Eastward-ish: (Another) Whim of the Great Magnet

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. -- Lewis Carroll


Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. -- Edward Albee

As you might recall, I walked into the Little Six Casino Mick Parsons and walked out divested of him. Nice enough guy, I suppose; but on the upside, I figure his identity is being used by some undocumented worker to stay in the country. On about the same level of an upside, part of my psyche hopes that some poor stupid bastard is, at this very moment, trying to acquire a hefty bank loan for an extravagant house, car, boat, or some other overpriced tinker toy, based on my credit history.

The peels of laughter from the loan department will be audible in a five state area. Really.

Beyond losing my ID, I lost my journal and my mode of travel. The loss of my notes and the bits of poetry hurt. The loss of my mode of travel -- the Discovery Pass that allowed me to travel from Ashland, Kentucky all the way to San Francisco, California, and had enough time on it to get to Cincinnati, Ohio before it expires on July 5th -- was more that problematic. Not only was I worried that I might be stuck, indefinitely, in Minneapolis, but I was pondering what that meant for the end of this particular jaunt. If it meant anything at all.

I was trying to figure out a way to get moving again, worried that I would overstay my welcome with my dear friends here, worried that future traveling might be complicated by my new minted non-person status, and worried that I would have to depend on my friends in a way I did not want to. I depend on them enough for a soft landing shelter, and food, and a ride to and from the bus station; they seem willing enough to help in these regards, seem to enjoy my company, and most of them even want me to visit again. In no way did I want to mess any of that up.


But it turns out, I stressed out all last week for nothing. I finally called Greyhound's Customer Assistance line to see if there was anything I could do short of waiting for a new picture ID to come in the mail or hitchhike.

DO NOT CALL THIS NUMBER UNLESS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO SCOTT JOPLIN.  I LIKE SCOTT JOPLIN AND EVEN I THOUGHT I MIGHT GO INSANE WAITING TO TALK TO A REAL PERSON ABOUT MY REAL PROBLEM.

I found out that all I needed to do was set up a password when I purchase my ticket online. When I pick it up at the ticket counter, that password will work as an ID.


Perfect. Absolutely perfect.


Add to that a kind donation or two to the travel fund, and I was able to purchase a ticket. I'm headed out of Minneapolis at 1 AM July 5th and arriving in Cincinnati at 8:40 PM that same day. All in all, just shy of a 19 hour burn to get from here to there.


And I have enough money for a bottle of water and even (gasp!) a cup of coffee.

Gawd Bless America. And Gawd bless those of you who contributed. May your children grow up smart and good-looking and not at all resembling the mail carrier.

The universe smiles on me yet again. A little crack of a smile, to be sure. But a smile nonetheless. And I'm grateful for it. As last minute changes in plans, go, it could have gone a lot worse. For example, I could've had the experience of the Roving Northern Englander and been mugged In Omaha, Nebraska.

I'm still unclear as to how that happened. I'm not blaming the victim, but I do suspect, based on talking to him for several hours, that he said something to someone and got unwelcome attention. Maybe he was talking loudly about how thieves should have their hands cut off, and how Americans don't know how to spell color. (He prefers "colour" even though I pointed out it was a French influence after the Norman Invasion. I thought he was going to spit at me. Talk about a grudge.)

There have been more than a few last minute changes. For example, the shift in Louisville that led me to St. Louis, then to Hannibal, Missouri and inevitably to Minneapolis on my way west... and though South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, some of the most beautiful and heartbreaking landscapes I have ever seen.

Truthfully, I could have done without the bedridden wildlife in Billings. But otherwise

I was planning a quick stop through San Fran and onto Oroville; but lingered in on the wharf a day longer and saw a wonderful city that I very much want to spend more time in.

Then there was the ill-fated trip to Salt Lake City, which led me to Colorado, meeting Cousin Mary and my Uncle Dan for the first time, and getting a glimpse into a side of the family that know next to nothing about. And I am planning on going back in October, Dear Readers, to learn more. I also got to see Cripple Creek, drive through Victor, and see the beginning of the Waldo Canyon Fire.

At every turn where I turned control over to the universe, I was not led astray. The trip became more interesting, took on additional dimensions.

A significant part of traveling -- of truly traveling -- is being prepared to adjust, being open to new roads, new possibilities. To be prepared for the unexpected. This most recent bit of the unexpected has not only freed me in some very important ways, but it reminded me that instead of moping and going into panic mode, that I need to follow my own advice. It showed me that instead of trying to re-establish control over event I may not have any control over to begin with, I need to breathe.

Simply breathe. And let the universe do the work. It may not always turn out so neatly. But a wise man -- which is what I hope to be one of these days many, many, many years from now -- will be steady,  live in the present, keep on walking, and be consistent whether his fortunes are good or bad.

I have so much to learn.

But I'm working on it.

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Eastward-ish: Farsickness

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." - J.R.R Tolkien

I used to have a friend. Well, I believe he's still my friend, so there's no reason, I suppose, speak in the past tense. It's just that I haven't seen him in going on 8 years or so, and even then it was accidental. I don't remember the context of the conversation, only him laughing, the way he did at everything, and saying

"You're exactly like Bilbo Baggins!"

"In what way?" (I hadn't read The Hobbit  yet.)

He just laughed and shook his head. "You just are. Trust me."


This was long before I even aware of the itch that has since taken hold. My Dear Sweet Ma, and others, often refer to my itchy-footedness as wanderlust, which is loosely defined as "a predilection or desire to travel." The word itself is from the German, a turn of the (20th) century term that means "to enjoy hiking." There's another word... another German word, Fernweh -- which means "farsickness" or, more directly translated, "an ache for distant places" -- that might seem more appropriate. Maybe. 

Though to be honest, it's not so much far off places I am sick for as much as I am sick for traveling for it's own sake.

This is often a difficult concept to explain to people, and one that, even when they grasp it, few people really understand. And to be fair, I'm not sure I completely understand it myself. There's a certain amount of fluidity in the way I live, that's true. As time goes on, it becomes increasingly fluid and separated from general expectations of culture. And though my Dear Sweet Ma, and a few select of my closest friends who worry about my future, my safety, and (maybe) my sanity, keep telling me that I have to stop sometime... if even to make more money in order to keep traveling...

I keep thinking about how much more expensive it is to settle down than it is to keep on the move. To stay someplace, for more than a few days (a week at the most) requires:

1. A Domicile. That usually means paying rent, unless you're effective at squatting.
2. A Job. To pay for said domicile, and all that may entail.

Both of those things require an inevitable perpetual maintenance, a tithing, if you will, which means that the travelsickness becomes something altogether more malignant, cancerous. It becomes a TRUE sickness, a dissatisfaction that plays out in any number of ways. For me, I get mopey, I get surly, I become a lousy drunk. I quit jobs. I get fired from jobs.

In short, I begin to work against myself -- in spite my own intentions, which, believe it or not, are sometimes noble.

These are things on my mind as this particular jaunt, the Westward Expanse, comes to a close. In short order I'll be returning to the Ohio Valley for a bit, and then up to Northwest Illinois. It will be good to see familiar places and friends whose warmth and company I've missed. 

I'm not sure though, whether the road hasn't spoiled me, to some degree. And recent events, which include losing my ID, and the weighty thinking about identity, and what a name truly means -- not only to me, but to my friends, my family, and in the larger context of a culture in which people's lives are expected to be transparent so that The State doesn't have to be -- make me think that the only place for me is everywhere.

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Eastward-ish: Dennis the Menace and The L.A. Bus Station

Transcending life and death is leaving home. - Bodhidharma , "The Waking Sermon"


It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story. - Native American Proverb

It was somewhere around the time that Dennis finished telling the story about how he and his dad had to help a stumbling drunk then President Jimmy Carter to his limousine -- much to the annoyance of the Secret Service suits who were, at the moment, looking at a long semi-retirement in Georgia having to babysit an ex-president -- when it was announced that our bus was boarding.

I was sitting on the floor in line at Door 14 in the Los Angeles Central Bus Depot, waiting. There is an established etiquette in most bus depots that says you can leave your bags and hold your place in line; naturally, this unofficial rule runs contrary to the official rules as set down by Greyhound Bus Lines, which state that no bags should be left unattended. There is also another common courtesy among most bus travelers -- bag watching. Which is to say that if you're holding your place in line at the gate (This does NOT apply to the ticket counter... ever.) and if you need to run to the restroom without losing your place in line, you can ask someone to watch over your shit while you're taking one. As the person watching, it's your responsibility -- if you chose to accept it, Mr. Phelps -- to move the other person's stuff forward if, for any reason, the line should move. It is NOT your responsibility to load someone else's crap on the bus, or to make sure it gets put under the bus.

Naturally, Greyhound Bus Lines has a rule EXPRESSLY FORBIDDING you from watching any bag that isn't yours or belonging to anyone you don't know well enough to have either changed their diaper or helped them through the trauma of a body cavity search.

I watched Dennis's stuff when he went off for a smoke, and when he got back, he hobbled and sort of fell -- he later told me he was suffering from a sciatic nerve -- next to me on the floor, telling me about he and his dad and Jimmy Carter. He also took care to point out that his mother was already in the limo drinking with then Presidential Family Prize, Billy.

Dennis and I left San Francisco on the same bus, changed buses in Sacramento, and were now waiting for the bus from Los Angeles to Dallas., where he would change buses again and head south for Miami, Florida. I was getting off the bus in Phoenix, where I hoped to visit friends and see some old stomping grounds.

The availability of a friendly couch or piece of floor was also a determining factor. My stay in San Francisco, while cheaper than it certainly could have been -- the city has a 15.5% surtax on hotel rooms -- still depleted my travel fund to the point that I had to either go someplace with friends, or go someplace and hope there was an open bed at the men's shelter.  I had been promising friends in the 480/602 that I would stop through my Westward Jaunt. My original plan, prior to being waylaid in St. Louis and ending up in Nashville, was to circle south and visit The Valley of the Sun while it was still almost kinda sorta comfortable. But the timing was good, anyway... being low on funds and knowing I'd at least have a place to crash -- not to mention being able to see friends I hadn't seen since the eventually-to-be-ex and I left the desert for the four seasoned tundra of Northwest Illinois -- was all the incentive I needed.

And of course, coming from the West Coast that meant going through L.A.

Now, as much as I've said I don't have much interest in seeing L.A., I have to admit I kind of wish I could have. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that I'm not quite sure how to wrap my head around a place like Los Angeles. Most other cities -- even the horrible gray ones like Norfolk, Virginia --  have a sort of personality. Sure, most cities are diverse, and have all kinds of stuff; but even New York -- which is by far one of the more diverse conglomerates of buildings, neon, history, and twisted metal that I have ever seen -- still has a sense of itself. Even Cincinnati, which has very little sense about anything, especially among the people who are typically elected by Indian Hill residents to keep the keys and turn the lights on and off, still has a unique personality. L.A., it has always seemed to me, is more of a Choose Your Own Adventure City. Is it the punk/rock/goth/music scene that's the backdrop of such shows like LA Ink? Is it Bukowski's North Hollywood? Is it all glam and slam bam thank you ma'am like it looks on the Oscars? Is it Watts? South Central? Compton? Seems to me like whatever you want out of the City of Angels you can get.

The bus station in L.A., though... that was a world unto itself. The first thing I noticed -- besides throng of people and the near impossibility of getting around without having to almost run people over -- was an underlying and (as of yet) undetermined smell. I am (sadly) familiar with smells fine and foul, from expensive bourbon to 3 day old cooked puke and piss in the gutters of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The odor of the L.A. station wasn't sweat, or body odor, or garbage. It wasn't gasoline. It wasn't piss or old mop water.

Luckily, the bus we were on from Sacramento was about an hour behind schedule. That cut the 2 1/2 hour layover time down, at least.

Dennis was worried that the bus would be too full. He had managed to avoid having anyone sitting next to him by essentially setting up camp. He put his bag in the seat next to him and didn't move it. Lucky for him, neither of the buses was so full that he would be compelled to move it by the driver. I didn't fair that lucky...though the bus leaving Sacramento had been, at least, a modern bus with electric outlets and a spotty WiFi connection. I didn't expect any of the West Coast buses to NOT be full. And as much as I would like to have Dennis's tenacity, I still adhere to some simple rules of bus travel... that include watching somebody's bags in line when they go off to the bathroom for a quickie with a bus station hooker.

Sorry. Lady of the Evening. Lady Thanks to Duck Tape. Lot Lizard. Depot Deepthroater. Hand Job Sanitizer. Whatever. I'd hate to get someone's job title wrong. What do you call it when someone pays you for sex in a bus station bathroom?

Being a Republican.

And NO, I don't really care. I just think it might be better to have this shit out in the open. Set up Hooker and Coffee Kiosks. You can have chaise-lounge and a privacy curtain, order it all up like at Starbucks:


Cashier: Welcome to Coffee and a Piece. What would you like?
Customer (Male) : I'd like a medium half-caf no foam latte with a twist.
Cashier: Anything else? [Wink Wink]
Customer (Male): How about a Caramel Honky Delight?
Cashier: Blonde, Brunette, or Redhead?
Customer (Male): Uh...  (Looking over the menu) I had a Blonde last time. Nice but a little foggy. How about we go with the Red head.
Cashier: Very good, Sir.
Customer (Male): That's a natural Redhead, right? A friend of mine tried one at another location and she was strictly out of the bottle.
Cashier: All Natural all the time, sir. Will that be all?
Customer (Male): Does this location have the Hump Day Pre-Op Tranny Special?
Cashier: Yes sir.
Customer (Male): (Reaches into his wallet for his credit card.) Let's go with that, then.

The thing about Dennis's Carter story, which ended, improbably enough, with a statement that he liked Carter just fine until he gave away the Panama Canal ... after which he never forgave him ... was that while I almost certainly didn't believe him -- Ok, I was almost certain that I was certain I didn't believe him -- it didn't much matter to me whether I believed him or not. I liked Dennis. He looked rough. Looked, as a matter of fact, like he'd spent some time out, and was running with his tail between his legs. And as we talked, I discovered that this was probably closer to the truth. Before he got on the bus in San Fran, a suspiciously plain clothed cop type person handed him a bus ticket to Miami and $40 -- $10 a day for every day he would be on the bus. I found out later, among Dennis's story telling about being a master mechanic, carpenter, and about how he had to leave the West Coast because there was no work for him, that he had come out San Fran to see his wife, who is apparently brilliant, with multiple university degrees, and is absolutely gorgeous to boot.

"So I come all the way out here," he says. "And you know what she tells me?"

"No. What'd she say?"

"She says 'Dennis, you're a distraction. I can't work with you here.'"

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the same thing I did. You're thinking "If you are married, there has to be a reason she moved to the other side of the fucking continent to get away from you." He was a small guy, though, a bit older... older than his age, since he told me he was born in 1957 but he moved like a much older man... and didn't look like he could hurt anybody. His big red suitcase with the duck tape handle weighed more than he did. He told me it was full of tools.

It was heavy enough to be full of his wife.

The thing I liked about Dennis, though, other than his stories, was that he was constantly excited about the landscape outside the bus windows. He'd never been across country by bus, he said, he'd flown out before but couldn't afford to fly back. (I don't think he realized I saw where his ticket came from. I didn't tell him.) But he was always calling over to me, whether I had someone sitting next to me or not-- I had a window seat on one side and he on the other -- about something he saw out of his window. At one point he was on the phone with someone who told him the highway we were on was directly over the San Andreas Fault.

And to be honest, I thought that was actually kind of cool.

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