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going crazy part 6
The driver of the van that had immediately pulled over, apparently at my command, was a dumpy looking woman in her early 50s perhaps. She looked remarkably like my mom, shorter lighter hair but largely the same feel, gestalt if you will. She pulled back into traffic and asked where i was headed. I told her i didn’t know and preceded to explain that i’d inadvertently fallen in with an apparent gang of international drug smugglers and that i’d fled coercion into smuggling because i didn’t know what to do. She drove as i explained this listening intently with no apparent disbelief. She pulled off at an exit and parked next to a small park. She said it was foolish and dangerous to get involved with drug smugglers and i should be very careful. She said the Schipbol was dangerous, a frequent pathway for smugglers and heavily surveilled. She suggested i leave by Denmark I think it was, and she drew me a map of the easiest way to cross the border. I told her i had already ditched the drugs but she looked like she didn’t believe me. She was excited and concerned and looked near tears but happily so. She dug in her purse and pulled out a 50 guilder bill. She pushed it into my hands with the map which i remember as being on a cocktail napkin and made me promise not to spend it on drugs. i promised her i wouldn’t and impulsively added that i would use some of it to call my mom. i pulled out my backpack and walked across the park to find the train station she had mentioned on the map.
I was overcome by a tremendous weariness. I again recalled it must have been over 10 days. It was definitely in the middle of the second week I’d slept last and if we were to leave today it was day 21. I saw children playing and such and looked for an out of the way place to rest. I wouldn’t sleep, that wouldn’t be safe but i could not go on. I walked around some bushes, benches, perhaps a calliope and came to a bench out of the way. I sat my bag down and stretched out, I closed my eyes, the weariness overcame me.
I looked up to yet another blocky blond guy with a big forehead and a strong chin. This one looked a bit more rural, bibs perhaps, or jeans and a flannel, he was older but in the prime of life, muscled in a workingman kind of way and he was holding an axe. Not menacingly but prominently across his chest. He asked me what i was doing there? He appeared nervous but trying to hide it. I couldn’t decide if he were making conversation and just happened to have an axe or if he using it as a badge of authority to question my possible vagrancy. I looked over and saw the train stop, i couldn’t find, across the street and said i was waiting for a train. “Well be about it then” as the train rolled into view. It was definitely the homeless guy push off and i took it.
I rode the train the way it was going. I looked at the map on the train and tried to determine where i changed lines. I pulled out my cocktail napkin map and realized it was like a 3rd grade geography assignment kind of map that marked like the borders of a few countries but didn’t have anything about train lines and such and i couldn’t remember what the mom-lady had said. I rode the train until things looked familiar and i was able to find the stop closest to the mind spa.
I walked to the door and rang the bell, unsure of what i was looking for, what i would do if no one answered the door or what i would do if someone did. Our host opened the door and looked mildly surprised to see me. I asked if he had heard from Debbie and he said he hadn’t. I told him we were separated and i had missed my plane and come there to see if she had called. he said she hadn’t but i could come in and work out what to do. I told him that was alright, I had friends i was going to stay with and thanks just the same. He seemed surprised but didn’t argue. Everything was pregnant with meaning. Every conversation, every thought had for seemingly forever but it did not lessen its impact.
I walked to a one of the restaurants that had a small necessities counter and bought a pack of cigarettes. Galouis blonds, I was smoking then. Happy to be using the exotic locally. I thought of my promise not to buy drugs and did it anyway. Oh i wanted one. That moment of elusive clarity, focus at least. I took the change to a payphone and flipped through the business cards i had collected over the last couple of weeks, there were about 10 but mostly Americans who wanted me to look them up in the states. I had gotten the number of a tarot card reader I had let come in and set up at the cannabis cup. We had talked pretty intensely and he had given me a reading fraught with meaning that i no longer recall. I do recall its eerie prescience as certain events unfolded over the coming weeks but the vast majority of what occurred is lost to me, was lost to me even then. Living in the moment at the cost of history, identity even. I not only embraced The Now, i was Lost In It. And I hadn’t even yet had the dream….
East Toledo Euro Trash
When I was visiting the homeland I had the great pleasure to see London’s own The Stash play at Frankies. It was an incredible nostalgia-fest because i hadn’t been to Frankies in probably a decade. It was probably the first club i had ever been too, my first girl friend Tais Jalal took me there and we saw some bands that looked and sounded very much like the bands i saw their last week opening for my pals The Stash. It would of course take a friend’s band to get me to go out to see a show these days. But I went to Frankies pretty regularly from my late teens to my mid-twenties. Most memorable were going as Fidel Castro on halloween with Chad Osborne (father time i think) and Bill Soleau (something morrissey inspired), seeing the Laughing Hyeneas with Mike Leonardi and losing my glasses slam dancing and later pulling Mike out of a brawl with some Vietnam Vets arguing about the first Gulf War. The show was great except way too late. Nick and Rebecca are great folks and Nick at least is a genius. They did a band Universe Crew with a heavy alien theme. Nick also did mixes and had a European record deal, Green Tea records I believe and ultimately they offered Nick a job doing mixes and Rebecca one designing record covers. This must have been 6 years ago or more and their still making it, still making music. Closest of my friends to be rock stars. Nick produced 3 songs for Milk Carton (if you weren’t blessed to get one of the 100 Milk Carton tapes you can get aa little taste if you go to the Memory Hole and go look at one of the older versions of myspot.org) that we never did anything with and I made some music with Nick solo after we broke up. They’re good people and their new band is pretty good. More rock -n- roll than Universe Crew, a three piece, Nick on guitar, some presumably British guy on drums and Rebecca playing the Moog (Nick’s got a thing for old synthesizers). The CD is even better since Nick’s had a chance to work his mixing magic on it. I didn’t get a chance to talk to either too much being the stars of the show but they both looked great. Nick took a little rubbing for wearing eye shadow but its hard to be a rock star. I’m proud of them and wish them the best. They’ve picked up an accent but since they live their i’ll let it slide. On the trip home i started a new piece (i haven’t written in ages) based upon Phillip K. Dick’s idea of the Black Iron Prison as an analogy for the rise of a totalitarian state. Here’s what i got so far:
Theres a Black Iron Prison casts a shadow across the land
From the strip mines of the North to The Wall at the Rio Grande
So show us your papers, your bio-metric ID
How about a mark on the hand or forehead so that all can see?
That privacy is over, the world is made of glass
So much for your delicate sensibilities our society is crass
going crazy part 5
After a long night of restless wandering I returned to the mind spa. Everyone was up and rolling, cleaning up and packing. The first night we had arrived our host’s partner Rose had told us to “remember what it looks like” which in my then unspun mind was a simple admonition to clean the place up when we were done. Now i saw new implications of needing to remember what was here, what had transpired. I placed an Israel Regardie book on the shelf of metaphysical classics in thanks for the memories. Debbie seemed a little out of sorts as i put the last few of my things in my pack, doublechecked to make sure my ticket was still in my bag. I remember a couple of Aaron’s friends who hadn’t come over with us were there. I thought one of them might want to carry Debbie’s bag as they also only had one. I was remembering the Fishbone CDs left over from the show at the Melkveg. I was remembering Jennifer dipping CD sized sheets of hash into a large pot of boiling wax the night before. I was remembering that i’d brought Debbie’s bag over from the states. I felt very tired, that now i was ready to sleep, and told myself not yet. Its not yet safe. I’ll sleep on the plane when i know i’m safe. We left for the train station. Debbie was disgusted when i mentioned i was broke again. Jennifer asked what happened to the 100 guilders she had given me and i told her i spent it teaching an immigrant what “frivolous” meant. Debbie bought my ticket and we boarded the train to Schippol. I kept thinking about the 300 CDs, the CD sized sheets of hash, this whole extended dangerous practical joke i had fallen into, the vagaries of friendship – and who in fact where my friends? I had no clear plan but i knew i wasn’t rolling that bag through customs. My thoughts ran slowly through my sleep deprived befuddlement. As the train pulled into Shippol I pulled the roll away behind me, last in line, moving towards the door. I felt like i was walking through molasses. The doors closed before i could de-board the train with everyone else. Flooded with relief i waved to my dumbstruck friends as the train pulled away from the station. There was another passenger stuck behind me, seperated from her guy at the airport. She seemed nice and uninvolved in this mess. I thought i would ask her advice. We had decided, of course, to ride up to the next stop, change trains and return to the airport. On the ride I quickly explained i believed that i had fallen in with international drug smugglers and thought the bag i carried was filled with Hash and wondered on the ethics of checking. She considered my dilemma. She said, her guy would be at the airport when she returned however long it took because he loved her and would wait. If my friends were at the station i could trust them and if not then well….
We arrived at the airport and there was her guy, happy to see her and in a hurry to catch the flight. My “friends” were no where in sight. I pulled off my backpack to check the ticket for the time and gate. No ticket. I had seen it that morning, double checking it was in the flap it had rested through this whole ordeal, now it was gone. I checked the flight listings and went to the appropriate gate. We had been cutting it close and the flight was departed, no one was in sight. I was stunned, exhausted, not thinking clearly. I needed some air and went outside and sat on a bench to collect my thoughts. There was this rhythmic pounding of a huge piledriver at a nearby construction site. I felt drawn there. I had been thinking about the hypnotic quality of techno music and the risk involved in opening your mind to hypnotic suggestions enclosed in the “music”. I felt drawn there, i felt like our host would be waiting for some kind of final confrontation. As i walked towards the pounding i realized this was insane. He would not be there, trespassing on a construction site would only draw attention to me with possibly a huge amount of hash in my possession. I sat down more to think. I opened the large duffel and pulled out a cloth shopping bag with some of Debbie’s souveniers contained within. I consciously did not check the CDs. I felt it was safer not to know. I zipped the duffel back up, left it next to the bench and walked away. I saw an exit sign leading to a highway. I thought i would return to the known of hitchhiking. I saw i was on an on-ramp heading east. Home was to the West. Or was it, East would get me there too, it would just take a little longer. I felt ready for the journey. I felt beyond want, beyond fear, beyond even need. I walked as the 4 lanes of traffic, those funny little European cars whizzed by. I found a lighter in my pocket, from the Mind Spa. I wondered if this was how they tracked my movements? My sinuses were clogged, i felt like i could barely breathe, i felt exhausted. I thought if only my sinuses hadn’t been clogged i could have done progressive relaxation and shut off this barrage of thought and rested and i wouldn’t be so damn tired. I thought it would be over by now but here i was a stranger in a strange land still. I thought i didn’t know what was happening to me. Had I been drugged, hypnotized, had my mind blown by mindblowers. Had i touched the face of god? I felt powerful as i breathed air into my lungs. I felt i had to be a powerful magician to have survived or maybe i was an angel? I was uncertain, and i felt there was power in this uncertainty, that if i knew it would all crumble into dust. I realized i loved the unknown and did not fear it. I said quietly, “I whisper when i want to hypnotize and I shout when I want something”. I didn’t know if i was listened to by a microphone planted by mindfuckers or the god who made the universe or if i was being listened to at all but I was angry. Angry at my exhaustion, my clogged sinuses, my fear of pursuit as a drug smuggler though i had done nothing. I shouted, my spirit self grew to scrape the clouds, i found myself ten thousand feet tall and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that at this moment i wielded all the power of the universe. I shouted. “If i don’t get a ride right now! I will destroy Phillip Morris”. Bamn, instantly a van in the far left lane cuts through 4 lanes of heavy traffic. “Would you like a ride?” the driver asked.
Fantasy Trip
If I were to abandon my current life and travel say around the middle of March it would look like this: I’d drive down to NV to see my Dad, assuming he’s still there, for a couple of weeks. Besides hanging out in Mesquite I’d (we’d) probably do a long camp at the Valley of Fire and perhaps Lake Mead. By April I’d swing up through the Midwest camping and seeing the sights along the way through Chicagoland and a long visit home (SE MI and NW OH). I’d then like to drive out to the DC area, see Jillian, do the DC tourist thing, maybe camp in Shenandoah, and hopefully leave the truck there though I haven’t asked yet because this is a fantasy. I’d then probably take a bus down to North Carolina, hitch the last 60 miles to the Nantahala (spell checks as Not taxable) National Forest and pick up the Appalachian Trail where Amee and I ended our ill-fated trip. This would be in early May, maybe the 2nd week or so and I would hike until some time in early July. Maybe pick up 350 trail miles, lord willing. Then I’d fetch back my truck and drive back to SEMINWOH for my niece’s wedding in July. Then I’d ride out to Yellow Stone with John and the Popster (assuming he’s not just in visiting from driving around escorting big trucks around) and ultimately landing in the Bay Area for a month or so, its getting hazier here. I might then like to hitch up the coast, camping and seeing the sights along the way and visit John and Lisa and Terry and Christin in Eugene and Corvalis, respectively. By this time I would be anticipating getting low on funds and wearing a bit thin on constant travel and might be thinking about getting the truck and getting back to Mesquite, Toledo, Columbia, Berkeley, or Some Place Else and doing that thing for a while.
Or I could learn to see the strengths in my current position, my clinical freedom, good pay, and ability to help people in a meaningful way. I could re-invest my off-work time with meaning and purpose and put my capital into some project, a house, storefront, rural property, something else. I could work out, quit smoking, and socialize more. Meet a good woman and settle down. All right probably not in the 6 months I sketched out in the fantasy scenario but close. But if I could do scenario 2 why aren’t I? Fantasies, I’m afraid, must be enacted or discarded.
Obligatory Vacation Blog
One of the nice things about family get-togethers is nostalgic reminiscences. One of the things my brother John and I reminiscenced about was spending summers on the road with Dad and getting to report on what we did on our summer vacation when we were shackled back in our student desks. The trip itself called out for such remembrances tooling around with Dad in his big Ford 250 diesel was a lot like cruising around in the old semi, although I got to sit in the back seat instead of on the dog house (the plastic covering over the engine that rose up between the seats in old cab-overs.
I flew out of Kansas City after driving there because my return flight was too late for the shuttle. I got out just after the snow started falling and got to witness my first wing de-icing. Not an inspiring sight as the first wing they cleared was covered over before the second wing was done and we were off. I flew into Las Vegas, which John said was Spanish for Devil’s Anus. I think it harkens back to imperial Rome and makes me more sure of who we are as Americans. History is not going to look on us kindly. Its kind of pretty in its gaudy tawdriness, especially at night, even as it screams its wrongness.
But Vegas was just an airport, our real stopover was in my Dad’s chosen hometown of Mesquite, just north of there. Got to see Dad’s little efficiency which seems more like an extended stay hotel but it seems to suit the Popster pretty well. We had one of those buffets and met Dad’s buddy Dora. She was sweet and charming and I’m glad he’s found someone to at least hang out with. We decided too skip the longer trip we had planned through AZ and go to Death Valley instead. John and I had done Christmas there 3 years ago and it was pretty fun and Dad had never been. I had been there 3 times previously, although John doesn’t count my first time because we just drove through because it was so damn hot and we went through a part of the park not in the valley. I count it because it was a long ass drive and we saw a lot of cool stuff.
We camped our first night on possibly BLM land outside the park. The dogs loved it there running wild in the wild. John has two dogs these days adding Smokey (aka Doo Doo) a pretty rambunctious Australian cattle dog to the world famous Shadow (try googling “ornery critter” aka Fat Dog). My dad got a puppy who I was glad to finally meet named Myrtle (John nicknamed her turtle which caught on and I got to calling her Princess Mildred down the stretch). Traveling with a pack of dogs takes a little patience and some planning but it can be a hoot. I especially got a kick out of waking up to hearing John yelling and then having him tell me Smokey pissed all over him (glad I decided to bring my own tent). I would have been more sympathetic if it wasn’t so fucking hilarious. Princess Mildred and I were the only ones who heard the coyotes that night, but Smokey was out after the horse rider in the early morning.
A word about Smokey. John is one of the most conscientious and attentive dog owners I have known but Smokey is a handful. John tried hard on the reward system that made Shadow such a great dog to be around but it didn’t take with the Smokester. After failing to find someone more likely to make a good dog out of her John sent her to reform school for a couple of weeks and they largely shaped her up. The technique is mostly built around a choke collar and swift punishment for not listening. It also involves bopping her for misbehavior which is kind of fun. I can see why she needs the tough treatment when I bopped her one for beating up Princess Mildred and she was ready to throw down. Smokey and I ended up becoming pretty good friends although she chewed up my glasses on our last night together.
With dogs in tow, a little piss soaked but still optimistic we drove into the park saw some sights and camped off a jeep trail near Hole in the Wall (most parks in the West have got one). It was a nice sight except for when the Santa Anna winds kicked up and our tents blew away. Mine ended up about 100 yards down the canyon and John’s went a good ½ mile and he and Dad had to go driving to find it. Fortunately we weren’t in it in the time and they were both sort of structurally intact (John’s has some holes and my zipper is fucked possibly terminally). It at least got out the smell of piss John reported. My Dad had called it too so he got a big kick out of that.
After a couple of days of seeing the sights we drove into Beaty NV for a hotel and more casino cooking. We stopped off in Rhyolite an old ghost town from the turn of the century that is pretty cool being mostly structurally intact. We also stopped by the cemetery in Bullfrog, which was new to all of us and pretty neat. We later drove through this really cool cemetery with mausoleums carved into the rocky hillsides, speaking of cemeteries.
We then drove back into the park and camped right in the valley. It was backed by a hillock which was a nice windbreak and had a 270 view of the colorful mountains that surround the valley. I can’t describe how beautiful it is there, even being largely devoid of life. Moths were our best critter siting and their aren’t even cactus there, just some mesquite looking things and a lot of this bunch grass (its all the salts in the soil, in better times Death Valley is a lake bed). Its got volcanic action going on and sedimentary stuff and the rocks are just so colorful in so many different ways. Anyways, its one of the 5 prettiest campsites I’ve had and I’ve had some amazing ones.
From there we drove out to an abandoned mine and climbed back inside. It was a very Scooby Doo moment walking down the shaft over the little train tracks with 100-year-old wooden bracings sharing a flashlight with 3 people and a pack of dogs. “Don’t fall in a hole” John told them and none of us did.
After a return trip to Beaty we motored back to Mesquite to lounge for a couple days at the casino hotel. It was nice to have some good time to relax before leaping back into the salt mines. That was delayed when I broke my key off in my truck door at the KC airport at 2:00 am. It was 9 degrees my coat was in the truck and it took me till 6:00 am to get a tow truck out. I ended up getting home, changing clothes and going to work. Thank God my 10:00 cancelled and I got to run home and sleep for an hour.
All in all it was a fun trip. If you ever get a chance to ride around with my dad and brother through Death Valley I would definitely recommend that you take it. They were both excellent hosts for the West for this Midwesterner.
Travels with Trevor
So i have been back from vacation for three days and work hasn’t left me beaten down as of yet, a new record. Reviewing our trip after the KOPN interview last night left us both surprised we found the experience relaxing. We journeyed over 1,500 miles and clocked an average gas mileage of 44.2 mpg in Trevor’s Honda Civic. Our pentultimate location was Farmington Hills Michigan, which some would shorthand into Detroit, but FH is really more of an anti-Detroit, like a photographic negative it is everything Detroit is not. We ended up pitching in on our friend’s “re-branding” of the historic Farmington Bakery into the Sunflower Bakehaus, which mostly entailed a paint job, as they have been moving their menu to wholegrain goodness for months beforehand. Painting was pretty fun with Trevor being especially hilarious. Once it grew quiet and Trevor exclaimed in a total deadpan that “the agency promised i would be given positive feedback every hour”.
Our biggest impression of the Michigan leg of the journey was the economic depression in the area. My sister Betty and her husband Bill have been talking about selling their house and buying a business “Up North” as long as i can remember but no one is buying houses their anymore so those plans were shelved. Jeff and Becky were talking about selling the bakery and going back to school, but no one is buying bakeries anymore so those plans were shelved for a “re-branding”. Its interesting to see how these macro-economic trends play out in the real world of individual lives, not destitute, but changing everyone’s plans, touching their lives.
On the drive back we stopped and got a room in Cloverdale Indiana. We decided to go and see Indiana’s largest waterfall Cataract Falls the next morning and take a little break from the interstate. On the way the local High School caught Trevor’s eye and we drove over for a closer look thinking it looked like it came out of the WPA era. It was just an art deco facade but they had paper recycling which we had collected a bundle of and on such a series of coincidences a dog’s life lay in the balance. As we were recycling we saw some serious smoke and decided to investigate. We found a house seriously ablaze and called 911. We had to drive down the street to find a street sign and we were not sure what to do after reporting it so we just continued on our journey. Neither of us were eager for a contact with law enforcement as you never know how those encounters with the men with guns are going to go so we just drove on down to the falls. Thanks to the wonders of the internet we learned it was a blocked up chimney and the front page follow up story talked about the rescue of the family dog. We took a little bow for being curious and brave enough to call “The Man” if not stick around to talk to him.
Cataract Falls was beautiful and taller than i was which was pretty good for Indiana. There was also an old covered bridge there which was lovely. In the shadow of the new bridge the surface of the water froze into this intricate spiderweb pattern which reminded me of the hidden evils of modernity spreading out in near invisible webs until they are irrevocably frozen in place.
As our trip ended Trevor proposed I come on KOPN and do an interview. I ended up talking about my work with individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse issues and the holidays. I like to think i went beyond the obvious of making sure everyone has a cozy fire to gather around and to think of sober alternatives for those of us with a problematic relationship to substances. I also talked about listening and being supportive and how to break down people’s ambivilance towards postive change. I might write a post on that topic later. I ended with a poem, my whamo poem, which Trevor and the next guy who has a show enjoyed. I will check back and see if i have posted it yet and if not i will knock it out for you all.
more thanksgiving travels
Day two on our Thanksgiving journey fortunately involved less driving. Trevor and I went for a hike in Oregon (Pierson Park) with Chad and his dog Nakomas. We drove out the “Greenbelt” Parkway and talked of our efforts to keep that boondoggle from coming into being and came back over the Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge which had better memories. We then drove up to my sister Betty’s and visited with the family. It was interesting having an outsider’s perspective on the typical family drama and we had a nice meal. Heather took Trevor and I on a tour of downtown Ida which hasn’t changed much although I was pleased to see the new library. When I lived there it was in a trailer and i remember having read whole sections of it. After saying our goodbyes we drove up to Monroe and checked out downtown which was quite still on a Thanksgiving evening and ended our sojourn at the truckstop for a bowl of chili and oatmeal respectively. Trevor’s biggest observation was the gaps in Toledo, the vacant houses and buildings and empty lots like broken teeth in a formerly perfect smile compared to all the new construction in my former country home rapidly joining the world of exurbia.
thanksgiving travels
Trevor and I set off on our journey to the heartland yesterday at 6:00 am. We drove straight through, with a lot of rain, but had some great conversation, and arrived in Toledo with only a little discombulation navigating about the city. Having lived in a number of places its my theory that our navigating grid that we use to get around gets recycled. The plus side of getting around CoMo better these days is Toledo got a little fuzzy and i ended up on the wrong side of the Maumee and taking a little longer to get to Chad’s and Melissa’s then necessary. Chad Olsen made us a great dinner and all of my favorite people came over. It got a little overwhelming but was a lot of fun seeing everyone, and all the T-Town crew looked happy and healthy. Trevor and I had been talking and he had asked me what was the key to the Toledo character which i couldn’t really answer but having spent an evening back I think its a level of parochialism thats higher than most places. There was just a lot of Toledo-centric conversation that I probably wouldn’t have been aware of if Trevor hadn’t asked me how much of the conversation i could follow having been elsewhere for the last several years. Nonetheless, Trevor was impressed with the Urban nature and thought everyone was really interesting in ones and twos but 20 of them at once is a little overwhelming. Today we are going to Ida to have dinner with my family and then back to Toledo in the evening. Tomorrow we venture deeper into Michigan to Farmington Hills. After our visiting there we are going to shoot down to explore Cincinnati/Covington and check out the serpent mound, before heading home. More travel updates to follow and Happy Thanksgiving to all family and friends.
Wilco Redux
On Wednesday Amy, Eric, and Sarah and I saw Wilco play an outdoor show on 9th Street. It was pretty good the third best of the four times I’ve seen them. It put me in mind of the first time i’d seen them and one of my more memorable hitchhiking trips.
I had been doing some field organizing work in Missouri and found myself in St Louis on my way to a SEAC regional conference in Mississippi. The day i needed to leave Sarah convinced me i should wait another day so i could see Wilco at Mississippi Nights. I think I was down to my last $5.00 and i really wanted to get to this conference where i was scheduled to do some workshops and I really liked Brian the conference organizer and felt for him doing radical environmentalism in the deep deep south but when Sarah said it would be a date and she would get my ticket i decided to stay. I’d had a big crush back in that era (94-95) but i knew Sarah didn’t mean anything by it we had too different views of relationships and i think she was chasing Jeff Pavlik back then and he was around and we and Jillian i think and some others caught the show and it was great. We were all really into Uncle Tupelo and Wilco was prety knew and it was a kick ass show and i drank way too much beer and i spent $4.00 but was still a little melancholy because it was certainly not a date. We were out late and i couldn’t sleep and i wanted to leave way early as i still had hopes of making Mississippi by the next day. I was crashing at Sarah’s in University City. I woke her at 4:00 to tell her i was leaving. I told her since it was our second date i deserved a kiss and we kissed a sad kiss goodbye and I gave her a Pooh Bear stuffed animal i had dumpstered from the Columbia Good Will and set out walking to the highway.
Hitching out of St Louis is relatively difficult and I had the choice between spending my last dollar on a metro link ride to East St Louis, no picnic, but i’d had good luck there it was on the other side of the city or getting a pack of cigarettes. I voted on the cigarettes and got a buy on get one free special on Mistys of all things. If you took the filters off them they weren’t too bad.
I was still somewhat drunk from the night before and stopped and puked walking toward the highway. I had an old army duffell that i’d been living out of and I had my organizing materials so I was probably packing over 100 #s but I didn’t realize i hadn’t packed any water until i puked. I walked onto the first exit which was dead at sort of pre-dawn in a light mist on a Sunday morning. I started walking down the highway under the assumption that there are more nice people than cops, I was still in Missouri a notoriously tolerant state to hitchhikers, and I was in a hurry. I ended up walking 9 miles down the highway before I got my first ride. I had found a Harley Davidson water bottle half full on the side of the highway. I’d rinsed my mouth out but hadn’t dared drink any but was greatful for the bottle figuring i’d fill it at the next exit with services. I didn’t dump it out, just in case, although I’d never hitched a day without running across a bathroom. There was no real place to pull over the lane came right up next to the raised foot wide cement shoulder i was walking down. A guy in his early 40s in an old beater pulled over and there wasn’t much other traffic so it went pretty smoothly. He was out just cruising, drinking straight out of a pint bottle of Canadian Club Whiskey. We shared his bottle and he agreed to drive me to the first decent exit in Illinois. He ran a small embroidery firm and had been a youthful radical grown jaded and feeling like a sell out. He said he had sewn the patches for the ATF that had killed all those people in Waco not too long ago. We talked a lot of politics and parted too soon at an exit with good traffic but no services. I’d put my buzz back on with the Canadian Club and was feeling pretty good about life again in spite of not getting any water. I started walking again and didn’t go but a couple-few miles before my 2nd ride a guy in his 50s with an Amish type beard in an old beater van pulled over and i was off again. Coincidentally he was drinking a pint of Canadian Club whiskey and I joined him as we cruised across Illinois and maybe Indiana. He was nice, a retired truck driver and when he learned my Pops was a trucker he hung out with me until he got me a ride on his CB. I don’t remember the rides the rest of the day but eventually i hit Cincinnati. I still had some daylight left but I was beat. I’d walked 15 miles been drunk all day and hadn’t had a drink of water. I felt I was getting old. I really needed more miles to have any hopes of getting to Mississippi but i just couldn’t do it. I knew then i was getting old. I’d always prided myself on being able to knock out 20 miles heavily packed, but not that day. I was in some kind of industrial wasteland, I stashed my gear and wandered around looking for water but nothing. I rolled out my bedroll under the overpass and broke out my little sterno stove and the last of my food a pack of ramen noodles. I managed to scare up some wild onions, dandylion greens, and this other edible plant i’d just learned in Missouri but have forgotten and cooked it all up in the Harley Davidson water i was glad i’d saved. At least it was boiled.
I slept torn between utter exhaustion and the roar of highway traffic echoing through the underpass. I was up before dawn packed up and down on the side of I-75, North instead of South. I’d written off Mississippi and decided to go home. I’d never make my conference on time and I was now flat broke. I was a little hungry, but confident. My old Modus Operandi was to stay out hitchin’ till i was flat broke and then head for home. It had never failed that my first ride of the day when i was broke would offer to buy my breakfast. After making a new sign i got a ride after a not intolerable wait though I was in a bit of a construction zone so i couldn’t walk down the interstate, plus i was in Ohio were those kind of shennanigans are not allowed by law enforcement. It was another bearded guy in a van but no Canadian Club. He was a fundamentalist Christian, an active anti-abortion activist. We had some great talks as we puttered through construction traffic headed north. He didn’t try to preach when i told him my christian background and where i had evolved since then, though we did have to agree to disagree on a lot of stuff. We shared some commiseration on our common organizing problems, group dynamics and such and debated pro-choice and gay rights and we both respected the other’s sincerity and compassion in spite of our polar differences. He asked if he could pray before he dropped me off but it was for me to see the truth and have travelling mercies so i could get behind that. He also gave me a fat peanut butter and jelly sandwich which hit the spot. My only gripe with him is he debated changing his route to get me all the way home and then decided it was too far out of the way. He should’ve kept those thoughts to himself and not gotten my hopes up.
After a few piddly rides (I’d finally gotten to some services got cleaned up, filled up my new water bottle, and i still had a few smokes so i was feeling good) i was up in the Lima area when i got picked up by this real smooth looking character in a newish lincoln. Travelling salesman type, with leather seats and in a suit. Turned out he was a gay guy doing a little cruising on his way north. I was a little flattered as he was a good looking guy but still not interested. Except for having to put his hand on his side of the front seat a couple of times he was pretty friendly if a little pushy and it didn’t get really scary. I told him about my first sexual experience as no one rides for free but was strict on the no touching thing. The story must be better than i thought as he gave me $4.00 when he dropped me off. That got me a pack of Marlboros and a Mountain Dew and a couple uneventful rides later I was home.
floating the big muddy
Yesterday, Eric, Brice, Alex and Brice did a 14 mile float on the Missouri. We put in at Rocheport and floated down to Coopers Landing. It was a beautiful day to be out on the river sunny and hot and we stopped at California Island for a swim and to toss the frisbee around. Saw a lot of Great Blue Herons and a spot of Fall cover. It was a great last day of Summer.
On a poetry note i have another couple of stanzas on my “I am a Pattern” piece. I will include the whole thing. I have been getting the most positive feedback on the poetry so i might try to do more of that. I would still encourage folks to make comments, I will respond in style and content to any reader’s suggestions. I will also send a chap book to the first non-robot who makes a comment if you don’t already have them all. Someday i will finish the one thats been sitting 99% done for years.
I believe I am a pattern, a pattern of information
Built from millions and millions of simplicities
Organized through emergence, I rise up from the bottom
I am many, but still I am me.
I believe I am a pattern, a consciousness construction
Will, sense, imagination, memory
And though I surely rise up from my body
I am much more a story
Told in the hearts of everyone who knows me.
I believe I am a pattern, a pattern set in motion
In oscilation with the tides
Not just the ocean, but the universe besides.
In every mind’s eye their is a cup
Its not the one i drink from, but its close enough
Occam’s Razor cuts, simplest is the best
Is my idea of cup unique from the rest
Or do we all drink from the same cup after all.
Multiconstruct 
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