Dan Kennedy - In Deep Guano

 

So, it's like an average Tuesday and I'm downstairs from my apartment at this cafe in downtown New York and I'm getting a coffee and I overhear this person say that she's trying to be in the moment more. [audience chuckle] And I turn around and look at the person and she's just sort of this normal, average middle-class woman and she's talking to a friend and she's like, “Yeah, I'm just trying to be in the moment more now,” and I-- the first thing I think is here's what irritates me about this saying. [audience laughter] 

 

I think, the thing I can't stand about this saying is it seems to imply that unless you are living your life in this bizarre state of heightened awareness at all times, you're not living your life as this awesome adventure that it could be. If you're not in the moment, your life is slipping by in all these unremarkable days. You know as a freelance writer person who is worrying about their SEP retirement account, which is apparently basically a 401k that only I put the money into, nobody else, [audience laughter] which I now have a program where I like match each dollar that I put in with another dollar. [audience laughter] 

 

Still haven't caught on to that, and obsessing over things like did I get my laundry done in time before we go on the road? And how many Twitter followers do I have and are we making any progress on the mortgage or is it all just interest? And suddenly, I think, “Oh my God, I'm never in the moment and my entire life is slipping by.” So, I get home with my coffee and an editor from this men's magazine phones me up and says they've got this great idea. What if they send, let's face it essentially the shut in downtown loner.org podcast sort, [audience laughter] to a really crazy place and that person writes about it and hilarity ensues. 

 

They say, “Wouldn't it be awesome? We're going to fly you halfway around the world, so that you can hook up with these herpetologists that are looking for a world record python. [audience laughter] And you'll hike down through this canyon filled with cobras [audience laughter] and then you'll go into a cave filled with giant pythons and you'll trail these guys and you'll write about it and it'll be hilarious. And I say that I don't think this will be hilarious. [audience laughter] I'm not really crazy about snakes, to put it mildly. And I don't think I probably belong in a jungle. But then she says, “Well, we'll fly you like first class, all the way, and we'll put you up in like really big suites at nice hotels for all your layovers.” And I'm thinking to myself, I think the moment has just called me up. [audience laughter] And I think I should do this. And so, I mean, all I got to do is go through a canyon and into a cave. I'll do it. [audience laughter]

 

And I say, “Yeah, yeah no, I would like to do that because I'm trying to be more in the moment these days. So, definitely yes.” So, it only takes about 48 hours all told for all the fancy stuff like the plane tickets and the hotel suites to be over with. And now I have met up with the herpetologists and we are traveling in a couple of little vans down a very narrow potholed road where the drivers occasionally just swerve violently into the ditch to avoid oncoming traffic using the same road. And we pull up to this string of concrete-like bunkers, I guess is the best way to describe them, where we'll be staying. 

 

And each room/bunker has a single light bulb hanging from a cord in the center of it that lights up at random times whenever the generator kicks in. [audience laughter] And each room has a hole in the ground that's the toilet. And each room has a window which is a hole in the wall and my room, as a bonus has a starving ox tied to it, [audience laughter] which is evidently an upgrade. [audience laughter] So, I'm sitting on my cot in my room, staring at the view, which is this starving ox drinking out of a stagnant irrigation ditch, trying to get pumped up to be in the moment. [audience laughter] 

 

And next day comes, we hike down through the canyon, see a couple of cobras right off the bat. We also catch a snake called a white lipped pit viper. The white lipped pit viper is put into a reptile sack, and that sack is put with our gear that we're carrying along with us. And so, I clarify, I go, “So that snake is not poisonous, right? That's not venomous.” And they go, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Poisonous, definitely poisonous. Watch that bag.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Okay, but sort just to clarify, it wouldn't kill me if it's not like a fatal snake, right?” And they go, well, “Technically it's not, but you're like a long hike, two van rides, and a 12-hour flight from a modern hospital, so consider that snake fatal.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Okay, keep an eye on that, road case, whenever we're reaching for something.” 

 

We start into the cave. The first thing I notice is a lot of bat guano. It is about 4 feet deep. The bat guano has merged with the water table to make a bat guano swamp. [audience laughter] We start trudging through it. It's about up to my waist, and I'm thinking, I don't think I like caves. [audience laughter] The next thing I realize is there are bats in the cave. That is where the 4 feet of guano came from. About 1,000 bats break away from the ceiling and come rushing past us. And these are not cute bats. These bats have bodies about the size of those little dogs that models in New York City carry around in their handbag. [audience laughter] And they've got big wings. And sometimes when they're all rushing to get out, their radar sort of goes out of whack, they fly into your chest. Occasionally, they will go straight for your face by accident and realize, “Oh, my God, what is that thing? I don't want to hit it.”

 

Throw on the brakes, put it in reverse, and these big rubbery wings go smacking all around your head. [audience laughter] And you need to stand perfectly still in that moment and not freak out. So, luckily, when I freak out, I stand perfectly still. [audience laughter] That works out fine. The next thing I notice is the walls of the cave down at the sort of guano line, if you will, undulate and that's because they're mostly solid cockroaches. [audience laughter] Now, here's the thing about the cockroaches that's kind of neat. They smell the carbon dioxide in your breath because the oxygen is really low the further in you get in the cave. They follow that trail, thinking it's leading to a food source. And they follow it quickly so they go in your mouth. [audience laughter] 

 

And I'm thinking to myself, I'm not crazy about cockroaches either. This really isn't the best assignment for me. So, I'm hacking a cockroach up off the back of my throat and spitting it into the liquid bat guano that I'm hiking through, when suddenly the lead herpetologist turns around and yells, “Snake, snake, snake, snake.” And I'm thinking, I really, just really want to be home I think maybe at this point. [audience laughter] And everyone freaks out. There is people rushing past me. Like the Sherpas get up on the side of the cave wall, they're like, “Oh God.” They're trying to get their legs out of the swamps so they can't get bitten or anything. Suddenly now these guys are looking, I've been told, for a snake that's basically 21 or 22 feet long. [audience aww] It's a giant reticulated python. So, I'm not happy to hear. Snake right off the bat.

 

Turns around, the lead herpetologist has a small snake, about an 11-foot python, which if you ask me, is a big snake. He's got, it's trying to get coils on him, it's trying to bite him. He's trying to get control of the snake. He turns around, he gets a little bit of control of it and goes, “Kennedy, you got to hold this. These things are amazing.” [audience laughter] And I say, “No, I really, it's not the way we do it. Like we take notes. Writers basically.” [audience laughter]. Writers don't need to do the actual thing all the time. And he comes towards me with it and I hold out my hands and I go, “Oh my God.” And the snake's trying to get coils around me and I'm holding its head and he's showing me how to not hurt it. 

 

And suddenly there's a photographer right here and they start shooting pictures for this story. And basically, every single picture, I just look like a terrified nine-year-old boy who's going to cry any minute. [audience laughter] And the snake is struggling, I'm struggling. And then suddenly the snake just calms down, takes this huge deep breath and just exhales. And I'm like, “Oh, my God, that was amazing.” This thing is just like a living creature on earth just like all of us just trying to get through a random Tuesday. [audience laughter] I totally identify with this snake. 

 

And right at that moment, I just am in this Zen moment, and I happen to be looking right down the barrel of the lens, “click” and they get this photograph of me that looks like I was born to be a guy, to go into a cave and hold a giant snake. [audience laughter and applause] It's great. The irony is, when I was nine years old, I would read National Geographic and watch mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. And I thought, I'm probably going to grow up to be a pretty adventurous man, but [audience laughter] this had not come to pass.

 

We get back to camp and somebody has another great idea. They go, “What if we take the white lipped pit viper and put it on your bed for a photo? Like a hilarious photo, right?” And I'm feeling, I have to say, sort of confident about myself at this point after looking at the cool photo of me about 40 times. And also, I want to redeem myself for the 20 photos before it where I look like I'm going to cry and scream. So I go, “Yeah, it's totally cool. Let's do that. That'll be fun.” 

 

And I go. I get in my bed, they put the snake, the white lipped pit viper on the mosquito netting above my bed. This is really funny. I'm giving them my iPhone, going, here, put some on my phone. This will be cool. I want to show friends. So, it's all great. They're like, “Act like you're sleeping. Okay.” Yes. This is hilarious. Then somebody goes, let's unzip the side of the mosquito netting. So, it looks like the snake has a shot at getting in. I don't know what happened next because I blacked out. Not from being bitten, thank God, but just because it was real terror for me, I think. They unzip the side. This snake slithers over, arches its head down, and looks in like, “Hey, who's that?” [audience laughter]

 

And I'm told the next day at the breakfast table that I said one profane word about 70 times in six seconds. [audience laughter] Everyone's laughing, and they've never heard anybody say it that fast. [audience laughter] I also apparently followed it up with the phrase not cool. Not cool, not cool. [audience laughter] Everybody's laughing about this around the table. I'm laughing about it, too. And then suddenly I think, “Man, it's not cool.” Like, I could die down here goofing around, doing the stuff I'm doing. This is definitely a place where people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't be hanging out. 

 

So, after that, the trip winds down. I get back to New York City, and the first thing I notice is anytime I'm in a restaurant or in my apartment and the lights are kind of low, I instantly think I see snakes out of the corner of my eye. And I'm like, “Oh, that's fun. How long is that going to last? Is that with me forever now? [audience laughter] I was in the moment, and I'm left with paralyzing fear and hallucinations. [audience laughter] Cool. I also have these nightmares where I think there's a snake in the bed with me even after I wake up and I'm like, thrashing around going, “Ooh, gee. Oh, that, snake.” And then I have to realize, “Okay, I'm safe. I'm in here.”

 

So that was a beautiful time. Yes. So, aside from hallucinating snakes and having these nightmares, the piece isn't really turning out super funny. I'm writing it. It just basically is coming off like a guy who shouldn't be in jungles, was in a jungle, and now he's got some really messed up posttraumatic stress disorder or something. [audience laughter] And the opening paragraph was like another violent sunset bleeds against a bruised sky. I'm trapped in the bunker. I don't know how long I've got light, so I've got to type quickly. [audience laughter] 

 

The editor is like, “I got your humor piece. It's not really funny.” So, the magazine actually didn't end up running it, which is really fortunate for all of us. It was very traumatic piece, I think. [laughs] And I'm thinking, “Huh, that's interesting.” So, I'm sitting in my apartment one night and I get this email. No subject line. It's from the lead herpetologist, but there's an attachment. I click on it. The guys went back down there, they caught that big snake that they had heard about. It's not a world record, but it's pretty darn close for a wild reticulated python caught out of captivity. It's like 22 feet long. It takes 14 of them to hold it in this photograph. And I'm looking at the photograph, and I'm looking around the apartment like the lights are adjusted perfectly. I'm watching a movie. I'm checking my SEP account on my laptop at the same time, pretty screwed. Seeing how many Twitter followers I have, all the really important things. 

 

And it occurs to me I like this. This is what I like. I like sitting on a nice couch [audience chuckle] with good lighting adjusted properly, watching a good movie and then checking stuff on a nice laptop. I'm happy with that. And then I thought to myself, I'm really glad I'm not in that photograph, and I'm really glad I didn't go back down there. And then it occurred to me, “Oh, right.” I literally was like, “Maybe that's all that woman in the cafe meant by being in the moment.”