mortal infiniteness

17/18 September 2010

road: a pebbled blacktop mass fused in the forges of highway men and women, tar and sweat; those drumming rubber stilts separate the rubber soles and weary rubber souls paving progress. The original social network of us all, yet wears on melting away in gummy tar suns of the Southwest, snowy mountain passes and never ending, time stilled plains trots. Pass along yer progress trail at hundred or so miles to the hour, hell-driven fury of indifferent gas passing to blow all yer gas into the poetry drenched sea.

I see the Sea today after climbing a windy mountainous pass dotted with California mansions and for the first time I am aware of the infiniteness of the Highway. I rolled it away with my drumming tires, thinking it was another barrier ‘transcendable’ with enough octane and that the sea was our hero untamed and free; all the best poetry laid bare at her shores and lapped away frivolously by her surf. But I was wrong. Here at the top of a pass lined with hidden icons, I see the sea. And now, after a month of this study, solid and dotted line painted, paved black in a heat wave horizon and I see no difference between road and sea. Though, road is man’s. Whose is the sea? 

Road is: winding tales twisting thru town and country, connecting each. An omnipresent promise of freedom reminding us that escape is at our gear box or thumb, a creatable destiny as tangible as the window glass guarding our eyes from God’s wind and surf, without which we might find the mundane unbearable, the ‘real life’ less real. That road sets us free.

So, I descend the pass as my friend guides me by phone to his Santa Cruz abode where I will be spending my final night of highway manning, one final couch and conversation. And I feel sad.

Santa Cruz looks like a city built by beatniks running from San Francisco’s skid row, their book dividends accumulating enough to support both their drug experimentation and owning a proper house. That is to say that it’s choke full of ‘academite’ book stores, latte laden cafés, and mod bars where I mistake the ‘book’ left behind by the couple next to us as an accident rather than them paying the bill. So I pay the bill for the gin and tonics and leave Whitman behind red in the face, but not from the alcohol. It is a delightful re-visitable coastal haven.

18 September

A clear calm morning for driving and the finale road is the 101 and there aren’t many, if any, that parallel it. More than a road it is the final finite feat of man before stepping off the continent into the celestial sea; like a humble ‘Bernini step’ (the architect that built Rome humbly buried under a simple step in one of his divine basilicas) on a cliff’s edge border of mortal and immortal. 

Jack’s SEA:

Cherson!

Cherson !

You aint just whistling

Dixie, Sea—

Cherson! Cherson!

We calcimine fathers

here below!

Kitchen lights on—

Sea Engines from Russia

seabirding below—

When rocks outsea froth

I’ll know Hawaii

cracked up & scramble

up my doublelegged cliff

to the silt of

a million years—

Shoo—Shaw—Shirsh—

Go on die salt light

You billion yeared

rock knocker

Gavroom

Seabird

Gabroobird

Sad as wife & hill

Loved as mother & fog

Oh! Oh! Oh!

Sea! Osh!

Where’s yr little Neppytune

tonight?

My road, approximately:

Miles: 10,118 / Km: 16,283.342

Total $ amount of gas: $966.27

Gallons of gas: 353.458452955789

Average price per gallon: $2.734

Miles per $: 10.47

Average miles per gallon: 28.625749

This trip was ‘just’ an idea from a jacuzzi on a deck in the frozen Idaho January of 2010, now a past engram of summer musing realized. Fin.

.s.

awake when September ends

17 September 2010


Keeping conversations trotting well past middles of nights, and dawn pounces on my eyelids again and still I am more awake than should be possible and on the road again without Starbucks or stimulants. Physically the toll of this journey must be more than I know. I expect to Rip Van Winkle for the next twenty years, but I figure I’ll just shove off exploring then too. What will the grand road be like in 20 years? And so, I muster up and out the door and avoid a slow mourning morning by shoveling all my pertinences into the carriage-in-wait looming dew covered in the now brisker turning autumn air; mornings less and less forgiving as this month dwindles away. I’m off. Last bend bent.


At the border within the border: on the H-97 South at the California state line there is an unexpected inspection-point.
A head nod slowing my mustered muster, ‘whirr’ of the automatic window lowering to a crisp cowboy accent just above monotonous:


“Where ya comin from?”

“Just Oregon last night.”

“Any fruits?”

“Nope.”
“Have nice day.”

A minimalist for conversation… don’t you want to ask what I meant by “‘just’ Oregon last night?” Come on I loaded that for hours of bargery conversation! but unnoticed it goes and I too brush away the situation as a bothersome halt to my objective: Santa Cruz by mid-afternoon.


And such is my entrance to California, questioning the meta-quest of ‘just’ a month of nowhere meandering, thoughts stoic as the mid-morning mid-September sun massaging my left temple deep in contemplation about my mid-afternoon mission reminding me that it’s almost over. Nope, no fruits, but I’ve stowed away a month of hard-earned, worked for memories; each mile under my tires more booty to add to my chest of treasure, each conversation a precious stone never to be rendered to any ‘Thought Police,’ nor to the dangers of ‘just’ another summer jaunt, estivated in un-planned, free-wheeling wayfaring across the New World (as it may be perceived), and definitely not confiscated away like a ‘fruit’ at a border between ‘never and never again.’ Four wheels thru caliginous obscurity at the luminous thresholds of liminality, thousands of pilgrimaged miles along infinite intertwining interstates leading to a hope that, as is sung, I will awaken when September ends.


Weed, California

There is a rumor, tested or no I am not sure, that eating Mexican food above 40° latitude is asking for trouble, either digestive-wise, taste-wise, or otherwise, but there is also a Taco truck in Weed that sold me a mighty fine taco, and those of you travelling thru, don’t be afraid. The “Ricos Tacos” truck with Oregon license plates provided me with just as its eponymous name suggests ‘delicious tacos.’ As for the town of Weed, although the name sounds like a stoner’s paradise, it is in my humble opinion, one of Northern California’s finest stops location-wise for aesthetic-wise enjoyment, pocketed in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the farouche Mount Shasta standing all alone in her grandiose stature just a few miles south.












.s.


"Slowly, desperately slowly, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. x Can you see anything? q” –Howard Carter

resilience beat into wanderer, a heuristic travel reverie

16 September 2010

Idaho to Oregon

And then, this melancholy Thursday morning, I left the reposing hammock of comfort behind and I said ‘goodbye.’ Each trip must have a beginning and an end for logic’s sake, no? Yet, when they each actually occur or occurred on this perpetual wheel, I am not sure. I do know that again and again those tongue resonating ‘goodbyes’ topple and fumble out of my mouth, and if what I tell you now will discourage ‘some future beginning’ then turn a deaf ear because the throe does not exceed the trial. ‘Goodbye’ never gets easier, you never get any better at it, in fact it seems to get more and more difficult, I guess that’s because the more you travel the more goodbyes you ‘get’ to say, an eerie dénouement of ‘time-half loves.’ Travel is a treasure-trove of oxymorons that sweeten and bitter the nectar of stillness.

I push across the dry interior mountains west towards the sea. From the heart of Idaho along a cliffside course I weave a snaky Salmon River road; a sharp contrast to the rectilinear plains’ highways of late. Traversing the River of no Return is, to me, second nature. A road just as I had left it: I dodge the same dips, cracks, areas of fallen rock, and slow drivers; I am familiar with the straight stretches, rest stops, and beautiful vistas from which to snap photos. I keep on whirring by… my first nature? I drive in reverie as morning turns afternoon and then in my immediate view the Oregon state line comes and fades and my passing denotes the end of my western trajectory, for tomorrow I will round the last bend in the road.

Have I already traveled 300 degrees of the circle? Heuristic yogi lessons of life gush thru my mind. What have I learned? Will 360 degrees bring an answer to any of my questions? Perpetually questioning, stretching farther back than this journey, all journeys. I question my motives for travel. I question this vehicle to enlightenment, as if questioning any faith. Is the cure of my inquietude on the road? Is my journey different? Somehow more true? Is my voyage more revealing? Did I really think that making a magical circle would bring any answers to questions lingering in my spiritual vagabond soul?:

I see an endless wheel; I see four; each pitches down the last rays of sun on the last westerly pavement plan. Four humming, drumming wheels ease my worries, soothing music in my ears not from any radio, but my own.

Mine is a mithridatic whirr, peddle steadily percussing a blacktop tympan; bbbbvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv; beat injected flex and ease of my Achilles heel. Pitch elevation swings round ride cymbal pendulum-like cues of a background provoked rhythm: wheel dips left, ddduuussss; elevates on balance, ffffffff; back right, ffffuussss… repeat. River. Road. Rock. Repeat. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz kick drum dream. My music. No words.

.s.

the de rigueur of traveling the true north, home

10-16 September 2010

Somewhere in the Northwestern United States

Home. You blur my compass view, as I twist and slue. Deviate as I may, I twine, coil, skew, hook, crook, kink, writhe, spin, whirl, curve, snake, gyrate, reel, bend, bow, wimple, pivot, angle, meander, wind, zigzag, veer, pirouette and still I find you clouding my mind, my dearly loathed and frivolously loved, home. Your nostalgic longing plagues all travelers, you are inescapable and demoralizing to the route: travel is great to look forward to and back on but as uncomfortable as a rock in my trudging boot whilst I traverse, displaced, lost, uneasy… all the tell-tale whimpers of the wander afar. So this sentimental rapture is for you ‘home’ then we are through, that is, until the next time I gallant away magnetic north directing direction as you pull magnet-like “longing for familiarity.” 

 

Home in the nude:

Not a spot on a map (which it is hardly ever even that), I have no map for ‘home’ nor is one needed. It’s the place I know the answer to the ‘where’ and it’s that comfort of knowing that makes ‘home’ sweet home.

Thru my glass I see home:

‘Home’ I have come to reckon, after 8 years of wanderlust transient pilgrimaging, is indeed a concept rather than a place. Physically the Northwest is where I spent the bulk of my life. I feel comfortable charging 80mph down the highway here. I ‘know’ the layout of the land… each bend, dip and pothole in the road and, as far as this side of the fence goes, I know the color of the grass (i.e. the people, the life, the culture, etc...) So, I guess I just hope a deer or an elk doesn’t walk out in front of my 2002 Accord at 80 and put us both into nonexistence and an effective end to my so-called ‘knowledge.’

This is ‘where I am from’:

A place time reluctantly touches; an exemption from the worldly laws of modernization and change, it is a lost (or is it found rather than lost?) land and for that I write vaguely about the lusterless treasure passed up by covered wagoneers heading west with glowing eyes glazed with gold dreams. I write so the megapopuocalypse fate that choked the coast after they passed continues to pass; they left us wild and alone… and free

we know Home knows us:

For us and you, where ever you call home: those devoid of soul, those ignorant of fellow beings, those shallow demotic stay away from our peace, we need not your business or ideas to exploit our humble inheritance. You will seek riches as you have forever sought at our expense but we will carry on when you have gone long and far. We are not for sale.

Final thought:

Travel with your heart and home is where you are.

And for me right now resting in quiet rejuvenating repose where life slowly goes is at home, for today, and today was a good day.

.s.

tipping the last ullages from the pit of existence

9 Sept. 2010 (9:00pm)

Brumal views of jutting snow covered apparitions thru shrouds of clouds in half light and a drizzly Bozeman welcome me at dusk. An enclave prostrating at the feet of the Rocky Mountains, this small Montana gem sits in quiet repose in an already winterfied early September air. It has a cowboy-e character about and is as familiar to me as home, even if I’d only passed thru a handful of times.

I will divulge is that there are 4 cities on the I-90 parallel as one crosses the big sky. All precious in their various ways, 4 distinct personalities from East to West:

First stop: a large industrial and aesthetically displeasing city that borders the flat on-ramp to the celestial Rocky Mountains, a businessman in Birkenstocks

(*the picture is not mine(for now), I've borrowed it for descriptional purposes. my pictures of this section of the journey are sadly lost somewhere in the U.S. postal system)

Second Stop: nestled contentedly in the American megaliths sits a confused blue with a red heart/a hippie cowboy whose lasso and tether outweighs his steaming biodegradable latté.

(*again the picture below is not mine)

Third stop: lost Ireland (not for greenness but Guiness), if the hard worked land reflects on its inhabitants, then these clover island descendants are rough, rowdy and very ugly. With so much philosophy said for beauty, then let not the mining pocked land be so foretelling. These are people of the land, and theirs has been mined endlessly, so it says something for all of those whose will to go on in the ‘pit’ of existence, it says something great about character. Theirs has been extracted from the core: Miners, engineers, the ‘real’ life of life…

(*these photos are mine)

And the fourth and final stop: At the bitter cold heart of the Rockies is a rough hippie, the farthest left a sensible person can get without passing into ridiculousness, or mindfully farther right than a Boulder or California hippie; a real land conscious hippie that doesn’t rely on the dogmatic words on the side of their ‘Starbucks ‘green’ vente latte’ to guide them to green living. This pragmatic pith of ‘green reason’ doesn’t come from politics but rather the kind of reason out of necessity to get on well with nature due to the sheer closeness. Work, respect and love the land.

(*picture below, again, stolen from internet)

That’s the big blue sky that I see. 

Now armed with a friend and an all-American pick-up truck, we head into town to find the diamonds inside Bozeman. Cold breath-seeing air in the rain sputtery night, we hurriedly scurry from divey to lively bar and back again. Friendly visages greet us at every stop. My friend a popular visage in town and free drinks a plus for this broke peregrining soul, my alcohol lit smile smirks across my own visage as I tip the last ullages from my glass and parley another dreamy night away in this corner of the world. Can I eternally travel this land?

.s.

my eyes, capitalism consent, and beatnik budgets

9 Sept. 2010 (4:20 a.m.)

"This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters"

With plastic shopping bags fastened to the canvas straps that crisscross the interior ceiling of the car which hold the makeshift surf rack on, I drove like a madman out of Iowa. Survivor man techniques to me surely seemed like an absolute lunatic’s ‘hairbraining’ to those I passed at 4:30 in the morning, had I passed anyone. Water-filled bag swinging by my head and each of the three other doors, I attempted to avoid puddles from forming in the seats. The jerry rigged surf rack was fine for sunny So-cal but definitely not tornado alley. In a semi-slow process, or just under immediately after the rain starts soaking the straps, quite a potent drip is released , thus, the occasional wet left shoulder during sudden cloudbursts along my journey and, tonight, a wet backseat bed with drips occasionally escaping the bags and either landing directly on my forehead or feet.

I may have dosed off around 11:30pm or 12am, but a restless night yielded little comfort to my bloodshot, rain-soaked road eyes when I woke up to my cell phone ‘dawning’ 4:20am. Jumping in the front seat my four white specters and I were ‘ghoul’ing’ off by 4:30. Horrid? At least I didn’t confuse the route and I made it back to I-90 just in time to watch the sunrise in my review mirror… NOT altogether an unpleasant sight, even with the dangling, squawking, swaying bulbous under the weight of water and oscillating with the uneven asphalt white with blue W A L M A R T that undulated in and out of the fiery red-orange ray spectacles dancing thru the dark grey infernal tempest of the previous night. A vista in my rear view to remind me eternally of the beauty of nature in a country which is often sacrificed for the price of ‘materialmanic’ consumerism… but maybe not in Big Sky country.

Here I could mention that I stopped off in Keystone to see Mount Rushmore and the giant faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln reinvigorated my American spirit. I would ask them each the really important questions, like you are supposed to ask Lincoln at his monument in Washington. Where AM I, from? What is IT all about?

Here I would add that, at least in my ‘peregrine,’ ‘bloodshot,’ ‘raindropped,’ ‘road’ eyes, driving thru tourist hell at 15mph, neon signs pointing to gambling, game parks, hotels and restaurants in the middle of the only natural bump in the landscape made me pity those attracted to private $15 charging capital ventures set up in the middle of the only thing around; where just east when I saw my first topographical relief and was asked to pay $10 to drive thru it, the Badlands. Now $15 to see faces which I could see just fine from the road, I was trapped between my vein-coursing capitalism consent and disgruntled free hippie spirit with a beatnik budget, their haunting white faces watch as I flee and the questions remain unanswered. They forced me to sway on down the road, plastic bags slung over canvas straps (what a sight it would have been canvas bags over beatnik back, but not this time Lonesome Traveler)…sway on West young man.

16 hours when the day was done, and I did find my big sky. It appeared just after valley and rise and valley and rise thru Wyoming, where cell phone coverage is thankfully still hard to come by, still a bit of the wild in the Wild West. I feel the comfort of home.

"This land was made for you and me."

.s.