24 August 2010: 2AM
With a
trunk full of ‘Beat’ literature and some clothes I began this morning on another
American road trip, one of those famous soul searching journeys. I’ve been
reading a lot of Kerouac, but only because I’m fascinated by his literary
knowledge and prose. I’m not an ‘experimental’ traveler and that’s why I’ve got
William Least Heat Moon with me as well. He writes, although somewhat less famously,
about his road trips as well. His are more of the ‘real enlightenment’ kind.
His is a literary trip filled with history and ‘calendar collecting diners’
that dot this land.
I’m sorry. You’ll have to read him to understand.
Still Jack’s poetry
affects me, and so does the originality of his ‘beat.’ Like everyone, I’m dying
for originality. Maybe filming myself alone on the road for a month as I travel
across the U.S. in my own lose and find journey will fill that unoriginal void
I’m feeling.
Not quite sure what I’m
looking for, I’ll heed the advice of a student when she said, “Write all your plans in pencil, so that you can
erase.” I will.
I’ve got my plans laid out in front of me in a
discounted 2009 U.S. Road atlas. ‘Buyer beware, roads are an ever changing
stream of human betterment.’ On account of not caring if I get lost, the only
cement in my plans will be a mixture of graphite and conversation, blithely sketched
in scribbles in a bar, on a couch or maybe in a hot tub nine months prior with
a wintery Idaho backdrop. A conversation strummed thru steamy breath as it hits
the cold air, slowly the ideas float from one head to the other. I had a car, co-pilot
and an anxious writing hand.
Fast forward to now, all minus the co-pilot sit
with me on this couch seven desert hours of driving later. I’ve met a friend in
Flagstaff whose conversation scribbled my first plan:
"...I'm in to 'this' and 'that,' but
I never really got round to travelling much."
Years seep pass and the comfort of a stable
home make it hard to leave. The job affords all the microbrews needed and a
bike’s ride away is contentment enough to stave off the call of those thousands
of untraveled miles. Maybe there’s some guilt of not having made good on a few
invitations to venture off and visit some far away friends, an unscratched itch
beneath the skin on the palm of your hand, but all that’s forgotten as you add
on another hobby and life pens on.
Here I am, lemming-off [sic] towards the coast
without a course, running my pencil, crossing off the names of towns on my last
year’s Atlas. I don’t even understand what compels me. Is it to see the
continent’s end or beginning? Could I not have taken another’s word for it?
We spent the evening in downtown Flagstaff, eating
the all-you-can-eat Sushi special (to the dismay of William Heat Moon) and washing
it down with a few conversation supplementing liquids.
My host matter-of-factly put it this way “…You know
all those people we used to go to school with? I bet they turned into some
really cool people.” And with that my journey developed a reason. I bet there
are some really cool people out there. Some I myself told would come visit one
day. So instead of sprinting to see the end of a continent, my sushi inspiration
will go like this:
I know people and the people I know know people,
and I want to meet them and see what inspires their journey, what they dream. To see
their picket fence criteria, while I drive this fenceless wander to figure out
my own criteria.
