The Whole Song

Hello Everybody,

A few weeks ago, on my way up to North Dakota, I pulled off US Highway 281 at Lawton, Oklahoma and checked into a hotel.

Big beds, white sheets void of personality. White, fluffy, pillows. TV hanging on a wall covered with abstract wallpaper. The same comfortable yet impersonal ambiance of so many other hotels of which I’d sought repose. I always plan to do the same thing each night I spend in a hotel: take a bath, play my guitar, watch TV until I fall asleep. But what usually happens also happened in Lawton that night: after the bath and turning the AC as low as it can go, I crawled under the covers and quickly slipped into deep sleep.

My stay in the hotel in Lawton was no different. I went to sleep at 9, woke up at 6. Then I went down to the lobby and had the same continental breakfast.

I hadn’t had any coffee yet, therefore my diminished mental capacity made working the pancake pour-and-flip-and-wait contraption a difficult task. I managed to extract a serving of pancake batter out of the dispenser and pour it into the contraption, but something very wrong happened when I flipped the griddle…batter dripped out of it, spread all over the table.

“Wha…wha…what’s going on?” I exclaimed.

“Oh, you gotta let it wait for a while,” said the clerk, running to the table.

“Well, it’s…the instructions aren’t very clear.” They were.

“Oh, I know, they can be tricky,” said the clerk, a Latino man, tattoos on his neck and forearms. “Here, lemme get another one set up for you.” He did so. “Yeah, it’ll just beep when it’s ready. All you gotta do is wait, my friend.”

I waited, watched the lobby TV as I kept an ear our for the beep. A local news program was on—a well-coifed anchor was talking to a bald on top yet pony-tailed farmer.

“Tell us why you are here today?” asked the anchor to the farmer.

“I’m here to tell you this new proposal on the Clean Water Act by the EPA is just another way to keep water from us smaller farmers. It is a clear example of the overreach of Federal Government-”

BEEP.

I flipped the griddle, plucked the pancake out of it, sogged it up with syrup. When I turned around the anchor was saying…

“Well, (Mr Farmer), that’s very interesting. Thank you for coming to visit us this morning.” The anchor turned to the camera. “We’ll be right back.”

I sat down just in time to watch a commercial for Choctaw Defense. “One of the largest defensive contractors in the nation,” said a narrator, recorded over footage of Indians welding, working on assembly lines…sparks flying across the screen, “Choctaw Defense is responsible for thousands of jobs throughout Oklahoma. Completely owned by the Choctaw, located on the Choctaw Nation.”

I couldn’t find the commercial online, but I did find this, that basically says the same thing:

Indians building military equipment for the Military Machine that crushed them one hundred years ago. I heard the Great Mother crying as I swallowed the last piece of my cold, soggy pancake. Then I picked up my bag and guitar, walked toward the door.

“Hey,” shouted the clerk, “you play guitar?”

“Yeah,”

“Oh, cool, man. I do too. I play just down the road, at the Spanish speaking church down the way. That’s pretty much only where I play these days. I used to be in a band, played all over you know…back when I was wild, haha…but they really like us there at the church. Ok, man, well safe travels and God bless you.”

I continued north on US 281, which runs completely up and down the nation—Mexico to Canada. It’s also a military highway, meaning if we were ever invaded, or if Martial Law was declared throughout the country, US 281 would be a main transport vein for supplies, personel and weaponry. But it’d be hard to send all that military might up or down US 281 through Oklahoma. There, the highway shrinks to 2 lanes often, is not maintained as well as it is in Texas and of course has a slower speed limit than it does in the Lone Star State. I was losing time, so when I came to Alva near the border with Kansas, I turned east onto US 64, toward Interstate 35.

US 64 was small, bumpy, slow. There was no shoulder most of the way. I had to counter the high prairie winds to stay on the road. Lush crops grew right to the edge of the bar ditch, and nearly every farm had about 5 acre square of land cleared and leveled, where a huge oil derrick pumped away. Oilmen scurried around the rigs, enshrouded by red dirt clouds brought up by the wind. These scenes looked chaotic, busy, but not a sound came into the cab. There was only the gusts of the wind, and a classic rock station on the radio, playing a fine list including ACDC, Alice Cooper, CCR, all the greats. In between every other song would be the same commercial…

“Last year, Oklahoma experienced more earthquakes than in recent history. Did you know regular home insurance does not cover earthquake damage, however we can help…”

About 20 miles out of Cherokee, the station played a lo-fi recording of some local band. 3 chords, distortion just like a million other songs, and of course the tough yet curiously sensitive voice singing the lyrics…

I smoke, I drink

Just tryin not to think

I smoke, get drunk

Just tryin to change my luck

It was impossible to ingnore the glaring contradictions in such a set of lyrics (changing requires at least a little thinking and doing the same thing over and over never leads to change…just insanity) however, I was in Oklahoma, therefore I championed the effort, nonetheless.

The eyes of The Past staring back at you…

The Boss came on as I rolled down the main street of Cherokee – growling through the brilliant and most misunderstood tune of all time, Born in the USA – passing by one closed down storefront after the other. Born in the USA, I was born in the USA…Springsteen’s repetitive howl put me in a transe and suddenly Oklahoma quit being a feeding plain for Big Oil Predator’s and incubator for Societal Burn Out and transformed a wormhole through Spacetime…

I’m 9 years old. Ronald Reagan is on the TV. A lot of people are clapping. Born in the USA…Born in the USA…four more years…four more years…all those people in stiff suits with big shoulder pads and cemented hair…smiling…but why aren’t they singing the rest of the song:

Born down in a dead man’s town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

End up like a dog that’s been beat too much

Till you spend half your life just covering up

Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land

To go and kill the yellow man

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man says “son if it was up to me”

Went down to see my V.A. man

He said “son don’t you understand”

Had a brother at Khe Sahn

Fighting off the Viet Cong

They’re still there, but he’s all gone

He had a woman he loved in Saigon

I got a picture of him in her arms

Down in the shadow of a penitentiary

Out by the gas fires of the refinery

Ten years burning down the road

Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go

Born in the USA…born in the USA…Reagan’s still clapping, confetti’s falling…fade out…fade it…I’m sitting in front of the old RCA watching an episode of 20/20…Hugh Downs does a story on the eminent nuclear holacaust, then Barbara Walters runs a story about Satan Worship in California and finally John Stossel does the feature story of the evening, about all the farmers committing suicide in creative ways so their families could collect the life insurance because insurance is there to help…if they did it just right…everything grows dark around the TV…I look behind me…my father’s not there, he’s in prison…my mom’s reading on the couch, but she fades away…static…static…Reagan clapping…confetti…static…I look back again…mom’s gone…it’s only Reagan and he’s still smiling like the smile was painted on…I hear the sounds of factories closing down in Michigan…I hear the bombs whistle down…one hand after another tapes an Out of Business sign on a mainstreet window…oh, yeah, and there’s AIDS, we’re all gonna catch AIDS…scrrrrrrrrrratch, scrrrrrrrrratch…Satan scratches his pitchfork across the front door…ding-dong…there’s the bell…momma? momma?

Swoosh…back in 2014 and on the on ramp to I-35 North. Wow, that was thirty years ago. 9 years old. 1984. Jesus, is that really The Past? Hmm…1984.

A few weeks later I was chatting with my friend, Matt Anderson, with whom I share an office at the North Dakota Museum of Art. I told him about the oil rigs in the farm fields outside all the small closed-down Oklahoma towns. In between our discussion, I’d glance at the world coming through on my computer screen that morning: shot down jet planes, beheaded journalists, deadly viruses, white military police and dead black kids and unmanned drones, ISIS, ISIL and East Asia and Eurasia and JLAW’s boobs and internet crime and thought crime and unpersons and RATS RATS RATS and BIG BROTHER RATS OH GOD RATS PLEASE OH GOD NO BIG BROTHER OK BIG BROTHER OH GOD PLEASE NO NOT GOD I MEAN BIG BROTHER PLEASE TAKE THE GODDAMN RATS AWAY I LOVE BIG BROTHER!!!…i love big brother (breath)…i love big brother (another breath)…i love big brother…i love…

“You know,” said Matt, “I got home the other day, checked in with Heather and Grace and Abigail. We ate dinner. Then I went outside, walked a ways from the house. The sun was at the horizon, shining across the crops, hitting me head on and made the hair stand up on my arms. It was still warm, but cooling down. It was so quiet out there. I said to myself, This, right now, is real. Heather, Grace and Abigail are real. The only thing that is real is Right Now. Then I went inside and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Heather and the girls. I can’t look at today’s headlines. I don’t know what to believe. I can’t watch dark TV shows. None of it feels real to me. My farm is real, though. I want to live on my farm with my family. Sell farm shares. Earn just enough money, I don’t want a lot of money. I want…I want more Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang.”

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a musical based on an Ian Flemming’s novel about a goofy inventor with a flying car who travels to Vulgaria and goes up against an evil, wealthy Baron and Baroness who imprison all the children of the realm. It’s a sugar and cheese technocolor feast for the eye and mind…

Don’t waste your pucker on some all day sucker
And don’t try a toffee or cream
If you seek perfection in sugar confection
Well there’s something new on the scene
A mouth full of cheer
A sweet without peer
A musical morsel supreme!

But like all cheesey tales…

A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain
Softly blows o’er lullaby bay.
It fills the sails of boats that are waiting–
Waiting to sail your worries away.
It isn’t far to Hushabye Mountain
And your boat waits down by the key.
The winds of night so softly are sighing–
Soon they will fly your troubles to sea.
So close your eyes on Hushabye Mountain.
Wave good-bye to cares of the day.
And watch your boat from Hushabye Mountain
Sail far away from lullaby bay.

…they’re not so cheesey…

What makes the battle worth the fighting?
What makes the mountain worth the climb?
What makes the questions worth the asking?
The reason worth the rhyme?

…if we listen to all the words…

To me the answer’s clear;
it’s having someone near; someone dear
Someone to care for; to be there for.
I have You Two!
Someone to do for; muddle through for.
I have You Two!
Someone to share joy or despair with;
whichever betides you.
Life becomes a chore, unless you’re living for
someone to tend to be a friend to.
I have You Two!
Someone to strive for, do or die for.

 

Maybe the world can use a little more Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang…

Be well…

 

 

Full Circle

Hello Everybody,

The skinny white man and Indian woman fluttered about like balloons in the parking lot of the closed down coffee shop. He wore giant white tennis shoes and his pale thin and scabbed legs sprouted from them like sun-starved stalks of grain. She was barefooted, a tattoo here and there, and wore a black evening gown through which her beer belly desperately tried to escape. They both carried large duffel bags that seemed to be the only things keeping them from floating away forever. They twitched, spat, kicked at invisible objects on the ground, drifted away from each other only to collide again a few steps further down the sidewalk. I watched them from the window of the Chinese joint on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington state, where I dined that evening.

Yep, even in Washington State.

“Make sure you tell the waitress you want whatever you’re gonna get to be spicy,” said the young Indian host as she led me to my table, a few minutes before. “The cook doesn’t make it spicy and if you don’t get it spicy it’s…well…”

“Thanks for the tip,” I replied.

She turned away, took a few steps, then turned around. “Are you here for the hot rod show?”

“Nope.”

“Why are you…here…then?”

“Heading back home to California.”

She smiled, walked away. I closed my eyes, rubbed them, rubbed them harder. I’d left Grand Forks, North Dakota the previous morning and had been driving straight on since, stopping only to sleep for 4 hours in my Jeep in a motel parking lot somewhere in Montana because there…

“Ain’t gonna be a motel room for you anywhere probably,” said one of the many hotel clerks I’d talked to along I-94 West. “It’s vacation season, they all headin down t’Yellowstone from every direction. And it’s construction season, too. And a course you got all the bikers headin down to Sturgis for the biker rally.”

I finally found a room at the Sunrise Valley Inn on the Yakima Reservation. $54. A dip in the mattress and a broken lamp, but a good air-conditioner. And of course, the Chinese restaurant next door with the Indian host and a leather-tanned gaunt shell of a waitress coming to my table and asking, “Hi there, honey, watch’a havin today?” just like out of some black and white TV show.

“I’ll have the General Tso’s Chicken.”

“Alright, I’ll be right back with it, dear.” Then she blew away to the kitchen like a tumbleweed.

I turned back to the window. The skinny white fellow and Indian woman had dropped the duffel bags and were moving about like pinatas being swung at by many invisible children.

I closed my eyes again, nearly falling asleep after a few seconds. I jerked my head and almost fell out of my booth. I looked around, no one among the half-dozen or so other customers seemed to notice or care. I rubbed my face, took a long gulp of ice water. It was after I swallowed the water that the decision I had to make – that I’d been able to outrun all the way from Grand Forks, ND – found me. The North Dakota Museum of Art had offered me the position of Director of Program Development. Nice salary. Insurance. Vacation. Personal and sick days. The whole shebang. I didn’t apply for the job, but I just so happened to be around when the guy who had it before gave notice. Laurel, the curator of the museum, said, “why don’t you take it?” I told her I’d think about it, then tried not to think about it. But now – in that Chinese restaurant on the Yakima Indian Reservation – take the job, don’t take the job echoed in my skull as I waited for my meal. I was torn. I didn’t want to leave LA, but the job promised creative freedom and a steady paycheck. I rubbed my eyes harder as if poking my fingers through my eyes and massaging my brain would somehow help me make the right decision. Right decision??? said one of the voices in my head. What the f#$k’s a right decision these days???

The waitress came. “Here ya go, honey.”

I dug into the plate with a fork, twisted the lo mein noodles, stabbed at a piece of radio-active orange chicken. Starving but not hungry. Tired but wired. I took a bite…oh, I forgot to order it spicy.

Back to the window. The skinny white man stood in the middle of the street, peering down the street in one direction then the other…I took a bite…his eyes were the size of silver dollars…tasteless…the woman squatted down and began digging through one of the duffel bags…I swallowed…her gown drifted up over her ass…chew, chew…she didn’t mind…swallow, another bite…she pulled a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of water out of the bag, shouted at the skinny guy…lukewarm, tough flesh of fowl…he scrambled over to her and they each squirted a load of toothpaste into their mouth, brushed their teeth with their fingers…chew, chew, swallow…then they each took a huge swig from the water bottle, gurgled, spat…another bite, sweet rubber…then they hovered down the street together like balloons not quite light enough to escape into the darkening sky.

Bite…take the job, don’t take the job, take the…chew.

An old Asian women came out from the kitchen and began wiping down tables. The gaunt waitress followed her from table to table.

“I’m ain’t gonna do that for him no more,” the waitress said to the old woman.

“Mmm-hmm,” said the old Asian woman.

“Not gonna put myself through it again.”

…take it, don’t take it…

“Not for him or any other man.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Another bite.

“I’m done with other people causin me problems.”

Chew. No expectations.

“mmm-hmm.”

The waitress came over. “You done, honey?”

“Yep.”

She handed me a check. “Have a good evening and come back.” Then she resumed following the little Asian woman from table to table. I paid the bill and left.

“Have a safe trip back home to California,” said the young Indian host on my way out.

Home? California? Take it…don’t…

I walked back to my room at the Sunrise Valley Inn, turned the AC as low as it would go and went to sleep.

The parking lot was full of classic cars the next morning. Male baby-boomers stood around wearing Hawaiian shirts, shorts, smoking and talking to each other about their cars. Female baby-boomers were putting luggage in the trunks of the cars. I threw my bag in the Jeep and headed out of town on Highway 12.

Three of the old cars followed me, westward, through the Cascade Mountains. Sunlight wiggled through the tall pines. The morning was comfortably warm. I rolled the windows down and let the sweet wet pine scented air come in. Everything felt so fine, like that moment of weightlessness between jumping high on a trampoline and descending again. I was on a road I’d never been on before, seeing things I’d never seen before. Where I really like to be. But every time I glanced in my side-view mirror and saw the old cars, it was as if I were transported to 1962, or thereabouts…when those drivers were young, working men, not retired old fogies…hey, if you take the job, you can work for 25 years then you can be an old retiree driving a classic car with a smoking habit on top of a zipper scar on your chest from a triple bypass underneath a Hawaiian shirt, too. Ok, I will ask you what you’ve been afraid to ask yourself, are you…that would be me…SELLING OUT if you…me…take the job?

I pulled off at the next observation area to let the three old cars pass me. I got out of the car, stretched my legs, took a few deep breaths, looked out across the valley to see Mount Rainier. Big beautiful giant bald Mount Rainier. I’ve seen you Mount Rainier, you are real to me now…that weird feeling weightlessness came back, but seconds later so was…take the job, don’t take the job, take the job…

From there I hauled ass toward the coast of Oregon. Logging, logging, logging. Like patchwork over the mountains, clusters of tall trees grew next to clusters of shorter trees that’d been planted to replace the felled trees that’d been shipped down to the mills along the giant Columbia River that twisted faithfully with the highway. At Astoria, the Columbia spilled into the Pacific Ocean. There, I turned south on Highway 101 and began the long slow trek down the Oregon coast.

…take it…don’t take it…take it…

My view out the left window was of the deep green forest. The view out the right was the endless Pacific. The smell of pine mixed with the smell of salt air. The sun was high in the cloudless blue sky.

Every now and then, I’d come to a town. Most were bustling with tourists, with a few ratty drifters about, but others had more drifters, less tourists. The money just wasn’t in those towns, so neither was the heavy traffic, and I passed through those towns quickly. I couldn’t figure out why some towns had the tourists industry and some didn’t. Because you’ve never been able to get a grasp on the nature of money, Todd. But now with this job you can, though you’d no longer be your own boss. And you’d be in an office, wearing a tweed sports coat with leather elbow patches…look down from your desk…your feet are so cozy in those leather dress shoes…maybe on your two-week vacation you can come back here and be a tourist, if your boss ALLOWS you…shut up!

I pulled off the 101 somewhere south of Cannon Beach late that afternoon. I took a trail through a downward sloping meadow of high grass. The crashing of waves grew louder until suddenly I was feet away from the sharp jagged drop down to the ocean. The blue-green water below crashed into white foam against the dark grey stones 100 feet below. The sun was a couple of hours above the horizon, where the blue ocean stopped. Just like that, the ocean ended with a straight line as if everything started and stopped in straight surgical lines. No loose ends, what if’s or maybe’s. No emotional entanglement, no broken hearts. Just start…just stop…begin…end…psst…take it, don’t take it…or, just jump. It would be so easy, just lift one foot and then Geronimooooooo…

I continued onto the trail which ran along the ledge leading into a forest. Under the canopy of the trees, no grass grew. Only eons of dead limbs and leaves lay on the ground. The ocean breeze couldn’t reach me, and only a the stray sun ray could find me, peaking at me from behind a tree every now and then. But eventually, I was able to shake that sun ray, and found a place so quiet and dark where Existence reduced to a low hum and dull glow. On the trail before me lay a pile of fresh animal droppings. Too big for a squirrel, raccoon. What if it’s a bear, a mountain lion, Todd?! A pang of fear rushed through me, but was followed by total calm. I took a deep breath. My shoulders, my jaw, my back, relaxed as I let it out. A bear? A tiger? I wouldn’t run. Life’s been good. I wouldn’t run. The crashing waves sounded a million miles away. Tiny little snaps of twigs here and there. What are you gonna do? Me? Yeah, you. I’m gonna take the job. You are, why? Because it scares me more than not taking it. I’ve gotta do the things that scare me. Good answer, Todd. I know it is.

A few nights later, in Hollywood, I told my buddy Luis about the job offer, the ocean, the forest, the droppings, the decision.

“Sounds to me like you got a direct f#$king sign,” he said. “And a ticket out of Bohemia.”

“That’s what scares me, leaving Bohemia. I’m not sure if I wanna leave, or it’s just what I’m used to. You know, I saw a sign in Oregon, somebody was hiring carpenters—”

“You’ve done that, bro,” said Luis. “You know how to barely get by on building things. This is The Universe giving you something new. It’s the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new chapter.”

Luis was in between chapters of his own book, too. He’d been in LA all summer, performing for Independent Shakespeare Company’s summer festival. When the summer ended, he’d be returning to Houston to begin a new job heading up a youth poetry program in high schools across the city. He’d be drawing a steady salary, and could wear a tweed jacket with leather elbows to work, if he wanted to. We spent most of the night telling ourselves that we’ve reached the end of struggling to get by on whatever we can, that where we were headed was something bigger, better for the both of us.

“Man,” said Luis, as we walked down the dark Hollywood street – just after midnight – through it’s shadows, distant sirens and it’s eternal echoing of whispered promises, “I didn’t know I was a bohemian until somebody told me the other night that I was, in fact, a bohemian. I just called it living. But I’m done with barely scraping by, shit…I’m done starving, bro.”

We we got to my car I hugged Luis, said farewell. Then we stood there, staring at each other with something resembling smiles but more like silly, scary expressions of wonder.

“Man, we made it,” he said. “The next chapter. Travel safe, bro, talk to you soon.”

I pulled out of LA the next morning. Around noon I hit the bridge over the Colorado River and the end of California. My heart rate sped up, I grew shaky. “Man oh man,” I remember whispering. When I passed over the river, the last 14 years – LA to Chicago to New York back to LA – passed before me, and kept going. I felt like a part of me…died. Yep, died. But that’s ok, where things die, new things grow.

A fast drive to Texas. A fast week with my mom and sisters. Then a long drive straight up the middle of America. I’d left Grand Forks on August 1st, drove 7,500 miles in a complete circle around The West and by the time I arrived in Grand Forks on August 26th I was exhausted and huge chunks of me were missing. But new things are growing…

Be well…

Mni Wakan Oyate

Hello Everyone…

Last Friday, I left the farm and headed west on flat, flat, straight, straight Highway 2. When I got to Devil’s Lake, I pulled over, called my friend, Matt.

“Turn south on Highway 20. It turns into Highway 57 when you pass the casino, and that’ll take you straight in to Fort Totten. You’ll know you’re there when you see an old water tower and a new water tower being built next to it. You’ll go past those, then come to the tribal high school. Turn left after the school. After a while the road turns into a gravel road. You’ll veer left and you’ll see the rodeo. Once you pass the rodeo, you’ll see the pow wow.”

I was a little late on my way to the Spirit Lake Nation’s annual pow wow, but, “don’t worry,” Matt said, “this thing’ll go on til midnight.”

Highway 20. Highway 57. The casino. Two water towers. The high school with FORT TOTTEN SIOUX across the wall in giant letters. Paved road to gravel. The rodeo. Then a sea of parked cars. I parked, opened the door and walked toward the distant sound of drums, somewhere beyond the cars.

The pow wow took place an high meadow surrounded by a rolling sea of green hills. Shaded seating surrounded an open grass circle where all the action took place. I arrived just in time to see many old Indians dressed in old American military uniforms, marching slowly out of the grassy area. Two men in front of the procession held an American flag and the black POW-MIA flag. When the last old fellow marched out, the announcer said of the PA, “Alright, let’s give a loud, proud round of applause to these verterans!”

Matt found me.

“Did I miss much?”

“No,” he said, “just the grand entry and the veterans. Oh, man, and this guy running for the state legislature. Jeez, he came out and spoke and I’ve never felt a more uncomfortable silence. Pandering out here…” Matt shook his head. “Oh,”  he said, looking behind me, “there’s Johnny, one of the drummers we took to New York for the art exhibit I was telling you about.” Matt waved. “Hey Johnny!”

“Matt, hey,” said Johnny. Johnny was tall, stood straight and had a large hard belly and long pony tail and wore a t-shirt shirt and gym shorts. “How’s it goin?”

“Good, Johnny” Matt said, “yourself?”

“I’m good, workin, you know. Drivin a truck.”

“Good, they takin care of ya?”

“These guys are. The people I worked for before, goin all the way to Florida and back…they only paid me $500. Hell,” he slapped his belly, “I ate more than that on the trip, ha ha! Hey, here’s my son, Johnny.”

Matt shook little Johnny’s hand. Little Johnny was as tall as his father, but skinny and had a smaller ponytail.

“Look,” eclaimed Christine, big Johnny’s wife, little Johnny’s mother, “isn’t he as tall as his father!! Gonna be 17 years old in-”

“Five days,” said little Johnny.

“Can you believe it, Matt?” Asked Johnny. “He’s already as tall as me. Gettin old, man.”

“Our daughter’s already gonna be 21,” said Christine. “And I’m already scared. She know’s where all the bars are.”

“Are you drumming tonight, Johnny?” Asked Matt.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

The next drum circle began to set up behind us. Big Johnny, little Johnny, Christine, Matt and I went over to it.

“Did Matt tell you we went to New York?” Johnny asked. (Matt works for the North Dakota Museum of Art, they took a drum circle to New York the previous year), “We went to the top a that Empire State Buildin. It’s tall, man.”

“Have you ever heard one of these things up close?” Matt asked me, about the drum circle.

“Nope.”

“It’s gonna go right through you.”

“So New York’s big, huh” Little Johnny asked me. “My dad says it’s big.”

“Well, yeah,” I answered. “There’s a lot going on. But it’s also a lot of people crammed in a small place. To me,” I looked up at the sky, down on the hills, “it feels bigger out here.”

Johnny shook his head. “My dad might get to take me to Chicago this summer in the truck. But I wanna go to New York someday, too.”

The drumming started and we all found places to get a good view.

“Alright ladies and gentleman,” said the announcer over the PA, here is the group, Yellow Snow!” The announcer chuckled.

Everybody around me chuckled. “Yellow snow,” said Matt, “get it?” I chuckled.

The men drummed softly, at first. Their voices were subdued, some sang in a low pitch, some in a high pitch. Then the drumming escalated into a hard driving cadence and suddenly all the voices shot up to a high, shreaking pitch that goes through a body like razor sharp icicles. Then the voices dropped, except one that maintained the incredibly high pitch. By itself, the voice sounded like it’s own entity, something unfound that dwells just on the edge of Reality’s Shine. Then the drumming softened and the voice faded down to the others – its disappearence leaving a hollow space in my chest. Then it all happened again, and again, the drumming and the voices rising and falling as if the song and the world came to me from far away on gusts of wind.

“Let’s go get an Indian taco,” Matt said.

As we made our way – along the various booths selling dream catchers, blankets, t-shirts – toward the food stands, Matt stopped to shake a hand here and there. Matt is white, but grew up on the reservation. His family had homesteaded in the Spirit Lake area before the land was allotted for the reservation, so, “my family’s and a few other families’ farms were grandfathered in,” Matt said, taking long, loose comfortable strides. Matt was home.

“Hey Sam Ann!” Matt swerved through the crowd to shake a woman’s hand.

“Matt!!! Oh my god, how are you!” They hugged.

“Sam and I grew up together,” Matt said to me, then turned back to Sam Ann. “My dad says he’d still adopt you in a heartbeat.”

“HIs dad,” Sam Ann said to me, “told me that every time he saw me.”

“How’s the girls?” Matt asked.

“Oh, Matt. I’m gonna be a grandma.”

“What?! Which daughter?”

“Both! Both of them, can you believe that? Oh well, I’ll be a young, fun grandma at least!” She looked around, then back to us. “Oh, I tell you I need a cigarette. Hey, have you heard…”

Behind Matt and Sam Ann, a young man in Army Dress was milling about, standing straight, his hat tucked in the crook of his arm, stretching his neck as he looked through the crowd. After a moment, his head jerked and he smiled. I turned toward the direction he was looking. A tall, large bellied man wearing a t-shirt and gym shorts was standing up in a crowd of other tall, large bellied men wearing t-shirts and gym shorts. He was smiling, too. The young soldier went over and shook hands with the man and the hands of all the other men. Then he relaxed his shoulders a little, sat down.

Matt and I grabbed our Indian tacos – a hefty portion of bison and lettuce atop a bulbous piece of fried bread – and weaved our way through the crowd, toward the pavillion, running straight through the cigarette cloud coming from a group of teenagers adorned in skull caps, black pants and heavy metal t-shirts.

“I’m guessing not many people make it off the reservation?” I asked, after we sat down.

Matt shook his head. “Naw. But more do than they used to. At the university (University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks) there’s a woman going to law school. Back in the 80’s or so, when I was a kid, that was unheard of. And some who did manage to leave are moving back to the Rez. The schooling is improving and there’s also a renewed focus on tribal traditions. But pretty much everyone you see here will never leave.”

A dozen men dressed in bright colors and feathers moved out onto the grassy area. When the drumming began, they started dancing. Their movements mirrored the drumming – feet softly tapping the earth, then stomping hard when the drumming came on harder, as if they were trying to crack the earth with each step. Every now and then they’d leap in the air as if they were trying to catch the shreaking voices. Then soft mincing with still torsos and relaxed arms when the drumming and voices softened together. All the men had their own distinct dance, but matched each other in intensity with the rise and fall of the song. The song finally ending on one final, Earth shuddering downbeat. All the dancers remained frozen in their last pose for a moment. Then they relaxed and the crowd applauded. The men shook each other’s hands, walked off, their chests heaving.

Later in the night, a gawky teenage boy in traditional dress except for a pair black horn rim Buddy Holly eye-glasses led a drum circle of equally gawky younger boys wearing t-shirts and gym shorts. The skinny group of kids swung down hard on the drum with sticks about the same size of their arms. Their faces contorted, as if they’d tasted something sour, when they went for the higher notes. Older folks stood around them, proudly, filming them with iPhones. After they came down hard on the last beat, they held still, caught their breath, then looked up at the crowd around them. During the applause, an older man walked up to the teenage boy with the glasses, grabbed his shoulder, squeezed it, stared in his eyes without saying a word, then walked away.

“Let’s give those boys another large round of applause,” said the announcer. “Now, we’re about done for the night. But I want all of you to not forget to head down to the casino tonight and have a good time!”

“Is that Arnie?” Asked Matt, as we were leaving. The short, fat indian wearing a cowboy hat approached us.

“There’s Matt!” Arnie exclaimed, then shook Matt’s hand.

“How’s it going, Arnie?”

“Aw, man…I need a drink!”

“What?! I thought you’re supposed to be on the wagon?”

“Jesus, Matt, can’t you take a joke?” He pointed to his cowboy hat. “You see the hat, the hat means I’m workin, not drinkin…but come on, man, you’re a Rezzie, you know how it is.”

Down the hill. Passed the dark rodeo arena. The highschool. The water towers. The casino. Highway 57 became Highway 20. Long, straight Highway 2. It was past midnight, the world was only the size of the reach of my headlights. It was a lonely world, with only the odd pair of headlights coming in to my world then leaving to resume the chase of their own world. But the thunderous drumming and those shreaking voices kept going on inside me. When I got to the farm I killed the engine, sat in the dark. I couldn’t even see the the dash. Then I stepped out of the car and stood still in the smoke-thick darkness for some time. The drumming. The voices. Cool moonless night. Then I looked up and gradually the entire sky was alight with stars. The drumming. The voices. The Milky Way fluttered so softly in a line from the Northeast to the Southwest. I like…I need…the big open sky. I need to see the twinkling stars clear down to the horizon, in every direction. To keep me reminded that I am amongst the starts, not separate from them. Not separate from anything.

Be well…

 

IT MEANS FOX

Hello Everybody,

A few evenings ago I was driving back from visiting my friends, Matt and Laurel from the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, when I saw something moving in the road. I thought it was a rabbit hopping along the road until I got closer and saw it was a baby fox. Wow, a fox! A baby fox. I slowed down. The baby fox scurried to the left and to the right as if he was unsure of where to go. I stopped about ten feet from him, got out, watched him. He turned to me and froze. His pointy ears and wide eyes were very large for his little head. He kept his eyes on me as he moved about, uncertainly. He had none of the swift, smoky movements like a fox.

I gazed over the still-green potato fields on either side of the road. I didn’t see a mamma fox around. The only things out there other than potatoes were the irrigation sprinklers going phft, phft, phft, phft…and maybe the hum of a tractor, maybe not. I turned back to the fox. Hey there little fella, where ya tryin’to go? Tryin’ to go BACK somewhere? To go TO somewhere? Or did you lose your momma and you’re just scared? He skidded back from me a bit. It’s alright, little guy, I’m a friendly…gee, it’s good I have Matt and Laurel and the rest of the folks at the museum to visit out because after a few days alone out here I’m talking to myself and to the animals and trees and everything else as my thoughts swirl to a thick cream that I have to crawl through but ultimately get lost in and am I speaking out loud or am I thinking this?

The fox finally skidded into the ditch on the right side of the road. I watched his bushy tail bounce in the high grass until it disappeared. BACK? TO? Or just running? I scratched my head, pondering those possibilities. Such a poor little young fox…I scratched it again…lost out there…I scratched my head yet again…alone…then I scratched my arm, slapped my leg. The mosquito’s had found me, so I got back in the car and resumed my drive to the farm-house in McCanna – 35 miles west of Grand Forks – where Laurel and Matt and all the great folks at the NDMoA have set me up for my artist residency.

“The house was built in 1920,” Matt had told me, when I first came through North Dakota. Matt is the director of the Rural Arts Initiative at the museum. “Margery McCanna parent’s built it. Then she inherited and spent the summers out here until she died. She was a good friend of Laurel’s, and bequeathed the house and 10 of the surrounding acres to the museum.”

“The McCanna’s were one of the first bonanza farmers to come out here,” said Laurel, curator of the museum and Matt’s aunt, “in 1881 on the Homestead Act. In those days, a bonanza farmer would come out here, throw all his money into farming several thousand acres and they either made a huge profit and began a farming empire, or making a huge bust and heading back East a loser. A bonanza either way.”

I spend my days out here like this: wake up around 7:30, load up on coffee, have breakfast, meditate, have a little more coffee, spend the morning and early afternoon shaping up a novel I wrote about the time I traveled all over America on a Greyhound Bus…

*** It’s called It’s A Long Ride, Man and is due out late 2014, early 2015!!! Stay tuned for details!!! ***

This is my second residency with the NDMoA, second stay out at the farm. This time I’ve also hired me to fix the windows in the old house. Some of the windows have jammed in their frames, having been painted shut for decades, because the window frames have shifted as the house has settled, or for other reasons. I spend the afternoons and early evening working on the windows. The labor offers a welcomed shift of psyche after having my head in the book all day. I sand, scrape, chisel, oil, paint, moving from one window to the other. After I make a pass by all the windows, I start again, one room to the other, seeing which ones swing open, which ones are still sticking. After I make a few passes in a room, I clean up the windows and frames and touch them up with paint.

The other day I was working on a window in the master bedroom, upstairs. Through the window, I saw the wind whipping the tops of the trees around the house. Their trunks were still but the high leafy branches swayed drastically to the left and right like pom-pom’s shaken by giant petrified cheerleaders. The tree nearest to the window was a birch, the leaves of which are dark green on one side and light green on the other. The leaves fluttered fast from light green to dark green, making my view out the window look static-y as if the world’s rabbit ears needed to be turned slightly to catch The Great Frequency. I grew dizzy as I watched the leaves sway and change color, I turned away, rubbed my eyes. When I looked out the window again I noticed just how much the old tree was leaning.

“Pretty much every tree you see in every direction was man-planted, “Matt had told me, “The birch were planted out here when the house was built. So, almost 100 years ago. They planted them around the house to keep from going crazy from the wind.”

“Oh yeah,” said Laurel, the wind was maddening for the settlers. It was brutal, the wind and the cold and the storms without any shielding. Alcoholism was rampant. The men would disappear. The wives would be left alone out here, or left with a family to try to keep together. There were many suicides. My great-aunt came down with my grandpa from Saskatchewan in 1906. She killed herself out here.”

Very little of the wind makes it through the trees, at ground level. Many times a day I’ll walk about the grounds and let the sun hit me. The still warmth calms me and I am far from madness. But all I have to do is look up to see the tops of those trees, blown so hard like they’re about snap sometimes reminding me of the madness that’s just above my head.

After finishing up the windows for the day, I cook supper. Matt’s parents had butchered a steer and hog over the spring and he gave me several cuts of both. I’ll throw a little salt and pepper on the meat, throw it on the grill. Matt also maintains a garden on the farm, and in the evenings I’ll pull up some spinach, onions or swiss chard, clean it, cook it. Cooking’s always been a hassle for me, in the cities, when eating’s simply something to get out of the way. But out here, it is part of my day, part of my life.

Prepare, eat, clean. I like the process. I take my time with it, and do it whenever I’m hungry. It’s nice to eat when I’m hungry, not when I have to. It’s nice to be writing and get an idea for the windows and leave the laptop and pick up the wood chisel, as nice as it is to be working on a window when I get an idea on the book, and I head to the lap top. Or, stop it all to pick up the guitar. At all times of the day song lyrics and poetry flow into me and I immediately and I run to the note pad and pen in the kitchen. About 70% is just scribble, but the other 30% I will read or sing in front of anybody. I’ve got a strong connection to The Big IS out here. No, those rabbit ears don’t need to be adjusted, leaves are supposed to flutter in the wind, and the dizziness is just clarity. The shifting leaves is the clear view. And when it’s time to eat at 5pm…6pm…10pm or whenever, I look over my plate and feel truly grateful for the abundance. I give a thank you to The Big IS. Then I look at he clock on the stove and laugh. Ha, ha, silly idea, ‘time’.

Last night after supper, I built a fire, like most nights. Like most nights, I brought a book and my guitar out with me. But I ended up just staring into the fire for hours, like most nights. The chaos of my mind rages through the flames like a storm. I grow calmer. Sure, memories surface, but they tend to burn up quick. There’s nothing about the future – those thoughts, fortunately, are much too flammable and burn to nothing in an instant. Calmer. It’s just my infinite mind and the flames and strong, pure feeling of existing. I follow the thin plume of smoke straight up into the old leaning birch tree. The plume of smoke rises through the branches and the dark green then light green leaves, into the dark blue where that maddening wind ushers it into the indigo sky and it disappears. Hmm, the first stars are out. Calmer still…

I look down from the night and follow the smoke plume down through the branches and leaves, straight down into the fire that is smelting with my mind wherein the little fox appears. Hey little guy. Did you know in Old English, ‘Todd’ means…oh, you did? Hmm…so tell me, are you going BACK? TO? Or just running? The little fox answers. I laugh. Good answer little fox, good answer.

Be well…

Views Along The Way

Hello Everybody,

I headed up the 101 Freeway toward Hollywood to check my mail one last time before I headed out of town. I had an artist residency in North Dakota, was hoping a check would be in my mail box – Hollywood’s my official address – that I could cash before I left. There wasn’t. But there was an envelope from Covered California, the state’s version of Obamacare. I opened it to find that I was indeed covered…for the month of March, 2014. That was good to know. I hopped back in my Jeep Cherokee, pulled back onto the road and settled in behind the wheel as I headed out of town.

Santa Clarita. Palmdale. Lancaster. Mojave. I followed Highway 14 northeast into the dry, hot land to Highway 395. When I reached it, I turned, heading due north. Every now and then 395 shrunk 2 lanes. I’m out in the country, I thought, lazilly steering around each curve with one hand on the wheel. Finally. It’s good to be Out There. Things is slower here. Hey, if I needed to pull over and take a piss, I could. Nobody else would even pass by, probably. Even someone did…phshaw!…what would they care?

To my left, little foothills steadily grew into the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains. I rode along side the ridge for hours, until I turned onto Highway 120 into the mountains and toward Yosemite National Park, singing Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again…

…goin’ places that I’ve never been, seein’ things that I may never see again…

I paid the price for admission, drove deep into the park, parked, walked around. It was cold, I put on a jacket. But the sky was cobalt blue with just a smattering of cotton ball clouds and the sun heated the side of your body facing it. Although crowded, the park was heavy with quiet. All the visitors walked about slowly and silently as if they were just another species of pack animal. Some were in couples, groups or were solo like me. Collectively, our wide eyes gazed up at the sheer cliffs, the bulbous stone peaks, peered out over wide meadows where Serenity floated just above the land like morning fog.

I wanted to stay a little longer – possibly forever – but the sun had begun its nosedive to the horizon and I wanted to get a little further down the road, so I walked back to the Cherokee, crept down the winding road leading out of the park. Curve after curve, the temperature got warmer. When I pulled out onto 395 summer was raging again. A few miles past the Yosemite entrance, I passed an SUV on the side of the road. Three girls ran out from behind a bush, toward the SUV, pulling up their shorts, grinning. See? Nobody cares at all…

Just before I reached Carson City, Nevada, I got the feeling that I could drive all night. Then I hit the wall of exhaustion that always comes seconds after that feeling. I got a motel room and slept.

The next morning, my friend Laura from Helena, Montana, said I could come visit her if I was heading up that way. So I headed that way.

Kit Carson!

Eastbound on Highway 95 through Nevada. Beginning there and continuing through Idaho and Montana, the roads were populated with many bikers – old men on loud Harley-Davidsons, dressed in leather. Some had their wives, or lady friends with them. They rode in packs, pairs and solo. Hands high on the handle bars, their long gray hair flowing back into The Past as they faced the future and peered into it with sunglassed eyes trying to find some clue as to what the freakin’ Past may have been about. Take all my hair, read the expression on their faces. Every last one for all I care…

A little passed Elko, Nevada, I took State Highway 225 northward. There, I rode out of the desert into high, grassy rolling hills with occasional mountains. On both sides of the road were public lands – so said the signs – that belonged to you and me and everybody. But when the sun was an inch above the horizon I rolled into the Shoshone Paiute Indian Reservation. I rolled down the windows and the fresh evening air made me tired. I had no clue where the next motel would be but when I came upon a lake I noticed a sign that said I could pay $6 – slip it in a box next to the sign – to camp on the lake for the night. So I did. Then I drove down a steep dirt path to the lake’s shore. It was a very pretty lake. Blue glass. I stood on a rock at the shoreline, gazed across it to the beautiful yellow-green hills and the snow-capped mountains just beyond. Hmm…that’s strange. Snow on the mountains. Damn near July in Nevada. Weird. Just after the sun dipped below the hills and shadows started to blanket the land, I felt OK about everything…about the World, who I was and where I belonged in the World. I fit just fine. I’m just fine, after all these years, everything’s just fine. When the sun set, I was ready for sleep. I laid out my sleeping bag in the back of the Cherokee, crawled in, peered out the window. Gee…snow caps. July. Nevada.

I awoke at 2:30am to the yelps coyotes. The view out the window was filled stars as if I were in a spaceship looking down at the lights of some city on some planet. Then I realized I was shaking. I was cold. Too cold. I curled into as tight a ball as I could, the sleeping bag up to my eyeballs. One by one, the stars disappeared. Two hours later, only about five were left hanging in the morning sky. I crawled out of the sleeping bag, into the drivers seat, started the engine. The temperature read 39℉. I stared at the world through the windshield, through the cloud of my breath. Yep..snow f#$kin’ caps alright. I drove up the dirt road and back onto 225.

Cows walked across the road here and there with no fear, as I motored through the reservation. Little calves ran after the mamma cows, nipping at their udders. Bulls mooed deeply at me. The highway followed the winding Humboldt river. Steam hovered above it as if the river’s soul was trying to leave it and go somewhere else. Frost covered the blue-green grass along its banks until the sun popped up over the hills and melted it. Junky Jim Walter’s Homes sprinkled the landscape, surrounded by one, two or three clunker automobiles. But all the Indians appeared to be sleeping in. It was Sunday after all.

At Bruneau, Idaho – a town with just over 300 inhabitants – I stopped at a country store for some coffee. Three old men were sitting at a table and they turned and stared at me as if I was a raccoon that’d just wandered into their kitchen. After a while, one of the men stood and hobbled to the counter.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“Right there,” pointed the man. I went to where he pointed, poured a cup. “Where you headed, young man?”

“Helena, Montana.”

The old man straightened his back and Jesus! He is the size of a f#$kin’ statue! He looked out the window, then down on me. “How you gettin’ there?”

‘Well…”

“Cause you don’t wanna go through Mountain Home.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You don’t wanna go to Helena from here but I guess you have to now since you’re here. What you do, is when you get to Mountain Home, you take the first right, then you take the first right after the Wal-Mart. Two rights. That’s all and that gets you to the Interstate.”

The old man was right. Two rights later I was on the Interstate. That evening I pulled into Helena. Laura guided me to her house by phone.

“It’s so good to finally meet you!” She said as she hugged me.

I’d known Laura only via instant media – a friend of a friend. But only minutes later me, her and her boyfriend, Garret, were conversing like long lost friends. We never stopped talking even through dinner and the walk after, and through the drive around Helena after that.

Laura and Garret

“Oh, look, there’s the old theatre where Mark Twain spoke,” Laura would say or something like that, in between our deeper ponderings about Life…not work, or ambition or goals or anything about who we thought we wanted to be, but Life – as a whole, you, me every living thing and inanimate thing in The Universe – contemplating what exactly IT all was and where IT might be headed. “And there’s some preserved cabins from back in the mining days.” Then back to Life. By 1am we were back at Laura’s, deep into the subjects of Free Will and Illusion, and the catastrophic consequences if Humankind achieved mortality…and finally to the inevitable discussion of the haunting notion of Computer Intelligence. I’d been awake for 21 hours.

“I think I need to sleep.”

The next morning, Garret, Laura took me to breakfast.

“This is special,” Garett said. “Here we are, we didn’t know each other and now we know so much about each other.”

“And it just took a day,” said Laura.

“This is real living,” I said. “I think.”

“This local artist and I have been working on something together,” Garett said. “He makes sketches and I hand them out to strangers that I get to know. Would you like to have one?”

“Absolutely.”

“And would you like to give it to somebody you meet on your travels?”

My first thought was, Oh, no. You see I’m gonna be real busy, working on my book, and doing so many other…

“Absolutely,” I answered. “I’d love to.”

Who am I gonna give it to?

“It was so wonderful to get to know you,” Laura said, in the parking lot as we hugged.

“Absolutely.”

“Please come through again, anytime. And maybe we’ll see you in LA,” continued Laura.

“Absolutely.”

Laura and Garett walked to their cars, I to mine. I had the sketch in my hand and…life just keeps going like water spilled on a table. Until I evaporate or drip off the edge…I got in and started the engine and took Highway 12 straight through the heart of Montana, witnessing staggering beauty along that road that I could attempt to explain to you but you’d have to take the drive yourself to truly understand it.

Dakota Territory

The next morning I took Highway 2 into North Dakota. The land flattened with every mile. I passed through one tiny farm town after another and thought of my own farm town home of Orange Grove, Texas, way down at the opposite end of the country. Then I thought very fondly of my childhood. It was a good childhood, when I look at it all these years later. I saw it all, crystal clear. Those real, real memories. Who knows if they really happened? Who cares? There I am, a little kid…

Fortunately, the wind was blowing across Highway 2 at about 30mph. I had to negotiate the wind like a sailor on a skiff, which kept me from sinking down any deeper into the Great Ocean of Memory.

Be well…

Little Simple Things

Hello Everybody,

Last week, I boarded a flight from Los Angeles to New York City. I sent a last message to Dan, my friend and director of a filmed version of Richard the Third I was to act in, while there.

On plane. On time. See you in 6 hrs.

I turned off my phone. The rest of the passengers boarded, sent their last texts, turned off their phones, settled in for the flight. But as we waited to taxi to the runway, this message came over the PA…

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have word our 1st Mate is stuck in traffic. Looks like there’s some wildfires wreaking havoc on I-5. We are currently trying to find another pilot to take her place, but until then we must ask all of you to deboard the plane and wait at the gate for further notice. But it looks to be at least an hour before we can board again.”

Off plane. Delayed. Who knows when.

Back in the terminal, I sat next an electrical outlet so I could charge my phone. A few passengers hovered over me, rather irate now that we wouldn’t be landing in New York until late in the night. I wasn’t, because Dan texted back…

Will track ur late ass. Get here when u get here.

45 minutes later, I received an email alert telling me my flight was delayed 45 minutes ago. That’s helpful, you silly little machine. At the gate’s kiosk, a passenger argued with the gate attendant who kept smiling and uttering statements anchored with the words force majeure. The passenger was bald, the pate of his head glowed red. He wore the remains of a business suit, sweated through it as he shook his phone at the attendant. But the attendant held her smile…force majeure…so Baldy walked away, dialed a number, then shouted into his phone statements anchored with the word f#$k.

An hour and a half later we were in the air.

“For couple of years there,” said Dominic, who sat next to me on the flight, I pulled in like a hundred grand. Then a couple of years later it’s back to setting up tents at weddings. Catering.”

Dominic had been watching the movie, Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, through the little viewing monitor on the chair in front of him. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, was playing on the screen in front of the passenger on my other side, but he’d fallen asleep. Little Hobbits fought the fire-breathing dragon in front of their sleeping audience as if movies weren’t made for people, anyway. The guy sitting in front of him watched The Wolf of Wall Street, but he was drunk and just kinda moved his head around as Leonardo DiCaprio and Co. screwed the fools of America out of millions until they drank, snorted, f#$ked and wrecked themselves into prison and money went on being made as if it didn’t need Us to make it. I was watching Her, a beautiful movie about heartache and moving on and falling in love with an Operating System. Well written and well acted, the movie’s frighteningly foreseeable. The drama unfolds in a Los Angeles set somewhere in the near future, but not yet the LA of the film, Blade Runner. Throughout the movie, more and more people are seen cooing into their computers or listening to the sweet nothings of The Cloud from their ear pieces.

When the movie ended and the credits were rolling, I took a look around the cab and saw everyone plugged in to the screen in front of them. I rubbed my eyes, unsure if I was still watching the movie or not. I noticed that Dominic had paused Captain Phillips sometime just after the evil black pirates had taken Christlike Tom Hanks hostage, ordered him into the escape pod, and jettisoned into the sprawling blue ocean. Dominic was staring blankly at the illuminated screen.

“Couldn’t get into it?” I asked.

“Uh…I’ve seen it before, so…” He shrugged his shoulders.

Dominic was from Ohio, been in LA 10 years. He liked LA but didn’t know if he wanted to live there anymore, but of course, didn’t know if he wanted to live anywhere else. And, of course, didn’t know what he’d do Anywhere Else.

“That’s good, man,” he said, “that you gotta real skill, building things. Me, I’m catering, waiting tables, bar-backing and whatever I can when I’m between films. It’s such a hustle, man. Everyday. Everything’s always up in the air. I’m supposed to act in and oversee the production of a film my friend’s been able to put together, as soon as the money comes through, which is supposedly soon. At least that’s what I’ll tell my brother I’m visiting in NY.”

Dominic and I exchanged info at the baggage claim and bid each other farewell. Will I ever see him again? Will I not? It seems a simple decision to make, seems I have all the power to say yay or nay. It seemed a real possibility that we would indeed meet again, just before I turned and headed to the taxis, just before I pulled out my phone, texted Dan…

Getting cab. Be there soon.

…just before another email alert popped up telling me that my flight will arrive at JFK late, just like it did. But Will I? Won’t I? Will I? Won’t I? may as well have been the riddles of Taoist Monks. Will I? Won’t I? Will I? Won’t I? as a cab came approached. I stepped into it helplessly, a being guided by an incomprehensible fate.

The view inside a memory.

I spent Friday walking around New York. It was a cloudy contemplative day. Strong memories came to me at every corner. But they came in blurry. I couldn’t recall a single, specific moment of the 10 years I spent in New York. Block after block, the harder I tried the blurrier The Past became. So I gave up trying to remember and when I did I realized New York City was the memory. The honking horns. The ambient roar in, out, over and underneath everything. This is all a huge part of me. The walk lights flashing, the stopping and going of people and traffic. The endless chatter that no one on the street seems to be speaking. Everyone walks with shoulders tensed, mouths slightly open, their eyes behind fixed protective expressions, their gazes falling upon a point of distant calm through the vast realm of chaos. Wires running out from their ears, pumping The Cloud into their brains. A huge part of me...

Rain drops began to fall from real clouds, and the rivers of humanity on the city’s sidewalks flowed harder to the subway drains. I helplessly flowed down the drain and was spat out in Astoria, Queens where Dan lived. The wind was hard and knocking down awnings and whisking trash all over the place. Then came the hard rain and in seconds I was soaked, through and through. The rain came in from the side, so I held my head to the opposite side as I negotiated the storm, glancing in one eatery after the other. It was evening now, and the Fridaynighters ate and spoke with silent mouths, leaning close together and smiling in dry clothes just a thin pane of glass away from the biblical deluge through which I trudged.

31st Street, below the elevated N,Q train line was river. The sewer drains were clogged with plastic cups, plastic bags, plastic bottles. The water rose over the curb. The roar of the rain and wind and trains pummeled my consciousness. My soaked hood flapped about my face like hound dog ears. I felt my Self disappearing into just a moving shadow seen only on the edge of the headlights of passing cars.

Then the rain stopped. The wind stopped. The city was now calm and quiet. Smokers crept outside of bars. One smoker saw me, let out a one-syllable laugh, tapped another smoker on the shoulder, who looked at me, laughed the same way, took a drag. Then they turned to each other, huddling in a cloud of nicotine the made all by themselves.

I got to Dan’s, threw my soaked clothes in the dryer, put on some warm, dry clothes, kicked back and relaxed. Sleep was fastly approaching when my phone chirped out another email alert: Flash Flood Warning!

But there was nothing but sunshine the next morning. I ate breakfast by the kitchen window and let the sunrays warm my skin. The same sun would rise over Los Angeles a couple of hours later, 2,500 miles away. The same sun but a different shine. One spoonful of yogurt and granola after another, I kept thinking a hard thought, I don’t miss New York anymore. I love it, but don’t miss it.

After breakfast, I hopped the Long Island Railroad out to Ronkonkoma. There I met up with Dan and the rest of the cast and crew of Richard the Third. I played Clarence, imprisoned by his brother, King Edward. The first scene we shot was mostly a long monologue through which Clarence describes a nightmare he’d had the night before. He dreamt he escaped prison and sailed with his other brother, Richard the Third, across the English Channel. But Richard knocked him over board and…

Lord, lord, what a pain it was to drown!

What dreadful noise of waters in my ears.

What ugly sights of death within my eyes.

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,

Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All lay, scatter’d in the bottom of the sea,

Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in those holes

Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,

As t’were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,

Which woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep

And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.

 

I rode back to the city with Ben, the costume designer. Ben’s been a friend of mine for over 15 years, since Texas, and we’ve been working together off and on ever since. We began to chat – as Ben drove us out of Ronkonkoma – about old times, new directions, etc. Conversation was easy as we cruised down streets that could have been anywhere in the USA. One-story houses, small green lawns, one tree on either side of the sidewalk leading to the front door, an SUV or sedan in the driveway, the occasional rusted, dusty and dented sports car parked on the curb. Georgia. Minnesota, Texas…

Public toilet in Anywhere, USA.

…then we drove down a street we’d already been on and Ben hit the brakes, stopped in the middle of the road. He huffed and puffed and picked up his phone, and spoke, “Get Ben home.” The kind lady in the computer agreed, and led us to New York City.

On Monday, I met up with my friend, Lauren, in Central Park.

“Yeah,” she said, “I got fired from the restaurant, sublet my apartment and have been crashing on couches ever since, getting some clothes out of storage every now and then. It’s great. I feel it now, Todd, the freedom you have.”

“Well, I’ve been feeling it for 4 years now and don’t know how much more of it I want. I’m broke, and I gotta do something about that, or more of what I’ve been doing, or more of whatever–”

“You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. See, it’s not just you or anyone of us, but all of us. We’re all highly unstable. Pluto may not be a planet anymore but it’s still a powerful force on us. Right now, it’s squaring up against Uranus. Those are two powerful forces. Pluto’s a slow mother#$king tugboat of hell and Uranus is lightning. They’ve been at it for a couple of years but next year they’ll stop going at it. Then our paths will be clearer. This is all crazy shit happening at the end of a larger 13,000 year cycle. During that time, Humanity has been defined by brutality. It hasn’t been pretty. But we’re about to enter a new age of Man…you know, the Age of Aquarius (rolls her eyes)…a time when we’ve gotten all the rape, murder and rule out of the way…a time of great enlightenment.”

My phone in my pocket was warm on my skin. An app was running. An app’s always running. The phone’s always running. Always. Everywhere. At once. Always will. I stood up. “I have to pee.”

“Oh god, I do too,” replied Lauren. “I mean, I’ll probably have to be wheeled to the toilet I have to go so bad.”

Almost there…

The next day, I took the N-train to the 7-train to the E-train to the Air-train to JFK. Just before the train pulled into my terminal, I saw all of the borough of Manhattan Island clearly, completely. So small in the distance: the skyscrapers of the financial center downtown to the low buildings of Greenwich Village to the skyscrapers of Midtown and then the consistent range of mid-level buildings to the end of the island. A small simple city. The sun shone brightly upon it, as it will on all cities. As it has on all cities over the last 13,000 years. Cities built by a small simple species that almost has all the rape, murder and rule out of its system.

Be well…

Hey! What’s this?! It’s a donation button! Think El Jamberoo’s worth a couple a bucks? More than a couple a bucks? As many bucks as you can spare? Hey, I won’t stop you…but more importantly, thanks for reading. It means a hell of a lot.

New Old New Ad Infinitum…

Hello Everybody,

Last week, my friend, Mia hired me to build a table out of two old wooden doors. The doors were coated in several layers of paint, applied throughout several decades, except on the corners where the paint had peeled away, exposing brittle and cracked wood.

Stripping all the paint off the doors would’ve taken more time than was worth putting into the project, so I sanded over the doors until the dull gray topcoat of paint opened up in spaces exposing a white coat, then a pink coat, then a blue coat. Also, since I wasn’t stripping off the paint, I thoroughly sanded the edges of the paint around the areas of exposed wood – the smoother the edges, the better the seal I’d get with lacquer. Sanding took most of the morning. When I was done, wiped the grit from my reddened eyes, blew from my nose paint and wood dust that was older than my parents and stepped back to see that both doors had an uneven, yet consistent appearance.

Then I built the frame for the table, mounted the doors atop it, applied wood filler into the screw holes, and ate lunch with Mia as I waited for the filler to dry. After lunch, I sanded the filled holes down, made a pass over the doors with a brush, wiped them down with a damp cloth, then wiped them down with a dry cloth, in preparation of applying the lacquer.

It was a still, hot day with few clouds. The afternoon sun was blinding, reflecting off the lacquer as I applied it. My arms turned from tan to pink to red as I brushed. My face was caked with dust and dried sweat and my eyes were a little irritated. When I finished brushing on the lacquer, I rubbed my eyes, looked real close at the finished doors. By then it was the evening, and in the gloaming the doors glowed as if they had a lights inside them. The lacquer Mia had chosen was clear, but oil-based, so a slight amber tone came with the shine. The grays, blues, pinks and whites were so rich, so distinct, but all colors blended subtly with each other, like the inside of a seashell – it was hard to see where one color ended, and another started. And, the exposed wood at the corners appeared younger, healthier than its previous ashen, brittle appearance.

I was shivering in the evening breeze, as I gathered my tools. Mia came out and liked what she saw. I said goodby to her and walked to the bus stop. By the time my bus arrived, the job had lifted from my shoulders and exhuastion had set in. I slouched in a seat, tucked my tools under my legs. I felt like a real artist – transforming matter from useless to useful again. However, I felt no grand sense of creativity. In fact, as the bus jerked from stop to stop down Hollywood Boulevard, I became convinced that Creativity was an illusion. All I really did was simply expose and illuminate what was already there. I just happened to be open to what was there, and by being so, and trusting my own capabilities, a process of transformation took place. Art is transformation, not creativity…it is discovering what’s within something – whatever’s in front of you – and…holy cow…it wasn’t the doors that underwent a transformation, it was…wow…

Two days later I flew to Texas. My friend, Luis Galindo, was staging the first reading of the book he wrote and I edited, Electric Rats in a Neon Gutter: Poems, Stories and Songs. The book is a semi-damn-near-completely autobiographical collection of musings about love and loss and booze and drugs and hatred and sorrow and ghosts and injustice over several bruising rambling years – though, all the way through, Luis searches for The True, The Pure, The Light. The reading would take place at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, a city where many of the tales within the tale take place.

I landed in San Antonio, spent a day with my mom, sister and her family, then hopped in my mom’s car and onto I-10 East to Houston. I sped down the interstate, bobbing and weaving around 18-wheelers, slowing to the speed limit when I saw State Troopers on the horizon, then speeding up again after passing them. The drive was old, familiar, which was odd because it’d been over 16 years since I’d been to Houston, for a wedding…

…my friend, Matt’s wedding. I remember pulling into Matt’s driveway, walking into his house, cracking open a Budweiser…then cut to me standing outside of the tent where the party after the wedding was being held…swaying slightly, smoking a cigarette, staring down at the patent leather shoes that came with the rented tuxedo…they are too small and my feet ache…I drink dark wine fast from a plastic cup…I want more wine, but I don’t want it to appear like I’m The Drunk at the wedding…granted I am The Drunk at this wedding, but what other people don’t know won’t hurt them…I lift one foot off the ground at a time like a flamingo, gazing up at the night sky, then back to the tent, to see if I could make an inconspicuous dart to the bar...it doesn’t appear that a covert trip to the bar and back without being noticed is possibility, but it’s a mission I’m obliged to undertake…I finish the cigarette, walk to the tent…but everything goes black after that…I hadn’t been to Houston since, or seen Matt, for that matter…

Luis was waiting for me at the theatre. Throughout the afternoon, we went over the order of the pieces Luis would sing, read. Then I timed him as he rehearsed the pieces, to get an idea of the length of the evening. When he’d rehearse a song, he’d pace the stage, strumming his guitar as if the chords he played told him where to step…

 

From the song “Adios Chica Linda”:

I’ve been sick

and I’ve sure been tired

I’ve been up, down, below the ground,

I’ve been stoned, drunk and wired

I’ve had every occupation that a man can hold,

I’ve lost every single thing but my heart and soul

and I sure got a bunch of problems, or so I’m told.

Brian, the lighting technician, played with the lights to find a good tone for the evening. One by one, each light – pink, blue, amber – illuminated Luis differently, as if he was a different person in each light. The familiar songs and poems came to me from unfamiliar directions, like new things that sounded older. The lights bounced off his glasses and guitar as he paced around. By the time Brian finally found the right lighting – a combination of all the lights, naturally – Luis had transformed from a guy rehearsing to a man onstage.

“It doesn’t seem real, man,” Luis told me, after rehearsing. “Feels like I didn’t write any of it.”

“The good stuff always feels that way,” I said. “The real stuff is always humbling, scary.”

“Feels like it all came from somewhere else.”

“Well, it’s all you.”

As 7:30 – the starting time for the reading – neared, Luis grew more and more nervous. “I don’t get this nervous when I’m doing a play,” he’d say, or, “Shit, I didn’t even feel like this when I did Macbeth.” People began to arrive and Luis greeted everybody, shook hands, smiled. The crowd gave him something to do but also drove home the fact that everyone was there to see him. Every now and then he’d rumble passed where I was selling books and tending bar, mumbling, “Jesus, I’m f#$kin’ nervous,” under his breath.

The book is about a certain periods of Luis’ life from which, now, he’s very different. And today, he knows those versions of his Self better than when he actually was those Selves. Time has revealed those Selves to Luis, and he is able to see clearly the transformation(s) he’s undertaken over the years. But no matter what, that’s a lot of Selves to handle, and when the clock hit 7:30, Luis saw all the Selves he’d ever been coming at him. All he could do was walk to them and greet them because the audience was already seated and waiting for the show…

The Heart’s Tangled Jungle

He was a fearful hunter

in the heart’s tangled jungle.

He made preparations

for failure but didn’t show them.

Ever.

He ripped off time

and charged his wallet

and his watch

for the left over crumbs

of his unfinished business.

He would write promises

to God

to be good

and pure

but his scribbled notes

were unreadable

at the moments when it counted.

He walked through gardens

with his cousins

telling half-truths

as their grandma’s chiles ripened

and magnolias kept their mouths shut and the roses were busy

being perfect.

In those lonely moments

when there was no one to lie to

and no reason,

he would tell himself

that everything

was going to be alright

and the wind in his blinds and the Virgin Mary candles tried to tell him

the truth.

All the truth

for the lonely hunter kept the sun on his face but no light, no light no grace

to signify

that he

was walking,

talking

right.

…he was a little fast starting out. But he found the night’s rhythm and soon he had the crowd laughing, gasping, sighing, even tearing up with him at every turn. Luis commanded the stage, without the skin of a Macbeth or Galileo or Stanley Kowalski, or any of the other great roles he’s played, to cover himself. He was Luis, the simplest and most complicated character he could ever play.

Before we knew it, the reading was over, the free beer and wine was gone and the crowd had dispersed.

“The whole thing…none of it feels real,” said Luis, in the parking lot.

“It will tomorrow…maybe,” I said.

“Maybe. Alright, man, see you in LA.”

The next morning, I headed back to San Antonio to spend a few more days with my family. I-10 was fast, fast, fast. Truckers hogged the blacktop as they made out with smart phones. Black and white State Trooper vehicles lay beached on the side of the interstate like killer whales waiting for absent-minded seals. Every now and then there were multiple troopers around a car on the side of the road – it’s trunk open, the troopers searching the car as a Latino or white trash couple stood frozen with their heads down and 2 or 3 children holding their hands and crying. I would pass by these scenes within group of speeding 18-wheelers as if I were seeking protection within a school or some giant industrial-grade species of whale moving at the speed of Economy! and too big and stong for the little Orca troopers to catch in open water.

I got back to my mom’s house, walked in to find my 7-month old niece, Arabella Rose, sitting on the floor, staring up at me. She stared at me the entire time I was there. She’d smile, wave her hands like a bird, shout, cry, burp all over one pastel blue or pink or white jumpsuit after another, smile again, etc…always staring.

She does not like peas.

“It’s because you’re new,” my sister said.

“I was here just two months ago,” I replied.

“That may as well been 10 years ago to her little mind. To her, today, you’re brand new.”

Be well…

The Little Bull Ran

Hello Everybody,

I arrived at Chicago O’Hare about an hour before my flight. It was Christmas Day, so I thought it’d be a lean travel day. I was wrong. The airport was packed. The four throbbing lines at security bottlenecked at the only two scanning docks that were open.

On the air was a general worry of missing flights. A woman in the line next to me would tiptoe, stretch her neck to gaze at the line in front of her, shake her head, then turn around, tiptoe and look at the line behind her, then shake her head again. The fellow behind me kept pushing up against me, huffing and mumbling to himself.

Throughout the lines, divorced mothers and fathers stood in line with their kids, who they were shipping to their ex-wives and ex-husbands for Second Christmas. The parents would stay with their kids until it was time for them to go through the X-ray chamber. Then they’d stand off to the side on their tiptoes, making sure they put on their shoes, belts and coats, grabbed their carry-on. One by one, each child waved goodbye, then disappear into the terminal. One by one, the parents left with the same expression.

It took almost the entire hour to get through security. After I got my shoes, belt, coat back on, I grabbed my bag and fell in with the hurried mob to the gates, and got to the gate just in time to board my flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. From there, I would catch a plane to San Antonio and home. I found my seat, sat down, closed my eyes. I was cold, feverish and had a rather tubercular cough. I’d slept very little in Chicago and was very tired but couldn’t sleep. I opened my book, but couldn’t commit to read, either. So I simply, blankly occupied my allotted space in The Universe until Charlotte.

At Charlotte, there was a mad, collective rush to get off the plane. Angry, anxious passengers shoved their way down the aisle. “I gotta get to my connection, dammit!” exclaimed one bull of a man, as he pushed through the line like a fullback. “I’m trying to get off this damn, plane, baby,” he said into his cellphone. “But everybody’s clogging the line up.”

The flight attendant just shook his head. “They’re holding all the planes, sir, so please-“

“You told me I won’t miss my plane,” the passenger growled back.

“You aren’t sir, so please-”

“You better be right.”

Soon, the man barreled into the end zone and off the plane. All the little step-kids stood in the aisle, with their carry-ons clutched against the chest, their eyes size of silver dollars, helpless in the bubbling froth of impatience. “All of you are gonna make your flights,” said the attendant. “No need to worry at all.”

I wasn’t worried. I had a two-hour lay over and felt like shit. My feet were cold and my face was hot. I hadn’t eaten but wasn’t hungry. I’d dumped so much coffee and Dayquil down my throat that I shook like Katharine Hepburn in her later years. So this Christmas, and what have you done...” I sang silently. Another year over…

Very disturbing cracked plaster dog in my mom’s backyard.

My mom picked me up at San Antonio that night around 9pm. I walked out of the airport into the warmer and more humid weather and finally shook off the Chicago cold that’d grasped me with its icy talons. By the time we got to my mom’s house in Jourdanton – 30 minutes later – I was finally ready to sleep.

I did very little but sleep over the next week. When I’d finally wake up, I’d drink coffee with my mother and my sister in the living room. My my teenage niece and nephew would wake up a little after I would, go to the kitchen, grab a poptart, then disappear. My sister’s newborn baby girl, Arabella Rose, would be locked into her swing. Muzak played from the swing’s mobile as she gaped at the world, speaking in gaga language. The world she appeared to see seemed a world filled with much more wonder than what the rest of us saw. She’d escalate her gagas every now and then, looking at me as if she’d made some discovery, and that nothing whatsoever was more important for me to know than this discovery – such a simple yet profound discovery that not only me, but my mother, and sister, and the entire world needed to know. She gaga’d and gaga’d until her eyes grew red and wet. Then she’d cry. Then she’d fall asleep, grow older and forget the discovery.

One day – I’m not sure which – I walked out of my mother’s little subdivided neighborhood, crossed Texas State Highway 97 with all its fast 24/7 oilfield traffic, walked past the giant peanut factory with it’s loud fans blowing hard, then down a little dirt road where farmers and ranchers dumped dead wild hogs they’ve shot on their land. That day there was a fresh pile of about 5 dead hogs. Only their eyes had been eaten away, probably by buzzards. They were still bloated and their legs stood straight out like they were balloons for some kind of upcoming parade through Hell. A few days later, after their bellies had popped open, the entire countryside would smell of rot. Bones of hogs that had faced the same fate were scattered about the ditches alongside the road, with all the empty beer cans.

A little further down the way, I hopped onto another road that ran alongside a pasture. A herd of cows grazed at the fence line. They all looked fairly young with blue, numbered tags on their ears. You’re all gonna be chopped up and on sale at grocery stores by Spring…

The cattle meandered in the pasture peacefully, but as I came upon them, a little black bull looked up, stared at me. One by one, the other cows stopped grazing, stared at me. Then the little bull made the decision to trot. Then the others trotted behind him. I kept walking. Then the little bull moo-ed, began to run. The others ran. Soon the entire herd was stampeding down the fenceline to the corner of the pasture, where they stopped, began grazing again. When I came closer to them again, the little bull looked at me again, ran again, down the other fenceline. The others did the same. They stampeded hard all the way to the next corner of the pasture, where they stopped again. Grazed peacefully again. Ground up, slapped into a patty and grilled on a summer afternoon…

On Sunday, my flight back to LA  was delayed. Dreary passengers hung out in the waiting area next to the gate – headphones, iPhones, laptops – looking to be in no hurry to reach their destinations. But when one man made his way to the gate – to be first in line when they called general boarding – others quickly followed him. Then more and more did the same – including me – until we formed a giant throbbing glob of humanity. When it was time to board, the airline rep picked up the intercom…”Ok, at this time we’d like to invite all first-class ticket holders to board, all first-class passengers only…” Three people boarded, the glob throbbed closer. “Ok, at this time we’d like to invite all premium ticket holders, all premium passengers only…” A handful of people boarded. The human glob inched its way to the tunnel, condensing into a dense force, nearing the point of singularity and utter calamity…“Ok, at this time we’d like to invite all passengers seated in Zone 3, passengers in Zone 3 please…” until, fortunately, the glob ruptured like a boil and we began to ooze down the tunnel, into the plane. “Zone 4…” Ooze. “Zone 5…” Ahh…

Growing stronger.

It was a long, smooth ride to LA. I was ready to get back West, ready to rehearse the play I’m in, ready to keep writing, ready to line up some carpentry work and get 2014 rolling. But I was still tired, too. The cough was still with me, though it seemed like ages ago I was slipping around the icy streets of Chicago, on Christmas Eve. A real fatigue had anchored into my bones. But somewhere over the great desert of the Southwest – passing by so tiny below me – I accepted Wintertime. Just keep going. In the Spring would come a new energy. In the Spring we’ll be strong again. New calves would’ve be born by then, too, running for their lives from fence to fence until…

Be well…

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…

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…