from Field Notes from 26 Aug 2019: Squeeze me home, Ohio Valley heat

Ride the Cardinal east
to the mountains, watch
the first Autumn wings
brush the trees

Losantiville – The train rolled in more or less on time. Actually, a few minutes early (!). Got out to Mom’s from The Halls of Justice* in an Uber. The Uber driver got turned around because, he said, he didn’t know the train still ran out of the Union Station. Yes,  I said. It still does. For now.

Land of the Seven Hills, a ravaged and rewritten map

overnight and early morning hills dotted with lights
illuminating dreams, erasing stars.

It’s been raining here. It’s been raining at home. I have to remember there’s no point in worrying. It rains whether I worry about it or not.

Yesterday’s rain rivulets
Hug the elephant ear leaves
Grieving the storm’s absence.

Visiting George and Laura and Mike and Liz was good. It had been more than a while since I saw Mike and Liz and it always does my heart good to see them. I think if I wasn’t worried that they would get tired of me, and if I could have Amanda with me,  I could travel and visit friends all year. What other real wealth could there be?  Maybe this is why both freedom of movement and connections with others are what fascists attack first.

I’m a man blessed with itchy feet and many friends. In every way that matters, I am the wealthiest of men, the king of infinite space.

___________________________________________________________
* The Union Station in Cincinnati was the model for the Hall of Justice for the old Super Friends cartoon from the 1980's.

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[re: lines on the day I remembered my father's birthday]

"Your skin starts itching once you buy the gimmick"  - Iggy Pop/David Bowie

For years I drove out by the old house to see what the new occupants had done to wreck the place. The time I drove out and saw the buried wagon wheels at the end of the driveway, like some broken redneck gate straight out of HGTV and the western-chic issue of Better Homes and Gardens, I knew my father's imprint was worn off. Finally, indescribably, gone.

And even as I write this, I don't know that I ever made peace with that -- until now, as I come to terms with how I feel about being at my mom's, and how my own wounded vision has impacted not only how I feel about this place, but about my Losantiville as a whole. 

Only now do I understand that I must see this place like any other place -- and that this vision must extend to all places. Even the ones I allow myself to be attached to.

Summer ends just as it begins.
Places abide in a mourner's memory,
an early morning dew. No house
holds out against the wind. No island
holds out against the current.

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from Record of a Pair of Well-Worn Traveling Boots: Be Safe Out There [a brief ethnography]

The middle-aged black man was wearing a blue suit coat that was too big for him, worn around the cuffs, and missing a couple of buttons. It was October, and after dark, which meant it was a little chilly. His clothes under the blue coat were rattier than the coat. Tired flipflops left his feet exposed. In his hands, he held an empty baby bottle. He approached me after I finished pumping gas. Debit cards weren't a thing in those days, and neither were card readers on gas pumps. But in that part of the city, near the university and Short Vine -- another area I ended up spending a lot of time -- you walked in and paid before you pumped. And I've always preferred cash transactions, anyway --chalk that up to my small towniness. 

The town where I'm from isn't remote or isolated in a geographic sense, but I learned early there are other kinds of distance, other types of geography that are difficult to cross -- especially when it's crossed under duress. And truthfully, crossing the distance between where I'm from and where I have ended up wasn't so much a problem for me. But it took me a long time to figure out that there's no going back. Not really.

Cincinnati was the first place I escaped to when I got my driver's license. It was the closest city, and the nearest place of any size. And though I didn't mean to end up there, necessarily, I ended up in a part of town that I would, and do, return to: Over the Rhine. In those days, Vine Street was still an open market for pretty much any illicit thing you could want. Not that I tried any of it; I still had a healthy dose of small town naivete that, for good or bad, managed to save me. But I did witness my first drug deal and accidentally walk up on a sex trade transaction. All the parties involved were amused by my small town whiteness -- amused and too busy to punish me for it. Because while Cincinnati was a dangerous place, and while OTR was probably the place furthest from where I lived -- for a whole host of reasons -- it never once occurred to me that I might have been in danger. I explored it with an anthropologist's curiosity -- and detachment -- that has served me well over the years, no matter how deep I dived or how close to the bottom I got.

He started in by telling me he wasn't just panhandling. He was passing through, he said, pointing directionlessly towards the interstate. His car broke down and his wife and baby daughter stayed with the car because it was chilly out. He waved the baby bottle at me as proof that his story was true. In the moment it didn't occur to me that he might just be hustling for drug money; it did occur to me that he sounded too practiced to be in moment. Growing up as I did around a few truly ineffective liars, I had started to pick up an ear for that sort of thing.  But also, in that moment, I didn't care. I don't know if it was the dedication to his story, or the flip flops. But I gave him a few dollars, wished him luck.

- Be safe out there, I said. And then I got in my car and left, traversing the various geographies back to my hometown, where panhandlers were prime time television extras, where the poverty was just as palpable, but somehow different. A place I would not be able to look at in the same way, or ever really be able to stay -- though at the time I wasn't aware that anything in me had shifted.

I think about him often and wonder whatever happened to him. I see him in every face I've met doing outreach. I've revisited that moment hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the years. And while I don't know if that was when it all changed or when it first occured to me that something had, I'm forever grateful that he crossed my path.

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Etiquette and indignity: riding the Grey Dog

[From pocket journal, 9 May 2016]

At the. Louisville Greyhound Station, waiting for the bus to Cincinnati. I know this isn't a proper jaunt, but I feel a certain mental and spiritual release just sitting here on the floor with my rucksack and the blue guitar*. [They've taken out even more seats since the last time I was here.]

The post-Derby exit crowd is still here -- the proles that no one looks for in the expensive boxes or theexclusive parties where the rich, the famous, and the rich and famous wear ugly hats, ugly ties, and take pride in urinating on the city in a most non-metaphoric fashion while making fun of the accents, the politics, AND while the city's most glamorous whores -- the mayor, the city council, and the Chamber of Commerce** -- open wide and swallow whatever the out-of-town rubes have to offer. In addition to the obvious hangovers and economic losses being nursed***, space on the buses at a premium. This means, among other things, that that Greyhound drags out the broken down cans to accommodate the crowd.

My bus is number 6222. I always look at the number. It's a habit born out of complaining. Yes, I realize it often does no good to complain when, after riding in a mostly air conditioned sardine can for 25.5 hours from Louisville Kentucky to Norfolk, that your bus driver is lost in rural Virginia. It does no good, but I do feel a little better afterwards -- especially  after listening for 2 hours as other passengers, none of whom have ever been in the state of Virginia, try and give the bus driver directions to get back on the interstate.

I know what you're thinking, Dear Friends and Readers -- GPS makes this sort of foolishness impossible.

Oh, if only that t'were true. If only.

Traveling by the Grey Dog is one of those things I often swear I'll never do again. By its very nature, it is undignified and uncomfortable. Many people lack the basic etiquette to minimize the absence of dignity and comfort. I have even written about how I will never travel by the rolling sardine can again.

But I end up doing it anyway. And this is why they always win.

This particular bus is one I'm sure I've ridden before. It used to be a nice one, too. One of the late 90's models -- seats still wide enough for a non-stick figure person (though certainly not big enough for a man of large appetites to stretch out). Plenty of room in the above head storage bins. Unlike the new buses they advertise, there is no free wifi, and there are a few electric outlets every 3 or 4 rows. It's true that the newer buses have shiny, all faux leather seats, free wifi, and plenty of electric outlets. But the seats are more narrow, there's less leg room, and the above head storage compartments are smaller and shorter.

The seat I'm sitting in is stuck in a reclined position that I have always found uncomfortable on buses. It's more slouchy than relaxed and I've slept better on the bus sitting straight up. I know this seat will not be fixed. Mine is not the only broken seat, as the seat ahead of me is also stuck in a reclined position. The young woman sitting in it, trying to master English as a Second Language with an adult ESL reader, is apparently unconcerned that her head is almost in my lap and that a jolt or a speed bump could make us far friendlier with one another than either of us wants.

These seats will not be fixed or replaced. At some point, after the engine has been taped together from all the miles and abuse, it will finish out its service somewhere in the Great Empty -- a large, square state like Iowa, Wyoming, or Montana. They send all the broken up cans out there to rust, rattle, fall apart and die like an underfed racing hound.

Yes, the buses are made to be driven into the dirt. But the inevitable entropy is driven -- pun intended -- by riders who think a bus seat is a recliner, who don't know how to use earphones, and by those who don't seem to grasp that no amount of lounging, seat hogging, and a total lack of spacial awareness makes rolling along at 55 mph in a rolling sardine can more dignified.

And moreover, the basic business model -- as far as I can tell from my vast experience riding the Grey Dog and its various geographically locked clones -- is built on a mutual acceptance of an undignified humanity. They tend to put the nicer, newer (and smaller) buses in larger markets in the northeastern seaboard and southern California. Then, once the buses get a little too used in service, they're moved to more populated markets in the midwest, south, and west until they make the death roll even further west, into the mountain time zone far, far away from the shiny, made for TV background coasts.

I wish there was a train between Cincinnati and Louisville. There used to be. But CSX won't pay to update and repair the tracks for commuter trains. So on the bus I go.

There is, I suppose, always this:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
*The blue guitar is a Washburn Rover, a travel guitar. Sounds a little tinny, but holds a tune and can fit in the above seat storage. Someday I'm going to put in an electric pick up so I can plug it into an amp.
** The Chamber of Commerce has rebranded itself as Greater Louisville, Inc. You know. Because that changes the nature of what they are, which are parasitic savages.
***No one who wins big at the Derby takes the bus home. It's a universal truth.
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Along The Dirty, Sacred River: Introductions

The Ohio River has been a physical and psychic boundary marker for as long as I can remember. Growing up in southeastern Ohio in the shadow of the seven hills, the river was the demarcation point for everything that was wrong with everything.  It's difficult to explain sometimes just why folks from southern Ohio have had such a historical loathing of anything to do with Kentucky. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that most of southern Ohio's original settlers came, not from the east, but from Kentucky, searching for work in those grand and unsavory cities like Cincinnati that grew up along the river as cesspools and harbingers of commerce. 

As an adult -- or, more appropriately, a child who has reached middle age -- Kentucky and the river have taken on different meanings. The river is transfixed in my mind as a place of magic and of history. Before people developed symbols to represent the sounds they made, before people developed language to pass on stories and songs and other kinds of important life knowledge, the river and the rocks and trees recorded history for us. We can look at the water, dig in the dirt, and if we have the know how and if we pay attention, we can see not only the short history of humanity, but the history of this giant storybook Earth.

The river soothes and keeps me. Piscean as I am, I've always had an odd -- and sometimes contentious -- relationship with water. I'm hoping to develop a better relationship with it, and learn from it in the same way I hope to learn from everything around me.

Those of you who know me or have followed my writing for a while may be more familiar with me under a different header, americanrevisionary.com.  That blog is the story of a man travelling and trying to put himself back together. I am not done travelling, and I am not done with the core idea that those months taught me -- live to avoid an avoidance culture; but it would be disingenuous of me to try and keep writing under that banner. In a hyper-sensitized, logo-branded culture, the tendency is to find a niche and keep it up. All the smart marketing books tell us that -- that people are swayed by brand loyalty. That we are who our Google/Facebook profiles say we are. That we have one life, one trajectory, and one destiny.

That, Dear Readers (I hope you're there!), is a pile of bullshit.

I've been away from blog world for a bit, focusing on life here at the new home base on the south side of River City, otherwise known as Louisville, Kentucky.  I've also been struggling a bit with how to best proceed with this next to unknown and unread existence I think of as my public life. People who know me well enough to be my friend on Facebook, the most technofascist of all the social media sites, may have a handle on what I've been doing.  I've been teaching, and writing some poetry. I've been working on storytelling at monthly Moth Story Slam at Headliners. I've playing music in the basement, trying to teach myself the banjo and mandolin. I've also been putting together a show of sorts.  As if that doesn't sound busy enough, I'm also working on another small press endeavor ... for those of you out there who may still remember One-Legged Cow Press... that will publish and distribute limited editions of handmade chapbooks mostly written by yours truly with some other good folks thrown in for good measure. 

That I'm launching a new blog doesn't suggest that I've abandoned the notion of avoiding an avoidance culture. It's quite the opposite. I will wander about when the mood and circumstance takes me; but there's plenty here to keep me occupied that is worthwhile and worth not avoiding.  In addition to written blogs, there will be audio clips and pictures, and maybe even some viddy for your viewing pleasure.  This non-existent space will be filled with stories and songs and poems -- a lot be my, but hopefully a lot by others, too -- and with news and updates of new travels, travails, adventures, and (most certainly) misadventures. 

Welcome.

Poem Draft: Flamenco Sketches, Part 6

6.
This winter has been good for the grave diggers.
Nostalgia begins from cinema-made memories.
When we are old, we will have the certainty of our age
and the absence of clarity
that will lend it all a divine finality.
Dig a hole and fill the hole.
Be a hole and see a hole.
Spring peeps sing on frozen branches.
Ice storms blow in from the West:
Kansas is buried. Iowa is bogged down.
Violence is percolating in the wealthy cul du sacs of Colorado Springs.
Messiahs wander the high plains of Utah
searching for heaven and easy women,
praying for spread eagle legs of fire and of smoke.
Here in the valley, we wait for Spring.
The city is gray and the lights burn bright
as the mountains in the east are leveled
one foot at a time in the name of neon gods
whose names we never bothered to learn.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: A Baboon Turns 40 (Like A Pope Shits In The Woods)

They see him out dressed in my clothes, patently unclear
whether it's New York or New Year. - Nick Lowe

The road stretched, cracks and crumbles.
It all falls apart and underneath,
exposes fresh earth made
for fresh feet to traverse
and for new eyes to spy
golden valleys and endless skyways. - Cincinnati Day Book




I turn 40 tomorrow. And while it's considered insignificant by some to even pay attention to birthdays after 21 -- 25 if you're one of the lucky ones whose car insurance payment goes down -- I have to admit I'm pretty excited at the prospect.

I realize that this, too, sounds odd. I am, at this moment, supposed to be chasing age inappropriate girls, starting regular regiments of Rogaine and Viagra, buying a gym membership and a tiny red sports car that will reflect the youth in my heart that is not reflected in either my hairline or my waistline.

Men, it has been told to me... generally by women who obsess over their looks or who feel pressured to do so... age gracefully.

I am not particularly sure that is what I am doing, especially since the adjective "graceful" has NEVER been applied to me or anything I do. If anything I have learned and adapted to well to my lack of grace (physical and otherwise) that I am hopefully transcending the mere uncoordinated and entering a realm of something like Art.

Or not. Probably not. But it is good to have a goal.

But probably because of the nature of birthdays... like all arbitrarily important annual markings of the passage of time... I find myself thinking about this time last year, and of the days in between.

I certainly feel like I'm in a better place -- mentally and spiritually, anyway. I chose to stay put here in Porkopolis for the winter in order to spend time with my girlfriend and to save money back for a road stake. On a daily basis I mentally unpack and repack my blue rucksack; my last jaunt taught me that I needed some things I didn't have and that I carried a few things I didn't need. I'm working on lightening the load to make it easier to live on the road... the leaner, meaner rucksack... which I tell myself isn't the same as a little red sports car. Occasionally someone will still ask WHY I feel the pull to go, and I usually shrug and smile and say something cryptic or nonsensical. I'm grateful that Amanda isn't among them. Not that she doesn't have concerns about my need to go Out and About -- but she tries to embrace me as I am.

Or, she is simply lulling me into a state of dizzying bliss before she puts some domestication plan into action.

You will excuse me if I accept the former and reject the latter.

Sometimes in the process of growing into a new relationship, I come across echoes of the old. Sometimes when I am restless ... which happens often... I think about the ways I have tried to soothe my restlessness... AKA, my itchy foot. I have tried drowning it in booze. I have tried burying it in bitterness and in uncommunicative silence. All I can do is stay mindful of these things in the same way I am mindful of my anger and my ability to commit violence.

And sometimes, other nerves are exposed, other pains laid open. Familial drama, pecking order and placement, and the shadows of the fathers that all sons live under. All families have drama, and all families have drama queens. Mine is no different. I have extended relatives who fight over bloodlines, over ashes, and over ownership of the dead. I have had to remind myself over the past few days that the only things I have control over are those things I do or don't do. One of the casualties of all this ego driven bullshit-- which is exactly what it is -- is that while I have a deep desire to understand my father's family, to find some echo and connection with it, I will probably never find it. When parts of The Long Memory are lost, everyone suffers, whether they know it or not.

But all I can control is what I do, or what I don't do.

This, more than anything, probably explains why I will end up going back Out on the road. The Long Memory demands it, and the hole to fill is deeper than I can fill in a lifetime. And while it may sound strange, I find a certain comfort in knowing that.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: Baboon Among The Savages; Code of the Road

The code of the road is to share;
we only have ourselves out there. - The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band

The last time I battled the flu was the last time I lived in Losantiville. That time included a trip to Urgent Care for X-Rays and some somber dancing around the results by the staff who insisted I go directly to Good Samaritan Hospital. The nurses told me not to worry, that they had called ahead, the hospital was expecting me. That led to more tests and more worried faces, and the news that I would have to be admitted overnight because someone from Oncology needed to look at the X-Rays; naturally, none of them worked on the weekend. There was a growth in my right lung about the size of of my forefinger, and they weren't sure, but it might.... might, they said... be cancerous.

It turned out to be a viral form of the flu that had exacerbated because, at the time, my then-wife and I didn't have the health insurance for me to go to the doctor when symptoms first emerged.

For years after, she would bring up during various arguments that I never went back for my check-up.

It should be noted, however, that while I have had bouts of the common cold now and again, I never contracted the flu again.... in spite of not getting a flu shot... until now.

I can only conclude that Cincinnati hates me.

This flu, AKA "something bad going around" kept me in bed and not at my teaching gig at NKU this past Monday. It also kept me away from writing, since I was feverish and unable to focus on anything resembling a printed word. And thanks to the lingering malaise that is this damnable flu, I was forced to cancel a trip down river this past weekend in order to try try try to kick it out of my system once and for all.

But it appears that the worst of it has passed, thank Gawd.

The fever cropped up again Thursday afternoon, and broke overnight, so I was able to go to NKU. I barely felt up to the task, but I didn't want to NOT go in again. Catching up for one day missed is difficult enough. You get behind 2 classes, it's starts to become a scheduling nightmare. Too much tug on the end, something else gets shorted when you try give the same time to the stuff you missed for being sick.

Luckily, Friday was a workshop day. Rather than set out basic rules, I gave a general explanation of the difference between a workshop and a peer editing session. Then I sat in the groups and modeled the behavior. Or at least, I tried too. Getting some of them to get over that hump of insecure silence can be a challenge. In the past I've used author cover letters. This time around I'm telling them what to focus on. This far the amount of work this draws from the students in workshop is about the same as I remember in the past. Some students engage; others don't. There were more students participating than in the first round, simply because they're more comfortable.

But I haven't managed to turn myself into paint on the wall yet... i.e, my presence in the groups is still necessary. I have high hopes though. I've always maintained that a good teacher teaches in order to make himself irrelevant. Students decide to take a hold of and direct their own education -- the floating heads call that agency -- and upon learning what they can from the teacher, move on to other more suitable teachers.

Anyhow, that's the way it's supposed to work.

But this generation of college students -- those who fall within the spectrum of those who are what used to be called "traditional students"-- are all products of Bush II's failed NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND educational reform.

The results of it's replacement, RACE TO THE TOP, have yet to be seen, but I am skeptical of any positive impact because nothing has fundamentally changed in how teachers -- particularly K-12 teachers -- are required to teach.

On Friday, I noticed one of my students playing on his phone during workshop. I expect a certain amount of that -- most all of them have smart phones and have used them to look up things related to class -- but when I asked what he was doing, he said he was just "catching up on some news," like he hadn't a care in the world. His group is a quiet one and no one has really taken a leadership role. (That's not always necessary; I much prefer when everyone takes a part of the leadership role.) I asked the student to stop and use the time for course work instead. He balked at it.

I talked to him after class, and he balked again. He pointed out that he paid $4,000 to attend NKU -- saying, I can only imagine, that it is his time to waste. (I seriously doubt it's his money... he has the air of yet another Entitled Boy, that perennial cultural disease.)

Then I told him it was rude. That seemed to throw him; apparently of all the things he's been called out for, rudeness has not been one of them.

I have to admit I'm surprised.

But etiquette, like cursive script, isn't assigned much value anymore.

The only difference is that etiquette is one of the cornerstones of civilization, and script writing is a product of that civilization.

And while I tend to agree with Ambrose Bierce that civilization, on the whole, does very little to civilize mankind, it does make things go smoother when you say "Please" and "Thank You" and try to see how your actions, however innocuous they may be, impact those around you.

A few years ago, I might have handled it differently. I might have said nothing, or treated like a class discussion without naming names. But I am less inclined to worry about the feelings of a spoiled kid with as chip on his shoulder than I am about how his sense of entitlement is going to affect those around him. And before you think I'm one of of those who will rant about "these damn kids today," be aware that I am aware I used to be one of those damn kids that someone else bitched about. This one student's sense of entitlement is nothing new, even if my response is different.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: The Keys To The Kingdom

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. - Arthur Carlson, WKRP IN CINCINNATI

Probably the most succinct explanation I've ever heard or read of what's wrong with this place. Me, in relation to the quote above.

Being caught here as I was, over the weekend -- between illness, the weather, and the spinelessness of the Tennessee Division of Greyhound Buslines, I was left to cough up a lung and ponder the universe in the shadow of Porkopolis. This gave me a chance to try and get through a smallish pile of student writing that must be returned tomorrow when I exchange it for a fresh pile -- the unending cycle that is the educational machine.

Thank Crikey I'm not interested in being hired full time. This sentiment is not a reflection of how I feel about the students in my classes, as much as a recognition that other than a few new bells and whistles, the institution of higher education is no different than it was when I left (translate: ran screaming) from ASU in December 2009.

Perfect example: I received a circulating email in response to concerns raised by part-time Lit and Language faculty to the current chair in meetings scheduled for the purpose of airing such concerns and offering suggestions to improve the plight/make more comfortable those who do most of the work for little pay and no real recognition... since other than teaching classes that tenured faculty refuse to teach, part-timers do nothing to make the institution look good.

We are not a marketable bunch. Though a few of us are, I dare say, reasonably attractive.

I should note that I did not attend either Open Door session, which were scheduled on a Tuesday and Thursday... days I am not on campus. (They are, coincidentally, days that most part-timers are not on campus either. Draw your own conclusions, Dear Readers.)

The primary issue raised, according the email, was office space. Part-timers share the same corral on the 5th floor we shared when I taught at NKU in '04-'05. And apparently, those who went to the open door talks mentioned space as a priority.

It was not mentioned in the email, but I do wonder if anyone brought up access to health insurance. NKU DOES allow part-timers access to the institution's health insurance plan -- after 3 years of consecutive employment. Which means, if you're actually interested in having a full-time job, that you're pretty enough to screw but not to take to a family reunion. (Keep in mind that it is damn difficult to stay consecutively employed as a part-time instructor. That means you have at least a class every term... including summer, when enrollments are low, and spring, when a large number of First Year students run screaming from college campuses.)

Of course, the Chair has no say over what the Bean Counters in the administration bunker do. And a potential for access is better than no access at all, right? Carrot by any other name....

The solution to the aforementioned space issue? Give every part-timer his or her own key. This way, I suppose, it will feel like we really have an office and are taken seriously as professionals. Which, of course, is utter bullshit.

I should mention again, however, that I am less interested in being afforded the label of "professional" than I am in being treated like a human being and not a cog.

I got a set of keys instead.

I should also mention that every part-timer was going to be issued a set of keys anyway.

The solution, as I see it, is to have armed guards on campus.

Because lately that's the solution to all educational problems, and a blog is no place to think outside the box.

On a tangentially related note, Mount Carroll crank and all around lousy person Nina Cooper is running for City Clerk. She has built a very patriotic looking website to assert her candidacy, which ten people in town will see. (Five of them might actually vote for her; but she is one of them, and the other two are her co-hort cranks, Alderpersons Bob "The Amoral Pontificator" Sisler and Doris "I'm Not Dead I'm Just Plotting" Bork. The other two I'm giving her for kindness and statistical accuracy.)

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: Professionalism and the Baboon

You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't.- John Prine

Today being the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, it behooves us to take pause and consider the fact that right now, somewhere in America, some disgruntled old white guy, afeared and worried about the decline of America in the world, is right this minute talking about the days when President's Day was a holiday and there was no day set aside to publicly remember a dissenter and rabble rouser who had the temerity to suggest that all people are equal and that social change does not have to occur with the barrel of a gun pointed in someone's face.

And being as yesterday was a Federal Holiday -- and it was, even before Barack Obama was elected President, in spite of what your skinhead uncle might tell you -- I was not required to be on the penitentiary style campus of Northern Kentucky University... which means I have spent the long weekend across and down the dirty sacred river in Louisville.

If there are any ENG 291 students reading this blog... though I am reasonably sure there aren't ... you have no need to fear. I will be back in town in plenty of time for class tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

Last week was my first week back on the other side of the Big Desk in some time, and of course, it went off with all the help that Murphy's Law could give. The bus didn't stop to pick me up on the first day, the copies of my syllabus weren't ready, the book I picked to use was not available in the bookstore, and I had no access to the campus intraweb because my presence had not quite been made official.

(That would later be temporarily complicated by the fact that I was still In The System from my last stint at NKU back in 2004-2005. The Machine never forgets, Dear Readers. It all really does go down in your permanent record.)

My two classes meet at 8:00 and 9:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That's 8:00 and 9:00 IN THE GAWD AWFUL MORNING. I gravitate towards morning classes for two very important reasons:

1. a job, like medicine, is best when it is gotten over with early; and
2. no one wants them, which tends to put me in better position to pick up work... when I need to.

The students in these classes -- at least the 8AM class -- are probably there because every other section that fit in their schedules was full. And also because required general ed classes, like medicine, are best when they are gotten over with early.

Being back at NKU is interesting, not only in the sense of seeing what hasn't changed, but in noticing what has.

For example: me.

when I taught at NKU in '04, I was hungry for a full time teaching gig. A year into my second marriage, we had moved from Knoxville, where I could only find work as a mall janitor under a despotic and small-minded supervisor, Fat Mike. (Fat was not the Christian name given him by his parents; but I suspect they rethought that after he ate them and as they digest slowly over a thousand years.) I wanted to be a team player, but I was confident that I knew what I knew, that I was given the best education that looming lifelong debt could buy, and that my mission was clear.

I was young, alright, Young in the ways of the machine, even though I'd had plenty of experience that should have made me otherwise. But while it may be the mark of a fool to not learn from your mistakes, it's the mark of true insight to recognize that you have, in the past, been a dumbass.

I've also been recalling, in bits and pieces, my first departure from NKU. The then Writing Program Director, now Interim Chair, had put up with me as long as he could. Not only was I canceling class early when everyone was actually finished with what they had to do (stretching a class to an appropriate length is what passes for consumer care in higher education... making sure that students/consumers feel that the exorbitant amount of tuition they pay is justified by the amount of time they sit not paying attention in class... but I reeked of a lack of professionalism that rubbed the then Writing Program Director the wrong way. I never dressed office casual. I was never clean-shaven, and rarely keep up on my hair cut regimen.

[NOTE: CLEARLY THESE THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED.]

I was, of course, operating on a basic mis-assumption... that I would be judged as an educator by the improvements made by my students over the course of the class. Yes, yes. Silly, I know. But I was young. And a fool.

When I left I turned in my key... to the Part-timer corral, and the copy room, I believe... and left. Upon my return, I discovered that my keys were never returned to the key keeping authority.

Add that to the fact that I was still in the computer system as being a sometimes employee, and you get a notion as to how things are dealt with in higher education.

Being back, and being free of the urge for full-time employment does have perks. And so does being able to learn from my own experience. While I am, I hope, free of the hubris that drove me in my early 30's, I am not -- as I near my 40th turn around the sun -- particularly worried about coming off as a professional. I don't want to be thought of a professional. I don't want to act like a professional.

Professionalism kills art, murders intellect, and scars the soul. I hope I still have it in me to be a good teacher, and that I can convey the importance of writing and critical thinking, even at the undignified hours of 8 and 9 in the morning.

Losantiville Lines: Year of the Sea Turtle/Second to Last Sub Rosa/Holiday Plus 1

From now on I shall speak in onomatopoeia,
or better, in metaonomatopoeia. -- Lidia Dimkovska


If Christ had been a woman, the world would already be redeemed. - line from Cincinnati Day Book.

Year Of The Sea Turtle

In these post-apocalyptic days, there is time enough to sit and wonder at the inner and outer workings of the world. And for the time being, I am writing my poems, picking out songs older than I am on the blue guitar, and pondering even more closely a work of some length based on some of my travels in the recently dead and buried year of 2012.

If you have been even a casual reader of this blog, it won't surprise you to hear that the weather will play a prominent role.

As I mentioned previously, I am wintering in familiar territory, here in Cincinnati. Although my initial plan was to go south -- very very south, down to the Florida Keys, far, far away from the arctic chill -- the universe saw fit to deposit me here, nearly broke, not terribly road weary, but aware that in order to travel more in the cheap and lowly way to which I am accustomed, I need to pick up some work and put some cash back into the Travel Fund.

I was not unaware of the particular challenge that could potentially be. In spite of what the corporate owned, government complicit media machine has suggested, the economic recovery is not so much a recovery as much as politicians taking credit/laying blame for the pendulum swing that inevitably occurs when Capitalism is allowed to run amok like a lousy houseguest. Any savvy student of economics will tell you that the markets ebb and flow like the oceans and that most people are subject to the typhoons and droughts that occur over the course of time. And any savvy student of politics will tell you that the recently contested Presidential election which set friend against friend, family against family, and peon against peon was largely a contest over who would get to take credit for said pendulum swing and who would get to sit on the sideline moping like a sad chipmunk. (Look at John Boehner and tell me he doesn't have some semblance of a gin soaked chipmunk.)

IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHETHER YOU'RE A PEON, YOU ARE. AND IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW, 99% OF US ARE. IF YOU'RE READING THIS RIGHT NOW AND SAYING TO YOURSELF He doesn't know what's talking about. I'm the last of the Middle Class and doing fine! THEN YOU'RE A PEON, TOO. THE ONLY ONES WHO AREN'T ARE THE ONES WHO PROFIT WHETHER THE MARKET TANKS OR NOT.

But I also wasn't particularly worried, because I knew I'd have a place to sleep and because I have learned to place some faith in the universe. And the universe was indeed kind, because I managed, against any probability in Cincinnati and in this job market, to pick up a little teaching work.

That's right. Someone actually let me back in the classroom.

Not full time. And I'm thankful for that. There is nothing more odious and dysfunctional than trying to teach while carrying the weight of being a full time/fixed term instructor with no hope of tenure and all the expectation of departmental busywork-- committees, non-classroom related paperwork designed to cover someone else's ass and present yours for unwelcome sodomy.

Not me. Not again. I managed two sophomore level writing classes at one of the area universities. In addition, I'm doing some online tutoring and picking up a trickle of freelance writing/editing gigs. This, in addition to poetry, music, and some various other projects, will keep me busy until the thaw.

Second To Last Sub Rosa

But don't think that I plan to sit still for the next four months. I will be making regular sojourns down river to Louisville to visit my Most Amazing Girlfriend/Traveler's Angel.

During my most recent visit, I had the pleasure of being the Featured Reader at the monthly Sub Rosa Creative Courtyard, put on by the River City's very own Divinity Rose. The weather pushed the courtyard indoors at Bearno's on Highland, and the venue, perhaps not wanting to offend potential customers with something as perilous as poetry, pushed the scribbled to a small upper room, while leaving the Featured Music/ Music Open Mic downstairs.

This, as I know from experience, is almost always a disaster. Art grows best when writers, musicians, performers, painters, and burlesque dancers all drink from the same trough. It just does.

I was pleased to be asked, though, and went through the first set in the upper room. An increase in snowfall scared off the few folks who were there, and so Amanda and I went downstairs to the bar to join the folks who were there to listen to the Featured Music, Big Poppa Stampley, and maybe play some music themselves. Divinity was kind enough to make some space for me to do my second set, and as I was stepping up on stage to take over the mic, Big Poppa asked if I wanted him to play behind me.

After the shock wore off, I found my words. When someone of his talent and caliber offers to back you up, YOU SAY "YES" AND THANK THE UNIVERSE.

The second set went better than the first, and I even managed to sell a few chapbooks -- which, by the way, are still for sale. Both The Crossing of St. Frank AND Whitman Under Moonlight are in their second printing and can still be gotten for a measly $2 donation to the Travel Fund.

Holiday Plus 1

My planned trip down river for Sub Rosa coincided with a week long visit by The Kid, who will be a high school graduate/culinary school bound Mostly Grown Kid come June, and her boyfriend, Plus 1. My Dear Sweet Ma was excited about Christmas, and I was too. This past year was the first in many a year that the entire family had been in the same geographic location. Amanda spent Christmas with her family, and had to work for la machina duex hell the day after, but she was going to go back with me after the weekend and spend New Years with me and the Parsons Clan.

I was excited to see The Kid. Those of you who are non-custodial parents will understand that you take the time you can get. Those of you who are parents custodial or not will understand that as your kids grow up, the amount of time available decreases at a near exponential rate. She was initially amused at the notion that we were both showing off new Sig O's. I'm not sure if she thought that prospect would soften my reaction to Plus 1; but I do suspect that maybe Plus 1 assumed that if he made enough ingratiating comments about my beard that I would overlook his clear lack of guest etiquette.

He managed to work down to My Dear Sweet Ma's final nerve, rarely stirring from the couch except for food, to piss with the bathroom door open, or on the rare occasion that he was asked to actively participate in the goings on. He wore through my limited amount of goodwill by offending my mother, and embarrassing my daughter during a game of Extreme Balderdash with a sexually explicit definition that made me want to forget my promise to myself to try and do no harm and erase a 15 year record of NOT laying my hands on anyone with the intent to do violence by reaching over and snapping his neck.

I did no such thing. But he did reconfirm for me the simple truth that other than Harvey Pekar, nothing good ever comes out of Cleveland.

Those of you with near adult children will understand -- just because you can't tell the kid anything and that she will do what she wants to do regardless of your apprehensions, doesn't mean you don't wish you could spare them the grief. It also doesn't mean you love them any less.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

O Losantiville, Don't You Cry For Me(Verse 2): Quality Control \ Habitat for Humanity Part 1

True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but realizing our kinship with all beings. - Pema Chondron

Anyone who lives in or around Cincinnati knows instinctively it is a problematic city; and its history, from what I've begun to read, bears this out. The geography is perpetually under erasure: the various visions and monied specials interests have managed to twist the place so much it has to struggle to hold onto the remaining bits of unique character it has left.

But Cincinnati is where I am. At least for the time being. And while I wasn't planning on wintering in the Ohio Valley, there are worse places to end up than in the company of family and friends, in the shadow of a city whose geography is familiar and whose peripatetic combination of culture and anti-culture (think about what Gene Roddenberry said about what happens when you mix matter and anti-matter) long ago made an imprint of my soul.

And while Losantiville may not have been my first choice of winter havens, the fact is my only real plan was to go south, down around Port Charlotte, and spend the winter pushing up sea shells with my toes.

This may be the universe's response to my arrogance at trying to take a vacation.

One of the things that fell into my lap was an opportunity to work on a Habitat for Humanity house through the church My Dear Sweet Ma attends. Not being much of a church goer myself, I have, over the years, had a fairly volatile relationship with churches and with organized religion in general. When explaining my position I often say that I have rejected the metaphor for God that I was raised on, and finding no other that explains, describes, or satisfies, I resort to talking about the universe. (When speaking or writing about the larger mysteries, it's important to rely on language that is both specific enough to offer detail but vague enough to allow for new insight.) I'd heard of Habitat for Humanity, of course. And I liked the idea of pitching in to help someone have shelter that needed it.

The church is located about 5 minutes from where my mom lives, and they were warned of my arrival. I went Friday afternoon -- work was to begin at 2pm and I arrived a few minutes early -- to help cut and stack the wood in preparation for the actual work the following day. The weather forecast for the entire weekend was sunny with temperatures in the mid to high 60's. I stayed away from the power tools, opting to do the leg work of moving the woodI saw this as primarily a common sense move. While it's true that my Grandpa Dunn was a carpenter, and a fine one at that,it's also true that I'm not. Of all the genes that could have passed on, the one that didn't was the one that could have made me NOT a klutz and NOT inclined to hit my own -- or, gawd help them if they happen to be in the way, someone else's -- fingers. But to be fair, I haven't had much practice either.

At least, that's what I told myself.

Everyone I met and talked to was polite. It's large church, and for all any of them knew, I could have been a member; none of the people I met knew my Dear Sweet Ma, though they claimed to have some recollection of the surname. After some initial cutting and after more folks showed up, I ended up working with a nice guy named Jim. We were, according to the project leader Dave from Crossroads Missions out of Louisville, "Quality Control." Jim and made sure that everyone else was cutting enough of the different sizes of wood and that they were stacked in the right place. I ended up doing that particular job because no one else wanted it,and I suspect that Jim ended up in it for the very same reason. It's not difficult to figure. The other men wanted to be around the power tools and the women there didn't want to be relegated to a seemingly less strenuous job.

I didn't mind, though; I have learned not to define my gender identity by the seeming manliness of my job. One guy in particular seemed to enjoy the fact that he was doing something more manly than either Jim or me... especially since Dave, the project leader said when he was trying to find volunteers for Quality Control --

"I need a couple of women to carry this clipboard and just make sure the men are cutting enough of everything and putting them in the right place."

Every time this guy, who was entirely too young to be as bald as he was to be that pleased with himself, would bring some wood over he'd smirk and ask if he'd done it right. But he was wearing a shirt that identified him as affiliated with Turpin High School, so I took into account that he was probably not ever encouraged to have manners.

The work got done, though, right around sunset. Since I didn't hurt myself or anyone else on Friday, I decided to go ahead show up again on Saturday.

O Losantiville, Don't You Cry For Me: Asynchronous/ 2 Poems From the Road

I am open to the guidance of synchronicity and do not let expectations hinder my path. - The Dalai Lama

I woke up this morning to snow -- a light dusting on rooftops and car windshields that's lingering even though the snow turned into a cold rain. I woke up mindful of loved ones up and down the east coast, and mindful of the people I don't know who, even when the weather is fine, have trouble finding shelter. I'm mindful of people like Roger, who I met in the Chicago Greyhound Station and who I will write about in an upcoming post.

While my time in Cincinnati hasn't been bad, and it's taking me longer to scratch up money for the travel fund than I would like, I have been busy trying to find the good work of the world to do while I am here. I'm making some progress in that regard, and I'll write about that as it presents itself.

 Central to the ideas laid out from the onset of this blog, nearly 10 months ago, is the belief that philosophy without application is a mental puzzle, a brain teaser, and nothing more.  It's easy to say among similarly thinking friends that you need to put up or shut up. But it becomes a different discussion when you start preaching to someone besides the choir.

What this means for me is that I have to dig in, while I'm here, and find a way to positively impact the world around me, even if that means contradicting some expectation or another. Yes, I'm looking for teaching work -- and writing gigs. Teaching is part of the good work of the world, but there are other things. I'm still looking for other things to do. And from what I can see, I don't have far to look.

Not by a long shot.

Whitman By Moonlight, The Crossing St. Frank, Plus 2

On Monday, November 5th, I will be adding a new chapbook, Whitman By Moonlight. This one will be for sale or for trade or in exchange for donations to the travel fund. I still have copies of The Crossing of St. Frank.

If you're more of an ebook reader, you can now purchase St. Frank on amazon.com for Kindle:





2 Poems From The Road (Not in the chapbook!)

Shadow of Our Fathers

Downhill side street

leading to the cemetery on Boot Hill.

This place is watched over by it's dead

and the dead do not care care

that the living are waiting to roll them over

and move in.

Do not let the city fathers know, and

do not tell the church matrons either.

The sewing circles and kaffeeklatsches already

have a notion; and they are dangerous enough.

They whisper among themselves with eyes cast towards the ground.

Old men rooted on coffee shop stools know, too.

They grumble back and forth between news reports

that blame the President for the drought

and gastric rumblings they dare not blame on the cook.

There is talk of jack-booted thugs trying to nationalize the granaries,

but only from the agribusiness barons.

The dead do not care – so we necromance ours upon them.

Just one more layer of make-up on the corpse

so we can tell one another “He looks asleep.”

It is true then: the dead do not watch us

though we try and see through their dried eye husks

and tell ourselves the vision is crystal clear

as the fog wraps around Boot Hill

temporarily saving the dead from our intentions.

Three Days in Litchfield

Feet bleeding through my socks

the smell of fir and field grass

and new morning dew

pressed into my skin

with lavender scented Epsom salts.

Bone sore, from the top of my neck

to the tips of my toes,

bobbling like and old man

locked in a cheap motel –

waiting for some signal from the weather

hoping money doesn't run dry

like this past summer's rain.

The television for a companion

Gideon's book for recrimination

and Whitman for salvation.

The plumbing is good.

The bed is bug free.

There is rain coming

and the Carlinville train

is 10 miles away.

O Losantiville, Don't You Cry For Me (2nd Chorus)

Cincinnati presents an odd spectacle. A town which seems to want to get built too quickly to have things done in order.  -- Alexis de Tocqueville (1831)


I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
Open up the places I got hurt. -- Peter Gabriel (1992)

Once upon a time... maybe.

With my southbound trip delayed until I can rebuild the travel fund, I find myself back in Cincinnati, the land of flying pigs, tragic professional sports, a lagging and parasitic corporate mindset, arguably the worst alternative weekly paper in the country next to The River Cities Reader (yes, I mean YOU, CityBeat)and a shrinking population. Ah, yes, Losantiville... the city along the Ohio River that has alternately fed and starved my creative soul for as long as I can remember. Long a city full of unkept promises, of high ideals muddied by the low character of its leadership, and certainly the most prototypcially American of all cities in it's sense of exceptionalism, it's classism, it's blatant attempts at historical revision at the expense of the truth, and it's adherence to the tenets of organized capital that have sucked the marrow of the body politic near dry, Cincinnati has been writing it's death warrant for years.  

Not deliberately, of course, and not with any of the effort befitting a full blown conspiracy. The problem has never been that people don't WANT the city to succeed. The problem has always been that there are conflicting visions of what success means, and a certain, maybe cultural intransigence on the part of people when it comes to working together. One of the major problems is that there's a seemingly collective mindset so outdated that it's beyond quaint. It's beyond sentimental. It's beyond nostalgia. As a matter of fact, it's nostalgia -- coupled with a Holocaust deniers ability to rewrite the past -- that plagues the place.

But, I'm here. This is where the universe sees fit to deposit me, rather than someplace warmer with a beach, a warm sun, comfortable tidal waters, and large doses of tropical booze. And since I'm here, I might as well do something useful.  Because in spite of the fact that I have always been and continue to be critical of the Ohio Valley in general, of Cincinnati in particular, and of the corporate mindset that has always, it seems, held sway*, I still feel a connection to this place.

Not one that I would label as "home," exactly. Not the same sense of connection I have with Mount Carroll or for Eastern Kentucky. And it's nothing like  the complete ambivalence bordering on contempt that I have for Bethel, the town where I grew up. Cincinnati is the name of the shadow I grew under, the name of my first urban experience, the name of the place I ran to when I first needed to run.

But I have never been a city person. 

Growing up in a small town, even one as helplessly myopic and hopelessly shortsighted as Bethel, does make a person a bit more... stoic. The only place that it seems necessary to hurry is in a city, where life happens entirely too fast sometimes and everyone acts as if they are going to miss something if they stop long enough to enjoy the moment they are in.

Being back here, though, I feel a sense of obligation to the place that I am still trying sate. That means digging in, finding a way to contribute to something. Something meaningful. Something useful. Freelance journalism. Teaching, maybe. Yes, that's right. I'm looking into teaching and tutoring as a way to rebuild the travel fund. And I'm looking into other ways I can dig in.

Stay tuned.

I'm also taking the time begin work on a book expanding on the things I've been writing about in this blog, and to put together another chapbook, tentatively named Whitman By Moonlight.
____________________

*There were only two reasons why people chose to settle and found communities on this continent: religious/spiritual/philosophical compulsion (attempts at Utopian or theocratic societies) or commercial ones. Towns and cities tend to grow and die along the lines of commerce. If you don't believe me, take a drive along Route 66. Then drive the same distance on an interstate. The shift from Main Street to the interstate exit/entrance ramp is profound. It was the same when commerce was done primarily along the railroads and river transport. 

Oh Losantiville, Don't You Cry For Me / A Kid With No Ace In The Hole

And the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity. - quote from opening credits to WKRP IN CINCINNATI

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have -- Cincinnati sounds worse. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

My curve through the corn belt blew through the money I had managed to save up working in Mount Carroll. Southern Illinois is a stretched and beautiful landscape, much of which is lost when you stick to the I-55 corridor. If I had been a stray dog instead of a wandering human, I would have had no problem finding shelter; there are as many animal shelters/rescues as there is corn... but no motels or hotels in Mount Olive, Benld, or Gillespie. There's one in Staunton, 4 miles to the south of Mount Olive, and several in Litchfield off the I-55 exit ramp. No shelters for poor weary travelers that far south. Some friendly folks, like Stacey, who gave me a ride from Crawdaddy's Bar in downtown Mount Olive to the Union Miner's Cemetery, and the nice Indian woman -- whose name may or may not have been Patel -- at the America's Best Value Inn in Litchfield who let me check in early.

Beyond that, human kindness in Southern Illinois was as abundant as the free soup.

To be fair, though, I wasn't too terribly surprised when no one picked me up along Route 66. If I didn't know me, I'd probably not pick me up, either, and I didn't mind sleeping out. Getting the cab ride to Carlinville was worth the $24, since it would have taken me  a lot longer than the 20 minute drive to walk there.  I went to Carlinville because that was the nearest public transportation that could carry me into Chicago, and from there I would be able to make my way anywhere.

Options? Well, the travel fund was getting near to sucked dry... a situation I could do very little about at the moment. Yes, I have some folks I can call on, but I don't like to do that until there's no option. At that point I was still thinking I'd make it down to Albuquerque to read, but I wasn't seeing how I could do a whole lot of anything given the fact that three days in Litchfield, trying to get my feet back to their version of normal -- which was a slight derivation of my original plan, which had been to walk from Mount Olive up Route 4 through Benld and Gillespie into Carlinville (which I changed at the last minute finding nothing resembling cheap accommodations anywhere northbound EXCEPT Litchfield) -- had left me with limited options.

I decided, then to head to Cincinnati, and try figure out what to do next from there.

No matter what issues I have with the city, it's one whose skyline always stirs as much feelings of home as feelings of disconnectedness.  Cincinnati is a town fraught with nostalgia -- that same odd malignant strain infecting Southern Illinois along Route 66 -- that sense that nostalgia and blind longing have replaced memory, have replaced history. Monuments to our honored dead -- those whose lives and whose deaths we, as a society, are singularly uncomfortable with, like Mother Jones and the Union martyrs, like the Blackhawk Monument in Kent, Illinois  -- offer little but a series of spiritual Meccas along trails we have long since forgotten, trails where we have left pieces of ourselves and haven't begun to go back and pick them back up. There are bread crumbs out there: little pieces of who we are, who we should be, who we are capable of being, and we have not as a culture decided it's time to go and find those parts of ourselves we've lost in the process of insisting ourselves into a mock-historical narrative defined by Manifest Destiny. Cincinnati is a city at odds with itself, and for very specific reasons.

Like Mount Carroll and probably everywhere else in America, the various visions of the future and dueling identities are at odds with one another. A corporate stronghold, a staunch and conservative political perspective that exists along with a shrinking population (People are leaving because there are no jobs.) and a self-defeating attitude of isolation and self-enforced segregation (along class, race, political, ideological, and dogmatic lines).  People who don't know where to look could mistake Cincinnati as a city without real culture.

They'd be wrong.

The problem with Cincinnati isn't that there isn't culture. And I don't mean the stuff that attracts the black tie crowd, though some people think that's all there is to culture. There's always been a vibrant arts community here. But it's one that tends to either be excluded or exclude itself from any real conversations about the character and personality of the city. There's some damn fine writers, musicians, and artists here. But when the city's only alternative press barely gives a nod to anything and acts insulted and offended when their apathy and unwarranted snobbery is pointed out to them, and they still don't bother to write about what goes on here unless it's playing at the playhouse downtown or at US Bank arena -- it's very little surprise that the musicians, writers, and artists respond in kind to a city that only loves them when they can fit into the corporate culture that's choking the soul out of this place.

Yes, City Beat. I'm talking about you.

So I rode the train back to Cincinnati. There are only one train route that comes through the Queen City. The Cardinal, which runs south through Saint Louis, down into Texas, and north up to New York. The southbound train stops at 1:27 in the morning. The northbound stops at 3:14 in the morning.

I'm here for the time being, visiting family and hoping to see friends and pondering how to best get back out on the road. I'm even pondering trying to pick up work for  few months... gawd forbid.

Playing the Name Game, Leaving Porkopolis (Again)

I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long... -- Walt Whitman



Here, have another cup and forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir, from Big Joe and Phantom 309. - Red Sovine



After a nice visit with My Dear Sweet Ma, I'm on my way to Chicago, having caught a ride with my friend Paul H. He makes a weekly run up to Bloomingdale, which is about 27 miles from the Ogilvie Transportation Center


View Larger Map

-- where I'm meeting someone else who will help get me to Mount Carroll late Monday night.

Once I'm back in Mount Carroll, I plan on visiting some friends, finding some way to build up the Travel Fund*, and get my Southbound excursion planned. By the time I get there, or soon thereafter, a copy of birth certificate will arrive at my as of yet un-relinquished P.O. Box address there, and I will be able to trade in my recently arrived OFFICIAL TEMPORARY DRIVER'S LICENSE (that, according to the large type double bold capitalized notification at the top of the page... just below the Official State of Illinois page header... IS NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES) for an actual photo identification.

I can drive right now... but I don't have a car, having signed (somewhat happily, somewhat sadly) the blue station wagon... the appearance of which, I believe, foretold my soon to be divorce. So I will have an ID with the moniker My Dear Sweet Ma bestowed upon me during that blizzard in the Year of Our Lord 1973.

Several people -- friends, family -- have asked me about my name changes on various social networking sites. I have tried explaining. I have had to explain the reference to Ozymandias. And here... for you all, Dear Readers, to see... it is:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.' 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (published 1818)

There. Now you know. It's one of my favorite poems. It's always made me smile, just a little.

My reasons for getting another state sanctioned official (for the purposes of Identification) ID are two fold: I want to be able drink when some child working in a bar or restaurant would otherwise deny me booze without some proof that I'm nearly twice his or her age; and I want to be able get a passport for next year's anticipated European Jaunt. 

I'm still not sure what's in a name. Echoes of the father, the grandfather. The obligations of a son. The identity attached to that name by The State, by marketeers, by the various institutions that have been digging into us from the moment we're even let out of the house to get on a school bus. Once you start unraveling and tearing off the cultural appliques, you begin to realize that most of the reductive nouns people use to self-identify ... cultural, ethnic, political, religious, spiritual, philosophical... and all the ontological delusions begin to crumble and you begin a journey through the world without the apparatus that binds you to those self same rotting institutions that nothing more than the crumbling visage of some megalomaniac with a bank roll and a need for psychotherapy.

Notes On Reading Lorca While Riding The Metro (a poem

This is no city for gypsies.

The man sitting three rows ahead of me offered assurances

that the downtown food pantry was helping more people

than ever in economic hard times.

The bus driver is silent and unaware

of the stories he ignores.

People who have known down and out tend to be nicer

because they understand the true currency of kindness.

Late middle age white woman talking about her

knee replacement, about the diet she's on (pre-surgery),

and how she really wants a milkshake and still writes letters.

Menopausal black woman, no tiny bird herself

talks about her recent vacation to Atlantic City

with her sister, and the varying and different degrees of orange lipstick.

Down Salem, transitioning from a fading center of commerce

to an old working class neighborhood – single family houses converted

into multi-unit apartments. (Good for college students.

Right on the bus line.)

Down Martin Luther King and Prospect Hill,

Liberty Hill, past the 5 and Diner on Sycamore

and into Government Square.

Sidewalks littered with workaday folks

shirt and tie crowd, bottle shaped blonde

in a short tight skirt crowd painted on

sculpted hips.

Street Vibes vendor, someone's grandmother maybe,

smoking s cigarette in the shadow of the courthouse

corporate tagged Fountain Square, bank skyscrapers,

and the Mercantile Center, with a beautiful library

hidden carefully from plebeian view.

I behave as I always do

and wait for my connection.

The Three R's (Rest, Relaxation, Reflection)

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more -- restful. - Mark Twain



There's something about being back in the Ohio Valley makes me comfortable and jittery all at the same time. I'm relatively comfortable here, know my way around. Although I don't quite remember all the back roads -- I haven't actually lived in the area since 2006 -- I can get around pretty well in Cincinnati, and if I wander back out towards Bethel, Mt. Orab, and Georgetown, I find that I know more roads intuitively than I can recall and describe very well.


Not that I do wander out there that much. Although I do have an affinity for small town life and for being as far off the map as possible, visiting my old hometown has never been something I've felt an overwhelming urge to do. And while I can no more deny my small town roots anymore than I can deny that my eyes are blue or that I'm left-handed, there's never been much of an urge in my to return. It's not that it's small. Or that there's nothing to do. It could be that Tate Township, where Bethel is located, was -- and still is, as far as I know -- dry.  

To be honest, I haven't checked. And to be further honest, even if I could walk down Plain Street (The street that runs through the center of town) wearing nothing but my oilcloth hat carrying an open jug of cheap blackberry wine -- from which I would take liberal chugs and offer to anyone I met on the street... being sure to tip my hat and smile, of course -- I probably would not be induced to visit unless I had a really good reason. Hiding from the law comes to mind; but then again, half the people I went to high school with would turn me in (They never liked me much anyway.) and the other half is in some stage of past, current, or future incarceration. (They were never all that fond of me, either.)

Cincinnati is a city I have a love-hate /hate-love relationship with. Downtown was the first place I ran to when I was able to indulge my itchy foot. I love the Cincinnati Bengals (in spite of and probably because they are steeped in an inferiority complex so deep that it rivals Greek Tragedy in it's epic scale) and I love The Cincinnati Reds. (INDUCT PETE ROSE INTO THE HALL OF FAME,  YOU GRUBBY BASTARDS. You let in that roid taking balloon head, Barry Bonds.) I have an affinity for Skyline Chili. I love walking around downtown and around Over-the Rhine -- in spite of the gentrified ruination being wrought upon it. I'm annoyed by the casino being built downtown, but only because I know it's Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis's retirement plan. I hate the corporate nature of the city, and that between the multitude of corporate headquarters and the pull of the ruling class in Indian Hills, the cold and hard corporate heart of the city will never change. This city's only saving grace is that it's soul is far more beautiful (Ah, Losantaville, here my song!) and it probably has something to do with the inherent kinetic nature of things here. The cold h heart bristles up against the beaming beautiful soul of the place and creates a space in which Art might happen. I love talking about this place. I love complaining about this place. Once upon a time I tried to lend to hand... in as much as I could, given my limited skill set... to improve the place.

But what all of that really means is this: I can (probably) never live here again.

My plan, in as much as I had one, was to come back here, get off the road for a bit (no more than a month), and plan my next leg -- which will take me back up into Northwest Illinois for a visit and to file for divorce; then back out to Colorado for another visit with Cousin Mary and to hopefully interview and record my 95 year old Uncle Dan; then back through Kentucky for a visit, and then down south, to Port Charlotte, where it will be warm, and the sun will shine, and there will be NO SNOW. After that, maybe bump over to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and to celebrate my 40th turn around the sun, and maybe even to Austin to visit friends there. 

Part of the the plan (such as it is) was to go back over my notes, transcribe poems, and start putting together the ideas for what turn out to be a much longer writing project... an outgrowth of traveling and this blog. Another part of the plan is to finish the EFL  (teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification as part of the preparation for THE EUROPEAN JAUNT.

But, after a few days in -- even though I am planning on staying in the area for at least a month -- I was itchy to get on the move again. It's a terrible thing sometimes, realizing that for all the comfort to be found in a comfortable place among people who care about you, that you'd rather be out, enduring whatever the road has to offer; and considering the fact that what is offered isn't always kind, or comfortable, or friendly, that's saying something. It's the sort of realization that stands on the border between profundity and absurdity.

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