SelahStories

2004-01-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

Where They Go

Turns out it’s the Klingons who abscond with our lost thoughts, not the Romulans or the Ceylons as was once believed. The first I forgot was the difference between large pebble and small rock, how to tune a harpsichord, what I thought the fireworks sounded like. It is not “abduction,” as such, because in our lapses of mindfulness, we allow thoughts to drift away. The Klingons do not seek them out or in any way compel thoughts to stray from their thinker; they merely harvest what loose cognitions drift their way.

How high in the ether must thoughts rise before fair game? Truth is, once the unguarded thought—be it fact, plan, or reverie--has risen above where even the most ambitious kite may ascend, there is precious little chance of your ever retrieving it. Better it should dissipate into stardust or should live on in some form? Klingons, in fact, refer to such thoughts as “liberated:” released from indentured servitude in the sweatshop of the human brain to find perfected expression in a higher mind.

At least, these are the findings presented by a recent dissertation, based on a ten-year study of six billion chronically forgetful people. I’m impressed with the research, but have nagging questions, like what about when I re-remember something I first forgot twenty years ago and have partially re-remembered every four years since? Maybe fugitive thoughts seek refuge in the clouds and return with the rain. Fireworks fired half a mile down the beach sound like the logy farting of an old man.

2004-01-11T12:53:00.000-08:00

More photos at www.selahshots2@webshots.com

and more buhlahwggage on the way

2004-01-06T20:30:00.000-08:00

1/6/04 Philadelphia, PA Od:102,384

Back in my old Philly hood, the last phase of the anti-quest. Soon, the grail will be carefully concealed and under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, so can’t get saved, as Selah says they mustn’t. Finding it hard to maintain momentum here, sense of being on an extended adventurous outing, when it’s all so familiar. Really, by the time I reached North Carolina, I felt like I was back, the trip was over. Geographically the East Coast varies a great deal from Maine to Florida, but there’s still an essential “East Coastness” about it all. We’ll let that utterly undeveloped assertion lie there for now (or perhaps for all time), and resume.

Rising from night’s slumber back in my loft in Virginny, Sunday morning, I came down and packed up. However, the hurried packer put a few too many items on one chair and I turned to discover the bag containing my groceries had capsized and the gallon container of water had popped its top. By the time I picked it up, two thirds of the gallon had poured out on the floor, stopping just short of where yesterday’s bathroom flood had reached. Yet again, I got to begin my day mopping up a flood with a mop better designed for pushing water than absorbing it. Oh, I’m able to laugh now, but at the time it seemed a soggy and sorrowful omen.

Finally gave up when the water refused to be contained, and went down to the Rappahannock to read on the dock before jetting. Followed, of course, by Goldens. While the younger two swam in the murky water, the older, possibly the mom, laid her head in my lap and looked up adoringly at me while I read. The lonely chronicler was comforted by this gesture of canine affection and was loath to once more make his unholy pact with the road.

However, drive I did. The only thing worth noting was completing “Winesburg, Ohio” and extended reflection on the sad, claustrophobic world simply and strangely rendered there.

The temperature dropped and grayness predominated as soon as I reached Baltimore, and by the time I got to Pennsyltucky, it was all misty and raining, just as it had been when I did during my long drive across the state back in November. Arrived at Sam’s place in Dillsburg with the last light. Spent a great night with the man who really got me on speaking terms with the Bard and that blind poet who glorified satan back when I was long haired lad of twenty. We had a Cajun feast, drank the healing brew named in Sam’s honor, swapped songs, and talked of many things. Before any was the wiser, it had become 2am.

The next day I had a head on with nostalgia when I accompanied Sam back to me alma mater, where I haven’t been since graduation in ’92. Once again, a grey, overcast, cold day. I walked with Sam to Boyer, the monolithic new, swanky building, where his office is. From there, on to all the spots of undergraduate earnestness and folly. Naugle, much the same, but the view of the tracks blocked by new trees. Hess, where I used to climb the gutter up to my window, now joined to Miller and Grantham, a new dorm. The dining commons, the train tracks, the covered bridge. In fact, I even looked under the covered bridge where I hoped to find the only evidence of us, of our time here--that is, of course, where Shawny spray-painted Debaser. Couldn’t find it Goldy; you sure it’s still there?

J term classes didn’t start for another 2 days, so there weren’t too many students around, mainly professors and maintenance folks keeping the grounds pristine. It was strange to see mainly these people, the behind the scenes people who were mainly invisible to me when I was here, yet always there, grooming our little Liberal Arts paradise for us.

So many big and small memories, sensations. As I cut straight across the lawn in front of Eisenhower, I recall Lamar Nisly writing an editorial in the school paper in which he said that when people cut across the lawn instead of using the paths, it “really tested his Mennonite pacifism.” As I walked the path to Hess I remember running with the lads up from Lottie Nelson in naught but our undies on a dare. Trying to sneak onto the roof of Eisenhower. The corners I’d trysted in.

Melancholic in that way you inevitably feel visiting a place that used to be yours, which is now occupied by others, who look at you like you’re an intruder. Even though it had been over ten years, I had managed to preserve everything pretty well in my head—at least the parts that hadn’t changed. This could also be partly due to all the anxiety dreams I often have, most of which involve me not getting all my credits and needing to come back for one more year or semester. Or the ones where I’m working on a paper and go to the bathroom and get lost wandering endless institutional halls and stairways. So memory populates the terrain of the past with ghosts.

2004-01-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

Below, a message from my friend Mr. Coar, who has magically intuited everything I've been doing in the many sizable gaps in my blahwg. Squatzy, I knew you had ESP, but I never before knew the full extent of your skills...

No Blogs, No word. Lost, are you, in the vacuous, smog filled monopoly world of lost angeles? Or in a peyote induced spirit quest in a musky southwest sweat lodge? pehaps smothered on the overly perfumed limbs of a pile of working girls in a multi-themed Nevada brothel? Running with the bison, as if Hemingway in Pamploma, across the great plains wearing nothing but a loincloth cut from a fallen beast with your swiss army knife? On the nod after a week sniffing powder with grizzled cool-jazz catz near the san fran docks? Contemplating lifes twists atop the craggled snow peaked rockies? recording another opus with the memphis horns in a sweaty tobacco stained studio haunted with the ghosts of greats, one hit wonders and never were's? Lost in the swimmingpool eyes of some lovely cornfed american girl as she falls, arms spread as an invitation, into a mountain of hay? Or are you just pulling out of an arbys with a bagful of dinner onto a crowded commercial strip looking for a cheap fleabit motel to crash in. These are things I need to know. Happy New Year my friend. Scot

2004-01-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

1/2-3/04 Wake, Virginia Od: 101,806

Got up before the sun this morning, had toast and coffee with Jess, said goodbye, and we both hit the road: she to pick up Charlie & Sarah from her mom’s house in Charlotte, and me northward. One last stop at the beach to watch the sun begin to rise, then back on the open road.

I felt like shit most of the drive and had to park at a rest stop and close my eyes for an hour, though I don’t think I slept. At first I just attributed my feeling to getting up early after a bad night’s sleep, but six queasy hours later, I had to admit I was sick.

I arrived at the Sangraal By the Sea hostel mid afternoon and was immediately greeted by three golden retrievers who proceeded to follow me everywhere. The owners are away on vacation and all instructions for checking in where provided by a series of old, yellowing, notes. There’s quite a compound here: a huge main house where the owners live, with four guest cottages behind it. 1 and 3 seem to have month to month renters in them. Hostelers stay in 3, where I dropped off my stuff and went for a walk. The hostel is a minute’s walk from an inlet of the Rapahannock River, which I walked down to with a full canine escort. The little cove the path led to was a mostly swampy area, a pier jutting out into the much, the view of the rest of the river blocked by a promontory. I followed a nearby path, but it was too overgrown to get far and I began to feel dizzy. (The path, I later discovered, was impassable due to havoc wreaked by Hurricane Isabel). I settled for heading back to the pier, where I lay down and read Ponge till the sun began to set and I got too chilly. When I got up to leave, I discovered one of the retrievers had been waiting dutifully beside the path for me to return, and it walked me back.

I climbed, shivering and feverish, into my sleeping bag and began reading Pessoa’s “Book of Disquiet,” which is the kind of brutally honest journal, which by comparison, makes this document I’m keeping feel like something that deserves to be called a blog. Then again, I feel too wiped right now to do much more than just try to give a basic account of my day. So I turned pages until Al arrived, my hostel-mate for the night. I descended my ladder to the common area and had my first sustenance since 6 am toast: a Yeungling black and tan, while talking with Al. He’s here from Worcester, MA, of all places, and we talked for quite awhile about dear old Massachusetts and all the places he’d visited today in Virginia. He made me wish I’d stopped in Norfolk or Jamestown on my way up. Then again, the way I’ve been feeling, I was eager to get somewhere I could just rest. Which I why I will sign out now and hopefully feel well enough to say more tomorrow.

* * *
Did feel somewhat better today, at least I did until I climbed down, went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet which proceeded to overflow all over the floor. Not long before Al had discovered all was not well in the cabin’s septic system when the water in his shower refused to go down. So I started the day mopping up water and pee in the bathroom, then I took a shower once all was under control, only to discover, once in the shower, that the water did not smell so good. Ugh, makes my still somewhat unsettled stomach shift to speculate too much.

On to more pleasant matters; drove to Stingray Point and walked along shore of the Chesepeake. It was a gorgeous day: bright sunny and low 70s. I was expecting that Virginia would be the state where I crossed over from the almost-summery weather back into more-or-less-winter, but it was nicer today than any of the days I spent in North Carolina. Yet another gift.

From there I drove down to Jamestown, taking the Colonial Parkway, which is a beautiful, pokey road along the James river with “Historic Spots” ever 2 inches or so. I pulled over often to take in the sights and bird watch. (I’ve done quite a bit of bird watching this trip. I had a great day of it on my birthday, kayaking around Town Lake in Austin, spying on the herons, swans, ducks, and this strange blue headed, pointy beaked critter. Wish my Sibley’s guide hadn’t been destroyed in the flood.)

Got to Jamestown and had a fun time walking around, trying to imagine how it all looked in 1607 based on the rubble, or rather, the reconstructed rubble. Too protect the fragments, they re-buried them and built exact replicas on the ground above. This is the kind of painstaking stuff I never thought about when I used to fantasize about being an archaeologist just like Indiana Jones. There were monuments and plaques everywhere, my favorite being one dedicated to Jamestown’s first pastor, who was praised, among other things “because he endured great privations but was never heard to repine.” I bet he repined plenty when his parishioners weren’t around.

Took the ferry (called the Pocahontas, of course) across the James and back, in the last strong hour of sunlight. My favorite thing about that experience was the way all the gulls floated above and beside the boat, barely flapping, just hanging there, gliding on air currents.
Wish I could hover here, on the brink of winter, two jobs, finding a new apartment. My quest ends soon, too soon.

Saw a billboard yesterday on rte 40 with huge, curved letters advertising what I thought was ANTI QUEST, but without the t at the end. I wondered what the anti quest is. I wondered where the “t” went. Then I realized the sign was for ANTIQUES, which was a bummer. I imagine an Anti Quest would entail something like Percival setting out on a journey with the express purpose of losing the Holy Grail in some godforsaken bog where no other knight may find it.

2004-01-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

Books on Tape Review:

“Lolita” read by Jeremy Irons

*****

Never saw the Irons as Humbert version of the movie, but hearing him read made me want to. He understands and expresses all of Nabokov’s nuances. No road trip longer than a month is complete without Lolita.

“The Mill On the Floss” George Eliot

****1/2

Only got half way through this book when I had to read it in Nisly’s “English Novel” class back in undergrad. My loss. Awesome.

“Into The Wild”Jon Krakeur

****

I’m still thinking about McCandless a month later. Potent stuff. McCandless’s idealism, naivety, bravery, recklessness, intelligence, stupidity, arrogance, and humility make him a pretty compelling cat.

“E Tu, Babe?”Mark Leynor

****

Makes your gut hurt from laughing. For real. Save this or the longest, least scenic stretch of road.

Short Stories of Philip K. Dick

***

As with much sci fi, the ideas often way more compelling and engrossing than the storytelling, dialogue, character development. And the reader, Keir Dullea: really annoying.

“Life of Pi” Yann Martel

***

Good story, often great writing. A lot gets wasted , though, and some passages were so dumb I found it hard to keep listening. For instance, author spends a long time developing the main dude, Pi, and how he comes to convert to and simultaneously practice Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianty—then completely does nothing with this fascinating paradoxical practice.

“The Wild Blue” Stephen Ambrose

the story itself **** the personal spin Ambrose puts on the story *

Often fascinating accounts of WW2 B24 bomber pilots, in particular, George McGovern and his crew. Lots of patriotic gloss and editorializing by Ambrose. The conditions the crewhad to endure in the course of a typical mission are unbelievable.

“Sin Killer” Larry McMurtry

*1/2 Blech.

I got less than halfway through and couldn’t stand it. Bad historical fiction with no likable characters.

“Six Stories by Louis L’Amour”

**

Better than Sin Killer because Louis sticks with straightforward western clichés and one dimensional characters rather than pretend he’s writing serious literature, like Larry. Plus the authentic country western synthesizers and realistic gun shots give Louis a clear edge.

“Beowulf”

I’m not gonna attempt to star rate the big B, but I will note that I did not find it the best travel tape—that is, if your goal, like mine, was to seriously understand and follow the whole convoluted thing without constantly rewinding.

“Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson

I’m only halfway through, but so far I say that you should believe the hype. The version I got has a different contemporary fiction writer reading each story, which I like, though some are really hard to listen to, like Richard Ford who inserts these maddening, unnecessary pauses everywhere.

Tom Waits bootlegs

Very much like a great book of short short stories, not only because many songs are basically short stores (“Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis”), but also for the stories he tells between songs.

Cracker Barrel stores rent books on the tapes, which you can rent in one store and return at any other. Very cool, but the selection is pretty narrow; because Cracker Barrel orders all its books on tape from one company, I found almost the exact same tapes in Billings, MT that I found in Yuma, or Nashville.

2004-01-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

New Year’s Day 2:27 a.m Carolina Beach, NC

Jess and I just got back from the beach where we watched fireworks with glasses and champagne. Looked for hermit crabs. We laughed at the fireworks that seemed to dud, deciding that they were just a little too tired to put out: maybe in their next incarnation. I read Ponge out loud by flashlight, “Mollusks,” because we were shining the flashlight around hoping to catch sight of hermit crabs or other crustaceous critters. I wanted to read her “Oysters” too, because I had a bucket of steamed oysters this afternoon in a beachside lesbian bar (so Jess told me later) called “The Silver Dollar.”We slow danced to Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” We both had our own particular style of twirl: Jess’s very elegant, mine was very whirling dervish, but maybe that was the pointy blue gnome hat I was wearing. Drinking champagne reminded me of when I worked at the Ramada and all the dishwashers and prep chefs would go back by the dumpster and drink the bottles of champagne left over from wedding parties in the function room.

I had hoped to make it down to pier tonight, since this has become my late night ritual. Last night I met a fisherman who was packing it up for the night. His only catches that night had been sand sharks, two or three feet long, all of which he threw back. I would love to see and smell a live, wild shark up close, provided I’m out of biting range.

I could write a whole blog just based on short, more or less random, encounters I’ve had with strangers during my trip. Like the trucker at the rest stop between Sonora and Austin (on that road where I must’ve seen 40 road killed deer). He was keeping his golf arm trim by hitting a ball with his nine iron around the twenty square foot patch of grass in the center of the rest stop.

I wandered up and down the beach today with my Gremlin ukulele and got looks so curious you would’ve thought I was actually carrying a gremlin around, a mogwai, perhaps. Made up silly songs and read. Did not make resolutions, but if I did, they might be:

1. Eat more steamed oysters in 2004.
2. make a strap for my uke using that old Wrangler belt.
3. Invent the personal jet pack.
4. Whenever possible, discourage youngsters from forming Degarmo & Key cover bands.
5. Have more flying dreams, both with and without jetpack.
6. Try to do less stupid stuff, and when I do, don’t publicly blog myself with it.
7. Eat cracklin once more, but only once.
8. Dance like a dervish whenever possible, whether or not it further alienates me from other earthlings.
9. Find an above ground dwelling place.
10. Finish The Man Without Qualities already.
11. Trick George Bush into joining a Peebo Bryson/ Billy Ocean cover band.
12. Continue to feed and deepen my addiction to hot sauce and coffee.
13. Make the Dio “devil’s horns” with my hand less often, and when I do do it, really deeply feel it and mean it.
14. Live in such a way that I cause more portals to open up in the fabric of the lives around me.
15. Remember all my dreams, especially the flying dreams.
16. Kick it with a tasty groove.

2003-12-31T08:44:00.000-08:00

!2/29, 30/03 late Carolina Beach, NC

A seaside town; prefab condos on stilts. Stylish, seedy, salty, patrolled by pelicans, seagulls. More beautiful for its grit. I love being by the ocean, omniscient, ancient entity, a complex relationship of forces. A constant ferment. Just got back from walking by myself along the beach late, listening to the waves, speaking to an invisible being whose replies I sometimes try to transcribe into poems and songs.

I walked up and down the beach, the boardwalk, the town. I was able to enjoy the delicious solitude that is rarer than I’d like. During this trip, experienced as many kinds of being alone as there are Eskimo words for snow, as there are names for God or Satan. There was the way I felt revisiting my house in Carol Stream, after twenty two years. The vast field I played in paved over, covered with houses. My house, which was my house, and has always been my mental image of what a home looks like, reduced to a nice, attractive, utterly anonymous suburban home, the mulberry tree gone, the garage door painted a more olive shade of green. And there was the 37 pushups in a winter rate, sea side motel (to quote Smog) kind of feeling. And being with new people that you must hide your loneliness from. And the eight hours in the car, alone with the recorded voices of actors reading books or the drug of music—an exacting, but thoroughly inexact alchemy: today I need to listen this tape, but only the first three songs on the first side and the last song on the second side. If I do so, I can count on not feeling lonely, depressed, or—far worse—bored, for a good, oh, another ten minutes or so. At which point a new alchemic remedy must be concocted. But the delicious solitude: I had it tonight, and I’ve been lucky to experience it often during my journey.

Talked about the difference between solitude and loneliness on the phone with Bella tonight, who spent three and a half days alone, beginning Christmas eve, because she had a really serious bout with the flu. The kind of solitude that has none of the noble exalting qualities one associates with the word “solitude,” like “peace,” “repose,” “quietude,” or “stillness,” except in the sense that she was too sick to move much. And yet she reported that one of the outcomes of this enforced solitude was a renewed appreciation for the drive to work, for work itself, even though in her case, work is often very hard and draining.

Obviously, ideal solitude is chosen, not forced upon you, and too much of the wrong kind of loneliness can *make* you sick, can erode your psyche. But worse is the fear of solitude, than the inability to handle being alone for an extended period of time.

Been reading the fantastic, effervescent proems of Francis Ponge today. After reading them for a while, you begin to feel like you can spy on the solitary, sacred lives of things. Time to climb into bed and read more of this poet whose last name I do not know how to pronounce.

2003-12-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

My webshots page is full. For photos of Montana and the Southern leg of the trek, go to:

www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?!=670e21b35be9380514

2003-12-28T06:37:00.000-08:00

12/26/03 – 12/27/03 Carolina Beach, NC Od: 101,467

Roxy, traffic cops, Nature Valley Fruit & Nut granola bars, & cosmos be praised! I made it to Jess’s enclave on the beach, the Atlantic, that is, in North Carolina, for Christmas after an epic drive this week through the south. From sea to shining sea and all the mountains, rivers, plains, cacti, deserts, oases, and visionary vistas in between. Sarah, Jess’s 7 year old daughter, leans against the sill next to me and watches what I write and laughs happily when she reads her name in this entry. Her cats play at my feet and Jayhawks on the radio. Arrived around 4:30 Xmas afternoon after an eight-hour haul, beginning in Knoxville, TN. Amazing how many people on the road, how many places were open. It was a beautiful stretch through eastern TN, and Western NC. 7% grades up mountain passes. Sunny and clear. Like no Christmas weather I’ve ever known in 34 years.

Maybe I should try to resume from the point I left off in my last entry (23rd), and I’ll see if I can connect the dots somewhat: after writing my pessimistic entry at the Springwater, Kyle showed up and saved the day. Kyle was the other act booked for the night, and turned out to be a swell guy. He usually performs in the local band Lylas, but came with his Martin to play a stripped down set like me. We quickly achieved solidarity and decided we’d perform for each other if no one else showed. As it turned out, friends of Kyle did show, and gradually, as we played, more and more folks from the other room came over to see what was up.

We decided we’d play short, alternating sets, so Kyle began by playing five songs, then I got up and played 5, then Kyle, then me. Kyle’s third set ended with some fun, crowd pleasin covers, notably, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and “Walking On Sunshine,” which ended with me and two of Kyle’s friends swaying beneath the tinsel, singing along. We decided this was a fitting end to the show, and put guitars away and hung out drinking and talking till closing.

Incidentally, another variation on the alternating set concept was used at the last Area 5 show—a much chaotic variation. The two opening bands decided they would alternate every single song; thus, The Holy Smokes would play a song, then Two Year Touqe (with me as surrogate bassist) would play a song, then the Smokes. This was particularly chaotic because these were both full bands, so we ended up trading the same sets of instruments. Not to mention the antique PA, borrowed from a local hardcore band called Ass End Offend. Seriously. But more on that later, I hope.

Talked and drank on the house till Springwater closed up. Part of the time I talked to a guy who’s daughter had a horrendous illness which caused her belly to bloat up from all the tumors in it. I tried to comfort him but could mainly just say, “That’s horrible, that’s awful” as he described it all. I went back to Kyle’s a crashed for two hours on his pull out couch before rising early—he had to have an early breakfast with his parents. I rose in a complete, sleep deficit daze. I explored Nashville, ate at a deli called Noshville when the line at Pancake Pantry proved insurmountable, and ended up at a music and video store called The Great Escape, where I bought videos for Jess and her kids. Finally, got my weary carcass into the car and drove to Knoxville. I remember little about that drive, blurred as it’s become with all the other drives I did this week, but I am grateful it was only a little over 3 hours. More and I would’ve been a likely highway fatality. I was so tired I kept thinking the road was a dream road that I was drifting along between long yawns. Each time I looked into the rearview my squinty, dark circled eyes were looking back at me, or, trying to.

Was very grateful to reach the surprisingly large town of Knoxville where I was the sole inhabit of a very sweet, cozy hostel. What Al, the owner, referred to as a “former kudzu topiary” and junkie crashpad which he bought, renovated, and turned into a hostel. Which, I should also note, is in a somewhat dangerous neighborhood. Al, luckily, just happened to pull up at when I arrived around 4; he heated up some of his mom’s chili for me, told me about Knoxville, showed me what I could make for breakfast, and generally made me feel very at home, then headed off for church choir practice leaving me the place to myself for the rest of the night. For the first time since before my fateful apartment flooding back in NoHo, I had my own place, even if just for the night. I took a steaming hot bath, watched the Simpson’s, read, and went to bed early. Though I paid less than I paid for a bunk in a crowded room next to that snorer in Austin, at Knoxville I had the entire house and all its amenities completely to myself. I slept in the girl’s dorm because it was further from a very nearby stretch of highway then the boy’s. I slept well, though the alarm went off way too damn early. It was quite pleasant imagining this was my house as I made a big breakfast of coffee, toaster waffles, eggs, and oatmeal.

Couldn’t linger, though, and by 8 am I was on the road to Carolina Beach. 8 long, slow hours. Some beautiful stretches, but there was also hours stuck on the pokey dokey Rte 74 driving 35 mph and stopping at all the traffic lights in every little town. I was greeted upon arrival by Jessy’s son 8 yr old son Charlie, who I’d never met before. Quickly, however, he was calling me Uncle Danny Dan—as Sarah does—and all was well. He has since been christened Charniverous by me. Jessy, Sarah, and I walked on the beach, then came back and Jess made a feast for us.

Yessi, Charnisaurus, Sassy Bo Bassy, and their three cats live with Jess’s dad, Jack, who is in very rough shape after a very nearly fatal stroke. His memory was fried by it, and he’s constantly asking where he is, who I am, how to get to the bathroom, when supper is, when Christmas will be (two days after it’s over) and being struck with disbelief when told what he did and said in the distant land of yesterday, and the ancient, prehistoric deeds of two days ago. It’s very sad, and hard to see, and hard to imagine what Jess & her kids life is like on a daily basis making sure Jack is safe and gets his insulin shot and doesn’t binge on sweets.

I feel more than a little like Jack, trying to reconstruct the last three days. I know that yesterday I played a Star Wars catapult game with Char at the Kitchen table and washed a lot of dishes and watched Battlestar Galactica with Jack & Char. Also had a pre dusk walk with Jess down the beach and to the end of the boardwalk, where we watched diving pelicans and surfers.

Today I jammed with Char out on the side porch, me on my birthday uke: A Gremlin (my present to myself back in Austin), Char on a toy xylophone or “viber” as we called it. Recorded two new songs on my dad’s big, bulky old school hand held cassette recorder and a song of Charnivorous’s called “The Multiplication Rap”; Charlie rapped and I did human beatbox, with rhythmic burps thrown in to keep it jiggy. A supra kick ass tune about the strides Char’s taken to master his multiplication tables. Must be heard to be believed. Back to beach. Poem writing, lyrics, sunshine, dancing with Sarah, Jess & I watching the psychedelic setting on my powerbook's jukebox.

Back to Jack for a moment. Before I paint him into a sad cobwebby corner, I should also note the stunning lucid passages, that almost knock you over they’re so unexpected. Like when Jess took him to the bathroom and asked if he needed any help peeing. He replied “No, though the Doctor warned me not to lift any heavy objects alone.” Or when he turns to me at the dinner table and asks what do I think about Django Reinhardt? Someone asks what time it is and, without missing a beat, recites:

“Who’s keeping time
with the time keeper’s daughter
while the time keeper’s busy
keeping time?”

These are the moments I often don’t record in my scramble to note quote unquote: main events. That these events (gigs, landmarks, views, blah blah blog) are the most important parts of my trip is a notion as erroneous as the one I’m guilty of putting forth back when I’m a teacher; that is, that the “current events” as covered in 20 visually manipulative minutes by CNN is an accurate reflection of “what’s happening in the world.”

I keep trying to write dutifully about where I went, what I did, saw, how many miles drove, but there’s so much that never finds its way into these entries. Though I have developed the habit of writing on a little sketch pad on my thigh, beneath the steering wheel as I drive, often using the mostly useless triptic as a mini writing desk, even the poems in progress and song fragments begun on the fly fail to express the essence of my journey. I’m overflowing but I don’t ever know where to begin or how to translate the simplest realization into something like how it feels when I realize it.

Therefore: my cousin Glen, back in San Diego (too manicured a city, too much military for me) tells me about eating dinner with our shared Grandfather (our mom’s dad): Harold Moberg. Glenn and his siblings clearly remember him stoically taking his gum out of his mouth before a meal and sticking it onto the back of his ear and leaving it there till the meal’s finished, at which point he pulls it off and sticks it back in his mouth. He did not, Glenn insists, have a sense of humor about this; it was a serious, time honored gum preservation strategy.

Or: back in Austin I spent my birthday kayaking and biking and wandering around Austin in a dream where every place portended something important that I way always just on the edge of discovering, and was content not to. Like the Robison Crusoe headquarters discovered on a small, scrubby island in Town Lake. I kayaked out to the island, secured my Walden Paddler (honest injun, that was the brand name) and right away, came upon a mountain bike on top of a slope a few feet from shore. In the center of the island, a homemade tent, just big enough for the sleeping bag, blanket, and bucket full of supplies just inside its flaps. At the entrance, a long, wooden handled shovel was shoved into the ground. A fold out fabric chair to the right side of the entrance. A big rope net was turned into hammock, hung in two trees and suspended several feet above the tent. Two very tidy campsites, one for cooking, with a grill, pan, kettle, and another, a few feet away for campfires. No Crusoe in sight. I imagined and was nearly convinced that it was all placed and provided here solely for me, that I should begin my 34th year by beginning a new life living in this tent, a refugee from civilization—with a perfect view of downtown Austin and the nearby Power Plant. It seemed so uncanny that someone would be able to live thus without being kicked off by the authorities, that I decided it must be an enchanted place, protected from those who are not meant to see it.

Or the last show at Area 5, ending the set flat on the floor slamming my hand into my strings up and down the neck, eyes closed, mind free.

Now that I’ve paused somewhere and rested up, I would love to go back and relive every minute, every day, every person, every place I went to from the White Mountains on. All I ask is that I retain a dim sort of prescience that allows me to correct a few tiny slips, while preserving the bulk of it exactly how it is. Like staying at Crescent Beach that first night in California, instead of that smelly, dark, dog shit surrounded cabin in Klamath. Or not doing that really dumb thing I did in Austin that I’m only telling my closest of close friend about. Then again, if I changed one thing, it would all be different, so I wish I could have it all exact, but for the ability to enjoy all of it a little more than I did at those moments when fret and nerves got the best of me.

2003-12-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

The Evolution of Sasquatch

It wasn’t until the middle of the 21st Century that the average citizen realized
Sasquatch and Big Foot where basically one in the same.
In the Old World he was still referred to by a certain class of the aristocracy
as the Dixie Marauder. He—so they say—rows misty Appalachian rivers
in his dugout, raids nearby cabins for blankets, hardcovers, kerosene, fatigues, slippery elm lozenges.

I had the privilege of spending a weekend in his rustic cave, conducting a candid interview. He wishes he were equipped to fly and dive into the waves
as a pelican does, his black hair was glossy as a cormorant’s wing.
Not that he is unhappy with his lot, but why shouldn’t he enjoy daydreaming
as much as we do?

I am inclined to agree with the Belgians, who assert he is a poet, the first true
Native genius of his continent, though the form his verse takes may not be initially recognizable as such, his lexicon thorny, seemingly obtuse.
Translated, one stanza warns:

“Do not laugh at dancing nymphs
for they may prove Apollo’s consorts.
Show you pay heed unto the dwarf
by request of a lemon swedge in your port.”

To speak true, it occurs to me that he and I may have swapped places
and I remained behind in the cave while he writes the account you’re reading.
It would be far better if that were so.

2003-12-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

12/23/03 8:17pm Nashville, TN Od: 100,824

A gap of several days, places, thousands of miles, which will be filled in at some point…

Greetings from The Springwater Dinner Club and Lounge, where the personalized Bud banner across from where I sit advertises Happy Hour prices, shows three regulars drinking, and bears the slogan:

“Where everybody knows your name,
and sometimes you wish they didn’t.”

The Springwater adjoins Hog Heaven, a restaurant that serves the sort of fare you’d expect with a name like that. The bar is next to the big park in Nashville, and from the door of the Springwater, you have a good view of the park’s pride, an exact replica of the The Parthenon. I walked around it; an impressive structure, especially right after all the pouring rain, emerging from the mist and fixed upon by red, white and blue lights. Having never been to thee Parthenon, I can speak to its authenticity as an exact replica, but based on photos, it looks like the real deal. Now there would be a place to play a gig.

As things stand, I’ll have to be content to play The Springwater. Which actually seems like a great, laid back, low down, smokey, super-divey joint with a great jukebox; in short, my favorite kind of bar—not unlike the dear old Bay State. A place I would frequent if I lived here. The stage and walls around it are covered with red carpet. The back wall is covered with red tinsel and the ceiling hung with long stalactites of silver and white tinsel. The tinsel is low enough that it will touch my head when I get on stage. The bar runs the length of two rooms, partially divided. The front room has a pool table, dart boards, and a golf video game in a recessed nook. Here in the stage room, three drinkers and the barkeep watch a Cheech & Chong movie on the tv above the bar, bathed in the glow of a neon blue Icehouse sign. In the other, the X files, muted, flickers above the drinkers and pool players, darters, virtual golfers.

Why do I slowly sip my Shiner Bock and vaguely dread the fact that I must soon go load in my guitar and amp? Unpack, plug in, tune, place my set list on the floor beside me. Because at that moment, I will go from the guy quietly sipping his Bock and tapping on his laptop, a guy who, so far, has only spoken to the bar tender here—I will go from being this vague, private entity, hunched over his solitary pursuit, to a very public someone standing on the stage behind a guitar and a microphone, singing through the PA to people that, so far, I have not even made passing eye contact with. I will request, through this act, that everyone shift their focus and attention from whatever they’re doing and thinking, to look at me, to listen to me.

Cheech and Chong are now rock stars: one is singing into a mic and the other is sweatbanded and playing a guitar, an absurd, mustached parody of who I will become in half an hour. I must confess that I do not know which is Cheech and which is Chong. “Do They Know It’s Christmas” plays on the jukebox: “feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time.”

I don’t know a soul in this bar. The one person I know in Nashville is likely not in town, has not responded to my messages. I’m tired. I spent six hours in the car driving here from my motel room in Jackson, MI. It rained hard most of the way and the last book on tape I got at Cracker Barrel was bad. All conspire to make me a wee bit cranky and wobbly at the prospect of taking the stage…

2003-12-24T06:19:00.000-08:00

12/19/03 10:36am Sonora, TX Od: 98,981

The kills of upstate New York have become the washes of Arizona, the draws of central Texas. Roadside does replaced by road-killed coyotes. The landscape has been a long straight dream of desert, cacti, scrub and bouldery mountains, gradually giving way to buttes yesterday. I drove straight through most of the way because I wanted to make time, but did get to chat with some more border cops who, thankfully, only questioned, once overed, and sent me on my way. Spent the night in very cheap and perfectly nice Zola’s Motel. Talked guitars and country music with a tall, sincere old timer changing the linens in the rooms this morning—possibly the husband of Zola. Watched an episode of the A Team in which the boys rescue a diamond mine heiress and Murdock does a very good British officer’s accent.

Hiked a nature preserve in Sonora, most of which is on a ridge commanding a great view of this sweet, dusty little town. Cactus quills still in my shins from off trail wanderings.

2003-12-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

Written: 12/18/03 10:10am El Paso, TX Od: 98,586

I sit, chair tipped back against my bed, feet on the sill of my window in the Hotel Gardner, a hostel in the heart of downtown El Paso. A huge, grand old hotel like the Congress, but a whole lot more creaky and dilapidated. However, I dipped into my plastic funds and got a private room with a shared bath, so I’m living mighty large, watching the mountains and buildings and traffic and people and drinking my coffee out of my travel mug, which I altered from “America’s Free Thanks To Our Veterans” to “America: Hank & Sun Ra”.

I’m happy to report that Antonio, the manager of the hostel is incredibly friendly and talkative and gave me a royal welcome, lots of advice, and an illustrated map on the safest way to and through Juarez after dark.

El Paso’s downtown reminds me of Butte, MT. Big, wide streets, with lots more businesses and buildings than there seem to be people to merit them. They share that sense of having been big boomtowns about a century ago. Walking back to the hotel last night it was nearly a ghost town. A passed a big park completely saturated with Christmas lights and a looped recording of Xmas songs playing for no one but me. I found the one place that seemed open: The Tap, where I had a Tequila before fleeing the guy morosely singing along to Cars songs on one side of me and a loud, flailing, wiry, wild eyed, stringy white haired guy who raved in Spanish next to me.

On the other hand, at around 6 pm, as I made my way through downtown, the streets grew increasingly crowded as I neared the border, and by the time I reached the last few blocks of El Paso street, shops, sidewalk, and streets were totally and completely packed out with Mexican folks who’d crossed the border to do their Christmas shopping. It was an exciting mass of people to move among, and with, as I crossed the bridge over Rio de Janeiro, through the checkpoint, and into Juarez.

The main Avenida was the Mexican version of El Paso street, with dozens of shops selling Mexican crafts. The main difference being, none of the Mexicans were visiting these shops, while they were thronging the more expensive American stores in El Paso. I wandered all over the downtown and settled on Taco Lucas for an excellent, very inexpensive dinner of frijoles y queso burrito and a Carta Blanca. Kick ass salsa bar, literally, unfortunately, when I discovered the fiery price of overindulging in the hottest of the hot. I bar hopped for a few hours, but as it got later, being a lone American in increasingly dark, scrappy streets began to seem a little unwise. The taxi drivers offering to take me to girls went from friendly and encouraging to intense and adamant. The energy was wild and raw, again, for a Wednesday night. Juarez on Friday must be a carnival.

Everyone I talked to was very friendly, though shop keepers clearly didn’t understand the concept of “window shopping.” Maybe they would’ve been more relaxed if I wasn’t the only customer in nearly every shop I stepped into.

The bars were dark and raucous. I walked past one where “The End” by the Doors was playing, and right as I walked by, Jim reached the oh so Freudian part of the song: “Mother I want to…..,” but though Morrision finished the line by uttering a primal, inarticulate scream, dozens of drunk, jubilant voices screamed out what he meant to say.

I went into the bathroom of one bar and all that was in there was a single stall and, as I later discovered, a little hole for a urinal trough. Someone was in the stall and I waited outside. When he finished, I went in and found the toilet had not flusher. Thus the results of the previous fellow’s endeavors were simply sitting there in a heap. A man came in and pointed me to the tiny pee trough and commenced to scoop the contents of the bowl into a metal bucket and then left with it.

Recrossing the border was also unpleasant, though in less visceral way. I produced my passport for one border cop who was about to wave me through, when another who was sitting in a chair leapt up and decided to take an interest in me. Maybe it was because I said I was a musician; we all know they’re suspicious sorts. He began questioning me and had me empty out all my pockets. All his questions had an intense, interrogatory edge, as though my initial answers were just too simple to accept. What really bugged me, moreso than the groin frisking he treated me to, was when he got to the small notepad I carry with me, full of scribbles and rough drafts, lyrics, notes to self, etc. He asked if this was were I wrote my songs and when I said yes, he opened it and began to read the first 3 or 4 pages. Was he making sure I hadn’t written any songs urging the unconditional release of Saddam, or criticizing the killing of those children in Afghanistan last week?

As is always the case in these situations, he went from deeply inquisitive to instantly bored and dismissive. As he abruptly turned away and I gathered up my stuff, I said, somewhat sarcastically I’m afraid, “Sorry, I usually have more interesting stuff on me.” Which wasn’t that smart, obviously, because he turned on his heel and fixed me with his interrogatory gaze again and said: “Oh really, like what?” Time and again I have learned not to act like a person possessing a spine—or a sense of humor--when dealing with cops and time and again I do it anyways. Ladies and gentleman, may you learn from my mistakes

2003-12-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

Written: 12/17/03 8:46pm Tucson, AZ Od: 98,263

Two San, I hate to be leavin ya So Soon. The highly scientific City Rater is busily whirring and beeping, lots of lights flashing, and will continue to do so for days to come, as present experience of Tucson is weighed and reevaluated in light of future presents and the places that accompany them. However, I will say right off that Tucson scored very high in most criteria laid out last night. The only of those criteria where Tucson rated low was copability. As I sat at Epic Café and typed, I watched a cop pull over and bust a motorcyclist and a bicyclist within a half hour period. Not sure what the motorcyclist did, but the guy on the bike, as far as I could tell, failed to come to a stop at a stop sign.
He made him get out his wallet and show his driver’s license, which struck me as pretty damn silly.

However, Tucson did very well in several other categories. For instance, they scored very high in the cheap drink/vintage video game department, thanks largely to a bar called Sharks, which had a “2 amber bocks for $2” special. When I ordered that, the barmaid poured and handed me both at once, which I wasn’t expecting. Then, in honor of you, Shawny, I took my frosties and sat down at the mint condition early 80s upright Galaga and proceeded to annihilate scores of bee, scorpion, and hornet-like dive bombing alien ships while a band, which looked to be of the same vintage as the Galaga, rocked through a note for southern fried note cover of “Sweet Home Alabama”—(including the “turn it up” at the beginning). When the band finished up with a long jammy thing, the bartender began playing mid 80s Rush. I ended up earning the 3rd, 4th, and 5th best scores on the machine, and you know I derived some real pride from typing my initials in, well knowing my selfless deeds of heroism in the fight to rid the cosmos of insect aliens would live on in story and song centuries hence.

And Tucson has for sure got its share of freaky people, many of who are most certainly visionaries or oracles of some sort. For instance, the crowd at the Internet café I ended up at around 1 in the morning. First of all, every single person in the place seemed really drunk or altered in some highly charged, unpredictable way—this includes the two guys working there. There was the female Mexican midget who walked up to me, utterly unprovoked, and pretended she was going to stab my genitalia with an old chewed up drumstick she was carrying. A middle aged Native American guy who said he was only this drunk because he “just got out after 93 days” intervened and steered the midget away from me. Soon thereafter she was making out with one of the café’s workers in the back of the café.

The other guy working there had a very drunk (or something) girlfriend come in crying and screaming at him and then going outside and slur-screaming to every one outside about him. Periodically she would appear in the doorway and slur something like: “you pussy, you can’t even fuckin look at me” and other unkind comments about a woman with a “fat ass.” As I made my escape, she was giving a report to a cop, but soon thereafter, she reprised parts of her routine in the lobby of the Congress Hotel. The midget and the café worker also ended up in the lobby soon thereafter.

It is the Hotel Congress that I stayed last night: a grand, funky building with a nightclub, bar, and restaurant, and barber shop. The Congress is most notable (historically) for being where John Dillinger and his gang were hanging on the down low after the big heist when caught by the police.

It was a somewhat sleepless night, since I could only afford a hostel room, which ended up meaning I had to share a bunk bed in a very small, drafty, single room with a 60 something year old gentleman from Calgary who snored very loudly and tossed and turned all night. A nice man with weak English and a very thick French accent who described for me this morning of his plans to camp out in the Sonora desert for the rest of the week.

I’m realizing as I quickly peruse what I’ve written so far that I may not be doing a very good job of conveying why I find Tucson such a great town and that I may, in fact, be leading my reader to draw the exact opposite conclusion. I guess what I’m trying to convey is something of the wild, manic contact buzz I got off Tucson—and on a Tuesday night, no less. Tucson, I assure you, contains many and various portals to other dimensions.

To give you only the most obvious example, there’s the truly unbelievable, one of a kind music store on Congress St. This place simply has to be seen to be believed. A huge, three floor warehouse space crammed to overflowing with musical instruments and gear, hung from racks or simply piled and leaning willy nilly all over the place. Thousands (this is not hyperbole) of guitars and cousins of the guitar. Crazy, strange mutant guits, cheap, funky, beaters, breathtaking vintage classics. Classic Gibson SGs and weirdo Harmonys, Silvertones, and dozens of makes I’ve never heard of. Crazy, beautiful mariachi guitars, ukes, basses, and more drums and drum accessories in one place than anywhere else in the world (stated matter of factly by an employee). I was seriously and sorely tempted by a 1967 Fender Jazz bass that was only $400. All that stood between me and an instantaneous impulse buy was the lack of $400. If I hadn’t unspooled a trail of thread behind me, I likely would never have found my way out of there.

Unfortunately, I did. I wrestled hard with the temptation to linger one more day in Tucson, but decided I needed to make some distance, among other things, to make sure I don’t have to rush to make my show in Nashville.

I’m glad now I did, because if I waited another day, my rear passenger side tire, which I discovered to be dangerously low, would have been totally flat after another whole day of sitting. I discovered the culprit: a screw stuck right in the center of the tread. I limped to a nearby shop where they were exceedingly friendly and quick to patch up my tire and send me on my way. But I’ll be back. I’ll be back…

2003-12-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

12/20/03 11:40am Austin, TX Od: 99,191

First off, I'd like to congratulate myself on surving my Christ year without meeting my demise in any brutal or unpleasant fashion, or in any fashion at all. All reliable indicators lead me to the conclusion that I'm still alive, and unless my chest cold and sore throat take an unexpected and very serious turn for the worse, I'll continue to be a resident on earth for the forseeable future.

How the hell did he get from Tucson to Austin? Just think Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride." Actually, this blog head has written three entries since Tucson, (Tucson 2, El Paso/Juarez, Sonora), but I've been unable to find a computer that I can plug my laptop into, so I will post them next time I find a place to plug G4 in. In the meantime, we shall forge ahead on the Austin hostel's computer, with its funky curved keyboard that is, I imagine, supposed to be easier to use, less carpal tunnel inducing, but which has me fumbling and back pedaling and constantly putting in extra spaces. A woman speaks in German on the payphone next to me. I've met three Germans, a woman from New Zealand, and two young guys from Melbourne, Australia. The common room here is quite cozy with tall windows and an amazing view of the Town Lake, as it's called--though I think it's just a wider stretch of the Colorado River--and, beyond, downtown Austin.

I walked to that distant downtown last night, and quite a ways beyond what I can see from here. I walked and walked and walked some more. I was blown away but what a big city Austin is. It's central downtown and surrounding areas made me think a little of a southern Philadelphia. Then again, it's hipster shops and such on Guadalupe felt very New York City. It was too late, alas, that I realized that many of the music clubs I wanted to end up at where indeed on Lamar, the big street running parallel to Guadalupe, but they were on South Lamar. In South Austin. So I walked and walked. And walked. Finally ended up at The Saxon Pub and it was worth all the blisters. I saw the Resentments, a five piece made up of top notch players, all of whom sang and traded instruments. Brilliant picking, harmonies, lap steel.

I got back to the hostel around 2:30, totally dead on my feet, which made it quite a bit easier to sleep in dorm room with six strangers.
And already it's off again, to Nawlins, if I can haul some ass on the highway. Just to give you readers a taste of the kind of adventures you can safely assume I *won't* be having in New Orleans, I offer the brief testament of a fellow traveler. There's a board here in the hostel where hostelers are ecouraged to post pieces of paper on a big world map, offering suggestions for what to do where, which hostels are most fun, etc. A scrap of blue paper encourages us to:

"Go to New Orleans for the Heritage Jazz Festival--hook up with a girl from Kentucky & move into her suite @ The Hyatt for five nights...Hot tubs, room service & Love..."

2003-12-17T00:31:00.000-08:00

12/16/03 11:08 pm Tucson, AZ Od: 9

Once again, the naughty, delinquent blahwggr is a couple cities, one state, and one time zone behind. Let me first off reassure anyone who may have wondered: I did not drive into the Pacific in search of lost continents, despite the recurring, almost irresistible, impulse to vanish in just such a Nemoish fashion. And no, Amy, I didn’t do the Weldon Kees thing--I didn’t even make it to the Golden Gate. And though I reached the border (where I got some attitude from a trio of surly border cops), it’s with true regret that I must I report that I did not go the way of Ambrose Bierce. Nor did the high noon showdown with Governor Arnold go down, despite my repeated challenges. Chicken. No, California is mere hours behind me, but already feels like a decade ago. I’ve gone as far West and South as I’m going to go, and today, for the first time, began to travel East. This entry finds this intrepid buhlogspotter sipping a red eye in Tucson, AZ’s Epic Café.

Damn, there’s so much I want to write about my travels, and perhaps some fine (and less so) books on tapes I’d be simply delighted to review. Then there’s the great, the ok, and the scrappy shows I’ve played that I never said squat about and, way back in Wisconsin, Futuretron, which deserves the kind of serious props I may not have the prose chops to deliver.

First, however, I’m gonna follow a train of thought suggested by some reading done on the crapper last night at my cousin Glenn’s apartment in San Diego. The publication that helped me pass my time in the small room so pleasantly was a magazine called Men’s Health which featured a photo of a totally ripped dude on the cover and lots of red text, promising Sex Secrets and The Best Ever Abs Exercise. Despite my curiosity about what sex secrets could possibly be left after several million check-out counter periodicals have already attempted to bring to light all remaining sex secrets, and my earnest desire to get my abs somewhere slightly closer to totally ripped, the article I chose to read instead was the Men’s Health’s Review of the 100 Best (and Worst) Cities to live in. Naturally I was curious what the totally ripped correspondents of Men’s Health had to say since I have been, informally up till now, compiling a similar list myself. The extremely virile reviewers of Men’s Health had 3 criteria: 1. how healthy is the city? 2. how high is the quality of life? and… I forget the third, but I seem to recall that it was also health related. Dying to know what they came up with? Madison was 1, San Francisco was 2, San Diego was 14; I forget the rest. While these criteria are certainly worth putting into the equation, I can’t help but feel they were a tad vague. And even as general as they are, they failed to cover some crucial factors that must be taken into consideration. For instance, would Madison have taken the prize if “friendliness of hostel managers” were a criterion (see my Madison entry)? I think not. Therefore, I offer just a few of the many additional criteria that I factor into my intricate computations:

Cafeability: How easy is it to find a café where you can sit, read, write, or, simply sit, almost indefinitely even if you don’t feel compelled to buy more than one caffeinated beverage?

Hip Hippyability: Can you sit in the city’s crunchier cafes almost indefinitely, nursing the same cup of coffee, ruminating and scribbling in your notebook, without worrying that you will be subjected to any songs by the Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, or____________ (fill in the blank with whatever pseudo-hippy corporate act you most loathe)?

Pissability: After drinking a redeye and a lot of free water and walking across town, how easily can one find prime spots to spray an ace? This criterion really has two sub categories: 1. how many establishments, per capita, can one duck into for a pee, without buying something, and without getting grief or a guilt trip from the employees? 2. How easy is it to find shady nooks, alleys, parks, shrubberies, (or palm trees or cacti, in the case of Tucson), for the far more gratifying experience of outdoors urban peeing?

Copability: How mellow and laid back are the cops? (On a scale of 1-10: 1= They ticket for jaywalking; 10= even an uncharismatic guy with a dysfunctional haircut, absurd facial hair, and controversial bumper stickers can talk his way out of a speeding ticket; 11= they merely chuckle indulgently and send you on your way with a mild scolding when they catch you shrub-peeing in a residential neighborhood.)

Jingleability: How early do most businesses begin playing Christmas music and--an obvious corollary--how early in December can you expect to pass people waiting for the bus who are whistling Christmas ditties?

Antisociability: How easily can you spend an evening out on the town pleasantly indulging all of your most cherished misanthropic tendencies? I would have to elaborate quite a bit for this criteria to make complete sense, particularly to those readers not inclined to misanthropism. Therefore, I will add such an elaboration to the list of eternally deferred blog topics I’ll get around to writing sometime in my next life.

And perhaps the most important…

Enigmability: How many of the city’s “crazy people” are actually oracles? How inexplicable is the graffiti? How hard is it to tell what the city’s bands sound like based on the ambiguity of the posters and the band names? How many of the people standing on street corners, presumably passing out coupons for fortunetellers or handbills for strip clubs, actually give you invitations to join cabbalistic secret societies? How many portals does the city have to other dimensions?

Readers of Selahstories are encouraged to send additional criteria, which will be programmed into my highly scientific City Rater.

2003-12-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

Exhalation On Route 5

The tinsel of unspooled audio fluttering and glinting in roadside scrub.

It’s not my fault, clouds insist on metaphor: furrows in the brain, camouflage for the sun, foliage for the sky, expectant mothers, pregnant with the embryonic mass of snow and rain.

And me? To the extent I’m anything at all: a vibration of tongue & lips against air, an attempting at melody that errs and errs, as indefinite as there is breath.

2003-12-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

12/13/03 12:43 am Oakland, CA Odometer: 97,355

Try to scrap together a quick blaw here between vigorous rubs of my overtaxed eyes. They are exceeding full of all they’ve seen and tried to absorb from my last four days in the Bay. Likewise, my feet and shins really ache from all the perambulating they’ve done. I find myself very, very much taken with San Francisco, which I hereby deem the most beautiful city I’ve been to. I don’t know that I’ve seen a big outpost of humanity that feels more harmoniously wed to its terrain. The best example I can think of is the way the houses slope and interlock to accommodate all the hills, so that, as you climb up the hill, you are constantly enjoying the best possible view, until you take another step and turn around, only to find the bay has come into clearer focus, but when you cross the street you can see this row of palm trees, etc. I wandered for hours, mainly through the Mission, Castro, Haight, Chinatown. I loved it. San Francisco is so full of life and variety, that even the simple act of walking around is an adventure. I want to write about favorite places, but with the time I've got, I'd just resort to listing and I've already done enough of that. I wish I could stay for another day, week, month, lifetime.

I know, this is a tiny, unsatisfying morsel I’ve offered here, but I promise a more filling entrée will follow.

* * *

Back after a most fractured night of “sleep.” Koeppler, barking on and off throughout the night at someone or something outside, neighborhood sounds, violent rain and wind shaking the house, and especially, travel anxiety, Koeppler is Tom & Marisa’s very big, but quite docile, mutt. Yesterday I went with Tom & K. to Point Isabel, a park in Oakland with a great view of the Golden Gate bridge and more varieties of big, small, medium, mutt and pedigreed dogs and dog owners than I have ever seen at one time. It was amazing to see them all playing and chasing and butt sniffing and fetching and going through all the rituals of pooch socializing: a cross cultural canine experience.

It’s also been quite interesting being here in Tom & Marisa’s neighborhood where, Tom estimates, the population is about 40% African American, 30% Hispanic, 29% Asian, and 1% white. It hasn’t been since I used to wander around North Philly that I can last remembering feeling what it is to be the minority. The only time I got a real look at some of the tensions in the neighborhood was when I was returning from a walk around the block with Tom & K. As Tom unlocked the door to their house, I bent down and snapped a photo of him. As we entered the building, a car whizzed up and a guy jumped out in and confronted us. He got up in Tom’s face and asked “why I was taking pictures of parked cars.” After a great deal of muscle flexing and interrogation style questions, he eased up and suddenly became overly friendly. Turned out Tom knew this guy somewhat and had a basic neighborly rapport with him, but my “actions” apparently called this rapport into question. He said he was “the protector of the neighborhood:” when he sees problems he, “takes care of them”—a phrase I put in quotes because he used it in the conversation to describe what he does to the people who cause the problems.

Tom says there is a gang activity in the neighborhood and a fair amount of dealing that goes on, but said he’s realized he’s got to make the distinction between people making a living and people making the neighborhood an unsafe place before he picks up his phone to call the cops. Sometimes an ambiguous line to stay on the right side of.

Speaking of navigate, I’ve got to get myself up and on the road because San Diego is 7 + hours away and I’ve got to get there before 5 if I’m going to meet up with my cousin Glen, who I haven’t seen since I met him at a wedding when I was around 5 years old.

More, and better, to come...

2003-12-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

Written: 12/10/03 9:14 am Klamath, CA Odometer: 96,978

A gorgeous, sunny day in northern California, seen out the window of my cottage on the Marigold Campground. I spent the night here, my first ever in California. After my week in Missoula, the last few days of travel have been a blur of impressions, and I regret waiting so long to capture a few. First, though, a brief chronology and summary: from Missoula, I drove across and spent the night in a motel in Ritzville, WA. The next day I got to Olympia, where I played a show, sharing the bill with Sandman: “Montana’s Rappin Cowboy,” The Mona Reels (cello, piano, drums, and vocals), and Encyclopedia of Fun (guitar, bass, drums, ukulele, male & female singers). A fun, friendly show in the basement with around 30 people who were not checking out The Pernice Brothers and the Jicks, who were playing in town the same night (or the Sun City Girls, playing in nearby Tacoma). The show and the sleep to follow took place in the ABC, a house owned by a 30 year old anarchist collective.

Then on to Porltand, Oregon, where I stayed with Chris Murray, poet, drummer, Herzog devotee, all around good guy. (The Pernice Bros. And Jicks followed me here, playing at the Crystal Palace).

Next, it was a few miles south in Newburg, OR, where I stayed with my former professor, Bill Jolliff, his wife Brenda, and their three amazingly bright, mature, home schooled kids: Jacob, Rebecca, and Anna. I haven’t seen Bill since I graduated from college in ’92, though we’ve done a decent job of staying in touch. Jamming with Bill on banjo and guitar, and Jake, a phenomenal mandolin prodigy (truly), was incredible.

Finally, yesterday, I drove through lush, lovely central and southern Oregon, cut west on 199, and entered northern California. Good God! Entered a mountain pass that must be described as breathtaking, both for it’s incredible beauty and the narrow roads and long drop offs on either side. The trees had been monstrous since WA, but suddenly, big became redefined as I began to pass beneath gargantuan creatures which could only be redwoods. I stopped in a redwood park, and despite steady rain, walked along the path in a state of near disbelief. Photos in National Geographic really don’t prepare you for the magnitude and majesty of a redwood forest.

As if that wasn’t dramatic enough, I came down from mountains, joined 101 south and, behold, the Pacific Ocean! It was truly stunning. I wish I’d stayed in Crescent City, where I could’ve gotten a room on the beach for the same price as this smelly shack, but I was determined to cover a little more ground before dark. Dark came quickly, as I stood at Klamath point, looking down on the most spectacular, violent seascape I have ever seen. I found this campground, thought the cottages looked quaint, and pulled off. Enough words. Time to pack up and proceed and see what California’s going to show me today.

2003-12-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to check out the selahshots, the far more reliable photo supplement to selahstories:

http://community.webshots.com/user/djselah

While I have been seriously and unforgivably slacking in the Blahwg department, I have continued to post photos, therefore, each picture earns me a 1,000 unwritten words.

2003-12-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

Commercial break:

Would you like to own the timeless and timely tunes that made the spiders of Cleveland bark, that put a new tine in the Clark Fork River, that got the combat boots and boo-tays of Olympian anarchists shaking? Are you looking for that Christmas gift that says “I wholly and unambiguously love you?” Would you like to help me put some gas in my tank so I can actually make it home? If you answered “maybe” to any of those questions, please send $10 to:

Daniel Hales c/o: Jessica Jewels
1317-A Carolina Ave. N
Carolina Beach, NC 28428

and I will mail you a copy of “eau de Ambiguity” on majestic, indestructible compact disc. 18 songs, 14 musicians, playing more than 30 instruments in the almighty, infinite key of ambiguity. Send an email letting me know that you want the goods and I will send the eau to you in a groovy, reusable mailer envelope. (Other fine titles from Algorithm Records also available…)

And now, back to the previously scheduled, seriously tardy, ever-belated blahwg…

2003-12-07T14:38:00.000-08:00

Written: 12/6/03 9:17 am Ritzville, WA Odometer: 96,170

Greetings from room 10 of the Westside Motor Inn, where the red letters on the marquee announce:

SENIOR VET DIS
THEME ROOMS FAX
PETS WELCOM E$28

I have a perfect view of the sign from where I sit on the brown divan in the very brown room 10, known among Westsider’s as The Jungle Room. The plywood walls are painted with jungle trees, vines, and ferns. Pictures of a toucan, white lion, zebra, panda, orangutang, cheetah cubs, African lion, lemurs. Leopard skin blankets on the divan and bed. With cable, a microwave, mini fridge, and instant coffee packets, the jungle room is pretty damn cozy by motel standards. I would almost swear I was in thee Jungle Room--you know, the King’s chill lounge in Graceland--but for the train tracks across the street, which were used at least a dozen times during the night. And the shower which stayed warm for less than a minute. And the couple in room 9 (the theme of room 9 seemed to be “Diner,” as evidenced by the Coca Cola lamp and the faux jukebox I glimpsed as two women made up the room) who checked in after I’d gone to bed and argued much of the night and all morning, starting just before 6 am. I could give a more or less word for word transcript of the argument, that’s how well I could hear them. Suffice it say that it was incredibly tedious, interminable, and depressing as hell. She: speaking way louder than necessary in a whining, defensive tone; he: speaking in an exaggerated quiet, long suffering tone (I could still hear most of what he said), as if to subliminally encourage her to quiet down. Both employed variations on the tactic we’ll refer to here as “passive aggressive one upmanship.” I considering sliding a tract extolling the benefits of suicide under their door, or better yet, rhythmically banging my bedpost against the wall and moaning.

It was a lousy day of driving yesterday. I was bummed to be leaving Missoula to begin with, but the steady rain and increasingly icy roads kept me tense and hyper alert for most of the drive. It was also an incredibly beautiful drive. I regret not taking any pictures, but my camera was still full of photos of the show from the night before and besides, it was too slippery to take my hands off the wheel long enough to snap a shot. I must have crossed and recrossed the Clark Fork River 10 times as I proceeded west across Montana. I headed up mountain passes, into Idaho, where I encountered some windy, icy passes. I had many an occasion to wish I’d gotten 4 snow tires instead of just two. The dense fog among the mountains and the snowy peaks were sights to behold, but time and again left me feeling like I was driving into an foggy blank that would utterly swallow me. I was always surprised when Roxy emerged, but there always seemed to be another opportunity to vanish around the next bend. For most of the way I listened to Stephen Ambrose’s “The Wild Blue,” a book on tape I rented at the Cracker Barrel in Billings. It’s about B24 pilots in WWII, and I think it helped me keep my own situation in perspective listening to harrowing tales of emergency landings in bad weather on tiny landing strips with two engines out. (I should also add that I have had two serious hydroplaning accidents, so all I have to feel is a little a bit of slide and I begin to prepare myself for that weightless, stomach-dropping-out feeling.) In much the same way, listening to Jon Krakeur’s “Into The Wild” about the drifter Chris McCandless as I drove across Illinois and Wisconsin reminded me that, while foolhardy, at least my own journey had a much higher rate of survival than his trek into the Alaskan wilderness.

I was grateful to get into Washington, and gradually back on level land. My goal had been to make it as far as Spokane and crash at a motel there, but there was still some gray light left by the time I got there and the look of the place depressed me. I vowed to push on, though the roads still sucked. I had forgotten I’d gain another hour as I crossed into West Coast time. My car clock, still set to Eastern Standard, made me feel like I was driving back in time. Gradually the land leveled out and begin to remind me of the South Dakota plains. And so it is that I made it here to Ritzville and the Westside, where I enjoyed an instant soup, using my camp stove, an episode of the Simpson’s, and some Milan Kundera before finding I was unable to keep my eyes open.

Will I get around to describing the 3 gig night that preceeded this one? Or the original solo show that brought me to Missoula in the first place? Or the week in between? I wish I could just post audio video footage of the shows and leave it at that. I wish I could take events that are so charged and over stimulating and write about them half an hour after they’re over. A few hours, a day, or a few days later, there’s no way to tap back into the intensity of performing, of meeting and connecting with new people. (Which is, I suppose, why I find it so much easier to describe the generic argument of two disembodied souls next door to me). And it’s especially impossible to quantify such experiences. Is the criteria how many people turned out, how loud they clapped, how positive the “vibe,” how good the PA, how tight the band, how good it felt before, during, how fun the after party was, how much money made at the door? I can’t even answer the last question because I haven’t counted all the change yet. We promoted the show as “donation appreciated” for the out of towner’s gas fund. I left with $20 in cash and, upon Victor's insistence, an American flag filled with several pounds of change poured into it and knotted, like a hobo sack.

2003-12-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

12/4/03 4:47 pm Missoula, MT

I’m sitting in Paul & Sarah’s kitchen, a little better rested than the last time I began writing an entry here. My powerbook is plugged into an outlet built into the front of the tiny, 1960s looking stove in the far corner of the kitchen. I slept on the cracked linoleum floor of this kitchen, next to the stove and the sink, Monday and Tuesday nights after I decided it was impossible to sleep between my hosts and their zoo in the next room. The main problem with that solution is that their tiny bathroom is connected to the kitchen and has no door, so whenever any of the three of us needed to got to the bathroom or take a bath, everyone else had to vacate so the kitchen door could be shut. My wake up call each morning was Oliver, their female cat, eating out of the bowl beside my feet. Why am I devoting so much space to describing this place when I haven’t even introduced these people, how I met them, how I came to be staying in Missoula an extra week, sleeping on their floor, sharing their meager meals? I guess I need to locate myself somewhere before I can pretend to approach the task of rendering the people I meet on my journey. And because this is a place where I’ve been happy and I want to preserve it. And because I moved on to another apartment last night, with my own futon and a door, even, and I feel some obligation to describe this place and its people before I move on to describe the other. And because it’s easier to prepare myself to leave a funky, cluttered apartment than it is to prepare, tomorrow, to leave the people I’ve met here.

There are already so many huge gaps in this narrative, a fact which makes me feel unaccountably sad--as though it’s ever possible to give a definitive account of any one experience, never mind a whole string of them. While postering campus last night, I stopped in at the library and checked my email at one of the dozens of computers in the University library, all being used by students checking email or writing papers. There was a beautiful young woman at the computer next to mine. After appreciating this fact, I stole a glance at what she was typing. It seemed to be an essay, and she was mid sentence, typing something to the effect of, “I kept trying to focus, but then this or that would happen, and I would get frustrated because I got sidetracked.” That’s a paraphrase, but the line that stuck, word for word, in my mind, because I watched her type it as she thought it, was “Then I realized that this is what life is.” (The word “this” was italicized, a function I haven’t figured out on this laptop yet.) Not that this is the most original thought, or that I needed to drive over 3,000 miles to be reminded of this truth, but it was a simple, beautiful moment like hundreds of others I won’t get around to writing about.

Should I go on to describe how I then went down to the second floor and got the copy of Cronopios & Famos, by Julio Cortazar, that Earl and I had sought out right before I drove him to the bus, and how I read for an hour and all the thoughts that stirred up, one of them being “Cortazar is such an awesome writer?”

Or should I go on to explain why Earl and I sought this book out in the first place (because he checked it out when he was an undergrad here and no one had checked it out previous to him since 1971, and he was curious if anyone had checked it out since).

I would enjoy describing why libraries are comforting wombs and, simultaneously, lonesome, forsaken cells.

Jessica writes that she is annoyed that I left my last entry dangling, the show about to start, my pulse quick and my fretting hand all trembly because now I have to give these people something worthwhile. Jess threatens to spank me if I do not continue the last blahg pronto, and I honor Earl by invoking the true and proper way to spank: begin with both hands raised high above your shoulders and lower them quickly, vehemently, upon the offending buttocks with the palms of your hand; then, with one fluid motion, you follow through by crossing your arms at their wrists, and deliver a second, quicker spank, with the knuckles.

Well now, that, felt good, didn’t it? Perhaps I should return to the kitchen, where I share the table with posters for tonight’s show, a notepad of chord changes, newly made cds. Oh hypothetical reader, allow me to describe the traffic out on Higgins and dripping of the tub.

Alas, such delights must be put on hold for now. For the chord charts and posters demand that I refer to Krusty, who tells me I must leave in moments; that I must leap into motion, which will not cease until I lay down to sleep on Paul’s futon tonight (not Paul of Paul and Sarah, but Paul whom I met through Mike, who I add to the long list of good people I’ve met and utterly failed to honor with a prosilicious entry in my ever belated blahhhhg). Starting at 7, I will begin strumming an acoustic guitar and singing at the Catalyst Café, across the bridge. As I beat a retreat, Tyler will take the stage to read a short story. But likely before he reads the first word of his story (entitled “Disco Fan” which opens describing a smashed cell phone on a table), I will be on my way back here, where I will strap on a borrowed bass and bang out a quick practice with Sarah, Sarah, and Paul of Two Touqe. Then we will rush over to Area 5, hopefully in time to catch The Holy Smoke’s set. Then I will break out Jane and rock the house with Paul on bass and Landon on drums: my top notch backing band for the night. Then I will say goodnight to Jane and, once more, pick up the bass, rock the 5th Area with the Touqe. Then I will likely die of adrenaline overdose. Then I will go to the special place in rock and roll heaven reserved for those who died playing 3 gigs in one night.

2003-12-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

Begun: 12/1/03 5:30 am Missoula, MT Odometer: 95,827

The only light out the window is the neon sign advertising: Altered Skin: custom tattoos and exotic body piercing. The neon reveals that a few inches of snow has fallen during my mostly sleepless night. I have not been doing a whole lot of sleeping since arriving in Missoula, despite my most determined attempts to do so. I am monumentally tired as I attempt to write this, and the urge to try, once more, to become one with my sleeping bag grows upon me. Why can’t I be like my powerbook: able to sleep at the click of a mouse? Actually, a rodent was one of the things that kept me awake last night. The crawling and gnawing of a gerbil Wesley in a cage just above where I lay. Oliver the cat, walking across me, then nibbling food in the next room. The dragon lizard Little Jeans lurking lizard-like, preparing to engulf a cricket. The gurgling of the toilet whenever someone else in the apartment building flushes. Ah yes, the sounds of a new place. The creak of unfamiliar floorboards beneath me as I shift position yet again. The breathing of people I barely know a few feet away.

* * *

It’s now 8:30 at night, and I’m still a creature of puffy eyes and long yawns, but my overall take on the cosmos is a little more balanced. Before I proceed further I should clarify: I have, by and large, been having a great time in Missoula. Missoula itself is a wonderful town. It is, by far, the place on my trip I could most easily see myself moving to (knocking the Mini Apple out of the running). Which is why, when the opportunity to stay an extra week and play another show presented itself, I didn’t take a whole lot of coercing—even though it means sleeping on the floor, with Paul and Sarah in their bed on one side of me, and their menagerie of critters on the other. God, just typing the word “sleeping” makes me lust for a long night of deep, sweet slumber such as I knew in days of yore. Enough. No slobbering into the pillow till I’ve cranked out a blahg. The immediate setting for this intrepid act of composition is now Liquid Planet, a café and beverage store, where you can buy and drink coffee, beer, wine, soda, seltzer, iced tea—nearly any legally drinkable fluid--while gettin yo blog on. I am replenishing precious bodily fluids by means of H2O and a Nut Brown Ale from the Bitter Root Brewing company.

So, yeah, me and Chief Craighead jumped aboard Roxy and headed out of Park County Friday morning. We talked most of the way about nearly everything under the sun, lingering most, however, on the following conundrum: how to be an “adult” and still manage to leave enough room for the whirling dervishes of imagination to wreak glorious havoc? It’s a beautiful and dramatic stretch of road from Livingston to Missoula. Wish I’d taken more pictures, but I was doing my best to keep between the lines and the guardrail. At a rest stop, Earl returned to the car with a copy of Blender, undoubtedly the trashiest rock magazine I’ve ever seen. What possessed him is unclear, but we did have quite a bit of fun reading its reviews and interviews out loud, which led to us interviewing each other using the incisive questions posed by the Blender interlocuter: “What was the best sex you had this year?” “What trend has *got* to go?” “Describe the time you were the drunkest this year.”

We touched down at the apartment of his sister in law and her partner, who were away for the weekend. By agreeing to feed their cats a thimble-full of food a day, we were granted a crash pad mere minutes from downtown. Earl headed into town for a drink and I stayed to reacquaint myself with Jane a little bit. We rendezvoused and headed across town to find Area 5.

We found it across the Clark Fork River, down an otherwise residential street. A big, high ceilinged warehouse space filled with paintings and prints. We knocked on a big, curtained door in back of the gallery. Just as we were about to give up, it opened and we were greeted by Victor. He led us into the enormous back room, which turned out to be his apartment. The space was filled with paintings, mobiles, instruments, toys, books, typewriters, and his very tall, gregarious girlfriend Amber. We were whisked in and deposited around a kitchen table while Victor procured a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the fridge for me, in honor of the vintage PBR t-shirt I was wearing (an Earl hand-me-down). We were invited to eat the Thanksgiving left-overs left on the table in open tupper ware containers. We were encouraged to crash in the gallery that night. It was a very theatrical reception, perhaps partly due to the fact that Amber was leaving soon to do the lighting for a local theater production. However, she assured me she would be back in time for the show, and that she and Victor were both dressing to the nines for the occasion.

After she split, Victor began telling us about his many movie scripts, four of which were under serious consideration by Hollywood producers. He and Amber were leaving in two weeks to meet with them and negotiate. He then described two of the scripts in detail, followed by a tale of the script of his that he’d nearly sold to a big studio in the 90s, back when he was living in LA. He’d managed to wrest his script out of their hands before they could massacre it, because he disapproved of their choice of mainstream actors for the lead roles. Now, of course, he wishes he had sold out.

Soon, Max, the “promoter” showed up with the PA, along with Dave the opening act. No, the third act wasn’t coming. No, he hadn’t done any real promoting to speak of. I talked with them while they set up and sound checked, then talked with some of the audience members as they trickled in. I talked quite a while with Jessie, a really earnest early 20s guy who had recently returned from an extended tour of important biblical sights in Israel. Then I met Mary, a freshman studying music composition at the University, who Victor referred to as his girlfriend. When I asked how Amber felt about that, he said that she probably hooked up with him so that she could get with Mary, too.

Victor admitted that he had done absolutely nothing to promote the show and began frantically calling everyone in his little black book to entice them out. I was stunned by Victor’s unabashed approach. He seemed to get few people on the phone, but left a message on the answering machine of anyone and everyone that didn’t pick up. The basic spiel was similar, but still quite varied. Come out and see Daniel Selah, this amazing musician from Northampton, Massachusetts. Bring beer, bring drugs, bring ginger beer--whatever, just come, dammit! When, between calls, he mentioned Sonic Youth—I forget the context—I told him that they were Northampton residents. In his next call, in addition to being a great musician, Victor bragged that I had slept with everyone in Sonic Youth. And so on. While, to be sure, Victor was—in his own words—a smarmy guy with a warehouse, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his utter shamelessness and his seeming warmth and good will toward me. After all, regardless of how I felt about his approach, he was trying to encourage people to check out my set. And while I loathe calling or emailing friends to come out to my shows, he seemed to genuinely get off on this end of the biz. He was a snake oil salesman and I was his snake oil.

I went out to catch the rest of Dave’s set as Victor continued, presumably, to ply his craft. Dave did very straight forward, soulful, acoustic folk. He had amazing chops and a good vocal range. There were probably seven people in the audience. As soon as Dave’s set finished, Victor rushed out and told me not to start yet, that he’d gotten people to come out, there’d be crowd. I promised to set up my gear slowly. Soon after I began slowly unwinding the cord of my amp, he reemerged in hat and coat and said, again, not to start yet, he was going out to get people to come.

So I set up, then hung out and talked with Earl, Mary, Dave, Max. Soon Victor returned, with two or three folks in his wake. He told me to wait a little longer, more were coming. Sure enough, more and more people began showing up. I hung out and talked to many of them, apologizing mostly, saying I hope that Victor hadn’t twisted their arm in order to get them to come out. I was definitely feeling a great deal of unnatural pressure at this point. I fervently wished there were just the 5 or 6 people who came of their own accord, rather than this “captive audience.” On the other hand, now they’re here—I’ve gotta do something. I told Victor, ok, I’m gonna play now and he asked if I could wait till Amber got back. Yes, I could wait. Meanwhile, I endeavored to meet all these strangers who had been coerced out of their homes to hear me play. So many cool folks, and even Beth, a border collie/lab mix. Then, at last, Amber arrived, turned off the gallery lights and turned on the red and blue stage lights…

2003-12-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Begun: 12/1/03 5:30 am Missoula, MT Odometer: 95,827

The only light out the window is the neon sign advertising: Altered Skin: custom tattoos and exotic body piercing. The neon reveals that a few inches of snow has fallen during my mostly sleepless night. I have not been doing a whole lot of sleeping since arriving in Missoula, despite my most determined attempts to do so. I am monumentally tired as I attempt to write this, and the urge to try, once more, to become one with my sleeping bag grows upon me. Why can’t I be like my powerbook: able to sleep at the click of a mouse? Actually, a rodent was one of the things that kept me awake last night. The crawling and gnawing of a gerbil named Wesley in a cage just above where I lay. Oliver the cat, walking across me, then nibbling food in the next room. The dragon lizard Little Jeans lurking lizard-like, preparing to engulf a cricket. The gurgling of the toilet whenever someone else in the apartment building flushes. Ah yes, the sounds of a new place. The creak of unfamiliar floorboards beneath me as I shift position yet again. The breathing of people I barely know a few feet away.

* * *

It’s now 8:30 at night, and I’m still a creature of puffy eyes and long yawns, but my overall take on the cosmos is a little more balanced. Before I proceed further I should clarify: I have, by and large, been having a great time in Missoula. Missoula itself is a wonderful town. It is, by far, the place on my trip I could most easily see myself moving to (knocking the Mini Apple out of the running). Which is why, when the opportunity to stay an extra week and play another show presented itself, I didn’t take a whole lot of coercing—even though it means sleeping on the floor, with Paul and Sarah in their bed on one side of me, and their menagerie of critters on the other. God, just typing the word “sleeping” makes me lust for a long night of deep, sweet slumber such as I knew in days of yore. Enough. No slobbering into the pillow till I’ve cranked out a blahg. The immediate setting for this intrepid act of composition is now Liquid Planet, a café and beverage store, where you can buy and drink coffee, beer, wine, soda, seltzer, iced tea—nearly any legally drinkable fluid--while gettin yo blog on. I am replenishing precious bodily fluids by means of H2O and a Nut Brown Ale from the Bitter Root Brewing company.

So, yeah, me and Chief Craighead jumped aboard Roxy and headed out of Park County Friday morning. We talked most of the way about nearly everything under the sun, lingering most, however, on the following conundrum: how to be an “adult” and still manage to leave enough room for the whirling dervishes of imagination to wreak glorious havoc?

It’s a beautiful and dramatic stretch of road from Livingston to Missoula. Wish I’d taken more pictures, but I was doing my best to keep between the lines and the guardrail. At a rest stop, Earl returned to the car with a copy of Blender, undoubtedly the trashiest rock magazine I’ve ever seen. What possessed him is unclear, but we did have quite a bit of fun reading its reviews and interviews out loud, which led to us interviewing each other using the incisive questions posed by the Blender interlocuter: “What was the best sex you had this year?” “What trend has *got* to go?” “Describe the time you were the drunkest this year.”

We touched down at the apartment of his sister in law and her partner, who were away for the weekend. By agreeing to feed their cats a thimble-full of food a day, we were granted a crash pad mere minutes from downtown. Earl headed into town for a drink and I stayed to reacquaint myself with Jane a little bit. We rendezvoused and headed across town to find Area 5.

We found it across the Clark Fork River, down an otherwise residential street. A big, high ceilinged warehouse space filled with paintings and prints. We knocked on a big, curtained door in back of the gallery. Just as we were about to give up, it opened and we were greeted by Victor. He led us into the enormous back room, which turned out to be his apartment. The space was filled with paintings, mobiles, instruments, toys, books, typewriters, and his very tall, gregarious girlfriend Amber. We were whisked in and deposited around a kitchen table while Victor procured a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the fridge for me, in honor of the vintage PBR t-shirt I was wearing (an Earl hand-me-down). We were invited to eat the Thanksgiving left-overs left on the table in open tupper-ware containers. We were encouraged to crash in the gallery that night. It was a very theatrical reception, perhaps partly due to the fact that Amber was leaving soon to do the lighting for a local theater production. However, she assured me she would be back in time for the show, and that she and Victor were both dressing to the nines for the occasion.

After she split, Victor began telling us about his many movie scripts, four of which were under very serious consideration by Hollywood producers. He and Amber were leaving in two weeks to meet with them and negotiate. He then described two of the scripts in detail, followed by a tale of the script of his that he’d nearly sold to a big studio in the 90s, back when he was living in LA. He’d managed to wrest his script out of their hands before they could massacre it, because he disapproved of their choice of mainstream actors for the leads. Now, of course, he wishes he had sold out.

Soon, Max, the “promoter” showed up with the PA, along with Dave the opening act. No, the third act wasn’t coming. No, he hadn’t done any real promoting to speak of. I talked with them while they set up and sound checked, then talked with some of the audience members as they trickled in. I talked quite a while with Jessie, a really earnest early 20s guy who had recently returned from an extended tour of important biblical sights in Israel. Then I met Mary, a freshman studying music composition at the University, who Victor referred to as his girlfriend. When I asked how Amber felt about that, he said that she probably hooked up with him so that she could get with Mary, too.

Victor admitted that he, also, had done absolutely nothing to promote the show and began frantically calling everyone in his little black book to entice them out. I was stunned by Victor’s unabashed approach. He seemed to get few people on the phone, but left a message on the answering machine of anyone and everyone that didn’t pick up. The basic spiel was similar, but still quite varied. Come out and see Daniel Selah, this amazing musician from Northampton, Massachusetts. Bring beer, bring drugs, bring ginger beer--whatever, just come, dammit! When, between calls, he mentioned Sonic Youth—I forget the context—I told him that they were Northampton residents. In his next call, in addition to being a great musician, Victor bragged that I had slept with everyone in Sonic Youth. And so on. While, to be sure, Victor was—in his own words—a smarmy guy with a warehouse, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his utter shamelessness and his seeming warmth and good will toward me. After all, regardless of how I felt about his approach, he was trying to encourage people to check out my set. And while I loathe calling or emailing friends to come out to my shows, he seemed to genuinely get off on this end of the biz. He was a snake oil salesman and I was his snake oil.

I went out to catch the rest of Dave’s set as Victor continued, presumably, to ply his craft. Dave did very straight forward, soulful, acoustic folk. He had amazing chops and a good vocal range. There were probably seven people in the audience. As soon as Dave’s set finished, Victor rushed out and told me not to start yet, that he’d gotten people to come out, there’d be crowd. I promised to set up my gear slowly. Soon after I began slowly unwinding the cord of my amp, he reemerged in hat and coat and said, again, not to start yet, he was going out to get people to come.

So I set up, then hung out and talked with Earl, Mary, Dave, Max. Soon Victor returned, with two or three folks in his wake. He told me to wait a little longer, more were coming. Sure enough, more and more people began showing up. I hung out and talked to many of them, apologizing mostly, saying I hope that Victor hadn’t twisted their arm in order to get them to come out. I was definitely feeling a great deal of unnatural pressure at this point. I fervently wished there were just the 5 or 6 people who came of their own accord, rather than this “captive audience.” On the other hand, now they’re here—I’ve gotta do something. I told Victor, ok, I’m gonna play now and he insisted I wait a little longer till Amber got back. Meanwhile, I endeavored to meet all these strangers who had been coerced out of their homes to hear me play. So many cool folks and even Beth, a border collie/lab mix. Then, at last, Amber arrived, turned off the gallery the lights and turned on the red and blue stage lights…

2003-11-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

11/27/03 12:26 pm Wilsall, MT Odometer: 95,600

Sitting in a beast of a diesel truck pulling a horse trailer full of Earl & Susan’s furniture down Highway 89, toward Livingston. We’ve just loaded up this thing and are hauling a second load over to the new Craig/Thomas mansion on Falls Creek Road. 89—and Earl & Nelly’s new place in the Shield’s River Valley—boast an unsurpassed, almost uninterrupted view of the Absaroka range, the Crazy Mountains, the Bridgers, and a corner of the Gallatin Range. These mountains, even from this distance, make the White Mountains look like ambitious foothills. A bright, clear day, with big puffy clouds, close to what my sister Dar would call a “10” if it were about 50 degrees warmer. Just passed another dead buck by the roadside. Deer here are as plentiful and common as house sparrows. Driving at night is a risky affair due to deer who haven’t evolved the skill to swerve. Susan had a young buck run into the side of her truck last week. Earl saw a deer get run over by a schoolbus about 5 weeks ago. The driver passed right over it and kept going. When Earl wondered why the driver didn’t stop, I theorized that maybe he didn’t want to traumatize the kids with the sight of the bloody carcass. He replied that by the age of ten kids around here are used to that; what would traumatize them would be seeing an escalator. He then goes on to tell me about his buddy John, who grew up in rural Montana and never saw an escalator until he was 20. Earl then goes on to imaginatively recreate John’s first encounter with an escalator. Earl is a magnificent story teller, and one who manages to use any occasion whatsoever to segue into a story, or a whole string of them. I’ve enjoyed the telling of enough Earl tales that I could fill a blog or two retelling them all, but the full effect requires the Earl and his bony armed gesticulating, screwed up faces, exaggerated accents, punctuated by frequent spastic “spanking” motions. Yeah, the Early bird’s one freaky dude.

On our way back from dropping of the furniture and just saw a bald eagle: unmistakable, flying close and low, beside the road. Just now we just came inches from flattening some ring necked pheasants that scooted across the road in front of us. Beautiful, elegant birds, two predominantly brown, one black with a bright red ring around its neck. Something in the way they look scrambling across the road makes me think of puritans late for church. But maybe that’s just cause it’s Thanksgiving.

We just passed Porcupine Rd., the long dirt pass up to Porcupine cabin, the ranger station up in the Crazies that Earl and I stayed at last summer: a remote getaway with only cows and wildlife as far as the eye can reach.

Back in the truck again after dropping off the horse trailer and loading it up with bales of green hay, bits of which now cover me as I pick up the laptop again. God, it’s a gorgeous day with miles of tan plains, surrounded on all sides by blue ranges, snowy crests. The white of the mountains almost hard to look at in the sun, it’s so bright. One more stop and it’s back for a Thanksgiving feast. First we say hi to Marty the magpie, a bird Earl’s spotted around here enough to name him.

It’s a few hours later, post Thanksgiving feast, and we’re all calling our families and loosening our belts. Does anyone reading a blog really care what someone else had for Thanksgiving dinner? Probably not, but too damn bad. Susan made Earl’s grandma’s sweet potato recipe, homemade cranberry sauce, turkey, stuffing, gravy, salad. No diss on my family, but that be the tastiest spread I’ve had in recent memory.

Called my kin and was sad to hear everyone so far away, but glad to hear my presence around the table was missed. Joel, Luke, Kris, & Ben discovered a “wicked cool” abandoned house full of “strange books & records.” Then I heard about the final moments of the piñata I sent as my ambassador: bought it on the third solid whack, delivered by Katie. This didn’t surprise me, cause I could tell this one was not as structurally sound as piñatas in years past. Bringing a piñata to Thanksgiving for my nephews and nieces to massacre has been my pagan contribution to my family’s otherwise Judeo-Christian Thanksgiving gatherings for the last nine years or so.

Yes, I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties. For which I shall duly serve penance. Why, Jack wonders, has he failed to detail the remarkable pilgrimage to Futuretron? What about the poignant chapter on revisiting one’s childhood home which, in fact, I haven’t been to in 22 years, not 12? Or the Mini Apple, where me & the Conduites laid down some phat tracks with the Purple One at Paisely Park? Damn, all that feels like light years away. Travel definitely fucks with time perception, to put it as eloquently as I’m capable of right now. I’ve also moved through yet another time zone, which I have to remind myself of when I keep nodding off in the middle of movies.

To pick up where the flimsy thread broke off, I left Buffalo, WY, Sunday morning and drove up through the top of Wyoming, into Montana, arriving at Earl & Susan’s new place by late afternoon. As mentioned earlier, their new house sits on a beautiful, remote 7 acre plot in the Shields River Valley. The house is done but for staining the cupboards and cleaning up the interior. A wonderful place, all good smelling hard wood, high, high ceilings, a cavernous central room--both kitchen and living room, and, of course, unbelievable views on all sides. It’s been wild being here at this turning point in their lives, when they make the transition from working stiff renters to landed gentry. Really makes me reflect on my own placelessness. Especially when it's so damn cold out, the loneliness of the road, etc. I wouldn't mind a TuliKiva Finnish soapstone woodstove to warm my feet besides, a good book in my lap.

For the last several days I’ve been helping them clean up and move in by day, and wining, dining, and movie watching with Earl and Susan at night. My movie recommendation of the week (I only nodded off once during this one) is The Dancer Upstairs, directed by that Malkovitch fella. Really powerful, disturbing film. On the other hand, if you haven’t yet seen Minority Report, don’t rush out to rent it. Spielberg just can’t help himself from getting all Disney with it, no matter how hard he tries to adopt a grittier feel.

Earl’s giving a detailed account of all our moving chores, while Vinnie, my favorite dog on the planet bears down on his squeaky toy, shaped like an onion, complete with tears in its eyes. This is my last night in Wilsall; tomorrow, bright and early, it’s on to Missoula, where I’m going to play at what’s being billed as the “Too Fucked Up To Be With Family For The Holidays” show. Should be a trip, assuming I can remember how to play my songs…feels like a century since rocking the Spider with Ian back in the Cleft Land.

This is a real turning point in my travels; from here, I’ll be improvising most of the time, living from day to day, crashing on the floors of friends of friends. Praying Roxy keeps humming and my nerves stay steady.

for more photos: www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?!=67b0de21b35be9380514

2003-11-24T15:28:00.000-08:00

Photographic Interlude:

While I catch up on back blahing, peruse a few photos at http://community.webshots.com/user/djselah

I'll try to post a few each day I'm recuperating here in Wilsall.

The two shots of fabulous Futuretron will tell you more about the Evermor experience than my flimsy words can.

Anyone know of anywhere I can post video clips for free?

2003-11-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Photo Interlude: While I catch up on back blahing, please peruse a few photos at: http://community.webshots.com/user/djselah

I'll try to post a few each day. The two photos of the fabulous Futuretron will tell you more than I can in flimsy words...

2003-11-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/22/03 9:33 pm Buffalo, WY Odometer: 95,294

For the last two days I have spent most of my daylight hours behind the wheel and my evenings in motel rooms, an anonymous entity, but for my MA plates, and my lack of camo or fluorescent hunting garb. Last night at Allen’s Hillside motel in Chamberlain, SD, I was without a doubt, the only Motel goer who was not there to take advantage of Chamberlain’s status as the “Pheasant Capitol of South Dakota.” Room 28 was a room I had no trouble imagining as the setting for an especially ugly and pointless murder. However, it was clean and warm and soon after a burrito and a Michelob at Charly’s Lounge next door, room 28 tricked me into watching two consecutive episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation before retiring.

I will not reveal what worthless dreck room 118 at the Comfort Motel in Buffalo, WY tricked me into watching. Even a shocking, tell all blog must leave some sordid details to the reader’s imagination. The Comfort is a whopping $50, but what’s a fellow to do? The cheapest establishment in town, the Bunkhouse, had no one on duty, no way to check in. Therefore, I lingered in the Comfort’s hot tub until woozy, lightheaded, and utterly uninspired by the prospect of trying to write about the last several days. I lean back against the headboard and listen to the big trucks go by. I would estimate that the highway is, if anything, louder here than it was at The Hillside. Is there any sound that speaks more of transience than the whoosh of 18 wheelers speeding by your motel room on a lonely stretch of western highway?

Last night at the Hillside they told me I was going to be driving “into it,” and there was no doubt about what “it” is. Sure enough, almost as soon as I crossed the Missouri River, I began to see snow on the roadside, then in the road, then, falling from the sky. There were some very icy passages today and I did a bit of slipping and sliding, and there were long stretches where I didn't go above 45 mph. If it weren’t for this, I think I would’ve pushed on to Earl & Susan’s, but there was no way I was going to keep driving on that ice after dark.

I got off at the exit for the Badlands, determined to see this place I’ve been curious about for so long. However, the roads off the highway were totally untouched by snowplow and icy in the extreme. I made it about a mile, then freaked out by all my sliding, made my way back to 90. Damn.

I did make my pilgrimage to Wall Drug, however, the kitsch Capitol of South Dakota. I defy anyone to conjure the willpower to resist after hundreds of miles of Wall Drug billboards bearing such clever slogans as “Have You Dug Wall Drug?” I dug it, yo, and bought my postcards and my coffee mug. I had my free glass of ice water and my 5 cent cup of coffee. I had a cup of chili and a ham sandwich, which consisted of a slice of ham in a hamburger bun. And then I took the big plunge, and bought an audio presentation of 4 Louis L’Amour westerns, complete with realistic gunshots and authentic country western synthesizers letting you know when to be scared and when to get teary eyed. By far, the best was “Booty For A Badman,” the only tale whose outcome was not 100% predictable 10 minutes into the story.

By far, though, the most "exciting" part of the day was the drive itself. The intense concentration and forced confidence to pull into the iced over fast lane in order pass trucks, snow swirling and whipping every which way, a huge drop off on either side and, seemingly, nothing ahead but a blank expanse of white… It’s beautiful, awe inspiring country, but its barren, snowy expanse spooked me. I was grateful to start moving into mountains in Wyoming, although I was even more grateful once that last, long unpopulated stretch between Gillette and Buffalo came to an end.

2003-11-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Begun: 11/19/03 9:02 am Madison, WI Odometer: 94,184

Writing from the kitchen of the Butler Street Hostel in Madison, where a computer print out poster asks me: “Part of the Problem Part of the solution Where do you stand?” The hostel manager, Oliver, is downstairs listening, for the second time through, to a cd of gospelized peace & protest songs: “Age of Aquarius” and an endless version of “Give Peace A Chance.” That’s all they are saying. And saying.

About the only thing Oliver has said to me since arriving yesterday is to “take your shoes off” every time I come back in and forget to shed my boots at the door. However—likely as a result of sock walking—the hostel is clean and well kept up. It’s warm and brightly decorated, with plenty of quotes and posters urging me to cease my warlike ways.

I shared a bunkroom with a man I can only characterize as big and bearded. He came in around 3 am last night, clomped around loudly, and visited the bathroom frequently. Once, around 5, when I got up to pee, I came out and found him waiting to go to the bathroom again. I said “howdy” and he grunted. This is the extent of my familiarity with my roommate.

Based on my reconnaissance last night, Madison seems like a cool college town, with about the NoHo ratio of student oriented pads to gentrified and upscaley establishments. Plenty of folks out for a Tuesday night, and after wandering and wandering some more, I settled in at the Paradise Lounge for some beers and postcard writing. A poorly lit bar with a great jukebox, pool table, dartboard, cheap drinks, grad students, artistes, and drunks. The clincher: a Simpson’s pinball machine, which greeted me like an old friend. I played a few games but did better in Chicago. A good vibe here. Art grad students at the next table engage in a lively argument about the merits of plugging away at your craft in your small town vs. going to New York City. Meanwhile, your hero sips his Berghoff and tries to shake off hours sitting in suburban Chicago traffic.

Best photo op of the night:an anachronistic shot of a fellow dressed in a WWI uniform (including old school metal trench helmet) slouched, napping, one hand clutching his beer, over a half finished crossword puzzle.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
resumed: 11/23/03

The writing of this was interrupted several days ago by my hairy roommate’s entrance into the hostel’s shared kitchen, where I sat typing at the table. He was utterly taken aback and apologetic, as though he had interrupted something vitally important. Once I assured him it was all right, he began to talk rapidly, with no discernable pattern, about a number of seemingly disconnected topics—indeed, he seemed to abruptly segue more than he actually pursued any one idea. The disorganization of his mind was a wonder and a terror to behold. He alluded to troubles with the law--or someone--having to do, as far as I could tell, with his offering of money to “the pretty ladies of Madison.” He indicated he might have to leave the hostel tomorrow since his money had run out. Several times he abruptly left the room, and just as abruptly, would re enter and promptly begin to speak at me again, pursuing a line of associations that may have been comprehensible to him. He was clad in swim trunks and a t-shirt and, as he talked, he heated up water and added it to an old tea bag that had been sitting in a cup on the counter. He was from Wyoming? He had a job here? He used to? He was traveling somewhere where he was expected? I couldn’t follow a damn thing he said, despite asking some clarifying questions. The closest he came to conversing with me was going on about how much he liked popcorn shrimp when I said I was from Massachusetts. He returned to the topic of pretty ladies, saying that the hostel used to be full of them, but “he” drove them all out, confidentially indicating Oliver, downstairs.

“He” certainly didn’t make me feel any to welcome. After my roommate abruptly left to make a very loud phone call down in the lobby, Oliver called up and reminded me for the third time that I needed to put my “dirty” linens in the basket downstairs, although there was still an hour and a half till check out. He then reminded me I needed to do my own dishes; I assured him that I already had. He then said that I spilled a little oatmeal when I was downstairs looking at the tourist info brochures in the hall, and that he had been forced to clean it up. When I apologized, he merely went back into the office and continued to stare at the computer screen. Screw this, I packed up and prepared to leave. When I turned in my key, he didn’t look up. I said “Peace to you,” and he, begrudgingly, glanced at me and muttered “peace,” then resumed staring at the screen. I don’t care how many Maya Angelou and Cat Stevens quotes he put up on the wall, this guy was not making this place feel like a peaceful haven. Maybe he was tense and taking it out on me because he didn’t know what to do about my scary roommate. Whatever.

I drove to one of the nearby lakes, walked the shore for a while. Saw a poster advertising the Theramones: Madison’s best Theremin powered Ramones cover band, which gave me a great deal of hope for Madison. Then I mounted my steed and headed for Futuretron. Can’t say I was sad to leave Madison behind.

2003-11-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

11/21/03 Minneapolis, MN Odometer: 94,460

Inevitably, my travels have carried me several days ahead of my blah blah blahing, but the coming couple of nights in South Dakota winter rate motels should offer ample opportunity to blog myself into submission. What does the dedicated Selahstories reader have to look forward to in the coming days?

My visit to Futuretron, a huge visionary environment in Wisconsin, constructed by “Dr. Evermore.” Miraculous assemblages welded from industrial debris, authentic Edison dynamos, old car parts, musical instruments, and anything else that can be welded, all tucked unassumingly and utterly unannounced behind a salvage yard five miles south of Baraboo.

Why not to revisit one’s suburban childhood home after twelve years away, late in the day, in the rain, on an empty stomach.

The mighty Mini Apple and the fine folks therein.

More tailgating by that bastard, Gehry.

The very scary and unwelcoming vibe at the Madison Hostel.

And, hopefully, by the end of the day, the Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD.

2003-11-20T23:21:00.000-08:00

The After Dinner Superstar

Which model works better?
Which produces the most candlelight shadows?
I build a toothpick bridge.
If you have a curtain, you have two wheels.
Put the cap back on the felt tip,
but don't dislocate your neckbones doing it.
Eyes on the lip of a hurricane
so that my collar is actually not tight enough.
Though you encountered difficulty,
at times indifference outright,
others, there's a green median.
A flock of crows comb lawns
because communist movies silence the last call
or take a wind and come inside.
Unwind on the armrest with a pipe.
Pick up your room key at the Amsterdam,
and don't forget Wolfgang Puck.
Suck green pickles in paradise.
I mean there is a way to go,
and it is the best feeling.

Bill Waltz, Steve Healey, Me

Mini Apple 11/20/03 round midnight

2003-11-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

11/18/03 9:27 am Chicago

Chicago is raining and raining and the dogs play fight at my feet and the school bell rings across the street. Went to check on Roxy and was relieved to discover she hadn’t floated away in night and all windows were still intact. Got to either motivate to leave or decide to stay and do a monster haul to the Mini Apple in one day. All this rain is indecisive-making.

Yesterday I walked for miles all over the place, no set agenda. I love to wander more or less at random around an unfamiliar city and discover it a street, a block, a building, a vista at a time. Chicago’s downtown is quite stunning, space age looking. Watching each tower grow as I approach, from vague apparition into colossus. The winding course of the Chicago River and all the bridges crisscrossing it give it a canal like appearance, and there were views that reminded me of Amsterdam.

Once again, Frank Gehry has followed me, though clearly I’m gaining on him since his building here is still under construction in Chicago’s Millenium Park.

Went to the Chicago historical society to find the exhibit Jenny had recommended had closed the day before. I had fun in the Radio & TV broadcast museum housed there, though. It has a series of rooms decorated in period style, each with an old radio in it. When you enter the room, you trigger a motion detector which flicks on a light, turns on the radio, and plays a historic radio clip: attack on Pearl Harbor, the Lone Ranger, the first time Presidential election results were announced by radio, etc. I liked seeing how close I could get to an exhibit without triggering the mechanism. Sort of a spooky place, partly because I was the only one there most of the time I was there, but also because it’s a weird repository of dead people’s voices, wired to repeat the same things over again. Of course I had to go around and trigger all the tracks at once and stand where I could hear the babble of all the voices talking. Made we wish I could replace the audio tracks with tapes of found sounds or audio clips from personal--instead of public--history: children playing at recess, the sound of rain running down a street drain, Jenny shouting at her neighbors for peace.

Last night, talking to Ernesto, a neighbor, we discovered two men were shot. The man we saw had been shot in the jugular and the stomach and had developed pressure on his brain from all the blood loss. The other guy had been rushed in a friend’s car to the hospital while we were still inside. He also had been shot in the jugular vein, but got medical attention quicker and was in stable condition.

We went out for Costa Rican food last night at Arazu and it was absolutely incredible—especially the Yuca & roasted garlic.

Came back and watched independent videos to help Jenny choose clips to show her experimental film class. Watched “Memorial Day 2000” a film edited down to 22 minutes from hours of video footage shot by Wisconsin college undergrads partying past the point of oblivion in an RV park. All kinds of meatheady hijinks, often involving fire, mud, ATVs, dirtbikes, and, of course, massive quantities of beer. My favorite clip was when one reveler is not feeling so good and all his drinking buddies gather around him and chant: Puke! Puke! Puke! as though it were some sacred exhortation. He then struggles to make himself puke, so as not to let everyone down, but is unable until a buddy kindly offers “smell my finger.” That does the trick, sure nuff.

We also watched a video comprised of clips of politicians from CNN and other news footage obtained right before they go on air, and don’t realize they’re being filmed. This was pretty fascinating stuff, until I found the previous night’s lack of sleep caught up with me and I became one with the couch.

2003-11-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

Begun: 11/16/03 8:06 pm Chicago Odometer: 93,994

That the impala’s Latin name is Aepyceros melampus is only one of the things I’ve learned since arrival in Chicago. I also learned that one may earn a Master’s Degree in Biological Visualization after talking with Marie & Casey. Or Medical Illustration, in layman’s terms. Then a fascinating conversation about Gross Anatomy class and the dissection of cadavers. I sat rapt while they debated what was hardest to dissect: sexual organs, faces, or hands. According to Casey, you progress from stomach churning repulsion to boredom in relatively short order. I’ll have to take his word on this one, since the very thought of slicing through layers of human flesh is utterly inconceivable to me, be the flesh attached to a living organism or no. I quickly developed that respect for them reserved for those who competently do something I’m utterly incapable of. Reminded of Isidore Ducasse on beauty, (a quote revisited at the Cleveland Museum): “ the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella."

Back from a great Mediteranean meal, I write as Jenny prepares for six hours of student critiques tomorrow. Listening to Devendra Banhart at the kitchen table, very glad to have the day’s driving behind me. Another foggy, drizzly day of driving, which adds an extra layer of abstraction to the already abstracted act of travel. The most striking image to emerge from the fog was a stoic hawk perched composedly on the guardrail along route 90.

Tom Waits bootlegs and Mark Leyner’s “E Tu, Babe?,” and lyricing, and a shuffling of memories of the last week. Funny to apply the quaint word “memory” to events so recently relegated to the past, but extended travel has a way of piling so much new on top of the newly old, that there’s only room to contend with the particulars of each Now. This morning, feverishly trying get something down about my time in Cleveland, I could easily have written twenty pages about all felt, saw, done. A deluge of images and impressions that are still sloshing around in me, but their essence evaporated by all this new.

The big letdown of the day: being forced to abandon my pilgrimage to Cedar Lake, Indiana, where I spent most of my summers from the age of 3 or so till 11. Right at the outskirts of Chi I took route 41S as trip tic instructed, but a good 30 miles or so (just past Munster), the road was suddenly, unceremoniously, and completely blocked off to all traffic. Since I wasn’t even sure how I was going to find the Christian Conference Grounds where our cottage was, I was not prepared to bushwhack a route, especially as I spent a good 45 minutes in constant stop and go traffic to get this far. Must admit to being a little relieved, in that I would avoid the possibility of being let down. How could the actual Cedar Lake, in the rain, at 33 years of age possibly be as mysterious and sacred as it is lives in my memories of it? In fact, I felt myself inclining towards disappointment as soon as I turned off 90 onto 41. In my memory, Cedar Lake was remote from our house in the Chicago suburbs, reached only after a long gazing out the car window voyage. We sang a sacred song of greeting as soon as we turned onto the road, lined by cornfields, leading to it. Yet, the map revealed it to be just over the Indiana border, not more than two or three towns south of Chicago suburb sprawl.

………………………………………………………..

These wistful, nostalgic reminiscences were interrupted, last night, in just about the most abrupt manner possible. I heard a loud racket at the front door, at first thinking someone was knocking way too hard and way too fast. Emma and Pisco, Marie & Jenny’s dogs went nuts and Jenny came running downstairs.

“Did you hear that?”

“Is someone knocking?”

More like knocking on heaven’s door. Someone, directly across the street, had been shot, probably by a semiautomatic. (Since I was in the kitchen, at the rear of the apartment, the sound was somewhat muted.) After Jenny called the police, and we waited a few moments in the back of the apartment, then we took a look out the blinds. Everyone on the block was out. It was a mess of screams and threats and sobbing and barking dogs. We went back inside because it was all way to volatile and scary. A car was parked in the middle of the street, right in front of Jenny’s, and one man was standing outside the open passenger’s door, screaming threateningly at someone or a group of people in Spanish. We went out again once the police arrived, the ambulance, the fire dept.

At first Jenny had assumed a woman had been shot, after seeing a woman bent over, contorted, and screaming, but now we saw it was a Hispanic man in his twenties or thirties. We watched him get loaded onto a chair stretcher, rather than a flat one, presumably because he’d been shot in the chest or stomach (or both). He was bleeding profusely out his mouth. He was alive, but I would be surprised if he still is today. Sirens, lights, dozens of voices. For a moment, the dominant sound was Jenny as she shouted out to everyone:

“Alright, everybody listen up! From now on these block needs to peaceful! Peaceful! Everyone needs to contribute to that!”

A cop, checking for evidence, looked up at her crossly, and said: “Shh!”

“Why should I shh, it’s my block!”

(I very wobbly, clumsily, filmed several minutes of this, though without a flash, about all you see is the play of lights. Again, once I figger how to post video & photo somewhere...)

According to Jenny, the house directly across the street is inhabited mostly by members of The Kings, and unfortunately, this is hardly the first time her evening has been disrupted by gunfire. The big difference being that poor, bleeding man.

At my urging, we went to get a drink. There were way too many people out and way too much tension in the air. We went to the Rainbo Lounge, a hip bar, where a guy in hospital scrubs danced all goofy with a woman in vintage threads and fishnets. A cool, mellow vibe, much needed. We were still shaking by the end of the first drink and got another. By the time we got into our second game of The Simpson’s pinball (ball bouncing off nucleur reactors and Itchy & Scratchy statuettes) I began to feel a little more at peace with the cosmos.

Not the case last night, as I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to sleep on a couch right in front of the window where the shooting took place. I lay about 50 feet from where the body lay. I got to know West Haddon Street’s night sounds very well. At some point I did fall asleep, because I was awoken at 5 by something outside: a cop parked in the middle of the street (writing down license plate numbers?)

Once resigned to waking, it was straight back to mundane realities. Jenny and Marie scrambling to get off to work. My car was parked on the side of the street that is cleaned every third Monday of the month. As fate would have it, this morning is the third Monday of the month, and I drove around and around in circles trying to find a spot that was within a 5 block radius. It was downright Darwinian out there in the arena of parallel parking. Natural selection seemed to be working against me until finally, after about 40 minutes, a good spot directly across from the police station.

2003-11-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/16/03 9: 25 am Cleveland, OH

Damn, where’d all the time go? Trying to dash something out before I gotta shove off. These been four mighty full days here in Ian’s town, and the prospect of blobbing when there’s so much going seems foolhardy. How to recap? We’ve played so much music, playing for the saints in St. Paul’s Wed, playing a benefit for the Rape Crisis Center at the 25th Street Bookstore Thursday, playing till 3 am in Ian’s pad Friday, back to the bookstore yesterday afternoon and playing an opening slot at the Barking Spider last night. That was a real highlight: a real gritty but cozy spot with a very friendly crowd. Try to figure out a way to post a video clip. Free beer and a blazing fire in the fireplace next to stage area. Great PA, vibe, folks. I’ll let Ian do his imitation of Marcus, perhaps the friendliest man in Cleveland (after Ian, himself) who frenetically air drummed & guitared (often both at once) throughout our entire set and gushed praise between each song, and swamped us with adoration after the set. As we loaded up the car, we could still hear him for twenty minutes afterward, raving to his buddies: “those guys were really talented, don’t you think? I mean, they were really, really good!”

Polished off our Newcastles, said goodbye to our new friends, and jetted to see “American Splendor” at the best possible place in the world to see such a fine film: in the very theatre Harvey Pekar, Joyce, & Toby see “Revenge of the Nerds” in the movie: the Detroit. This film does not glorify the Cleve, that’s for damn sure, but it does a good job of showing off its scruffy, unpretentious charm. That Pekars and Tobys and Ian’s can thrive here makes perfect sense. Refreshing to hang in a big city that seems this relaxed and comfortable with itself. Of course when you’re walking around with Ian, you meet folks all the time, whether you want to or not: like Esperanza, the old Fillipino lady raking her lawn or Alexander, the museum guard (who proclaims “all this crazy music” during the Cage fest), the list goes on.

And the place gots some culchur, too. Not only do they have their own Gehri, building, but the totally top notch Cleveland Museum of Art, which we attended not once, but twice. Excellent permanent collection, especially 20th Century, American, & European. Great special exhibits, too, including some whacked video installation by a Dutch fella, Aeronaut Mik, showing people lethargically shredding and destroying the contents of a supermarket, and Decasia, a brilliant film constructed by compiling deteriorating silent film clips and accompanying it all with a shrill, ominous symphony of dissonant strings (which I loved, and Ian found unhinging).

And between our gigging yesterday, Ian & I managed to catch a fantastic John Cage Circus, as it was called, at the museum, where several groups of performers presented dozens of Cage pieces at various public spaces throughout the museum at odd times like 1:32, with a built in period of fixed silence, during which no performances took place, Prepared pianos & radios, tweaked percussives, long, antler like branches used to play the walls of the auditorium… I want to write more about this because it was such a beautifully orchestrated event—and all free. Even our parking, as it turned out. As we left the museum’s lot the parking attendant saw drums in the back of the car, the doumbek in my lap, and the guitar wedged between me and the dashboard (our mode of transport all weekend) and asked if we had been performers in the fest. I replied that yes, we were, but that our performance did not appear on the schedule. This was perfectly true: soon after witnessing an inspiring performance of “Living Room Music” in the central courtyard (in which a corncob pipe, ashtray, shuffling cards--among other things--are the “instruments”) Ian and I “staged” an impromptu Cage jam in a lobby crumpling our programs, slapping my notepad, clicking our tongues, stamping our feet, humming, whistling, etc. I like to think some of the interested passersby merely assumed we were performing a lesser known work from the Cage canon.

Damn, I gotta get rolling, but there’s so much to say, especially about Ian & Christine, two of the finest folks on the planet. Ian who mediates neighbor conflicts, “plants peacemakers” in elementary schools, and attends anti nuke rallies for a fun nigh out. C. who teaches ESL, GED cert. classes, and even tutors a refugee two hours a week, free, because where else is he gonna go? And, to my infinite gratitude, they take in the wanderer and give him love & refuge in the city of beautiful freaks.

Time to go see what creation Ian hath wraught, for he hath been making a sandwich-for-the-road for me for the last twenty minutes...

2003-11-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/15/03 noon Cleveland

Before I catch up on two + days worth of neurotic white boy escapades in bad assin’ Cleve Land, a tentative itinerary for friends who’ve asked just where the hell I think I’m going. From here the real bushwhacking begins, the Kerouacian stuff, the visionary cosmic zen & the art of Buick Century maintainence. Or maybe just more humbling tales of wipeouts and existential angst. Up to Xmas it’s all more or less solid (give or take a day or three) due to holiday plans with friends and shows already in place. From Xmas on I have just a loosey goosey approximation of where I want to go and who I want to see before my meter runs out.

Key:

P = place to crash already lined up
(Then there’s Tenacious Pee: my vote for the name of the new Jack Black outfit)

H = hostel, unless something better turns up on the fly

? = ?

Nov. 16 & 17 (?) Chicago P

Nov. 18 either Janesville, WI or Madison, WI ten. P

Nov. 19 Mini Apple, MN P

Nov. 20, 22 flea bag motels somewhere in South Dakota and/or western MT

Nov. 22-27 Willsal, MT P

Nov. 28 & 29 Missoula, MT ten. P

Nov. 30 Spokane, WA (?)

Dec.1 & 2 Seattle H

Dec. 3 & 4 Olympia, WA (?)

Dec. 5 & 6 Elma, WA H

Dec. 7 Portland, OR H

Dec. 8 Klamath, CA H

Dec. 9 – 10 Oakland, CA P

Dec. 11 Monterey, CA H

Dec. 12 Los Angeles, CA H or P

Dec. 13. San Diego H or P

Dec. 14 Phoenix, AZ H

Dec. 15 El Paso, TX H (?)

Dec. 16 – 18 Austin, TX H

Dec. 19 Galveston, TX H

Dec. 20 –21 New Orleans, LA H

Dec. 22 Memphis, TN ?

Dec. 23 Nashville, TN ?

Dec. 24 Knoxville, TN H (?) a

Dec. 25 Carolina Beach, NC P

As you can see, from Arizona on it’s pretty hypothetical. Those distances in Texas aren’t really that big, are they? I mean, don’t them Texans exaggerate everything?

2003-11-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/13/03 2:10 pm Cleveland, OH Odometer: 93,606

Writing after my first real night of seriously sleeping in and did I ever need it. I’ve been fighting a cold since the mountains, and the last few days it’s been taking a toll on me. My usual winter affliction: the throat, chest, head (in that order) beast. Writing at Ian in Christine’s big kitchen table watching the wild winds whip around the trees and leaves and, occasionally, snow flurries.

There’s been just the kind of schizo weather a New Englander grows to expect, but I guess Midwesterners get this too. All day yesterday, driving through NY, PA, and eastern Ohio, it fluctuated between intensely foggy and foreboding, to bright and sunny. Soon after I arrived, though, there was a thunder and lightning rain storm, followed by this rough, gusty stuff. Glad to be sitting in doors with nowhere to be and watch the leaf cyclones and sip hot beverages and feel my head begin to clear.

It was quite the monster haul yesterday, (8+ hours) and I kept feeling like I was gonna nod off, but map quest kept me awake with all the zagging and zigging it had me doing. I took routes 84 and 80 straight across the middle of PA, through many a long, rural stretch. I’ve never seen so much roadkill as I saw on an 80 mile stretch of 84 where I spotted 6 deer and several other unlucky crossers: porcs, a fox(?), rabbits, and--what looked like--a pretty mutilated hawk, to name a few.

The drowsiness got the best of me about half way across and I stopped to nap at a rest stop. I had just nodded off, when I awoke with a start, all tense and anxious. Moments later, I went looking for my datebook/address book, and discovered I’d left it in Red Hook. It had to be something, didn’t it? Luckily, one of the numbers I still had on me was Dave’s work number at Bread Alone and I caught him right before his shift ended. When he got home he found it so hopefully he’ll be able to mail it to me before I split the Cleft Land. Many thanks, again, to you Dave & Deb, for enduring my klutz routine, offering me your cozy guest suite, bandaging me up, wining and dining me like an emperor, and even sending me on my way with a delicious loaf of bread (which we broke last night).

The other call I made while in transit proved equally fortuitous. I followed up on a contact I’d made before leaving in Missoula, MT, and confirmed a show at the Area 5 gallery for Nov. 28, which Victor, the gallery owner, is billing as the Too Fucked Up For (From?) the Holidays Show. This oughta be a fun. Missoula is an incredibly groovy town, with its share of cool, freaky people. Victor was very funny, sardonic, self deprecating. Told me I could play as long as I insulted the audience, didn't mind having an orgy take place in front of me, and a list of a dozen or so other absurdist criteria I'll have no difficulty fulfilling. Wish it was this much fun talking to booking people back in the valley. No fretting about drinks and draw…

The only part that wasn’t fun was trying to navigate my mapquest strictures while talking, but I managed to make it 38th Street without one wrong turn. As I eased down the street, I noticed a car following me close, and I pulled over, hoping to spot the Ruth Building, Ian & Christine’s apartment. The car turned out to be driven by the one and only Ian Heisey, aka Mr. Hong, the Peace Warrior. Ian had just left work and had been following me for the last three blocks, seeing how good my sense of direction was. Wouldn’t it be nice if all my arrivals where this perfectly timed.

We hung out, talked, sliced carrots, potatoes, onions, and made squash soup together, and had dinner when Christine got home from work. Then Ian and I braved the cold and packed our gear into his Saturn (so tight we had my guitar and Ian’s doumbek in the front seat with me). We unloaded and jammed for hours at St. Paul’s, a local church that Ian is in good terms with, no doubt due to all the community service he’s done over the years. We played here before a couple of times three years ago (was it that long ago?). A pretty humble structure, but very high ceilinged, and a big, open sanctuary, creating tons of natural reverb. We drank hard cider and played dozens of songs, even dusted off some cobwebs and managed a wobbly Driver 8. We didn’t get back till 2 am, it which point I was yawning big enough to swallow my whole head.

2003-11-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Written: November 12 6:27 am Red Hook, NY

Once I slog, I pack up Roxy and head onward to Cleveland. It’s gonna be a long haul and the sooner I make my peace with the road the better.

Yesterday was a wet, gray, foggy day by and large. More than wet--sleety for a while: downright wintry seeming. I did some writing here in the morning, then drove into Kingston, where Dave manages the local Bread Alone bakery and coffee shop. They were getting slammed, so I checked out a kick ass used bookstore across the street. Alternatives, or something like that? Really good inventory, and an especially great poetry section. I got talking to the owner and it turned out he used to run a chapbook publishing press back in Berkley that published an early Ginsberg pocket edition.

From there, Dave & I went up into the Kill towns. First the main Bread Alone in Boiceville while Dave had a manger's meeting, then we tried to visit his friend Bill, a guitar maker, who is custom making Dave his dream guitar. He wasn’t in, so it was off to Phoenicia (?), to meet Dave’s friend Murray, an 80-year-old man who lives in a small guest cottage behind his wife’s house. Dave used to be their tenant before he was married. Murray is “quite a character,” as Franny would say. We had some wine and focaccio and talked. He spent much of the time talking about the funeral of a friend Murray had been to a few days ago, and how the priest kept talking about Christ this, Christ that, barely mentioning Lonny who had died, and then when he finally did, he said Lanny. Last time Murray’s going to a Catholic anything.

Phoenicia seems like a wonderful town, nestled right in the mountains, with Esopus brook running through, which is much more accurately described as a river. A real pretty Main Street with lots of small, local shops, and no trace of the gentrification which seems so rampant in Red Hook, Rhinebeck, & Kingston.

We drove back and Deb had made another phenomenal dinner: chicken, broccoli raab(?), squash, mashed potatoes, and salad. Damn I been eating well. She invited her friend and coworker Mary, her son Jason, and his girlfriend Sarah. Jason plays guitar and Sarah has a really sweet, sultry jazz voice, so after dinner, we once again, made for the fireplace, opened the port, and passed the guitar around, even did some group sings on Downtown Train, What A Wonderful World and Radiohead’s Creep.

A great night, and happy to report that I was only guilty of one blundery act all day. I was walking down the stairs to meet the guests, and just as I reached the bottom of the staircase, I bumped the ornamental knob thingy at the head of the banister, which detached itself from the banister and bounced on the kitchen floor right in front of everyone (kind of like Jimmy Stewart in Wonderful Life—you know how he pulls the thingy off the railing every time he goes down the stairs?). Rather than being humiliating, though, A) the damn thing was already loose, and B) it seemed to nicely punctuate my arrival, without leaving a visible punctuation mark on the newly refinished dining room floor.

2003-11-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/11/03 7:34 am Red Hook, NY Odometer: 93,060

Aye, I’ve been remiss in me clogging, and now needs must play a wee bit of catch up. And the entries already up in cyberdom are rife with nasty typos I have not the compooter know how to fix. And so, onwards. I am writing atop my bed in the guest room of David & Debbie’s beautiful, old house in Red Hook. Dave is a friend from way back in the Philly days, when we played with Jimmy in an oft renamed outfit. I think when Dave was in the band we went at various times by both Sister Rosalind’s Lepers and The Ballistic Swedes. Davey’s a world class classical guitarist, all around swell guy, and now, by the looks of it, a pretty happy fella. Dave & Debbie have been married less than a year, but I’ve only met her once before briefly, while hurriedly trying to pack out my gear after a show, the next band waiting to set up. Yesterday we had the leisure of meeting over several glasses of red wine, port, and a meal of Bra-zhoal (phonetic spelling) prepared the previous night and slow cooked for ten hours. Much better way to meet, and I found her really gracious, funny, kind. Fantastic meal and a fun, relaxed night of port sipping, changing the words to Henry Mancini tunes, song swapping in front of the fireplace.

But perhaps some back tracking is in order. How does one go from shivering one’s white ass off in the White Mountains to drinking Cockburn out of cut crystal glasses in front of a fireplace in Red Hook? I’ll board my time machine and see if I can retrace my path before it grows too cold…

Hiked down from the mountain after breakfast. More treacherous than a steady downhill would usually be due to, iced over rocks and snowy path. No serious falls on anyone’s part. Said goodbye to the Luces and my brother Dave and his wife Lois. Drove back with Dar, Paul, Ben & Kylie again. Ben drove while Paul and I attempted to doze. I wasn’t successful, and, consequently, inadvertently eavesdropped on a conversation in the back seat between Dar & Kylie about me. When asked why I was going on this tip, Dar said I was “trying to find myself.” Nine year old Kylie’s response, repeated twice: “but he’s right here, how can he find himself?”

I’m psychstoked at the prospect of finding myself out there. Dude, that will so rock. First off, I’m gonna high five me. Then you can be damn sure I will write one kick ass frog entry celebrating the consummation of the search for self.

Got back to sister Deb’s where I did some slogging and hung out with Luke. He played me his violin recital piece for upcoming all state orchestra try outs: excerpt from Motzart’s 4th. I will remain ever in awe of people who can play stringed instruments without frets.

I also took a hot shower, which never feels so good as it does after prolonged shivering.
Even so, I still carry a shiver inside that I’ll likely have in the marrow until the first spring day I can walk outside in a t shirt.

We all went over to Dar’s and watched Whale Rider, at my suggestion, with Dar, Deb, Joel, Luke,Ben, Katie, Kylie, and Christina, Joel’s girlfriend. Tough to find a movie that’s gonna cover a 9 year old, teenagers, and my sisters, both between 48 and 50, but it actually seemed to go over—though the Maori singing and dancing seemed to unsettle them a bit, which I must admit to enjoying (that is, both the singing and dancing, and the discomfort produced by it). The singing in the movie is astounding; worth seeing it for that alone. Especially the grandmother: beautiful voice, full of joy & suffering.

Deb said, afterward, that the movie was good, but “different.” I noticed a month ago when my brother Dave spent a weekend in Maine with me, he often used this word to describe things, usually in a way that implied he was inclined to like something, but cautiously so.

God, it was good sleeping in my niece Kristin’s warm bed (she’s off at college). Woke early, saw Ben & Ky off to school, and loaded up Roxy. Paul gave me this awesome monster adapter that should allow me to charge my computer off of the cigarette lighter. Very cool and sure to get lots of use. In exchange I need only send a postcard from the Corn Palace. Thanks Paul.

Scraped the first layer of frost off Roxy’s windows before embarking. The frost covered the entire windowed surface of the car, but came off without a lot of give; clearly, just another introduction to the world of winter. It was crystalline and beautiful; I wish I’d taken a picture.

Said goodbye to Dar & Paul and headed. Quickly found myself back in Massatucky, and did homage to my home state by purchase of gas, coffee, and by having a few moments of reverent silence at two rest stops on the Pike. Sang along to the Cosmos mix and pondered James Mason’s overly reverbed reading of Ecclesiastes. Inclined to think that maybe King Solomon (or whoever the writer of Ecclesiastes really was) would realize that life was more than a vanity and a striving after of wind once he found himself. Worked on a song incorporating favorite road signs and dreamed of cutting an album of all road songs, recorded entirely at truck stop diners and cheap motels.

Once in New York, took the Taconic Parkway south, and really fell in love with that stretch of road. Beautiful and sleepy and still quite a bit of color. I barely saw any cars, but felt no inclination to speed.

Got to Dave & Deb’s after discovering the hard way that there is, in fact, a very big difference between route 9 and 9G. A lot of 9s in the roads out here. Had no idea they lived in such a beautiful, elegant house, with a lovely yard and the Saw Kill creek running through their backyard. Dave greeted me warmly and gave me the tour, and then we went for a bike yard around the campus of Bard College, just down the road. A wonderfully tucked away, woodsy, spread out campus, with a great view of the Hudson.
Checked out the incredibly sexy new performing arts building, designed by Frank Gehri (?). Wish I knew how to post my photos, cause no verbal description is going to capture the feel of this thing. Huge, curved sheets of shiny, silver metal jut skyward, all sensuous angles like a huge, glittering silver dragon. There is no bad angle from which to view it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go into the belly of the beast and had to be content to admire from the outside.

Also unfortunate for me was a pretty massive spill I took on Dave’s bike when he turned to go down a hill and I attempted to simultaneously brake, turn sharp, and follow, but did so one handed because I was trying to tuck my camera back into its bag. I lurched out of my seat and went down hard, the moreso because my chief thought was protecting my technologies. Nevertheless, I bestowed a substantial ding on the bottom of my camera and brought up an incomprehensible message on my cel (inside my bag), which I landed on top of . I should also note that my Krusty the Clown watch, inside my jacket pocket, was activated by the force of my fall and the first thing I heard, immediately upon impact, was the hoarse voice of Krusty announcing: “Hey kids, it’s story time!” followed by his gravelly, alcoholic clown laugh. Krusty seems to enjoy any occasion that involves me looking foolish (too often in the last few weeks, I’ve pushed the button that makes Krusty taunt me when bending over to pick up something I’ve dropped). Ask me some time about how Krusty almost made Justin & I miss our flight to England this summer.

Once I determined camera and cel to be sound, I assessed my own damage. My right knee seemed to have taken the brunt, all scraped up, dented in from stones, and sore. My elbow was also hurting quite a bit, but it wasn’t till we were back that I rolled back my sleeve to discover I’d been bleeding pretty steadily from a deep gash just below my elbow. A piece of my thermal top had actually ripped off and become embedded in the small hole in my arm, which seemed to keep me from bleeding more. One of those curious wounds that resembles a mouth orifice in its ability to open, close, and emit a steady stream of blood when I try to find its tongue. This was not my favorite part of yesterday.

Today I’m aching, bruised, swollen, but warm, well fed and grateful to be spending another day among my hospitable peeps in the Kills. Today I’m keeping both hands on the wheel. Krusty, knave, thou shalt not have the last laugh.

2003-11-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/9/03 7:18 am Zealand Falls Hut, White Mountains, NH

It’s a painfully cold morning here in the hut. I got up, went to pee in the composter (where I read the note posted on “signs that you may have hypothermia”) returned and found the common room just as cold, so came back in the bunkhouse, put my down jacket on over my two sweaters and thermal top, and climbed back into my sleeping back, even though I’ve been awake for at least two hours. The emergency radio was squawking about an hour ago in the dining room, phrases like “negative temperatures” and “freezing fog.” Temperature at Zea Cliff is –30, which just goes to show that it’s all relative--it's about zero outside the hut. All the mice traps appear to have been de-cheesed or un-peanut buttered in the night, but no carcasses. They are wily, these mountain mice.

We, like the mice, ate well. Last night a pasta, pizza, salad, and garlic bread feast; this morning English muffins with egg, bacon, & cheese. For both meals I ended up on cleaning detail, which requires a pretty substantial crew of 4: a pre scrubber, a hot water scrubber, a hot water rinser, a cold bleach rinser, and a dryer/putter awayer--all water is, of course, well pumped and heated on the stove. I was dryer both times, a task rendered somewhat futile by the one tiny towel we had, which quickly became soaked through. Nevertheless, great fellowship was enjoyed by all scrubs.

After dinner last night I worked hard at tuning an old, beat upon guitar in the hut. Four of its six tuners had been broken off, but with a pair of pliers, I was eventually able to achieve something resembling a tuning on those rusty old strings. I jammed out in the kitchen and even got Ben to sing on Future Artifact.

Went out and shivered violently on the porch to watch a lunar eclipse. Never seen one so stark and clear. As a consequence of the dimming moon—and our elevation--I believe I beheld more stars than I had ever before taken in at once.

We were quite the bedfellows last night, G4 and I. We slept side by side like lovers. I borrowed two wool blankets from Naomi: one for me, one for wrapping up my power book. It occurs to me that, as is my wont, I should bestow a name upon my mighty companion. Naturally it must be female as befits my practice of naming my sacred objects idealized female names. My guitar is Jane (or, Sweet Jane, especially with a new set of strings); the mighty chariot which conveys me along my road is Roxy.

2003-11-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/8/03 4:30 pm Zealand Falls Hut, White Mountains elevation: 2,700 feet

Katie wants to learn to write with her left hand because Ben is writing his own log entry next to me in the chilly lodge dining hall, slowly becoming warmer as Naomi, the hut caretaker, begins to stoke up a fire. I am thrilled to discover that my power book started up at all after the bitter cold day and our hike in the snow and wind up to Zea Cliff (3,500 feet). It was a slippery, shivery hike up with many a narrow escape from full sprawl face-first in the tree roots and rocks, but the view of the surrounding mountains was astounding: Kerrigan, Avalon, and another cliff, whose name is uncertain, in the snowy distance and a stark valley below: trees bare but for snow tracery on the branches. We also passed beneath the shadow of Hale Mountain, and I rued that, once again, they have left off the s at the end. We shivered, gaped, shivered, dutifully documented our conquest, and descended much more quickly to the lodge.

Speaking of slippery, Donna Luce, a member of our party took a nasty spill at one of our first creek crossings during the initial ascent to the lodge. She may have broken her wrist, but determined to push on. Not me, unless someone was packing some powerful pain killers.

Nephew Luke wants to be included in my entry, and well he should be. Never will you meet a more mature, considerate, talented, bright, sixteen year old. Seriously. Luke can play any instrument he lays his hands on within a few weeks of sizing it up. Many a family member, like Luke, has poked a head over my shoulder or stopped to peruse my pokey progress as though it were an alien artifact I tapped upon. Which can be somewhat self conscious making, truth be told, but the intrepid chronicler forges onward, undeterred by familial eyes. After all, this is all being posted exhibitionist style on my blog for all to flog and exfoliate. Now Ben reads the previous log entries in the hut’s log “we had oatmeal,” “we love it here!” and my faith in my own journaling skills rebounds.

We’ve developed the theory that only kooks hike into the White Mountains in November. Proof? On the way up a very jolly looking fellow in really zippy hiking gear approached us on the trail as we waited for Donna and the rear party to catch up. When he reached us, he immediately addressed all of us, but speaking in particular to Katie, Kylie, and Sage, all under 13 years old. Without any segue, he began, his words came quickly, as though he had been waiting a long time to speak these very words:

“My father was divorced 50 (15?) years ago. But now he is remarried and has three little rats (?) fools (not sure?) like you: one 3, one 5, and one 8. Good day to you!”

And he proceeded merrily upon his way. It may be I have embarked on this quest for the sole purpose of following this wise man and learning wisdom at his feet. If so, I forsook my calling. Nevertheless, I feel moved to proclaim--without any basis or authority--that all quests should begin by climbing a mountain.

2003-11-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Friday 11/8/03 93N Near Canterbury NH 8:50 am

Driving with my sis Dar, hub Paul, neph Benyahmon, & neice Kylie on our way to the Mountains. Kylie leans forward and asks if I drink coffee, then informs me that if you drink coffee you’re a grown up. Elaborates “grown ups drink coffee because they’re always tired.” Whether or not I am truly a grown up is a subject that draws mixed review among my immediate family. At 33, I am the only one of 6 kids in my family who is unmarried and has not brought reproduced. I am also the only one who is not a fundamentalist Christian or a card carrying Republican. Ben talks of his motorcycle wipe out last night and sports his bandaged forearm. He tries to remember the Shakespearean sonnet he had to write last night for English homework. It was an ode to his car. Paul tells me he will give me a car jack ac adapter for my travels in exchange for a postcard from the corn palace. Somehow we get talking about a strange character they’ve seen several times who lives in a trailer with three large dogs who has a deer head mounted on the front of his RV and hand painted murals on the side. He’s a storyteller, right? He passes through Kingston a few times a year…

The day begin pretty inauspiciously with Franny waking me at 5:57 telling me I had left my trunk open last night, and my car’s not going to start today because the trunk light was on all night. Sure enough, there it is agape, all my carefully packed contents revealed before God and retirement community. I have a dim memory of opening the trunk last night at 12:30 to get out my coffee and filters for the morning. (What anxiety induced lapses will follow?) Mom follows up the prediction of doom with the pronouncement that if she didn’t live in a trailer park full of retirees my trunk would have been emptied. Over breakfast I allow myself to linger upon these lovely thoughts and try not to think to hard about what they may portend for my trip.

God love ya Franny, making me pbjs for the hike. Franny’s the kind of lady that’ll spread butter on your toast on the placement to save washing an extra plate, even if it means getting some jam on the tablecloth. Franny prays for me and warns me about hitchers who would kill me, take my stuff, take my car, even “steal my whole identity.” God love ya Franny. Keep praying for me.

We are passing Woodstock, NH, and approaching what Ben calls the Old Man OFF the Mountain, considering his recent erosion facelift. Paul notes that he wasn’t Living Free, so he decided to Die. Snowflakes spotted…

2003-11-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

Written: 11/7/03 Odometer: 92,795 Hampstead, NH 1:31 am

Too tired to be writing, but I’ve made a solemn pact with the Blog God to squeeze my ounce of blood from the PowerBook every day. Feel pretty wrung out myself, crying into my udon noodles at lunch and down Montague Road after saying goodbye to Bella, and all the rushed goodbyes to friends, stifled by pressing worries like, did I pack the sprocket wrench set somewhere that I can get to it if I break down?

Stopped in to pirate recording software from my guru, Leo (thanks, Plum Blossom) to make the hostel nights ahead more fun. Then the agony of trying to send out the goddam email about my clog site, thwarted again and again by a half dozen previously unencountered error messages.

First day on the road and I’ve already experienced my first case of severe road rage. Crawling down the clogged arteries of 93N I find myself striking the steering wheel and indignantly asking the crawlers around me “why the hell do you all want to go to New Hampshire?” Tried to make the best of it by attempting to photograph the endless line of headlights in my rearview mirror.

Finally got to mom’s and heated up the superb beef stew Bella made last night. Then allowed myself to be lured over to Shawny’s house to watch his new Fargo birthday dvd. Definitely suffered numerous forebodings about the trip ahead watching those snowy, barren stretches of North Dakota and Minnesota road. If only I had a travel companion like Steve Buscemi’s character, I’d be assured plenty of shits & giggles ahead. Checked out photos of Shawn’s cruise to Bermuda and, yet again, had to stop and ask myself why I was driving into the Rockies in the dead of winter. Talked with Shawn about muzzle loaded hunting and his quest to obtain an original upright arcade version of Galaga. That’s what I need right now to ease into sleep: a couple rounds of alien annihilation.

Ok, I’ll manage without. I have to rise in 4 hours to climb a mountain.

2003-11-04T11:24:00.000-08:00

11/4/04 2:25 pm

Does this thing work? I stand on the cusp between Jim's house in NoHo and a flog, I mean blog spot in cyber central. I leave for parts unknown in 3 days. Am I ready? Why'd you go and ask me that?