From Field Notes: 22 Aug 2019 (cool cats and a muckraker's city)

Leaving Chicago on the 5:45 pm Cardinal. By this time tomorrow, I'll be in Ashland (KY). Had a wonderful time at the reading. The record store, No Requests, is nice little place.  One of the owners told me they're also  a record label focusing on  local bands. They release titles on cassette... reminded me of those single or two song cassettes you'd find as a special right before an album drop or to fan up interest

My friend and poetic comrade Jeri has a lovely apartment with a polite and friendly roommate and two cats, both of which resisted my attempts to take pictures of them. They tolerated me well enough and were almost friendly by the time I left for the train station.

The cats eye me

with far less suspicion.

Their gazes say

you will miss us.

Off Lakeshore Drive heading into  the downtown business district, the Uber driver used Ida B Wells Drive. I wonder if anyone driving it knows what she endured in the name of truth just to have a stretch of street named after her.

Holy mother of muckrakers,

sweet lady of malady, madness and letters

have mercy on us!

Taking a smoke outside Union Station the Jackson Street,  I'm soaking in the city yet again, one more time. The weather is cooler, than it had been, and the sun is shining.  There's a few of us there, smoking. Even though the Canal Street doors are open to the public again, the Jackson Street door is more convienent for smokers. The others are huddling in shadows and I find myself drawn to the light around the corner. Street hustlers mix in the panhandlers. I see the hard push on a few unsuspecting travelers trying to wave off the nicotine  mists. But the ATM is right over there, I hear one say. 

What a shame:

out of shadows cast by brick, steel, and glass

violence bids hello

with a handshake and a sharp smile.

   

In Motion

Chicago --

Getting out of River City is always fraught. Or, at least, it seems that way lately. I tell myself it's important to remind myself: it's the time of year. Summer travel is a always a little .... more. More crowded. More expensive. More prone to run late. 

I decided to cheat on the old grey dog and use Megabus for my run up to Chicago. Yes, I could have taken a bus up to Indy and rode train... except that regional train travel is complicated thanks to the monumental lack of foresight that led to the decommissioning of the Indiana State Hoosier. It would have extended this leg of my trip a bit too long, and I would have had to spend at least one night in the Indiana Depot... an accommodation I've experienced many, many times too many.  In order to be an even more particular traveler, I opted for the option. -- at the cost of an additional $2 -- to reserve a specific seat. I chose one on the left side of the bus, next to the window, near the front, on the top level. 

That proved to be a complete waste of time. Not only was the bus an hour late, but my seat and the one next to it were taken up by a future seminary student and his prodigious amount of luggage. I wasn't the only one to fall prey the hopeful, false advertising.  Two women across the aisle and one row up from me were actually sitting in seats that had been reserved by a young woman and her friend. When the young woman attempted -- politely -- to explain they were sitting in her seats, they were incredibly rude. Sure, they were probably still sore at being bamboozled. But that's no reason to call a fellow sufferer a bitch.

Bus travel isn't my preferred mode, but it gets the job done. Mostly. At least regionally.

So I remind myself the delays are seasonal. Interstates are construction- choked arteries. There are more people on the road, and because we're heading out during rush hour, delay is almost guaranteed.   But there's been a steady increase in people moving around the country by bus. Flying can be prohibitively expensive, and trains don't go everywhere people really need them to go.

More people are in motion, for reasons and excuses to numerous to list. No, they're not traveling; at least, not traveling in the sense that I travel. And they're not vacationing in that Sunday Morning retirement IRA commercial sense, either. But people are in motion. Not in control, but still in a damned hurry. And because of this, and because public transit goers tend to see themselves as consumers rather than the consumed, the gentility and etiquette I saw a few years back is wearing off like tired, neglected paint. 

But the sunset in Indiana, just north of Indianapolis, is lovely. The colors are autumnal: purples and blues highlighted with splashes of tangerine, splashed across the sky above an endless ocean of green fields waiting for the harvest. And that, more than anything, is why I don't drive.

   

Field Notes, 24 March 2019: Beautifully Savage

[Indianapolis:]

Part of me wanted to miss the bus, or for something to go wrong in Louisville just so I could have one more minute with her. It's always like this. Even when I'm compelled to go, there is such a desire to stay, to damn the consequences. And indeed, there would be consequences. I've seen that before, too.

Some aspects of every trip are the same. Indy and the buzzing lights. Chicago Union Station and the great, depressive and beautiful vacuum of that city. Longing and loneliness. And the obligation to write it all down, to somehow make it all make sense, if only for myself, but maybe -- just maybe -- for some other poor asshole out there who is equally torn apart by a need to Go and to See. Someone else who is tortured by the desire to stay, to leave the road for someone else.

At the 2:45AM ticket check I was again asked about a confirmation number. I'm starting to feel punked.

Buzzing overhead lights
and a four hour layover.
Thoughts of you make me wonder
why it feels so necessary
to be anywhere you're not.

[Near Chicago Union Station]

Of course the ridiculous worries about the "confirmation number" were unfounded. The desk worker in Louisville was clearly mistaken/misinformed/harried. The security guard at the Indy station was probably just being a dick because he picked up on my displeasure about the ticket check. They always state the same legal caveat "I am not biased and will check anyone regardless of what they look like." This gives them the blankt authority to racially and economically profile anyone they want without fear of the guard or the company being sued. And naturally, there are any number of ways to abuse tacit authority at 3AM in a Midwestern bus station.

Power is so predictable.
Give authority to a beaten man
and he will beat anyone down
with savage impunity --
in particular, whoever he blames.

Canal Street Entrance, Chicago Union Station

[In the Great Hall, Union Station, Chicago]

The Great Hall is gorgeous. The lights, the statues, the columns and marble staircases. A mish-mash of Greco-Roman with Digital Age minimalism forced into the crevices. Ornately wrought columns and digital screens. Nothing is so American as our nostalgia for the past that never was -- the carefully and assiduously reconstructed one we write ourselves into as the denouement.

Beautiful as they are
all our grand monuments
harken back to a past
reconstructed from afar
so it necessarily includes
us, whether we belong or not.

[Harmonee Ave/Glenview, IL]

Loaded for bear
more people than seats
our steel horse barrels westward
breaching the ragged edge
in search of soul, Big Sky and light.

[Flooded plains outside Columbus, Wisconsin]

Downed and drought
are the only cycles
anyone can really count on.
Everything else is Faith.

[All that's left is the thaw]

Snow lingers west of the Wisconsin Dells. Dirty, tired looking stuff. Knee high piles along the outside

St. Paul-Minneapolis, MN - Union Depot (MSP)

edges and corners of muddy unplanted cornfields. Tiny blankets wrapped around the base of young sycamores and trimming along creek beds. It's all over but the melting here. 

The sun broke out for setting
just east of La Crosse --
piles of dirty snow like shrugged off clothes
lay around the edges
of soon-to-be plowed fields.

[Black River, WI]

Broken up ice islands
The waters are high.
We're coming upon the Mississippi
to breach the great boundary
into Minnesota.

Every time I travel I'm awe struck by how beautiful and how beautifully savage the landscape is.

[First 'Air Break'/ Flood Fight]

Chatted with a woman name Kristy and a man named Dean, both from Fargo. They were strangers to each other but both going home. When they found out they were both from the same place, they started talking about the 'Flood Fight.' Every year when the snow melts, people volunteer to make sandbags to stave off the inevitable flooding of the North River. Dean is volunteering for the first time in several years. Kristy volunteers every year, but her job allows her to volunteer and get paid for it. Dean said they are calling for 1 million sand bags this year. Kristy said they are expecting floods about 41 feet, worse than 1997.

All I said was that water always runs down river eventually. All I thought about was how much we don't need the water to rise anymore at home. But that's life -- it's all connected and everything runs downstream eventually.

-MKP

~

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Gator People Live in The River,1: The Knife

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

Traveling through the Harrison Street Greyhound Station has become old hat.

Chicago is one of the major intersections on the Greyhound Map. St. Louis, Dallas, and Nashville are a couple of the other ones. Nashville is a grungy, badly kept station, much in the same way that the station in Vegas is grungy and badly kept. Part of me thinks this is deliberate. In Vegas, of course, you're only at the Greyhound Station near the nostalgic Fremont Street experience because you lost. Vegas winners do not leave town via the bus; and any potential winners that roll in that way realize quickly it is no place worth returning to. In Nashville, it's entirely possible that they keep the station looking, feeling, and smelling like a set from a George Romero zombie flick because

1. they're hoping George Romero films a movie there; and


2. they're hoping some potential new Nashville pop star will write a song about it.

That's my theory, anyway. Don't get me wrong; there are plenty of terrible bus stations, and some nice ones, too. St. Louis is nice because it's new and because they police it in order to keep the riff raff (ME) from taking up semi-permanent residence.

The Harrison Street station is one of the nicer ones, too. The food isn't great and it costs too much. But that ought to be expected. On the other hand, the men's room is kept pretty clean and I have yet to walk into any back stall romantic embraces.

Mobile, Alabama. Yes. There is a certain smell to man on man intercourse that, try as I might, I will probably never erase from my sense memory. As a writer, I struggle even to try and describe it, in spite feeling guilty about subjecting you, my Dear Readers, to such knowledge. Lucky for you, I can't even muster the language.

The problem with the Harrison Street Station is that they have instituted TSA style bag searches prior to boarding... at least this has been the case the last couple times I've been through. I'm still unclear as to what the powers that be are thinking. If terrorists are going to blow something up, it's not going to be a bus full of poor people... not even to make a point. Because while a terrorist might posit that there is no such thing an innocence, any terrorist smart enough to put a bomb together knows enough to know that this government doesn't give a damn about the poor.

But this IS the Post-9/11 World, after all... which means that even if the terrorists -- whoever the hell they may be -- don't think the poor are dangerous, clearly the power mongers happen to.

And so, I had to once again consent to a search of my ruck and a wand sweep.

The problem was, though, I was technically carrying contraband -- my pocket knife. On my last trip outbound from Harrison Street, I didn't have a pocket knife. It's a nice one, too. A Christmas gift from my brother.

My brother is not one to go gushing about something as non-objective as feelings. This often leads some people who don't know better to believe that he doesn't have them. The knife, while it was something I had put on my amazon.com wish list, was something that probably only he would give me. We may not as close as some people suppose brothers ought to be, maybe, but we do understand one better than most people understand us.

Back when I was in the middle of a blood and guts divorce from The Kid's mother, my brother gave me watch. It was a simple one, with a clock face.

I prefer the quirky personality of a time piece to the cold and dispassionate visage of a digital hour marker. A regular clock face, with the steady sand sweeping second hand, helps me to remember that I am sweeping along, a tick at a time, that time is doing the same, and that we each move at our own individualized pace. A clock face also reminds me of the cyclic nature of time, of events, and that these hours will both perpetually return while at the same time never come back again. A digital clock makes me feel like I'm racing to the grave. Yes, I realize they both serve the same basic function. Dirt and a 20 ounce porterhouse steak can serve the same function, too. You can eat both and get full. But one is still preferable.

The pocket knife and the compass he gave me that year for Christmas -- the compass is too nice to travel with but a fine piece of craftsmanship I cherish -- were, on his part, a recognition of my impulse to move. Not just travel. Move. Movement unwinds the giant knot in me that in a way that coming up out of the water for air fill the lungs. Of the two, the knife is the most pragmatic and has been the most used. One of the first people I truly unloaded on about splitting with Melissa was my brother -- again, not because we sit around and talk about our emotions, but because, well, he's my brother. And having to deal with certain stupid family politics I have learned that while we don't talk often, it matters more that we are brothers than whether we are friends.

I was not going to give up the knife without a fight.

<

I also could not afford to bail myself out out a Chicago Jail.

The thought crossed my mind to hide in my rucksack. But they actually OPEN any bags that are not stored under the coach and I will not store my rucksack under the coach. That's how you end up in Lexington,Kentucky and your shit ends up in Detroit.

I didn't want to risk leaving it in my pocket for the metal wand to detect. Then I noticed that when another man took his ball cap off and put his wallet in it, the station security guard did not sweep his hat. Only the length of him from his armpits to his knees.

My oil-cloth travelling hat has a flap on the inside that is theoretically for cooler weather. My noggin is too big for that to be use in it's state capacity. But it occurred to me that I could palm my knife inside the hat, while piling the rest of my pocketed stuff in. The hat is crushable, so holding in that fashion would not be difficult to explain if I needed to.

So that's what I did. And it worked. The woman who was waving the wand didn't give my hat -- which had my wallet, some loose change, my travel journal,my cellphone, my lucky rock and Illinois buckeye, and a small pendant given to me as payment by my friend Heather Houzenga for street-calling poetry in it -- a second look. When she turned to the person behind me, I quickly palmed the knife and stuck it back in my pocket. I'd gotten away with it.

The other security guard had trouble unknotting my rucksack. Feeling safe and wanting to speed things up, I set my hat on the end of the small rolling cart and unbuckled and untied my rucksack. She dug around a bit, felt up my poncho pack, and was satisfied. I retied and rebuckled my blue rucksack and slung over my shoulder.

As I did, she moved the cart and my bag (probably)n hit my hat -- sending everything in it flying. The phone was unharmed (thanks OTTERBOX!) and I recovered everything. Eventually. The security guards and the people immediately behind me in line laughed. They found my lucky rock, my Illinois buckeye, and the distinctly feminine pendant quite funny.

I boarded the bus, glad to have gotten past the late night search. I found it interesting that they didn't ask me to open my guitar case, which I also DON'T put under the bus. But I didn't ask them why -- even though it's been mistaken for everything from a violin to a submachine gun.

I did end up not getting back all my loose change, however.

Story Gathering Project 1, Williston: Plans and Updates

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. - Camus

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

- Robert Louis Stevenson 

I'm heading to Chicago to catch the train a week from today (Monday 7/1/13). I'll be taking the Empire Builder from Chicago to Rugby, North Dakota -- the ascribed center of North America. After a day there, I'll catch the train (again, the Empire Builder) to Williston.

I'm still working on accommodations in Rugby... hoping to camp, actually, if the weather isn't too oppositional. I don't worry too much about one night here or there, but I AM hoping to be out of the elements somewhat when I'm in Williston. The money I put away towards this trip has gone towards transportation costs and a newer, sturdier pack. (My old one, of dubious Chinese manufacture, barely survived last year. My new blue ruck is tougher, and American-made.) Since the Kickstarter campaign didn't quite work out, I'm having to piece together my shelter. For now, I've got two nights at one of the several motels in Williston... that's Thursday the 11th and Friday night the 12th. After that, I'm hoping something else will turn up.

Because of the influx of people looking for work in the tar sands... not to mention that pesky business about Wal-Mart effectively booting a primary customer base and demonstrating yet again it's poor people skills... there is no place that allows for tent camping in Williston, except for one place: the Buffalo Trails Campground. Having looked them up again as recently as today, it seems there's new management. That's a good thing if any of the previous reviews are at all accurate. Stay tuned for more on that one, Dear Readers.

I'm picking up on a few things in my early research about Williston, one point being so stereotypically American that I expect to see a flock of John Waynes moseying down the street. There are several motels. All of them have a bar. All of them have a casino. I haven't seen any indications of where Miss Peggy's House of Massage and Tea Room are located, but I expect there's some of that, too.

Or maybe that's one town over. I have also read that rent is getting so high in Williston that many workers are living in towns around for cheaper rents. This might account for some of the discrepancies in the population count. The 2010 census came up with a population of 14,716 -- an increase of around 2000 people since the 2000 census. But the fellas on the City Commission estimate a higher population count of at least 20,000. Maybe up near 30,000. The reason for the differential?

The 2010 census didn't count people living in Williston for work. 

In addition to fracking and oil wells, agriculture is still listed as part of the area's primary economy. I suspect that the bigger chunk of all that goes to service industries, though. Companies like Halliburton, which provides the fracking technology used by most of the oil companies represented in Williston Basin and the Bakken Formation.

You remember Halliburton, right? Darth Cheney's old outfit? The one that also gets fat government contracts?

As a matter of fact, Halliburton has a corporate offices in Williston.

I expect that getting there on a weekend will prime time for people watching and interaction. I'm hoping to spend enough time there to see what the real story is... the narrative that has yet to be told. There's something fundamentally... AMERICAN in the idea of a boomtown. It's tied into our history, into our mythology, into our sense of who we are. It's tied to our culturally constructed definitions of Democracy and Capitalism. (Still NOT the same thing, no matter what some far right wingers say.)  You read enough about boom towns and American History and you notice a couple of things:

1. It's never neat and tidy; there's a lot of violence, a lot of loss.
2. There's also success. But we tend to hear more about the successes and not the problems. Because the problems aren't simple, and because they are tied to more than just people making money. The problems are tied to power, to authority, and to the mythology of the American Dream... that old idea that if you just work hard enough, that you will succeed. 

P.S.: It's also tied to that old Objectivist (aka Ayn Randian) Dream: that the only rule that matters is Social Darwinism.

In order to save some money, in order to reduce the amount of time I'll have to kill between stops in Chi-town, I am taking a Greyhound Bus from River City to Chicago.  I only took Greyhound because it was actually cheaper than Megabus... though not by much. The Old Grey Dog, inspite of it's attempts to modernize with free wifi on SOME busses and electric outlets on SOME busses that work SOME of the time, is still missing some fundamentals of customer service.

For example, while Amtrak and Megabus BOTH have very functional and free iphone apps, Greyhound does not. This, in combination with scrapping the Discovery Pass, is one more nail in their coffin, as far as I'm concerned. 

Being concerned as I am and being a frequent traveller, I thought I'd given them the heads up. Rather than try and find some contact point in their corporate office... which is difficult to do... I decided to be that it would be best to contact them the way everyone communicates now:

via FACEBOOK.

I sent a short, polite message last night. And this morning, I actually got a message back. If you are a long time reader, you know HOW SIGNIFICANT THIS IS: 

Don't worry, AC. I will. You keep on bein' you.

Carlinville Intermezzo: The Story Of R

The train station in Carlinville, Illinois is nothing more than a ventilated brick box. Cement floor, a single bench, no heat for the winter and not even a fan for warmer weather. I got there around 11:30 in the morning. The train to Chicago wasn't going to arrive until 3:30 that afternoon. The sky was cloudy, the temperature cold, and it was spitting a particularly unforgiving rain that made me grateful for I didn't have to walk the miles from Litchfield.

Nothing about Carlinville impressed me enough to get wet wandering around to explore it. I noticed one clearly No-Tell-Motel on the way into town. (The sign listed a price differential between single and double beds, and the ambiance suggested that there should have also been a price differential for hourly and nightly rates.) I also took note of several bars, none of which looked trustworthy enough to carry my pack into. Other than the rail, which rolled by a deserted grain elevator, there was very little left to describe. Like every other town that grew up along Route 66, it was impacted by completion of the I-55 corridor. And it was clearly impacted again by changes in the railroad industry.

I was alone in the brick box for about 20 minutes before he hurried in and asked if I had a cigarette. And if I was slightly inclined to dig deeper into Carlinville -- named, according to an optimistically written Wikipedia page, after a former Governor -- talking to R would have changed my mind.

He assured me that if I was looking to get laid, that all I had to do was walk down the street.

"Ah," I said. "So they're trying to fish outside of the gene pool?"

"Gene pool. Yeah, man You got that right!"

A man on the run from something has a distinct body language. Jerky movements. Disheveled look. Given the mostly pale demographic of the town and -- except for the Indians who worked in the hotels and the Mexicans who did the service industry grunt work -- R stuck out simply because he was black.

After I was unable to give him a cigarette, he asked where I was going and where I'd come from. So I gave him the quick and dirty version. Hearing that I walked from Staunton to Litchfield elicited a wide-eyed shake of the head.

"Why'd you do that?"

"I had to get here."

"You didn't have a car?"

"If I had a car, I wouldn't need to catch a train."

That seemed to satisfy him for the most part. It also gave him a door to prove the current events of his life more interesting than mine.

R was not from Carlinville. He was from Springfield, Illinois, but came there via St. Louis. And he did it for a girl. The part that seemed to surprise him, even though he was standing in a brick box train depot waiting for the train that would take him back to Springfield with his few possessions in a 33 gallon garbage bag, was that it didn't work out.

"She's a white girl," he said. "And she's... you know... not thick." He repeated this several times throughout the story, as if he was trying to convince himself that it should have, and for those very reasons.

The story unfolded something like this: he met the woman he was trying to escape the day after he got out of jail. R explained that yes, "It was drug related stuff," but that he had cleaned up his act since and was no longer doing whatever it was that got him locked up. But, he admitted that, upon his release, he was on the hunt for the one thing he couldn't get while he was incarcerated. And it just so happened that he got call from a former cellie who had a girlfriend who had a friend.

"I was looking for a one night stand," R maintained. "But it didn't turn into that."

Upon his release, R had been sent to a half-way house to ensure that his rehabilitation would take. After one night with this girl -- whose name, I have to admit, I don't remember -- she took it upon herself to harass his Parole Officer and the Missouri State Department of Corrections to secure his release from the half-way house so that he could move in with her. When calling St. Louis didn't help, R, said, she drove from Carlinville to St. Louis five days a week in order to visit him and track down the dodgy P.O. Naturally, the development seemed to work to his advantage, so he didn't argue. And while he never uttered the word, the confluence of events must have seemed to him, at the time, serendipitous. And when his parole officer secured his release from the half-way house... making it clear that his only reason was to get the woman off his back... R thought he'd stumbled onto the love of his life.

His first indication that something was amiss was when he showed up in Carlinville and discovered that not only did his true love have two kids -- from two different fathers -- and that both of them were medicated for educational and developmental issues, but that she also lived with her sister, her sister's flavor of the week, and HER two kids.

To hear him tell it, his one true love did nothing except sleep all day, eat ice cream and want to fuck. She didn't want to deal with her kids. She didn't want to deal with her sister's kids. Apparently the sugar she ingested while watching Maury Povich was only to be used in the pursuit of more ice cream and sex.

To hear him tell it, she screwed him raw. And in every way possible. And when he was too exhausted to get it up "I'm not as young as I used be, you know" she would insist that he do something else to fill her appetites. And then she expected him to take care of the kids, who wouldn't listen to him. And then she expected him to make her a sandwich. And then clean up the house. And then go buy her some ice cream.

I was waiting for him to admit to something involving a ball gag and a french maid's outfit.

Instead, he told me about changing the sheets on the bed.

Apparently, there was a day when his own true love actually left the house -- for reasons he didn't explain -- and he took it upon himself to change out the sheets on the bed. She had told him he could find clean sheets in a Santa Claus bag in the hall closet. He found the bag and starting digging through pillow cases and sundry unmatched soft goods until he stumbled upon something that wasn't so -- soft.

Actually there were several.

"I'm telling you," he said, "the bitch could open a dildo flea market!"

He found out later, however, that not all the dildos were for her. Apparently she was hoping that R's time in prison made him a more amenable catcher to a stiff pitch.

R would have none of it.

And while he didn't say directly, the eventual decline of the relationship -- he reiterated several times that he was in love with her but "The bitch is crazy, and those ain't my kids!" -- began with his discovery of the toys and his denial of her strap-on passion.

Even love has it's limits.

Crossing the Madison Street Bridge in Chicago at Midnight

I'm not so used to cities at night anymore.
The vast silence of steel and false night lights
gleaming in the darkness –

some apocalyptic dystopia
some photographic negative
of minutes spent scurrying
in the name of family, of god, of country
and credit rating.

Not so used to tall shadows created by dead things
that themselves are shadows – monolithic memento moris
leftover from forgotten dreams of some
Victorian Age notion of progress built
out of 20th Century materials
to become the icons of the new millennium.

Not so used to feeling crowded in on a deserted street,
These shadows, they have eyes

and they are always watching
and they are always waiting.

I don't know what it is they are waiting for
or why they insist on watching –

maybe they are waiting for my death,
watching for that opportune moment to pick my bones clean
like road kill on Old Route 66.

There are no questions here.
No one asks where it is I am going or
where it is I have come from.
My presence goes unnoticed.
There are no familiar faces in this city
upon which I might call on this chilly night
beg a couch and a few swallows of wine,
some warmth and conversation, trading tales
and the sweet lies that make of a man's daily life.

There are no doors open to me here.
Only a 24 hour chain donut shop –
and even then,
I must be careful not to offend
the impatient Middle Eastern man
who works the counter
blaring gangster rap.
Crossing the Madison Street bridge at midnight,
light reflecting in ripples on the waves
passing bus rumbles and shakes the bridge
creating ripples in the Earth
that cannot be erased
unto the last generation.

Street construction does not slow the steady rot underneath everything
man's hands have made.

I am not used to it. I find myself begging
for stars and for the breathing shadows
of more natural landscapes.

Nearing my 40th year I have begun to see
what it is I need. And it's not
any of the things I have been told.
Punch drunk clarity comes at almost two in the morning
sitting in a donut shop
as the city sinks into it's own arms
like a last call drunk.

Walk the streets, pedestrians disappearing into other shadows,
into older shadows. My own shadow, fractured as if
through a dark kaleidescope, four or five times –
A Schrödinger's puzzle.
I consider the possibility that they're following mw
intending to do me harm.

But I choose to dismiss this as paranoid delusion:
my shadows could never harm me
since it would hurt them in the long run.

I stop short of reminding myself that people do that very thing
all the time.

When I was young, I ran away to the city.
I craved the vibration, the cement, the anonymity.

Now I want to breathe big
and fill my eyes wide with green spaces,
acres of sky ascending and dissipating into nothing
into energy, into the cosmos, into stars, and into the ripple of planets
in Einstein's giant gravity blanket.

Now I want to walk in large strides
and I want to talk in large strides
and I want to traverse it all,
even the most inaccessible places.
Now I crave a western expanse.
Now I crave the Appalachian hills.
Now I crave rolling prairie
and nights re-splendid with a thousand million stars.

Now I crave a world in which
a man might breathe and live and love
and find solace in things that grow,
peace in warm fire,
among the songs and company of friends.

My soul speaks, sings out to this place.
It is waiting for the song to return.

I want to believe in all that is grand.
I want to believe in all that is beauty.
There is energy and beauty, where there are people scratching,
bumping into one another on the street, rubbing against the sidewalk,
opening and closing doors – in the same way atoms bounce,
and in the same way that neutrons bounce and bump.

There is a pulse where people are singing.
There is a pulse where a woman takes down her hair.

My soul speaks, sings out to the this place
because there is a rhythm under the cacophony
and some folks call it human.

My soul speaks, sings out to this place.
It is still waiting for an answer.

I want to believe in beauty
in spite of what my culture tells me –
and I am finally beginning to understand
that all that's beautiful
and all that's ugly
begins in me
like it begins in you.

Southern Jaunt: Ye, Tho I Walk

Truckin', I'm a goin home. Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong,
Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin' on. 
                                                                                                - The Grateful Dead
There is something to turn us mad. -Kenneth Patchen

These are the days that must happen to you: -Walt Whitman

My legs are a little sore even today. Still. That's what I get for not paying attention.

The trip up from Cincinnati to Bloomingdale was pretty easy. I rode up with my friend Paul, and his wife Cathy. She doesn't normally accompany on his Sunday run to Illinois, but she was going to catch a ride on a California bound truck. She's heading out to visit her family and attend to some sick relatives. Riding long distances in a big rig is actually sort fun. I will admit that it's one of those things my soon-to-be ex refers to as a "boy-man" sort of thing. I still remember wanting to be a truck driver when I was a kid, the appeal of all that romance and the sense of freedom... fueled, no doubt,  by Smokey and The Bandit and copious reruns of BJ and The Bear.  At one point, before I left Cincinnati this time, My Dear Sweet Ma asked if being a truck driver was something I might be interested in doing; after all, it could mean being out on the road for an extended period of time, and there's travel, of a sorts, involved.

Sometimes, though, when you talk to people about what they do, you learn a bit too much. I suspect that if many soon-to-be educators had an honest heart to heart with working and soon to be retired teachers, they would, en masse, drop out of whatever teacher education program they're in and apply to law school. Having talked to Paul about his job a lot, I can honestly tell you, Dear Readers, that while I enjoy riding in big rigs and don't mind helping load and unload cargo, I have no interest in entering the industry as an actual trucker. I should also mention that my innate ability to get lost -- in spite of have spot on directions -- would probably keep me from being effective at moving a trailer full of Stuff That Costs Entirely Too Much from Point A to Point B.

And yes, it may be true that pretty much all truckers use GPS.

I would like to point out though that GPS, as a mapping or directional system is flawed to the point that it's almost useless.  There was a time when I thought maybe my problems with Global Positioning Satellite doo-hickey-thing-a-ma-bobs was that I simply prefer to wander willy-nilly... or, as my ex often complained whenever I was driving anywhere I wasn't familiar with or had never been, that I have the uncanny ability to find the longest possible route to any place. The tried and true bumper sticker wisdom

ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST

is very much true in my case. My (increasingly well documented) tendency to wander has always found one outlet or another. And I do have a lousy sense of direction. Always have. Some people can stand in the middle of the prairie on a cloudy day and tell you what direction they're facing. Some of us need a little help. A compass, maybe. But I don't have one. My friend John, who met me in Chicago and brought me back to Mount Carroll yesterday evening, seemed surprised that I could travel from one end of the country to the other in the manner that I have without a compass. I admit there were times that it would have come in handy.

Like two mornings ago.

I woke up early and decided that since the Medinah Metra Station was ONLY about 6 miles from where Paul's rig was parked overnight... and since the morning was relatively cool and the sky looked rain free for the time being... that I would go ahead and walk I felt pretty well rested, and felt like I could get an early start, take advantage of the coolest part of the day. With any luck, I could get there before the boil really set in. Maybe catch the train into the city, rent a locker for my gear, and wander the city a bit before meeting John. I've never been to the Haymarket monument, or to any of the art galleries or museums. My trips through the most metropolitan of Midwestern cities are generally passing through... either on a train or, most often, the Greyhound Station. The ex and I visited Chicago once, not long after moving to Mount Carroll. We stayed with friends of hers in Oak Park and road the El into the city.

It was cold. It was windy. And the Macys frightened me a little.

But we did eat at a nifty little restaurant where I paid too much for a really amazing burger. (It was.)

After I said my so long/see you laters, I headed off, following what I thought were the proper directions. I had, after all, looked them up on Google Maps. The walking directions were slightly different than the driving directions.  More of a zig zag than a matter of 2 or 3 simple turns. But I thought maybe there was a specific reason for that. Maybe there weren't any sidewalks. Maybe it was a busy highway. Maybe there was no crosswalk.

I set off walking, looking for W. Army Trail, then Cardinal Drive. A few of the streets had bird names: Cardinal, Eagle, Raven. 5 or 6 miles isn't a lot, but it isn't a little either, so I didn't worry that none of the street names I had been looking for didn't appear. It was still (relatively) cool, my feet didn't hurt (more than normal) and the pack didn't weigh me down (yet.)

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all until something like an hour passed and I started seeing signs for Glendale Heights.

There was nothing in my Google Maps directions that mentioned cutting through Glendale Heights.

Not one to panic in these situations... they are far too typical to be worth the energy required to panic... I stopped and pondered my situation, looked at the directions I'd written down in my travel journal. Looking up, I saw an Indian (You know, the kind from India, not that kind that Columbus named Indians because he didn't want to admit that he got lost). He was walking toward me, in a semi-hurry, dressed in all white like an extra from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Being generally polite and only slightly smelly from one night in the rig, I smiled as he approached and signaled to him. As he approached, I asked him if I was going the right direction to cross W. Army Trail.

"I don't know anything," he mumbled quickly.

I didn't believe him, really. But I wasn't going to press it. Sometimes, in spite of my generally friendly, jovial nature, people are put off by me. It could be the hat. Or maybe the beard.

Oh well. As the Great Sage said, A Hater Gonna Hate.


It was then... AND ONLY THEN... that I took note of my surroundings. No street indicators that I was at all heading the wrong direction. Or the right direction either, for that matter.  Then I looked at the sun, climbing in the Eastern sky.

In the Eastern sky.


FUUUUCK ME. 


It finally occurred to me that I had been walking south, rather than north, for the better part of an hour.

No compass, remember? But If I had simply paid attention to where I was, I would have known.

Truthfully, though, I knew that I knew better. I still know how to  read maps and atlases. Honestly, I prefer a good road atlas to some cold digital (and always British female... coincidence? ) voice telling me how to drive.

Sometimes it helps to focus on where you are and what you're doing.

After backtracking an hour, I found W. Army Trail without difficulty. It was less than a quarter of a mile from where the rig was parked. I was across the parking lot from it when I walked over to Wal-mart at 6 in the morning to take a shit and splash cold water on my face.

It wasn't long before I found Cardinal Drive, which led me straight into a residential neighborhood. Nice homes. Not McMansions or anything like that, but still very nice. It was the sort of neighborhood that had it been closer to sunset than sunrise, someone would have noticed me and maybe called a cop. (Yes. It's happened to me before.) Mostly empty driveways, so either no one had a car (unlikely) or they were at work. Maybe in Chicago, having taken the Medinah Train that I, as of yet, hadn't made it to. As I made my way through the neighborhood of Stratford Trail, I looked again at the directions scribbled in my travel journal. The zig zag was really more of a zig, a zag, another zag, and another zag, followed by an amble, another zig, two more zigs, a zag, and a short bounce across the railroad tracks. It seemed to me like I was going around the block once, then going around another block, when there was clearly a street that connected all of the outer points.

Hmmm.

And I thought I was directionally challenged.

I finally got to the train station with plenty of time between trains. I was able set my rucksack down, sit down on a bench inside the abandoned station house. With an hour ride on the train into Chicago to look forward to, I drank water, waited, rested my feet, and read more from Philip Dray's weighty tome on Labor History in America, There Is Power In A Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America.

Harrison Street Station Run Through

"I love it when a plan comes together." - John "Hannibal" Smith 

The original title of this entry was going to be "2AM Harrison Street Station Blues." It's nice when a snazzy title happens to pop into the brain... I usually labor over, over criticize, change, despise, change and finally give up on titles. I've always struggled with titles in the same way I struggled with long division when I was a kid. I know it ought to be a simple thing, but dammit, my head just can't seem to wrap itself around it.

I was planning on writing it because even though I managed to get a ride into Chicago from Jim "No Toll Is Going To Slow Me Down" Beaudry, I had it stuck in my head that my bus was going to leave on Saturday, January 21st, and 12:15.

So there I was, sitting at one of the places available to plug in my netbook so that I could both charge the battery and check Facebook, listening to music through my ear buds, when I heard an announcement about an express bus to Cincinnati getting ready to board. "Hmmm," I thought. "If I had known there was a schedule for today, I would've probably taken that one instead."

I was about to go back to my music, my Facebooking, and my emailing, when I decided to go ahead and look at my ticket... the one I had bought a few weeks before and had sent to me in the mail. I looked at the date.

It read January 20th.

I looked at the date and time on the task bar. SHIT. That was my ride they were calling out.

I rushed packing up my computer, grabbed my other bag, and headed for the Express loading area. I looked at the date again, double checked it with my phone... because I didn't want to be the stupid schmuck  who tried to board the bus 24 hours early. My cell phone display confirmed that today is, for REALZ, January 20th.

I got in the short line, and when I got to the driver checking tickets, he didn't shoo me away; instead, he pointed to the bus and said "The same bus will take you all the way to Cincinnati."

So here I am, aboard the bus headed out of Chicago heading south and east. The world outside looks like a Cohen Bothers movie. All gray and white, to the point that it all looks almost dead body blue. (You remember that color from the Crayola box, right? ) The bus is on the empty side. I don't know if it will stay empty all the way to Cincinnati -- we have one short pick up stop in Indianapolis -- but so far, so good.

There's only three problems.

1) When I arrived at the Harrison Street station, they were cleaning the men's restroom. And by the time I noticed they were done, I had to get on the bus. That means at some point, I'll have to use the rolling outhouse in the back of the bus. If you here a large plop, that wasn't a mystic shit. It was me falling down the rabbit hole.

2) I didn't buy a bottle of water because I figured I had time.

3) I'm not quite sure who's picking me up in Cincinnati yet. Or, indeed, if I can prevail upon anyone in this weather to drive downtown and pick me up.

Wind Down Wind Up: Travel Plan Update

This one's for Dave Cuckler and Jim Beaudry.


So my plans -- in as much as I've made them, such as they are -- are set. I'm leaving Mount Carroll Friday Morning and riding back into Chicago with Melissa's Timber Lake Playhouse co-conspirator, Jim "The Glam Man" Beaudry.  Once I get into the city, it's another hop skip and a jump and I'm on a 12:15 pm bus on Saturday from the Harrison Street station that will put me in the Nasty Nati around 7:05 pm that night. Pretty sweet, these express routes.

I can't take credit for discovering them, though. Melissa found out about them first. And since it would cost me more than $15 to drive to Cincinnati, I consider it a pretty good deal. Also, it'll be on one of the newer buses... they smell less like dirty ass, month old sweat,  and bus rape.

The first leg of the trip with be a nice refresher through past places, visiting family and friends I haven't seen in entirely too many years. A few days in Cincinnati, hoping to hoist a few beers and take in the city that I have, off and on over the years, called home. I have one actual task to accomplish while I'm there -- emptying out the storage unit we've been paying $50 a month to rent since we moved to Phoenix. That will be an odd and (probably) blog worthy experience.

This leaving will be one of the most difficult, in recent memory. I've said that before, but I've trying to figure out why. I'm not much of a sentimentalist. I've made friends here, friends I will miss; but I also know I'll see them again. Whenever I move I always just assume I'll see my friends again. Somewhere. Sometime.

I've always believed that. And while some might consider that an aberrant version of sentimentality, it's not. Anyone who knows me knows I'm lousy at keeping in touch. It's not that I don't try. But I think it's important to try and live life where you are, in the now. That doesn't mean I don't often think about friends I haven't seen; I do. Everyone I love, friends and family, are in my thoughts constantly.

And that's really sort of the point, isn't it? When you've been fortunate enough to find people who you consider friends and who honor you by thinking of you as a friend, they have a permanent impact on your life. I've moved around enough and had enough leavings that I'm used to taking my friends with me, calling when I can, trying to see them in the future if at all possible. (Which is why the first part of my trip will be to revisit old places and old friends... because I never say good-bye. I only say "See you later." or "Later" when I'm into the whole brevity thing...)

Leaving Phoenix was difficult, but not really. I had friends there. I still consider them my friends. I assume I will see them again, and maybe I will on my extended jaunt.

But the leaving Mount Carroll is a different experience. First of all, this is the first place I've lived in several years where I actually invested something. I decided to care about the place.

I was sitting around, hating it here... not re-adapting all that well to small town life. I hadn't really invested much of myself while we were living in Phoenix. I was teaching, and I was invested in my students. I was even invested -- early on, anyway -- in my professional life. But when you live in a city like Phoenix/Tempe, you don't need to invest in the same way that need to when you live in small town; especially one on the verge of change like Mount Carroll is. I decided to care.

And I don't regret it. Not one bit. I like to think I've had some kind of positive influence on the place.  I've met some amazing people who reminded me that talent exists in places you wouldn't expect. Living here has helped me to remember that I shouldn't take anyplace or anyone for granted, and that people can still be good (and snarky, and back biting, and hypocrites, and power mongers. But they're everywhere, and most of them have political aspirations.)

I was drinking Monday night with my friend, Dave Cuckler -- one of those talented people I previously eluded to. We were drinking at the bowling alley -- the place that has, over the last year or so, become my regular haunt -- and watching the Monday night men's league, which I used to be a part of, finish up. I was telling him about the mixed sensation of leaving. Dave pointed out that not only have I invested myself in my life here, but that the town -- or at least certain segments of it -- accepted me.

Which is, of course, why this leaving has been so strange. I haven't felt this level of acceptance since graduate school, maybe. Before that, never. After that, maybe some in Cincinnati. But not the same. And even though I have railed against local and county leaders in the press, even though I despise the winters here, and even though I had to let people down by quitting the bowling league... which, considering my average, is no loss to anyone... I will take the warmth of that acceptance with me when I go.