surreal mashup of heavy metal, the Grand Guignol, and Spartacus. Neither of us placed high enough to move onto the World Air Guitar Championships, unfortunately (though on the plus side, my ego fared better than I thought it would). But that didn't mean we spent the entire Saturday night watching the action from the sideline, either. Twice, the Dark Horse contestants who didn't advance got to step onstage to help supercharge the healing powers of air guitar for a rain-drenched crowd of hundreds (Finnish nationalists aside)... Then a third time for the finale. To me, that last bow with my wife in Oulu, Finland, holding our air guitars at stage left, will always stand out as one of the most special moments in my emptiness-blessed life.
The bright lights. The cold. The heavy rains. The dark mass of the audience. Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" blaring over the sound system. And dozens of us dream-chasers building toward a metaphysical crescendo, a better-than-reality in which music could arise from the power of shared belief, and from which we could make a choice to extend that power when we dispersed into our daily lives. For none of us were truly separated unless we believed we were. That feeling of interconnectedness, more than the abstract concept itself--for all its beauty--was what Kara and I had really come across the world to discover in such a unique, and, dare I say, spiritual way. For me, at least (and let's face it, that song can seem to go on for a while if you're trying to mimic it at what Neil Young called "peak blood level"), past, present, and future fell away... as I looked at the crowd and remembered how the mist felt on my face when I ran back to the sideline during my high school football games... as I looked up at the dark sky and thought of the heavens stretching across the world toward the home of my youth where my mother was approaching physical death... as I felt the energy of all the air guitarists rocking out around me, including my wife, who had the genius and connections (that root word again) to plant us right here, beyond time, beyond life's burdens, in this floodlit celebration of togetherness-in-nothingness (or as Cool Hand Luke says, "Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand..."), and no, I was not stoned or drunk, just broken open with wonder, and maybe a bit giddy from the ice-cold squelchy grip of my waterlogged tennis shoes.
My mom passed away six days later, with me at her side. And Kara passed away eight years and ten days after that, with me also at her side. And to think she wanted so badly to go back to Finland, and we--or rather I, for it was my turn to take us across the world, was it not?--never made it happen. Once there was a chance--in the winter of 2020, when our healthcare team scheduled her radiation treatments so the side effects would taper off in time for air guitar season--but we all know how the rest of that year went, right?
And now I am tested every day... to recreate that feeling of togetherness-in-nothingness... the mist of old football games, the heavens over all the fields of the departed, the peak-blood-level power of the living to help a few hundred see fantastical music where others will either struggle or refuse to, fusing and flowing over me like tears, as the days draw me back to the end of the dark forest... to the moment my favorite air guitarist transmuted into air itself... to the second my ego was obliterated as it never can be again. And although we never went back to Finland, my love, we did enjoy our lives, and we did have adventures, and I will never know true joy again until my form too transmutes into air, and the two of us are back in the floodlights together, rocking by each other's side, stronger than ever... hopefully many years from now... for there is much for me to do while I am still here on earth.
And I pray to Anagolay, goddess of lost things, that I will swiftly find my way home to you, in all your Norse-goddess glory, when I am called upon to leave this world.
You were always the glimmer of light and you always will be.
Until next time.
--Charles Austin Muir
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