No Chickens Were Harmed in the Making of This Fire

I'm sitting at a table near the toilets in my second favorite neighborhood coffee shop. It started snowing about two hours ago and man, the weatherman really let 'er rip. Everything is covered. I was caught out on the road, dropping off girl-and-dog, picking up new wiper blades, a headlight, some air in the tires... I was considering a bike ride, but coffee sounds better now. Funny, the forecast still calls for rain.

Update:

I graduated. I did really well. I forgot to give the finger to South Carolina on my way out, though I did had some serious fantasies about it. Had it happened, it would have been the most epic middle-finger event in history.

I will not miss: Java City in the Cooper Library nor the base, shitty, inane music in it; networked printers; collections of kids with center-of-the-universe-disease; collections of adults with center-of-the-universe-disease; Governor Sanford; T-shirt shops; Zillion percent humidity; unchecked rejection of creativity; E-portfolio; old-fashioned ignorance;;;

I will miss: Nick's and everyone in it; meat-n-3 at the Esso; Jordan and all of her guns and good humor; Lesley and Emily and the genetic kindness and generosity of the Lindstedt family; Patrick; Buddy the dog and his owner Graham; Grits and Groceries; Double-Dog and Gonzo; Kenny; the broken elevators in Strode; Le troiseime étage de Daniel, même s'il n'y a rien de quiche;;;

So, I'm getting settled-ish in Portland the last little bit. After we got a blown head gasket out of the way--and a three-day delay--I had a nice fast drive across the USA with Adrienne. She laughed at my compulsive checking-of-the-coolant and I laughed at her jerky-clutch-style shifting--she drives a Subaru as if it is a Ducati.

Along the way, we learned that her garage had caught on fire and burned to totality taking with it a ton of stuff including my BMW motorcycle and her '62 Schwinn Jaguar. Shit. The fire started in the chicken coop and spread. The chickens suspiciously made it out ok, save some singed tail feathers. Can fowl be pyromaniacs?

And these bad sequences never seem to stop at two, so I'll tell those of you who know my old friend, Cog, that he's got some pretty serious liver trouble that he'll have until the end. Send some good thoughts to the old man if that's your thing.

Aside from that, it was a very nice, quiet Christmas with good food and friends.

Privately, with the help of a few wonderful people, I'm working on the good fortune side of things for this next year. Knocking on wood, standing on my head, making the sign of the cross, fresh air and positive thinking. It's a bumpy road, but whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Fucking ePortfolio

-Insert foul language and spitting here-

Thanks, Friends

I owe you all some thanks.

In January, on the heels of a tough holiday and the decision to get a divorce, etcetera, I wrote this:

"2009 is an infant at this stage, and I'm already understanding just how much of a bitch she's gonna grow up to be."

Today I'm reflecting, and can see where I was right. 2009 was a bitch. Is now a full grown bitch. I have so much freaking work to do in the coming weeks. Papers, exams, moving, resettling, job-finding, grad program applying... And, while separated, I'm still not divorced, which makes me feel a bit constipated.

It is easy to be negative about all this, but here's the bright side: I realize how lucky I am. I get to travel the world doing work that I love to do with good friends. I get to have terrifying rides through the Oaxaca mountains in the backs of vans. I get to eat good food and drink good drink. I get to read and write. I get to talk about motorcycles and sheep farming. I get to think about the future. I get to create. I have love. I get to be happy with myself and the people around me (or far away).

Yes, 2009 has been hard, but it was not joyless.

At lunch one day last week in Mexico, Gale said something funny. Really funny. In fact, I lost my shit. I laughed like I haven't laughed since... Well, I honestly can't remember. It was the kind of unchecked, choking, food-coming-out-of-your-nose laughter that seems to happen once a decade, but should probably happen daily. My laughing got Gale laughing, and we both made a ridiculous cackling scene in the restaurant that just went on and on. I couldn't see straight and, though we were stone-sober, I'm sure we appeared to have had a few too many shots of complimentary mezcal.

This year so far, there have been hundreds of instances like this. Maybe not laughter exactly, but equally poignant for sure. If you're reading this, we've probably had at least one together. Friends, don't think that the value of times like this is lost on me. I appreciate every second.

So, to all of you, for all the joy in this bitch of a year, Thank you.

Lost Souls CAlling Long-Distance Salvation

3:30am:

Early drive to the airport for the Mexi-trip. I usually listen to Public Radio in the car, 90.1, but this early it is some canned classical music show that was guaranteed to lull me into roadside-statistic-hood. So, I scanned. By the time I got to 95.7 I had already passed six evangelist stations, all varying degrees of psychotic. I did stop on one for a while. Mostly because the preacher's "JE-sus" and "SA-tan" style iron-fisted iambs were guaranteed to startle me awake every once in a while.

A couple things I noticed in general.

1-He made no sense--the thread of his conversation was so broken, I never knew if he was originally talking about premarital sex or the apocalypse. Guess it is all the same thing to some people...

2-Rampant misogyny--According to our wee-hours fanatic, God is at the head of man, man is at the head of woman and woman belongs in the house. At first I thought I had time-warped back to before people were smart. But, alas, I did not mis hear or speak. Examples followed. It is clear that this preacher actually said and meant that men are better than women.

Now, that concerned me on a couple levels. First, I'm generally bummed out that this sentiment exists. It is a very bad interpretation of a perfectly good philosophy, it is based in fear and hate.

Second, the radio is saturated with this claptrap. Bandwidth isn't cheap. That means that there a lot of people buying what this jerk is selling. In response, I have to say this: You people are assholes. Will you listen to what this guy is saying? I'm sure Jesus didn't hate women.

Over and out.

Finally, a Race

Getting up early enough tomorrow to justify not going to bed at all. Gonna catch a plane to Oaxaca. Racing. Bicycles. Friends.

Sunday Night, Greased Hair and Rolled Sleeves

I'm listening to a fantastic country and rockabilly music show on the only station that comes in at the cabin. It is so bloody good with my cheap beer. This isn't the new showy crap, mind you. It's the stuff that scratches when you roll it. The stuff of catgut, wood and legend. I've heard of the long black veil, the devil, Jesus, and two kinds of Phantoms and now every muscle in my body is burning with desiiii-iii-iii-ire.

Love me.

In the cabin, the chilly cabin, the poet drinks tonight. Wheeeee-eee-eee-eee eee-Um, um, oh wait...

I'm not really contemplating the Serengeti. I am actually writing, though. I've been pretty productive on the that front. Sadly, the poetry that I'm producing neither counts for class credit nor makes me any cash. Despite that, I'm pretty proud of some of it.

And I'm making nice with the local wild and domestic denizens. The wild tend to reveal themselves by sound alone at night. The domestic howl and cluck and stand in the middle of the road at the apex of blind corners. My favorite so far is the donkey I call Ed. Ed lives on a farm on my drive in. He's good for a laugh in the morning with his stumpy legs and two-foot-long ears.

This is my jungle.

How to Be a Hermit in Three Easy Steps

Step 1: Perfect the art of squatting.

I've been effectively living out of a suitcase since May. I'm pretty good at it at this point. There was a learning curve, though. When I arrived in Oregon at my sister's place (squatting between trips), I was clueless to how much I'd sprawl, but sprawl I did. It proved to be a pain in the ass for everyone in the house, myself included.

I arrived back in Clemson and couch surfed then back-hall-surfed for a while. Again, my squat was not perfected. I sprawled, allowed myself to feel 'at home' and my very visible presence caused undue stress (though I felt so, I was not at home.)

I'm dialing it in, though. I'm learning the true nature of squatting is not in the sprawl or lack thereof. It is in the overall visibility of the squatter. Basically, the squatter must be unobtrusive to the extent that invisibility is approached.

I'm now staying up in the SC hills in a friend's family's cabin. Neither the friend nor the family are there. I cannot see the neighbors. I am nowhere close to the place that I do business. I have no visitors. My regional imprint amounts to a plume of smoke from the chimney and depressed carpet where my bag and books rest. I agree that when the family wants to use the cabin, I will not be there. I will, like a solitary animal, skulk away until the coast is clear again. I'm still not home, but I am comfortable in my homelessness.

Step 2: Neglect grooming while maintaining self respect.

Until this morning, I hadn't shaved for two weeks. The way I see it, I'm only here to do a task--finish my last two months of school. Whether I have a beard or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not said beard itches, and whether or not it distracts me from kicking my task's ass. (other taskal distractions shall not be discussed in this essay.) As a solitary hills-dweller, I'm only concerned with offending myself, and that offense is decided entirely on ambiguous criteria. I have no doubt that when I emerge from this state in December, I'll still be able to look like a glowing prince when I shave.

Step 3: Be unbothered by drinking alone.

This is not a discussion on alcoholism. This is a discussion about standing in front of a long shelf of wine, beer and liquor, and choosing the very thing I want to enjoy. It seems that, from time to time, vice or luxury can become an expression of an implied persona. This persona is the face that orders a Guiness on St Patrick's Day in a crowded bar or drinks expensive scotch whilst publicly writing in its Moleskine journal. Not that either of these things are necessarily bad... (although, for all you public writers like me: paper is paper) But, if we are aware of this, the things we consume when other people can see us consume them do begin to define us as we would like to be defined rather than how we prefer to be.

The art of drinking alone is less an effort and more of a revelation. Like grooming, drinking alone (truly alone) allows one to decide the alcoholic expression without needing to worry about social perception or pressure: one's true alcoholic preference is revealed, thus a truer persona and self may be indicated. Will I know myself better for the drink that I choose when I drink alone? Will I care? Who knows...

I'm only beginning to embrace hermithood in the South Carolina hills. It still gets lonely and uncomfortable from time to time. This said, I'm determined to be richer for the experience. The silence and answering only to myself is absolutely delicious. There is an end to this, though. And once I am at truly home, and no longer alone, I hope it will seem all the sweeter.

"Shit." "What?" "Rollers." "No." "Yeah." "Shit."

I got a speeding ticket the other night. Usually this would bum me out, but here's why I'm not: I got it in a broken-ass hybrid with a 3 cylinder engine, failing electronics and almost 200k miles on it. I've recently been learning how to tweak these electric-assist-gasoline-engine jobbies, and apparently I did something right. So, I'll save the rant about the rollers having better things to do with their time and worse derelicts than yours-truly to worry about (they do) and I'll just give myself a pat on the back for old fashioned ingenuity, and running like moonshine and thunder-road in the South Carolina mountains.

Television is Worthless, Noisy, Inane Bullshit

It has always been a suspicion of mine. Now, it's been a few weeks that I've been in a "TV Household." I've objectively done my time with the box and it has become incontestable: Repeat title here.

I'm sorry to offend anyone who may live inside the world of television. Nothing personal and I'll keep this post short. Take the time saved as an opportunity to unplug and go for a walk or just enjoy the quiet. There's a whole world out here that misses you.

Do This More:

I was on the bus yesterday. Feeling a bit surly and there were three irritating chatty-cell-phony 18 year old girls sitting across the aisle. The bus pulled up to a stoplight. It was hot. Hot. An old guy was hunkered on the sidewalk bent over his dog who had collapsed in the heat. The bus driver said something and the three girls--who were apparently on their way to the gym--pulled out their water bottles and got off the bus to help the pup out.

In the end, the dog got some water and was able to stand up again, the old guy seemed pretty thankful and the three girls had done something to be proud of. A tip of the hat, ladies. We could all do this sort of thing a little more often.

Camelias

The koi have drank the water down.

They are ready to walk across the mud,

stretching to see the unmurky garden living

beyond the pond, just there, ready,

the fish that have only flickered thus far

cast themselves out, spawning toward

flowers, gasping to kiss blazing camelias.

If the Desert Coughs Me Up...

So, I'm taking off on the moto today. More or less pointed east for the next 3k-or-so miles. A few nights of staring into a campfire, a few days of rolling on, then Colorado to pay a visit to the Wessels. No plans after that, but they'll come together.

I'm still not sure If I'll just bounce off of South Carolina once I get there. My financial aid hasn't come through yet, and the guy I've been talking to about an apartment is suspiciously silent recently. That and the Northwest is so damn nice...

Ah, well... At least it should be a fun ride. Who knows, maybe I'll get a college degree out of it.

Chow

Moto Mayhem and the Urge to Completely Disappear

Back from Europe and I've decide that that trip is all mine. All three cheesy, winey, rainy, racey, weeks of it. You can't have it. All you get is this fragment of a poem I wrote on a hike up to the Austrian/Italian Border:

From "In the Hohe Tauren:"

...we flee into the mountain's

held breath. To be drawn in, to disappear,

to become ghosts, ourselves wisps of fog,

mountain's breath, remembered in legend

smeared wet onto red-painted waystones, cairns,

in dust under floorboards, peering through cracks

up, up at the promised land marked by a cracked

shrine to Christ.

Now for the good stuff:

The Old BMW is about as tuned as it is going to get for this trip. Valves, points, timing, bearings... Knocking on wood... Thursday is the departure, heading south to Ashland to get a final fix of Matt Sheehy, then pointing east for the duration. I can't say I'm looking forward to the hot march through Nevada and Utah, but with friends on the other side of the desert in Colorado, it gives me something to look forward to. In any case, camping out there should be fantastic with clear air and stars...

I'm also fighting the urge to just drop off the face of the Earth for a little while. The end is so close for classes, but is seems like the least important thing to do right now. Onward, and as it is written somewhere in my genetics, Fortune Assists the Daring... Guess I'll dare a few months longer. I've been pretty fortunate so far.

It is all a bit rambling and there's lots more introspective bullshit on my mind that I won't bore you with. Suffice it to say, if you're reading this, there's a 50/50 chance we'll be having a drink together soon.

Thanks for checking in.

Over and out.

Seven Years Bad Sex

So, drinking, the tradition in Austria is to look each other in the eye and say, "proust." I asked at an inn to the innkeeper--what happens if you don't look each other in the eye? I expected the answer to be something like, I'll turn into a toad or not find the trail of bread crumbs. No. The answer is: Seven Years Bad Sex.

Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. As I hear the cathedral bells toll and echo across the valley, please don't let that be true, because I think I didn't make adequate eye contact on the toast...

Tanze Mit Widernde Hunde

The best I can figure it, the sign I saw while I was running this morning was some sort of advisory about wild dogs. It was early and only peeking light, misty with a wooly fog hanging on the mountains. The black pebbles on the trail were wet and black and the evergreens were dark-trunked and thick. Mud was cold and the whole forest smelled like wild clover, and that advisory sign was the type of creepy that you can feel brushing your neck hairs up.

I unplugged my iPod so I could hear any toe clicking or soft panting , and I kept looking behind me as I ran, got lost, backtracked and eventually made my way back to the hotel.

So, I'd like to give a shout out to all my wildernde hunde out there and say thanks for mot eating me this morning. Kibble's on me tomorrow.

And I must have been a bit bothered, because as I write this over breakfast, I just realized I put sauerkraut on my eggs.

Charles Lindbergh, A Thrashed Turbo-Deisel and David Hasselhoff

My driver, I swear he said his name is Charles Lindbergh, looks mild enough--late 40's, trim mustache, glasses--but he is absolutely flogging the little Citroen. We're hurtling from Munich to the Austrian border at about 180 kph. I'm a bit thrashed myself and fall asleep for a bit, waking up to the same hum of the motor, the speedo still riding high, and a little blue sign on the side of the road denoting that we are crossing in to Austria. He begins to talk to me about the big downhill ski race in Kitzbuhel--he builds the finish area for it--and as we slingshot past bicycles, trucks and fun-spoliers, he gives me a general lay of the land.

There's an inn that we pass (quickly) and Charles Lindbergh tells me it has been open every single day since 1750-something. I ask if they serve beer and his return look tells me he now thinks I'm an idiot. He says only, "Schnietzel." Then he asks about Sarah Palin.

The airline lost my bags, all of them, tools, jackets, underoos, so when the car stumbles to the curb of my hotel and gasps for mercy, I make the general stop at the desk and let then know to get the gear to me asap when it arrives. I say goodbye to Charles Lindbergh and find my room for a deep and drooling nap.

Now maybe it is the altitude, the travel velocity, or that I have a strange response to hearing the German language, but I dreamed of David Hasselhoff. He was dressed up in his Knight Rider issue and getting married. Who the lucky bride was, I don't know, but I was crying like a baby. Inconsolable.

So, I woke at about 5 this morning. The sun is on the mountain tops. I can see brown cows on the far hills. My bags still aren't here, but there is work to do. Tchuss.

Long Distance Travel And A 2.116305134e+14 Mile Detour

The universe is so big. You might as well walk out into it...

It is about a hundred miles out of Portland to make the way up to Goldendale, Wa. There you'll find a public observatory housing a homemade telescope with a two foot mirror. Enough to bring some wicked distant points of light into view.

Before it is even dark, Arcturus beams out, road weary and having started the trip long ago, flickering like tired eyes. Three years older than me, the event that I see through the eyepiece is hard to understand: This great bursting collaboration of nuclear fusion, time and distance is lost. As we see it happening now, it has really happened 36 years ago. It has only taken this long for the light to travel to us. It happens thousands of times simultaneously each clear night, each star is a different story, a different traveler from a different time. But here and there must not be so different. In fact, at night the horizon begins to blend with the sky: The stars blipping on, the red indicator lights on waves of wind turbines, the bare black landscape with occasional windows lit comfortably, clouds creeping from the south, and a warm, but far-away bed. It's all only distance and proximity. Filament and fusion. And it is worth the trip. If Arcturus is traveling over 2oo trillion miles to meet you, you might as well amble out an easy hundred or so.

Ich Liebe die Veloce Moto

Ahh, Italy and Germany... When I think of these places, I think smoky airports, lunchmeat for breakfast, men with high-maintenance hair, women with expensive handbags... The big M and Hitler sucked royally, but argue this down, Johnny: BMW and Ducati motorcycles. Yeah?

Enter my new badass friend Adrienne-with-the-hot-bike. (2006/07 Ducati Sport 1000) She invited me out on a ride and flat took me to school on some excellent roads yesterday.

Here's how the day went--

a- Straight roads, behind a line of cars, riding through towns, I could get close enough to hear the two-part harmony of our exhausts. Mmmmm. Very cool sound. Like two bee hives, only lower and louder. I'm not sure why I like this. I'm a dork, I guess. Shut up.

b- Winding roads. I'd do my best to keep up (not really, but still within sight) through the first couple of turns--matching lines, watching to see when she might be braking (nearly irrelevant given the two bikes' technological differences). Then she and the Ducati would be Gone-Johnson. They were Italianally fashionable, talented and way, way up the road as I lumped around turns on my old BMW with a big, stupid grin. 15 or 20 miles would go by and we'd meet up--Adrienne would patiently wait for me, and I'd pull up to see her with the helmet and jacket off, dozing, halfway through War and Peace already... I gotta work on reducing that lag-time.

c- Gas stations. Easy conversation, Coca-Cola and taking turns fielding compliments on the machines. And rightly so.

Don't get me wrong, here. I dig the Mighty BM' like nothing else, but there were times (many) when it felt more like a runaway John Deere--specifically when the road turned sharply on a downhill stretch. So, on top of doing my best to be a better rider, having an absolute blast all day and after eight hours wrestling the old lady, I find myself having lusty and transgressive thoughts about something newer. Italian perhaps?

Until then it's business as usual with me--Austria, Germany, maybe France. Hungary was called off, but I'll be in Mexico this fall. Yesterday did a good job getting my head out of the clouds and getting me excited about riding the moto back to the east coast in August. Route planning. Classes and oblivion... Who knows...

Ciao-Vroom

E Pubis Bison

Yes. From my crotch, a buffalo... Drunk talk. Enlightened and elevated. Somehow I ended up a little relaxed, leaned back on a retired church pew with a set of taxidermized buffalo horns on my lap. I've come up to the top of the west coast to the Skagit valley to spend some easy time. Buffalo horns, steaks, ribs, beer and good friends capped a good long day on the motorcycle. At times on my ride up, I felt something close to what Kerouac must have felt when he bailed on the tussle and hopped a train to the Cascades. Restless, in motion, bound to poke around for something else that he and I maybe hoped to find in the dust we kicked up along the way.

So, I've landed here in the valley. We all must have some version of this: a place where we feel at home, comfortable to just exist. To sit and enjoy whatever comes by. In this way, I came to the Friday-night-before-the-Saturday-party party. Sometimes a party just needs a good warm-up the night before. Just to make sure the location knows how to interact with the invitees. That the displaced memory soaked into all the cracks and fibers are those of good times. Like a dress rehearsal.

In less than two hours the real party starts and I'm looking forward to it all: The genuine faces smiling, enjoying the sun gazing down on us all, and most of all, just being here, even for just a few hours, able to forget the tussle of the rest of it. It's all a little random, but maybe that's the point--just some good old senseless fun. E Pubis Bison, Cogito Ergo Vroom, Non Intellectum Latine Loqui, and all that jazz...

The Immortal Moment

I saw a documentary that came through town as part of the Southern Circuit series. It is called "A Man Named Pearl."  Such a good little piece about a man who has reached a sort of national cult status doing topiary in his yard.  It seems most of the movie is interviews of his friends and neighbors, placed in his garden as Pearl is riding his lawn mower around in the background. Pearl on his mower going left, going right, dragging ladders, trailers.  The point is, the man never stops.  He's always doing something.  In motion.  Creating.  

Well, I thought I might like to visit his garden some day, so I looked it up on Google Maps.  I popped down to street view and what did I see?  Right there, as I looked around the neighborhood, was old Pearl Fryar putt-putting past on his mower dragging a ladder behind him.  It made me happy to think that his moment of creativity is forever inscribed on a virtual walk down the street that any of us can take.  I hope you all take a walk past 165 Broad Acres in Bishopville South Carolina some day.  Check out the Dr Seuss trees and wave at Pearl on the way by.

Trying to Get Over

It was too early.  Or late.  It didn't matter.  things had gone wrong in transit and I had slept--barely-- sitting up in the same clothes for the past two nights over from Sydney--exit row, economy, transit lounge benches--sleeping either too close to a jet engine or with the beep-beeping of industrial floor cleaners scuffing past.

I got up before six when I was no longer alone in the airport, brushed my teeth, washed my face and shuffled off to find a coffee.  It was then in the waking moments of Dulles Terminal A, while the workers still outnumbered the travelers and all the shop gates were still shut, from down the hall I heard my bleary-headed siren song:  Curtis Mayfield accompanied by the undeniable shush of espresso steam.  The gates were still shut.  There I was, waiting.  Waiting...

Then.  Halleluja!  As the best bass line ever written played introductions to the toughest falsetto--Superfly--the gates opened and I was shoulder and shoulder with the morning ramp shift, being served a two-shot Cubano that was all of a sweet crack of dynamite.  The day brightened and I was on my way.

Mayorga Café in Dulles.  These men make a mean spro.  They're gonna make their fortune by and by.

GSP-ORD-LAX-SYD-BNE-SYD-SFO-IAD-GSP

The trip out was long and involved some small trouble with a visa.  The trip back was the longest point-to-point I have ever done traveling by air.  Quantas' ramp union had a nationwide strike the morning I left Brisbane.  69 hours door to door.

Naptime.

Permanent Record

Interpol, meet Jeff Donaldson:  It was bound to happen at some point.  All the stamps in my passport, boarding pass stubs in the bottoms of random bags, or used as page-marks in books I never finished just increase the odds of me running in to a bit of trouble along the way.  Until now it has manifested in the form of lost luggage, cancelled flights...  the normal benign hassle that people (me included) usually complain too much about.  But now I'm red-flagged in the system.  That system: the matrix that all of us long-haulers who've taken the red pill know is there even if we can't see it yet.  Everything about me that is camping out in that little barcode on my passport just got a little more exciting.  

Turns out I have been traveling to Australia with the wrong visa for a while now--I'm here to work, not to be a tourist--and only this time did the customs agents pick up on it.  And like the chronically honest dipshit that I am, I gave this information freely.  I was detained at a desk just the right side of the passport stampers, and just short of the baggage carousels, Purgatory, slightly elevated so I could see my bags going round and round as the rest of my plane's passengers collected their items and moved along.  Would I be let through the pearly gates of the Sydney airport to the land of milk and honey (murderous biker gangs excluded) or would I be cast back into the pit?

Well, here I am watching the Pacific waves crash in on rocks and sand from my eighth floor balcony bike shop, so you know how the story ends.  But the agent who helped me along did a little "official counseling" and informed me that I would be noted in "the system."  She was very polite, but gave me one of those looks that your fourth grade teacher gives you that instantly lets you know that pulling hair is not ok and you will be sent to the principal's office for discipline if you even give a crooked look to another pigtail ever.  For as long as you live.

As a cool-shades-wearing red-pill-swallowing long-hauler I can imagine what this means and I'm not looking forward to the working over in customs I'm sure to get on the way back home.  Now, whenever my passport is scanned, disembarking at whatever port of entry, I'll know that the agent will see something like, "not really a tourist"  or "too dumb to keep his mouth shut" in my permanent file. 

20-20-20-4-hours to go, oho...

...I wanna be sedated.  One of the first things you must embrace when setting off on a trip halfway around the world is that there will be a few setbacks.  Setbacks and grouchy travelers.  Setbacks and grouchy travelers and panicky, overworked airline agents.  My destination today is the Sunshine Coast of Australia. Already, there has been some confusion to the nature of my visa, increases in baggage charges, ($250‽) and some decidedly grouchy co-travelers fighting for the front of the line.  Laisse tomber.  These are the  precious moments that I will practice patience, kindness and complimentary in-flight drinking.

Bottoms up.

Interrobang

‽-- Beginning with the way E.E. Cummings screwed with punctuation to the way we use it or do not use it now with abbreviated words, in bodies of emails, text messages, it is clear that somewhere along the line efficiency becomes important.  It could easily be just that.  This thing, this hybrid mark, could have popped up with the significance that someone, probably with a fancy phone and callouses at the ends of her thumbs, could have an easier time simultaneously expressing uncertainty, surprise and confusion.  WTF‽ (Interrobang)

But that doesn't satisfy me.   It is a mark, and a hybrid, like the rest of us.  If I have learned anything, or gleaned something that maybe I wasn't supposed to learn, it is this: A thought, about anything, even something as insignificant as punctuation can reflect something else that has more power to drive us, our society, the world.  A living metaphor.  Allegory.  You pick.  

A philosopher named Sassure suggested language, words--these words, any words--exist always in a system of differences without positive terms.  That is, the words can never be identified by what they are, but by everything they are not.  Through just a small part of the 20th century, other thinkers came up with different ways to apply this principle.  It became a tool in the kits used by scholars, feminists, individuals.  Jaques Derrida, along with giving us all a good mind-thrashing, took this idea and played with it--yes played.  He calls that play Différance, and he said it is the stone that is close to signifying the death of the dynasty.  Derrida's meaning is the dynasty (the traditional search for authoritative meaning) and no one can tell you exactly what he means by that statement because the words do not specify exact meaning, only differences, therefore the play therein is the stone.  What a great challenge and charge to a person:  What you think matters. In this way,  I come to the interrobang.

Let's go back to the calloused girl with the fancy phone.  What if she's not trying to express uncertainty, surprise and confusion?  Say, she'd like to express disbelief and anger instead.  Well, the interrobang is just fine for that, too.  It plays with the way we use both the question and exclamation marks, only now it is played with and mashed into one funny looking mark.  Refer to différance a few lines up.

In a sense, this mark is a syntax cyborg--not question mark, not an exclamation mark, but having characteristics of both, yet not fully either.   There is no way of getting around this:  If we follow our philosophical bread trail, we meet Donna Haraway and do actually land on the topic of cyborgs in their very own manifesto.  After all, cyborgs are people, too. And other stuff.  And who should tell them what they are or are not?  Do they not deserve rights like us?

If we can think of the interrobang as a cyborg, can we also think of people like an interrobang?  We are all hybrids.  Mechanic+student+drinking partner+dog owner+motorcycle rider+writer+sweetheart+royal pain in the ass+etc=me.  How about you?  Seems we might all have a bit of the interrobang inside us.  And maybe through some oddball reverse engineering, the use of interrobang signifies our cultural realization and embracing of our true and complicated natures.

So, my new friend the interrobang gets some credit.  But, here's the rub:  In order to make the mark on this page, I have to switch the language on my computer and perform a key stroke that involves pressing 5 more keys in sequence.  Could it get any harder to use this little bastard‽  I don't have to spell out that irony for you, do I? Someone talk to The Man and tell him that the rest of us hybrids are running the show now.

Flesh and Bone

I just increased the text limit on my phone plan.  Not by much, but still, it leaves me with this thought:  I've had just about enough of virtual life.  I want the real thing.  I want rain on my face, dirt on my shoes.  I want flesh and bone.  Facebook, texting, email, even this stupid blog, no matter how many people are involved, do nothing compared to a pint with one person-in-person or a walk in the woods.

Homeless

There are some pretty big parts of my childhood that I can't simply go back and revisit.  Today, for instance, I couldn't walk to my elementary schoolhouse in Kananga, Zaire and hoist myself up to one of the locked library's high windows, work it open and hide out in the biographies; I couldn't push a rusty bicycle rim down a two track dirt road, barefoot and zigzagging the goats and guinea hens.  I have nostalgia, but it is often intangible and scattered.

Last night Rachel and I saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Rialto in Atlanta.  In a word, the show was amazing, everyone should see them.  In more than a word, I was transported, and here's why:  

Sometimes I get a whiff of something, or hear a song that automatically associates me with a time in my life.  Fire and smoke tend to take me back to my kidhood in Africa, but only for seconds--brushfires in the sawgrass, palm nuts oozing oil onto hot coals.

But the show last night, for more than two hours, sustained me.  The voices of those men brought back days and nights, mangos crashing onto a tin roof, the babas, sometimes naked beating the eerie glunk-glunk water drums, sometimes carrying their full body weight in fruit or diesel balanced on their heads, the crack and thud of the mortar and pestle beating manioc, men burning the sawgrass to hunt the animals within.  Always singing.  Singing from behind the thatched huts, across the fields, the rolling airstrip.  Singing bouncing under the umbrella trees and across the Lulua.  Singing and occasionally swinging a lazy switch at a trailing goat.  Singing from the church down the block, the disco up the street.  At the corner bread seller's.  Singing in the markets as the sun cooked us all and the stink of slowly turning meat and woodsmoke crept around.  Singing alone or with friends. Everything was singing, and I thank my own good fortune that singing brought me again to that place in good company.

The Stinky Kid

I resisted posting this because even thinking it made me feel petty enough to be back in 4th grade.  But seriously, yesterday I sat next to the smelliest person I've ever been lucky enough to smell.  I normally don't care about a stranger's level of cleanliness, maybe just pass it off as live and let live, but this dude was a biological weapon, and he was killing me.  He stunk in a way that would ruin your next two meals.  And all in a cinderblock classroom where the windows are riveted shut, the air doesn't flow, so the stink takes on a presence of a heavy who is holding your face in a barrel of rainwater.  Only not so clean and refreshing.  He smelled like the dark ages.  My dog never smelled this bad in salmon spawning season. 

There are two sides to this equation:

1-I should have said something to him.  Maybe using a bit more discretion than posting him in a blog, but he needs to know.  I'm not his friend, don't know his name, but as a decent act for him, me and all people everywhere, I shouldn't have let the stink go on stinking as if it didn't exist.  Am I a coward or is this normal fight/flight response to an olfactory crisis?

2-He should know better.  Soap isn't that expensive.  I really can't imagine that a person can smell that bad and not have a vague idea.  I don't think that humans by nature have a tendency to derive pleasure from fermenting themselves.  In that light, I think he might actually be an aggressive stinker, which brings me back to my first point.  Time to be a hero?  Is this my higher calling?

My dad passed along some wisdom that was passed on to him in a quiet corner of the Alaska state capitol:  It takes a while to realize that the guy who tells you your fly is unzipped is your friend.  Now maybe I was repulsed into just not wanting to be his friend.  Maybe...  And I could buy that.  Our smell is a presence that precedes and often trumps the other senses.  But no one else is taking on this task, so maybe it is up to me.  We'll see if it persists.  I'll let you know.

Until then, keep washing behind your ears like mom told you.  And for God's sake, if you're my friend and I show up stinking some day, let me know.

Jazz, Birds and Spring Fever

I got to see my good friend Paul play in Raleigh this weekend.  His trio is tight as tight.  The venue was on Hillsboro St. right off of the main rail artery, which was a nice compliment.  The music stands on its own with grit and stature, but I felt like a new level of legitimacy was bought between the coffee and jazz and occasional rumble and horn blast.  After all, this is music for the city, shoulder-to-shoulder mornings and evenings, the fluttering of progress, the buck and chill of a hardscrabble American metropolitan hulk.  Raleigh doesn't quite fit the bill for setting, but I appreciated Amtrak's weighing in on the matter.

I also thought of hummingbirds.  Long segue, I know, but leap with me... (Jazz, Charlie Parker, birds, hummingbirds) Last summer a pair of them spent the days dive bombing each other and dogfighting over feeder rights.  I remembered holding one as I was releasing it from being trapped in the garage.  It was as light as paper, brave, staring me in the eye, and gripping a finger tightly.  Just a whisper of a body, but what a heart!  I felt like I was holding an oversized electron, vibrating even in its stillness.  I was and still am fascinated.  The weather turned warm recently and now I think of hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds and motorcycles.

It took five hours in the car coming back from Raleigh today.  When I left, I had decided against riding the motorcycle in favor of bringing a stack of books that I didn't even look at while I was there.  Who am I kidding?  So, I spent five hours looking at other people on motorcycles, none as lovely as mine. I must have lost track of my priorities somewhere...  So, I'm going to spend as much of this week on two wheels as possible to redeem myself.

I'm also starting to get a pretty bad case of wanderlust.  A trip to Australia is just around the corner, but that is another post.

Madness

I went to see a musical production of Reefer Madness with one of the coolest girls ever.  It was tons of fun and at times made me think that maybe I should start working on a pot habit.  At least a brownie habit.  Jesus made an appearance with Tom Jones style quipping and a golden microphone.  That sealed the deal for me.

I keep going back to a nagging thought, though, about the relationship that a play has with its audience.  SC is a ridiculously conservative state.  I've been here for a year and a half and still have a lot to learn about social protocol, but some topics--mostly in the sex, drugs, and rock & roll vein--are clearly only for the speakeasy.  So, it was strange to be watching a play about sex, drugs, and rock & roll among people who were clearly a little squeamish about it.  Maybe I was a little surprised that nobody fainted or started speaking in tongues.

It made me think of the time I groaned loudly during a play at an especially quiet part just after a really bad line delivery.  (accidental)  And that made me think of visiting an awesome gospel church in North Carolina. (Amen) And also when a friend was ejected from a theatre for holding his chest during a really bad show and yelling "hep me, hep me" a la Blazing Saddles.  (totally on purpose)  Really, shouldn't the audience be engaged with the cast and vice-versa?  OK, maybe not so much, but a little?  

It was good to see such a fun play.  It might have been interesting if the Madness had really taken hold of the audience, though...

  

Oh Yeah,

And I had lunch with one of the coolest girls ever.

Thanks, Rachel

Plan to Witness

I started feeling really good today.  Things started out a little rocky, sleepily, hangovery.  I was getting the stink-eye from the dog for taking my sweet time coming home last night.  But halfway into my first cup of tea, the sun cracked through.  I was listening to some radio coverage of Obama's train tour down to DC for the inauguration.  

I thought about the day Nelson Mandela was let out of prison.  It is the only time I remember being told to watch television.  My dad sat me down and said something like, "someday you'll be glad you saw this."  And I am.  It is such a simple thing to watch a man walking.  But at that moment, what it meant...  I'm proud to have been a young witness to that instant that things got a little better with the world. 

I look forward to watching the inauguration on Tuesday.  I look forward to one day sitting my kid on my knee and telling about it.

I admit, I can get pretty damn cynical about human nature.  I think it is too easy for people to be bad to each other.  But this widespread hope is just plain contagious.

See Dick Learn.

I'm just out of class this evening.  It is a late one.  Listening to a little Iggy Pop.  Tea.  About to dive in to some not-so-lite reading.  

A discussion that happened today was a little befuddling.  Somehow the class topic ended up on the conservation--or not--of the spotted owl and its habitat, or the timber industry's harvesting of its habitat.

One enlightened voice, I'll call him Dick, said, "Why not just put the owl in a zoo and then cut all the trees down?  That way everyone could at least see it."

I wonder what it will take to get people to understand that 'natural resource' is not a another way of saying 'rape-able.'  Sustainability is just another polysyllabic word Dick doesn't bother to look up.  

Dick is a moron but he isn't alone.

I run across this sort of thing daily.  It is terrifying to think that this is the future.  That these kids are going to run the world one day.  They aren't learning anything more than what daddy taught them from his Lay-z-boy.  They are only learning how to be better at it.  And they have the immediate gratification that if they do have the chance to chop down a tree, it'll buy them a new H3.  Anyone for progress?

Not only does Dick's mentality exist here, it persists and breeds.  The governor and state legislature just went through another round of budget cuts.  Higher education is absolutely fucked.  Our university is now looking like it could be $50+ mil in the hole.  Profs are getting notice, quality of education is bound to suffer.

Trickle down values.  Thanks folks.  We'll just keep cranking out Dicks.

Traveling With Controlled Substances

Where do I start?  2009 is an infant at this stage, and I'm already understanding just how much of a bitch she's gonna grow up to be.  Don't get me wrong.  As hard as it seems now, most of it is probably going to be worthwhile.  

On my to-do list this year:  Graduate from University, find a good masters program, figure out how to pay for it, get a divorce, travel to far off places, make bicycles go fast while I'm there, enjoy my friends, write until the keys on my computer beg for mercy, ride on two wheels, get the hell out of the south, make lemonade from lemons...  You get it.

Funny enough, I'm most preoccupied with traveling with controlled substances.  See, as a race mechanic I'm expected to have all the glue and lubricant my team needs.  The MSDSs say air travel in certain quantities is ok, but it still makes flying a bit of a pucker.  And all the class acts in blue shirts at the airport don't offer much help on the matter.  So, that's a project for this spring.  Figuring it all out.  And maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere:  Figuring out how to not let your team down while you watch your own ass.

Over and out

Dirty South

In the south, everyone calls you honey or sweetie.  What an ego boost.  My mail carrier called me sweetie today.  How flattering.  Maybe I should buy her chocolates.