Chicago Goes On…

Hello Everybody,

The subway lumbered south to Union Station. It was the morning rush hour, most of the seats were taken. Most passengers dozed or stared into space as the train swayed side to side, except a gray-haired, plump lady wearing glasses, a patchwork dress, turtleneck sweater and a wallet necklace. She paced next to me in shiny white orthopedic shoes.

Blurry LA rainbow…

“Excuse me, ma’am?” I asked. The lady looked down at me. “Would you like to sit here?”

“Oh, no,” she replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes, thank you. I like to stand, I like to stretch my legs.”

I resumed my weary gaze, swayed with everybody else. The lady held onto the perpendicular subway handle that ran from the back of my seat to the ceiling. She twisted a little with each jerk of the car.

“I’m going to Union Station,” said the lady, leaning toward me, looking me straight in the eye. “Are you going to Union Station?”

“Yes.”

“I’m taking the MetroLink 902. Are you taking MetroLink 902.”

“No.”

“What are you taking? Are you taking Amtrak?”

“No.”

“You’re not taking Amtrak, what train are you taking?”

“I’m taking a bus.”

“What bus are you taking?”

The lady’s sharp voice carried throughout the car. A few people had begun to look our way.

“The Fly Away bus,” I said quietly.

“Is it a fast bus?”

“I hope so.” I was running late.

“Where are you taking it?”

“To the airport.”

“Oh, are you flying?”

“Yep.”

“Which airport?”

The fellow across the aisle opened his eyes, rolled them, sighed heavily, then looked at me as if I had a responsibility to silence the lady. But I felt helpless, as if I’d been fated to meet this woman at this particular spot in Spacetime. Nothing was gonna stop her line of questioning, so I simply shrugged my shoulders, smiled at the fellow, and said, “LAX…the airport.”

“What plane are you taking?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what plane you’re taking?”

“No.”

But I did know. I was flying to Chicago via Spirit Airlines. I’m not sure why I lied. A growing urge to come clean and tell her the truth began to gestate deep inside me, but before it could get born the lady’d already moved on and began asking another passenger down the car if he had the time, and, “What kind of watch is that?…You like that watch?…I have a watch…I wonder if your watch is better than my watch?…But my watch is pretty  good…I’m taking the MetroLink 902, are you taking the MetroLink 902…”

The doors opened at Union Square and she scooted off to become another piece in the city puzzle. I swam my way into the current of commuters and headed to the bus docks, hopped on the Fly Away. About a half-hour later, I was herded and prodded through security, and managed to get my boots and belt back on, and skip to my gate in just enough time to find that my flight had been delayed. General chagrin and Christmas panic ensued around the airline representative.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the representative, “we’re just waiting for a mechanic to come take a look at the lavatory. Hopefully, we’ll be boarding shortly.”

“Ha!” exlcaimed the man next to me. “Broken shitter.”

But the delay was miniscule, and soon all of us were run down the cattle chute and into the cabin, stampeding to our seats. I sat in the last row, by the lavatory – the working lavatory.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a flight attendant over the intercom, unfortunately, the lavatory at the front of the cabin will be out of service for this flight. Please use the lavatory in the back.”

More and more people began to board. Families bargained with other passengers to get seats together. Passengers hustled down the aisle to find a place to stuff their bags in the dwindling overhead space. People voiced their concern to the attendants that being delayed anymore might cause them to miss their connections, that they MUST NOT MISS THEIR CONNECTIONS! The attendants just smiled their hired smiles and told them everything would be fine.

The plane was up and away quickly. As soon as the seatbelt sign clicked off, people formed a line at the bathroom. An attendant scooted around them to begin asking patrons if they wanted any, “Purchases?” while holding a menu close to her face, “Will you be making any purchases today, sir?”

“Coffee is considered a ‘purchase’, huh?”

“Yes, sir? Coffee is $3.”

“Fine. Credit or debit only, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

She ran my card, then another attendant came out of nowhere and handed me an 8.oz cup of coffee. I nursed it like it was the last drops of that electric-life-water in the movie Tron. After the attendants made their way back from taking all the orders, one cracked open a book and sat down to read, the other took a nap – her head bent at a drastic angle against the curvature of the airplane hull.

Soon there was another line at the lavatory – there would continue to be for the duration of the flight.

“Do you guys mind,” snapped the attendant, slamming her book shut, “standing behind that line?” She pointed to the carpet line separating the cabin from the lavatory/storage area. Her smile was the same, but it now looked like a threat. “Personal space, you know.” She turned back around, resumed reading. The other attendant was out cold, her mouth slightly open.

The seatbelt sign flashed on as we began our final descent, but there was still a line at the bathroom.

“Please return to your seat, sir,” requested the flight attendant to a man who did not immediately return to his seat.

“Sorry, but when you gotta go, you gotta go,” smiled the man.

“Well, it’s not like I can make you do anything,” smiled the flight attendant.

Broadway and Lawrence, an old familiar intersection of my life.

Suddenly, I became aware that the cabin was much colder than it was at take off. I shivered as I bent over the sleeping passenger next to me, to look out the window. The land below was covered in snow. The sun was setting and a faint dusting of shiny yellow covered the white ground. The buildings on the edge of Chicago appeared – first only a few, then more and more, then suddenly the flat sprawling metropolis spread out all the way to Lake Michigan. When the sun dipped below the horizon, the city turned gray. White plumes of smoke or exhaust rose here and there, as if The City was some kind of industrial Yellowstone with some mysterious infernal source boiling below it. But the surface looked hard, frozen. I lived in Chicago for about 3 years, ten years ago. I’ve only visited it a few times since. But my view of it has never changed. You gotta be mean to live here, I thought, mean, numb, running from something or lost on some kind of chase. You gotta be OK with the streetlights coming on at 3:30 in the afternoon. You have to build a relationship with Cold and Darkness to live in Chicago – or know of no other way to live. Sure, the summers are nice here and quite warm. But how many people have you ever heard talk about the Chicago Summer?

We landed at O’Hare. As we taxied to our gate, our sleepy-eyed attendant brushed her hair from her face, picked up the intercom and told us to, “We hope you enjoy your stay in Ft. Lauderdale…………………….Oh! Chicago, sorry! Merry Christmas!”

Then the rush of the passengers to get off the plane. I sat and watched. I didn’t want to get off the plane. Every time I make it to Chicago, I don’t want to step out in it. Besides, it was 6˚F.

But of course, I had a great time, despite the freezing temperatures, like I always do. I stayed with old friends, we broke bread together, we didn’t sleep. Everybody looked older but the same. There were new buildings where old buildings used to be, new business in old buildings, but Chicago still felt familiar. Everywhere I turned was a memory. Truthfully, I have more bad memories of Chicago than good. My memories of the Windy City serve as proof of survival more so than fond reminisces. But I laughed a hell of a lot during my stay, as I have during all my visits. Maybe that’s all what survival’s about.

Appropriate metaphor for my self-delusion during my Chicago years.

Around sunset on Christmas Eve – after leaving a friend’s house – as I rode an eastbound bus down Division Street, the memories came alive. The city grew darker. Ten years dark…unemployed, unemployable except for little jobs that I found whilst wandering through a hazy fog of alcohol and drugs with low visibility and even less rationale…the bus was occupied by a handful of old black, bent men in work clothes that all seemed to know each other. They all had gray stubble on their chin and balanced rolled up ski caps just perfectly on the top of their bald heads. They were tired, but joking around. Further down the street, we passed by where the old Cabrini Green Housing Project used to be – once considered one of the worst projects in the nation. But now there’s nary a trace of it left. Now, it’s all newer, angular condos at market price…I ended up in Cabrini one night, two fellows took me there. God knows why (I know why). One of the fellows knocks on a door. It cracks open, two wide eyes poke out from the darkness behind the door. They peer into me, then to one fellow, then to the other, then back to me. He lets one fellow inside, shuts the door. God knows what happened next (I really don’t know)…the black men and I got off the bus at the intersection of Clark and Division…I used to live here, a block away, I see the building…nite girls and panhandlers outside the check cashing place. Thin dark ghosts roaming the parking lot of the grocery store…broken teeth back then, ramen noodles, lost phones, late rent notices, lost keys, broken doors, confused and angry looks from friends, desired loneliness, then one day where are all my friends???

But there were always moments of sunshine…

It was one of the darkest periods of my life, the year I spent in that neighborhood. I felt stuck back then, permanently stuck. I couldn’t see beyond the city. Little did I know that only months later I’d be whisked away to New York City. It took me years to find my way out of that city too, but at least the winters weren’t as bad. Of course, now I live in LA – just another city, just as easy to get lost in, but the weather’s quite lovely there.

I hopped the Red Line subway at Clark at Division, north to another friend’s house…another friend, friends, friends…in Uptown. Soon the train popped above ground and I was above the streets, looking out into The City. Day was now night. The sun keeps on rising and setting, winter keeps on coming and I keep moving through Time with no control over anything whatsoever.

Be well…

Too Real Dreams

Hello Everybody,

Last week, I began rehearsing a play in which I’d been cast. The piece is a retelling of the European conquests of The New World – a sort of amalgamation of several documented events, centering around Columbus, Bartolome de las Casas, Cabeza de Vaca, and of course, the Native Americans they encountered.

It’s a dreamlike, poetic piece. Raging seas and storms are personified. The explorers hallucinate feverishly as their ship sinks. When they wake up on the shore of The New World, they don’t even know if they’re alive. They don’t even have language to describe their surroundings – they’re terrified, speak gibberish as they try to reconcile their consciousness to their unfamiliar settings. They encounter strange, eerily friendly people who believe all times are Now, whose gods walk the Earth from time to time, observing, walking among them. It is a beautiful, strange world. But soon the explorers regain their speech. With speech comes labeling and concepts, such as ownership and wealth. Then comes everything else – the greed, the madness, the murder – thus beginning The Conquest and the subjugation and genocide of The Natives. The gods watch with childlike sadness over what is being done – for yet again man’s base, fearful nature wins over his higher, spiritual nature. All the gods can do is wait for Mankind to die. Then, at the beginning of a new Time, they begin molding New Men out of Earth – like children with Play-Doh – in hopes that Higher Nature may finally prevail.

Wednesday night, I had your standard naked dream. I’ve had the dream many times, though I don’t consider it a recurring dream (see the El Jamberoo #19 to read about my recurring dreams) because it’s such a common dream I’ve bet even YOU have dreamt it, hmm?

Wednesday night’s dream played out like all the others: I’m naked, soaking wet, trying to get home…

…somewhere deep in LA, scurrying down street after street. For some reason, no one has seen me, despite heavy traffic on the street. I continue to move about like a pale dripping phantom. I’m not terrified, or even nervous. I just don’t want to draw attention to myself, which I manage until I get to Hollywood. There, one person notices me, then another, then another…they start following me. I start running. Soon, I’m being pursued by a giant mob of Angelenos. I’m nearly home but the crowd is gaining and I know I won’t make it. I see a friend in his car at the intersection and I jump in the backseat. He yells, “Get down, man!” I huddle down on the floorboard. The light turns green but my friend can’t drive away because the mob has surrounded the car. I look up, and the entire city of Los Angeles is staring into the car, ogling at me like I’m some red-assed baboon in a zoo…

The next day I went to the library to check out Haruki Murikami’s 1Q84. I’d began reading it earlier this year, back when I was living in Brooklyn (see El Jamberoo #27 ). I’d made it through the first 700+ pages and was looking forward to finally finishing it. Murikami’s a favorite writer of mine. His works have a lot to do with multiple worlds with dreamlike realities. His protagonists usually jump between these subtle yet fundamentally different worlds, but usually by the end of the book they have to choose which world they want to live in – they have to choose a reality. “No matter how things may seem,” says a character at the beginning of 1Q84, “there is always only one reality.”

Usually something happens to Murikami’s protagonists – either subtly or in jarring manner – that transforms to these other worlds. From there – after a lot of suspense, darkness and danger – the books become about a chase after love or freedom, with the protagonist having to choose between the world he or she knows (this world) with it’s comforts and comfortable miseries, or the world of love and freedom…a world so foreign one has to relearn how to live, to survive in it. I’m not sure if my dream the night before spurred me on to finish the book. It probably didn’t, probably did.

It was a rainy cold day. Low gray clouds hovered over the Hollywood sign. I felt as comortable walking under an umbrella in Hollywood as I would reading a porno in a church. Heavy thuds of rain hit the umbrella – the cadence of a strung out jazz drummer. I had 1Q84 tucked under my arm to keep it from getting wet, but everything was getting wet. Other wet people appeared out of nowhere, crossed in front of me or passed me, then disappeared.

“Hey man,” said a man with a strong southern accent looking confused at a corner on Hollywood Boulevard, “you know where the Saban Clinic is. They say it’s one a those free clinics, you know? They say it’s somewhere in Hollywood but I cain’t find it to save my life.”

“Hold on,” I told him, as I juggled the umbrella and 1Q84 with one hand to retrieve my smartphone with the other, then punched in “Saban free clinic”.

“Wait, man,” he said with wonder, “you tellin’ me you can find it with one of those. Hell, I got one of those.” He pulls out an iphone. “Now, how do you do it…do you have some kind a…a…app…for that?”

“I just went to my map.”

He swiped his index finger across his phone, looking for the map app. While his head was down at his phone, I noticed he had a patch on his cap stating he was a veteran from the war in the Middle East. “Man, who’m I kiddin’,” he sighed, “I ain’t got the slightest idea how to work these things.”

“They got a way of making us feel dumb, don’t they?”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

I found the address to the clinic. “It’s further down, at Hollywood and Gower.”

“Aw, man, thanks. M’name’s Gregory.”

“Todd.”

We shook hands and walked together down gloomy Hollywood Boulevard.

“I ain’t been down here in a while,” said Gregory. “Hollywood’s sumthin else, ain’t it.”

“Yep.”

“I use to be down here all the time. I dated the daughter a one a them famous directors of the 50s nad 60s. Her mother was a Golden Globe winner or a Emmy. They both told her it’ll be hard for her to make it here even with them two as her parents. But she didn’t listen, she went off to try to be a actress. Her dad made that movie, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?“

“Stanley Kramer?”

“You heard a him, huh?”

“Yeah, he’s one of the big ones.”

“You must be in the movie business.”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m not in it, you know.”

“Well, I dated her for three years. She was real sweet but every now and then she’d look at me and tell me she’d be better off datin another actor or a doctor or anyone else. Shoot, I didn’t have nothin goin for me, no prospects, so well…” He stopped talking and walked around and through the memory for a while. When he came back, he said, “Lemme tell you, man, that world them Hollywood people are livin in is a different world from what you and me’s in right here, that’s for sure. Listen man, I’m gonna run and try to get to that clinic, but thanks a lot and it’s been real good talkin to ya.” Then he sped off through the rain and disappeared like the rest of us.

Just then, I realized I was at a corner where I saw something curious a few weeks back…

…it’s early morning. I see a young lady approaching the corner from the side street. The young lady’s barefooted, tip-toeing toward the corner – toward me – with one hand on the wall that bordered the sidewalk, to keep balance. She’s naked from the waist down – pulling her blouse down over her private parts with her other hand. When she pulls the blouse down in front, it rises up in the back, exposing her ass. When she pulls it down over her ass, it exposes her…well…hoo-hoo. She does this over and over. Her other hand never leaves the wall as if touching it is all that is keeping her from floating off Earth. Her hand brushes across a huge mural of Frida Kahlo. Frida’s dark eyes stare out from under her thick mono-brow – not at me, or at the girl, just somewhere far off, but somewhere she sees clearly. The young lady and I make eye contact, her head shrinks into her shoulders and she smiles an embarrassed smile through Last Nite’s makeup. I quickly look away and keep walking…don’t stop, you’ll only make it worse…a few paces down the street, I turn around to see if she crossed the street OK. But I can’t see her anywhere…

I hope she woke up from that dream, just then…woke up before The Crowd caught up to her.

Be well…

Happy In The Hills

Hello Everybody,

I’m 38 years old and I sleep on the floor of my friend’s home office…

That’s what I’ve been saying to myself in the mornings, lately, as I birth myself out of the rolled out mat and sleeping bag I call a bed. The phrase means something different every morning. Sometimes I love, it. I’m free of a whole bunch of Things that I don’t really want anyway, I’ll say with my head high. Or I’ll say something like, Jeez, I’m 38 and I sleep on the floor, got no real job, no wife, kids…did I do it all wrong? But most of the time it’s a little of both, and whether I’m free or delusional, on a path or totally lost, everyday seems to be pretty swell. I work hard when I got work. When I don’t, I write, play guitar, see friends.

Awaiting the feast.

I’ve also been hiking a lot in the hills behind the Griffith Park Observatory. I usually take the main trail up to the observatory, then a trail up to the hill’s peak, behind it. But last Friday, after entering the park, I went further up the main road, looking for a  different trail. I found a service road that wasn’t off limits. At its entrance stood a sign warning hikers to watch out for mountain lions.

I proceeded up the dirt road, hesitantly. Soon, the road dissolved into a trail. I’d yet to see any other hikers on the road, which concerned me. My eyes darted toward every little rustle of leaves or breaking of twigs. I know mountain lion attacks were very rare in the park, but for some reason, at any moment, I expected to hear the roar, turn toward the roar, see the fangs, feel the fangs tearing into my neck just before the Big Light went out. I stopped in the middle of the trail for a moment, debating whether to go back to the main trail. There was no City then. All around me were high hills. No sign of man. It was sunny and warm, but clusters of high light clouds covered parts of the sky. The tempurature would drop by several degrees when a cluster of them would pass between me and the sun. Hot, cold, hot, cold. I floated in the middle of the trail, park, world, for a bit, inclined toward no direction whatsoever, until another human appeared. A short Latino fellow was taking long strides toward me.

“You going up?” he asked.

“It’s OK to? It’s a trail?”

“Si, yes.”

I started walking again and by the time the man reached me we were walking at the same speed. Gradually, the trail grew steeper, with more curves. He took deep breaths, leaned into the incline, used his arms to propel the rest of his body. I did the same. At one point I turned and looked down. The City looked like a circuit board spreading clear out to the Electric Yellow-Blue Water of the Pacific Ocean. Up ahead, a flock of buzzards circled over something dead. On the edge of a cliff, even higher than the buzzards, was the observatory, shining white like some lasting monument from Antiquity.

“I take this trail,” said the man. “Most times. But I take one there,” he pointed to the right, toward the main trail to the observatory. “Or I take,” he pointed to the left, “that one way over there by the big sign…” he held his arms out wide, “…the Hollywood sign, you know.”

“Yep.”

“I like to go before work. Like to sweat before work.”

“Where do you work?”

“A liquor store. Down on La Brea.”

“Gotta work the whole weekend?”

“Si, yes.”

“I bet it gets crazy on the weekends, huh? The liquor store?”

“Oh, is crazy. Is crazy all the time.”

“What’s your name?”

He wiped his hand, held it out to me. “Felix.”

We shook hands. “Todd.”

“Nice to meet you, Todd.”

“You too, Felix.”

By now we’d reached the steepest parts of the trail, a switchback winding further up. I was sweating pretty good. So was Felix. For a long time all I heard was our breath and footsteps.

“You from here?” Asked Felix, as we neared the peak of the hill.

I shook my head. “Texas.”

“Oh, Texas. I come up from Texas. From Mexico. Through Juarez, to here. Long, long way.”

“Yeah.”

“You go home a lot?”

“When I can. I just did for Thanksgiving and will probably get down there around Christmas. Where is home for you, in Mexico?”

He held up two fingers. “Two hours from Mexico City, west. On the coast.”

“That’s cool.”

“Si, yes.”

“You get down there often?”

“I try. I come here. Work. Go back. Work at the liquor store. Or restaurant, or where I can. Then go back. I like it here. I like it there. Both places I like. But back there, I play music, you know, in my town.”

“Mariachi music?”

“Si, I don’t work, I just play.”

“That’s great.”

“Is good. Just the music.”

“You play guitar?”

“Si, yes.”

“So do I.”

“That’s good. You working here? In LA? That why you stay here?”

“Yes and no. I work when I can get it. But I’m just living here, too.”

“What do you do?”

“Build stuff, carpentry. It’s good. I don’t have to work all the time.”

“That’s good. No one should work all the time. Or too hard, you know. Everyone should be, like…happy, you know.”

“Yep.”

We’d reached the peak of the hill.

“Well, I go back down. To work. Buenos dias, have a good day.”

“Gracias, you too.”

“Si, yes.”

Felix jogged down the trail leading to the observatory which stood on a ledge below us. I walked around the peak and took a trail on the northern line of the hills, facing the San Fernando Valley.

I ascended a peak that gave me a nearly complete view of The Valley, another vast urban sprawl, stretching all the way out to the Santa Susana Mountains to the north. Another circuit board. Traffic flowed down the Ventura Freeway like blood through a vein. The faint roar of tires on asphalt reached me. It all looks so easily comprehensible from up here, I thought. Then I thought of something a friend of mine said earlier in the summer, “I’ve been all over the world, you know, but I couldn’t find my way out of the San Fernando Valley back I was drinking. My world was so small back then. Funny how you can get lost in small places.”

I turned around and began my journey back to Hollywood. It was only 3pm but the sun had already begun its race to the horizon. I was still sweating but would feel the chill when the wind came.

Joggers huffed and puffed up or down, there were a couple of horse tours, solitary dog walkers. I meandered most of the way down, thinking about nothing or a million things all at once, enjoying the onset of comfortable physical fatigue.

About halfway down, I saw a trail below the one I was following. I descended through the bramble toward it, jumping through bushes and across the old stone aqueduct that squiggled down the hillside. The same buzzards were high above but I never smelled anything dead. All around me were the cracking of twigs and the rustling of leaves but I wasn’t worried about any mountain lions. Usually it would be a couple of birds pecking around that would fly off when I approached. Moments after I’d made it to the trail, I was winding my way through the lawn near the entrance to the park.

Metaphorical, somehow…

I got home, ate a sandwich, sent out some inquiries for work, then played my guitar well into the evening. Later that night, I unrolled the mat and sleeping bag and lay in the darkness. The police choppers were flying lower than usual, probably chasing someone desperate enough to commit some crime. As I listened to the thwump, thwump, thwumps of the chopper, copious black globs of fear and doom floated just above me like a mobile over a baby’s crib. The urge to reach up and grab one or two or a thousand of them was there, but I haven’t gone hungry yet, I thought, and was content to let them all spin and twist above me. Anyway, I was asleep in minutes, tired from the hike. I slept like a baby and woke up early the next morning.

Be well…

Western Way

Hello Everybody,

At Albuquerque, I exited I-40 onto Central Avenue, which is the part of Old Route 66 that runs through the city. Instead of quickly zipping around the city, I motored from red light to red light, through the quaint downtown. At around 6th Street, a cargo truck was parked in the center lane, out of which men unloaded Christmas decorations, then scooted across the traffic and to hand the decorations to other men on ladders who affixed the decorations to streetlights. A cop had stopped to direct traffic. A few bums milled around the downtown area, in front of cafes and coffee houses. Little clouds of breath exited everybody’s mouths on this cold, crisp desert morning.

Lonely travelers, lonely planet.

I rode Route 66 all the way to about 5 miles out of town, where the pavement of the old thoroughfare had been torn up, nothing but a dirt road lay out before me as far as I could see. I turned around and headed back to the I-40, continuing west toward Gallup, NM.

Every now and then a piece of Old Route 66 came into view, either crisscrossing the interstate or running alongside it. Burned out gas stations, cafes and motels stood just off the shoulder of the old highway, here and there. Many of the structures had crumbled completely, with just studs sticking out of the ground like witches teeth. But others still maintained their structure. One gas station had what looked to be an apartment atop it…waking up in the desert, turning on the pumps, filling up the tanks…behind one of the cafes stood a little house…putting on an apron, scrambling eggs for strangers you’d get to know for a handful of minutes. The tank is full, the tip’s on the counter. Two humans who will never see each other again. Or maybe they will…

Route 66 Ancient Ruins

About halfway between Albuquerque and Gallup, I exited onto Route 66 again, following the squiggly bumpy piece of black top a few miles to a bridge that reminded me of some crumbling pyramid of early Egypt. The pavement was covered with cracks and patchwork and sinkholes, out of which that grass and weeds grew. I slowly ascended the bridge. The guard rail was rusted through in some places. I got out at the peak of the bridge and looked around in all directions. Aside from an old burned out bar, only Planet Earth could be seen, the roar of the semi’s on I-40 soflty coming to me from afar. I descended the bridge, determined to ride this piece of The Mother Road all the way, wherever it took me. A little town with no traffic light, just a gas station that also sold little homemade pies along with a coke and a smile? But just a short drive from the bridge, the pavement was gone again. I turned back and rejoined the current of I-40.

It was a long quiet ride the rest of the way to Gallup. Semi’s, mountains, mesas and rolling hills dotted with dark green cedar trees. A hundred yards or so from the Interstate, an incredibly long freight train ran as fast as the Interstate traffic. It would follow a slow bend in the rails, along old 66, disappear, then come back several miles down the way, only to disappear again with the ghost of 66.

At Gallup, I followed 66 through downtown. To the right of the street were the train tracks. The same Burlington Northern/Santa Fe freighter that I’d seen off and on since Albuquerque was slowly lurching through town. To the left, was the quintessential 20th Century downtown. Brick storefronts with big panes of glass, bells on the door, handwritten advertisements. But the old businesses were gone, and atop every other store was a sign that read something like “Indian Trading Post and Cash Pawn.” The other stores housed cafes or nothing at all, were empty.

I parked the car and walked along the street. It was early afternoon, but the sun had already fell behind the buildings and the steady wind brought a chilling cold. A group of old Native American men walked in front of me, laughing, shoving each other like boys. One’s hat fell off during the hullaballoo, and another bent down to pick it up. When he finally straightened back up, he slammed the hat back on it’s owner. They hobbled around a corner where three Native American teens waited to cross the street. They had long hair, wore black, each held a skateboard. The sun was shining on the corner and when I got there I immediately warmed up. The kids went across the street, the old men walked the other way, chatting, laughing, limping. I continued along the street where all the stores had a hand written sign that read “Cash Only” on the door. Little Native American trinkets filled the display windows of the trading posts, but nobody was shopping. Inside each was a Native American man or woman waiting to the switch the sign on the door from “Open” to “Closed.”

Downtown Gallup, NM

A few minutes later, I was back in the car, riding Route 66 out of town. Highways, gas stations, motels, cafes and freight trains. This is my favorite scene in America. It is the world of my earliest memories. Analog cash registers, mechanical credit swipers on the slower Highway World, before the speedy online Interstate World. Leather booths in the cafe, garlic toast and iced tea…the waitress, the station attendent hotel clerk and you…lives intersecting out in the desert…personal histories discarded, a moment of connection with no past or future…but I was so young back then, maybe I only want that world to have existed.

As I passed through Holbrook, I listened to a born again Native American giving a sermon on the radio. “I was talking to a woman, the other day. She picked up a hitchhiker and she felt it was her Christian duty to bring The Message to this hitchhiker. ‘Do you know the story of Jesus Christ,’ she asked. And he leaned up to the seat and told her, ‘Yes, and ma’am, I am here to tell you He is here, already. And you are to get ready now.’ Did you hear that, my friends? Jesus is already here, on Earth. He has come in our lifetime, so we must get ready.”

Outside of Holbrook was the desert again, old mountains, mesas, patient tumbleweeds, stoic cedars. The tumbleweeds live and die so fast and the cedars live longer than humans. And the mountains and mesas tell me that whatever happens in my lifetime, even if humanity goes extinct, or the Earth is destoryed…that it will be no more than a little burp in The Universe. Out in the desert, it’s easy to hear The Universe tell you that time and space and beginnings and ends are simply beyond our little specie’s comprehension. It’s been the end of time forever,” The Universe tells me in the desert, “and it’s beginning forever. And there is only one time, no time. See? I told you it’s beyond your comprehension.” The Universe kept telling that kind of thing all the way to Flagstaff, or my own mind did. ”Or is your own mind The Universe? See? I told you it’s beyond…

I descended out of the high piny region around Flagstaff at sunset. The sun slipped behind a mountain and the western sky burst into a red glowing thing that slowly faded into pale amber. I grasped the steering wheel with both hands to navigate the sharp downward curves. The cab was dark – blue, floating instruments of the dash, blue numbers on the radio, but everything else was black. I couldn’t see my hands holding the wheel, or the rest of my body. I was only consciousness. The sun lowered and the sky faded and just before it turned to indigo stuff like deadlines, break-ups, jobs, bills, ambition and 5 year life-plans or any kind of life-direction at all became absolutely laughable and meaningless. Take it all, the pain, the joy…and love it all. Open your arms wide to the Whole Shebang of Life. It was easy to say yes to the request, then. But as the sky went completely black, my eyes grew heavy and I was suddenly hungry. Find a hotel, get the rental car back in time, pay rent, find work when I’m back, a girlfriend before I lose my hair…I was carnal once more, embedded in this world. The lustful glow of Las Vegas hovered in the northern night sky, 115 miles away. Gas stations ahead on the Interstate looked like lunar outposts. I checked into a Motel 6 at Needles. Then I went to the nearby Denny’s and sat like a tranquilized monkey at a window booth.

“Want any dessert?” the young waitress asked, after I finished my hamburger.

Coming up on Flagstaff on Rt. 66.

“I’ll fall asleep eating it.”

As she went to get my check, I stared out into dark California, unable to articulate a myriad of questions I had. The waitress gave me the check, I followed her to the counter and paid it, walked outside.

Yes, said the Universe. But I didn’t ask you any questions, I couldn’t find the questions, I responded. I know, replied The Universe, But the answer is only yes. See, I told you it’s beyond…

It was a fast drive through the Mojave desert the next morning. There was Old Route 66 again, coming and going on its wayward way to the Pacific Ocean. It was a different kind of road, it had to be built around mountains and cliffs, whereas the builders of Interstate America blasted through mountains, built bridges over cliffs. Route 66 goes up and down hills like a roller coaster in places, you had to drive slower to manage it. You can really see the desert when you go slow. The Interstate is flat with as few inclines as possible. It’s getting flatter, their always working on it and it’s always getting faster, no matter how much the desert begs to be witnessed.

I hopped on I-15 south at Barstow, motoring smoothly along lava rock beds and cacti that resembled characters from a Dr. Seuss book. An hour and a half later I merged onto I-10 to LA. From there it was start and stop. So many cars, horns and exhaust. I felt The Hurry and played The Game and soon I pulled the rental car into the rental place, in Hollywood. From there I walked down to the intersection of Vine and Sunset, to my bank to get money for rent. There, a man wearing clean business casual clothes stood in the middle of the intersection and joyfully spoke into his phone. He wore sunglasses and every now and then he’d do some kind of dance move. The cars passed by him from all four directions without pause. Satisfied that he did, indeed, exist, he slipped his phone in his satchel and walked away. I was back in The City.

Be well…

Desert Pass

The setting sun flashed blindingly in my rearview mirror, last Tuesday as I motored eastward on I-10. I wanted to be further ahead by sunset, but getting out of LA took longer than I suspected, having got caught up in the Mass Exodus for Thanksgiving. My augmented goal was Blythe, California, the last town before Arizona, before the desert. I sped toward the mountains that glowed in earthy shades of purple, far out on the horizon.

Radio Babel

The SUV ahead of me roared passed a man riding a bicycle on the shoulder. The wind shear nearly pushed the biker into the ditch. But he over-corrected at the last minute and veered toward me as I approached. He wore a beat up baseball cap over long stringy hair, cut-off shorts and a winter coat, and many duffel bags, backpacks and jugs of water were tied to every part of the bicycle. An American flag flew atop a little flag pole fixed to the frame. He stared straight out from under the bill of his cap, eyes fixed on the mountains or something beyond them, his stringy hair blowing straight back like the flag.

Moments later, I caught up with the SUV that nearly blew the biker off the road. Across the back windshield were stickers with phrases like “Stand Up For America! Stand Up To Treason!” and “All Traitors WILL Be Shot!”, along with two stickers of American flags and one of a skull and crossbones. I read the phrases over and over, as I followed the SUV. The phrases, flags and skull would pop off the car and float in the apricot light of the fading day. When I pulled around to pass the SUV, I found an old, white-haired white man at the helm, staring straight ahead calmly. His contemplative gaze stood in stark contrast to the exclamatory remarks stuck to the back of his vehicle. His shoulders were relaxed, he wore a sweater. His hand draped over the wheel, lightly. The rest of his being presenting the countenance of someone listening to classical music, or maybe a book on tape. He wasn’t even going the speed limit. After I passed him, I turned my gaze onto the road. The sun was down. Those far off mountains were now blackblue figures and getting darker.

I was back on I-10 at dawn the next day. The sun came straight through the windshield as I sped into the desert. The radio stations were few and after a while I quit trying and turned the radio off. I let my mind go and talked to myself when I felt the urge, sang all the songs I wanted to sing. But most of the time I just sat silently – one hand on the wheel, my foot resting on the pedal to maintain 80 or so miles an hour. The desert sprawled out in every direction, and there always seemed to be mountains on the horizon. Hours of driving and the mountains would still be so far away. I am immeasurable when it comes to the Big Picture, I’d say to myself every now and then, or something like that.

I stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen somewhere in Arizona and ordered a chicken basket. The place was nearly empty but it still took a long time for my order. The three manager-less Indian women working that day were not in a hurry to do much. After I went to the restroom and sat down, I noticed they were bent over, leaning in close over the ice-cream machine, examining it as if it were a crashed UFO.

“I don’t know why it ain’t workin, you know,” said one of the workers. “It was workin’ fine just yesterday.”

I turned my attention to an old, white couple sitting next to me. The old woman was eating a chilidog without much devotion. She stared down hard at the greasy, cheesy mass, picking at it with a plastic fork. The old man was sitting on the other side of the table, staring through her.

“Godammit, I don’t give a shit one way or t’other,” the man finally said to the woman. “I gotta go find me some cigarettes.”

He got up and went inside the convenience store adjoining the Dairy Queen. When he came back, he walked passed the woman without saying a word, went outside and smoked, pulling in long drags that I never saw him exhale. He stared out at something far away and probably long ago, scowling at it through the crags in his face, rarely blinking his eyes. The woman dug out the last bit of the weenie from the goopy hot dog bun with her fork, put it in her mouth and chewed. After she swallowed, she went over to the trash can, dumped the contents of her tray into it and left. She said nothing to the man as she walked to the car. The tiny, wrinkled man followed her, lit another cigarette, fished for his keys, got in the car, reached over and popped the passenger door lock. The woman got in the car and they drove away.

Long Ago and Far Away

It was a long and quiet afternoon, very few radio stations. Somewhere around the point where the I-10 rises out of the old ocean bed that is the low desert and ascends onto the high desert, and incredible amount of anger welled up within me. I’ve crossed the desert many times, and have felt this happen with other emotions, but the emotion had never been anger. The anger was about nothing and everything at the same time. The anger grew. I started arguments with every one I knew to fully reconcile myself with this anger. Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I think…what I have been thinking all along! What do you think of me now! But each face would look back at me, bewildered, saying nothing. What is the point of this anger? But as I dug into myself to find the answer to that question, the anger fooled me, became abstract and malleable, like murky, rising water. I desperately looked around the desert for something to be mad at. My eyes caught the odometer. Nearly a 100mph. I slowed the car down and wanted a cigarette, or a pack of them. Then I was craving anything. I reached out for the radio dial like a sailor gone overboard, grasping for a life-preserver in this frothy wheezing blackwater abyss. Yes, radio would save me…

Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. You gotta be f#$king kidding me…

I scanned the gamut of the FM dial several, times. No dice. Robin Thick was some kind of perverted, cruel, joking, freak siren sitting on a jagged rock in the writhing desert sea, singing me toward destruction. Then he was gone. I hit scan but the dial just raced from 88.1 to 107.9 over and over. I looked in the rearview mirror at my own reflection…I didn’t know you were still angry.

I hit El Paso at rush hour. I hurried up, stopped, hurried up, stopped, etc, with all the other travelers, dodging cars that carelessly jumped from lane to lane. The sense of urgency on the road was palpable on this Thanksgiving Eve, the busiest travel day of the year. At sunset, the clouds turned dark black as a sliver of fiery yellow hovered just above the southwestern horizon. The vast event that was the violent and thriving Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande, floated in millions of lights. The Mexican metropolis went on forever, or at least too far for me to see any end. Maybe it did, indeed, have no end. When I reached the edge of El Paso, I stared ahead, followed all the red taillights through the mountain pass and into complete night.

An hour outside of El Paso, the traffic thinned drastically. I’d been driving for 12 hours. The dark night ahead of me was a cloud that came in through the air conditioner vents that formed squid-like shapes with long appendages. They would dance around in the cab until a pair of oncoming headlights would shine in and disintegrate them. I was pleased to find the anger was long gone, overtaken by fatigue, as anger usually is. And the radio was picking up stations consistently – the usual Top 40, Classic Rock, Modern Rock, Shitty New County, and several Evangelical Stations. I can drive forever. But I knew better. So I let the music tug me thought the calming waters to the nearest harbor.

And that was Fort Stockton, Texas. I shivered in the cold as I walked to my room at a cheap hotel. I turned on the TV and the temperature at the bottom of the screen read 30˚F. The room had no carpet, the cold came right in. I switched on the heater, crawled under the covers and watched the news – a segment on the benefits of prison labor. Footage of black and Latino prisoners cleaning up yards of homes and parking lots of offices was interspersed with interviews of white people praising the idea.

“Yeah, think it’s great,” said one fellow wearing a tie. “Long as they stay in line and don’t creep nobody out, you know.”

Low Prices Everyday

The next segment was something about the oncoming Black Friday with accompanying footage of people crowding the check out counters at a Wal-Mart. I turned off the TV and the world and lay under the warm blankets. I love hotels, I thought as I stared at the white ceiling softly reflecting the parking lot lights. The good ones and the roach motels. The minimum-wage effort to make a room cozy. The shower, the sink, mirror, desk, TV, table and bed and linens all harken to something like a home but yet is so far from it. This pillow is soaked with dreams and nightmares…a faint rumble by the oilfield crew who took up the two rooms next to mine…little bars of soap…the door opens, slams, more voices…brand new bar of soap just for me…they turn their up TV loud...no one will ever use that bar of soap but me...beer cans opening next door, general yee-haws ensue…tomorrow it’ll be a new bar of soap for a different traveler in another America...I fell asleep. 

It was still pitch black the next morning, Thanksgiving day, when I got back on I-10. Only the faint outline of far off mesas, and of course mountains, could be seen. A few minutes into the drive, I saw two school busses in front of me, lights flashing atop the cabins. School busses, on a Holiday? I sped around to pass the busses and read  “HALLIBURTON” written on the side of each bus. The windows were tinted and I could only make out faceless shapes of heads. Just in front of the busses were two mobile Halliburton oil rigs. After I sped around them, there was nothing but empty road ahead.

I searched up and down the dial for a radio station but only found an evangelical station.

“Did you know,” preacher said, “that Napoleon finished only 42nd in his class? A failure in many eyes. He was a man who nobody thought would amount to nothin’. Well, he fooled ‘em all, didn’t he? But because he was dedicated to makin’ somethin’ outta himself, he became one of the greatest men in history.”

An image of Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Jesus and Abe Lincoln standing outside in the cold in front of a towering locked door popped into my head. I hit scan, but the digital numbers scrolled back to the preacher. I hit scan again…the preacher…

The sky had lit up to a pure steel-blue and I was able to get lost in it for a while. The preachers voice faded to nothing. When the flashing lights of a state trooper ahead caught my attention, I tore my gaze from the heavens and came back. The preacher had moved on from talk about dictators to the importance of sparing not the rod upon thy children. “Now I know there’s all kinds a talk out there about how whipping or…spanking…a child hurts them, but the fact is the rod molds them, builds them up, keeps them from strayin’. Then they start making all kinds a choices. Limit choices for your children early, for you have to get ‘em early, or they’ll go their own way and be lost, forever.”

During a commercial break, the DJ announced a special Thanksgiving day auction, at a nearby town. “After dinner, come on down, bring the family. Enter and you get a chance to win a gun safe that can hold up to 56 guns!”

The sun broke the horizon but low clouds kept it from bursting bright across the new cold icy day. In seconds, the eastern sky was glowing blood-red. Hmm, red sky at morning…

Be well…