High and Dry

Stephen M. Park’s High & Dry is a memoir of misadventure akin to a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream. Under the pseudonym Wilson High, Park narrates and illustrates exploits that belie the beleaguered fugue from which they came.

If you ever imagined yourself exploring the ragged edge, this is it.

High’s life unfolds like an experiment gone awry. Among the myriad variables are fifty full-time jobs (including a stint as “The World’s Fastest Typist”), basketball, life-threatening illnesses, addictions, the d.t.’s, gunfire, crazy companions, mental wards, jails, halfway houses, wino hotels, apprehension by the FBI, a Tijuana divorce, Scientology, The Evergreen State College and years of marijuana cultivation.

The only constant in High’s life is his absurdist approach to it (like attempting, for instance, to drink himself out of alcoholism). He drifts from one fantastic adventure to the next, not searching for meaning but simply living in The Moment. The Moment can be comical or tragic, gentle or crass, beautiful or horrific. The Moment is a product of our humanity in all its perverse, ironic glory. The important thing, High reminds us, is not to shrink from the strange … but to embrace it.

Park, a longtime factotum and drifter, now wanders the streets of Portland, Oregon with a dog named Hobo.