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.