As my hair grows long, I try to recall the term for thinking two things at once.

Loren shows me a little box on the floor that serves as a sort of AutoTune for the baroque musician. After setting the key and pitch, one can chose from a dozen kinds of tuning: just intonation, Pythagorean intonation, equal temperament, wolf temperament, etc. Then when you plug your electric viol into the box, he explains, no matter how out of tune you play, what comes out is purely consonant. Brilliant, I say.

At the art cult, which I assure my friend Jesse we are just visiting for the evening, everyone is paired up and made to look identical, then set loose on the dinner party. Jesse drives back up the hill to his recording studio, while I am swept up in the action. I stay for several weeks, becoming more and more curious about the ultimate aims of this band of gypsies, and worrying that my straight demeanor will cause the the others to assume I am planning to betray them to the public. When Jesse returns, restless to get back to his final mix on the hill, I can tell that I have already been converted.

Hiking back out with my parents and brother, who explains his theory of natural selection in meticulous detail, until I get it. Wearing only my undershirt in the trailhead parking lot, I spot a cop car.

Driving a city bus home along mountain roads. I'm the only passenger, sitting about halfway back on the left, but I'm also the driver. It's an exhausting task, this backseat driving. After taking the wrong fork I am forced to stop at a steep rest area. That's where I see a long and knobby beaver, exhausted, splayed out in front of the coach. He fidgets, not quite dead from exhaustion. This is my pack animal, I think, as the other buses gather below.