Bluegrass Slingshot, Ashland, KY: Disappearing Geography

 Brutal! Savage! Beyond Perversion!  - Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)


Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. -Daniel Boone

Kentucky is one of those places I have a deep and abiding affection for in spite of  not having any real roots here. As I've mentioned before, my daughter, who was born here and hasn't lived here since she was 5 has more of a claim on the place than I do according to conventional wisdom. Stella could return to Morehead, Kentucky at any point in her life and call herself a local because she was born there. On the other hand, I've actually lived in Kentucky and spent more time here than she has; but because I was born on the OTHER side of the Ohio River I will never be counted among the Kentucky's sons.

But, as I've also noted in the past, people from Kentucky -- particularly Eastern Kentucky -- have such a strong connection to the geography that even if I tried to claim Kentucky as a home, I lack a fundamental oneness with the dirt... the mountains, the clay, the rocks.

My dirt, apparently, is elsewhere.

But even the dirt that I can claim is not dirt that I feel any connection to. That, maybe more than the change in my living situation, may explain more why I'm compulsed to go go go. How did Kerouac say it? 

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

Not that my traveling has much in common with Kerouac, though people have made mention of On The Road more than several times. I can only assume that because I'm a writer, that I claim the Beats as a literary influence, and that I'm traveling, that they assume I got the idea from reading the book. (In case anyone's wondering, I didn't. And actually, I think Desolation Angels is a better book.)

You can't be a writer at this time and NOT claim the Beats... even if you're writing against the influence of writers like dear Jean-Louis, Ginsberg, Corso, and di Prima. I can't stand anything written by Dreiser. But to say he hasn't had in impact on what I do would be naive and short-sighted. As a matter of fact, I wonder sometimes if writers aren't more influenced by the writing they hate rather than the writing they love.

In spite my lack of connectedness with the geography here, though, it's always nice to be back. And it's always nice to revisit friends. I stayed with Mike and Elizabeth on my last trip through a few months back, and it's always a kick to see them. I was also able to spend some time with friend and fellow writer Misty Skaggs, whose blog is here, and who's worth checking out.

Got in around 5pm Friday after a 9 hour drive from the coast... the idea being that My Dear Sweet Ma would drop me off in Ashland on the way back to Porkopolis. I suspect, however, that we would have gotten to my end destination much more quickly without the help of the on-board GPS giving me directions in an oh so polite slightly British woman's vernacular.

It was actually worse on the trip out to Virginia Beach... tried to take us as far out of the way as possible, but somehow still had no idea where we were when we were on Highway 35 in Eastern Ohio.

When I had a car I always kept a road atlas somewhere handy.  I may not be able to stand in a wide open field on a cloudy day and tell you what direction I'm facing, but I know how to read a map... which is one of those things that I suspect is being lost in the age of digital travel and permanent GPS tracking. One of the things I noticed -- especially on the way out to Virginia Beach -- is that even when you program your travel preferences in... longest route, shortest route, avoid toll roads, etc.. it still sticks primarily to interstate routes whenever possible. If, while driving, you ignore the dumb bitch (because computers are DUMB. They don't KNOW things. They're programmed. You know. Like members of the Tea Party) the voice will either harangue you into making a u-turn or... if you wait it out... it will eventually "recalculate." Even then, though, there are large pockets of the country that are being lost. And since people rarely travel for its own sake, and have lost a lot of that natural curiosity Daniel Boone seems to have credited us with (maybe it's The Travel Channel's fault?) in addition to not being able to read a map, people are learning to live their lives  corralled by the interstate system,  hyperbarically and hermetically sealed within electronically connected bubbles of their own design.

I have learned, however, that when it comes to travel, I would rather get lost on my own terms than depend on some umbilical connection to a global positioning satellite.

Wayward Sacredness, Intermezzo: Regarding The Peripatetic Peregrination

The problem with traveling is that it's addictive. At least it is for me. My time back in Mount Carroll is nice, and it's good to see friends. But the itch has kicked into hyper-drive. Again. The full body sensation is a disconcerting experience I liken to an asthma attack. 

(And yes, I know of what I speak. I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 5 and dealt with it until I was 18, when I finally outgrew it.)

One of the things I realized on this last 6 weeks out is that I am my most content when I'm mobile. Please note, I did not use the term happy. There's a  large gulf of difference between happiness and contentedness.The former is a term describing a temporary state of being based on short term emotions and the release of certain chemicals in the brain -- which can be physiological or imbibed, snorted, or injected. The latter describes a deeper, more fundamental state of being that remains after the chemical/hormonal rush of happiness fades. (And it always fades.)

And while I'm still getting things lined up, planned, and taken care of, some evidence of future forward momentum has occurred...

which, while it doesn't completely still the itch, does help. Enormously.

For one thing, my new rucksack arrived today. 

Easier to carry, and will hold a bit more. BOO-YAH! And yes. It's blue. Deal with it.

For another, I've made part of my travel plans... which, as of yet, do not include me breaking the Mississippi River Barrier. 

First things first: I'm working on getting my stuff out of the house on Pumpkin Hill and down to Cincinnati. This way, all of my books can be in the same place for the first time in 7 years. 

After that, I've decided to take a road trip  (driving) with my dear sweet Ma back to Virginia to visit my singular progeny and bona filia, Stella. This time, the busy child will be on Spring Break. This time, too, dear sweet Ma is springing for better accommodations in Virginia Beach... which is on the more attractive side of Chesapeake Bay. 

Once mi Madre is back, ensconced safe and sound in the Queen City, I will be heading down to Kentucky for a promised return visit to Willow Drive and my friends, George and Laura. 

And after that, I'm planning a short trip through Louisville to visit college chum Amanda -- where I'll meet her hubby, enjoy her amazing culinary skills, maybe take in a horse race or two, and fine tune my plan to break through on the Great Mississippi River Barrier and head on into the Western Lands.

(Thanks to Amanda Connor (nee Hay) for her gracious donation to the travel fund.)

[Thanks for reading... I'll be hitting the road again soon... VERY soon. Not soon enough for some, I'm sure... likely those here who saw my leaving as some grand sign of things to come... like blind local media and a return to the usual graft and nepotism that makes county politics here so great.

If you're enjoying this at all... or if you have... please contribute to the travel fund. You can also use the Tip feature on open.salon.com, or go here to buy a dirt cheap copy of my short story collection, Living Broke. 

And don't be afraid to pass the link on... really. Your friends will thank you for it. Or disown you. Either way, you win.]

Baboon in the Bluegrass, Part 3: Morehead, Kentucky

NO. It's not a sexual request.

It's a city... well, more like a town... a town that will, undoubtedly, be swallowed by the monolithic beast that is Morehead State University (Curse it's name!) and become a plaza shopping and living pavilion... with oodles and oodles of parking, of course. (They really did bulldoze a park once, and put in a parking lot. Well, it was more like a grassy knoll. Ok... more like an abandoned field by the side of the road. But it WAS green space.)

The nice thing about being gone for so long (George and Laura and I decided that my last visit to the area was maybe 8 years ago.) is that there's hardly anyone around who might remember me. At least, no one hanging around on the street or in the coffee shop. This is to my advantage; I wanted to walk around, see what changed, and take things in without people asking How I Am or What am I Up To. I could walk around, be perceived as slightly creepy, take pictures with my cell phone, and slip back out of town again without raising too many eyebrows.

But where to begin? 

One of the problems I have in coming back here -- other than a the fairly good chance of running into some ghost of my old self -- is that when I think about the place, image in my mental map of the place is a bit dated... circa 1995 or 96. When I think about Morehead, I think about driving into town on KY-32 and seeing the mountains on fire the year there wasn't much rain, black smoke blocking out the sun for what seemed like an entire summer. I think about the year there was too much rain and the whole North end of town flooded -- including a house of Melissa's Theater Department friends who were too stoned to realize they needed to leave. That happened when I was in graduate school, around 2001... but it's still part of the elemental 1995 map.

There are houses gone that I expect to be gone, and houses gone that I expect to be there. Every single structure I lived in with my daughter's mother, Anna, is gone. It is as if our marriage -- brief and ridiculously dramatic as it was -- has been erased from the landscape. To be honest, I find it oddly comforting. The number of people who have any memory of that botched disaster of a relationship is shrinking. Even my daughter -- the only good to come out of my first marriage -- has no memory of her mother and I ever being together. For this, I am eternally grateful. Anna's parents are dead. Her grandparents are dead. My mother isn't, thank god.

But she has the courtesy not to bring up my early marriage as one in a catalog of mistakes I made In Spite Of Her Telling Me So.

Morehead has more parking lots than I remember. The Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, once located in what was once the back store room of Coffee Tree Books, which was located in a nominally interesting shopping center, is not located -- along with Coffee Tree Books -- in the building that was once the movie theater downtown.

(This was replaced by a six screen multi-plex out on the by-pass. More screens for more lousy movies. And really expensive popcorn. But the bubble gum under the seats is more fresh, at least.)

 It's theoretically more space. The coffee shop takes up what was once the concessions and lobby. The problem is, that it still looks like a movie theater, only with no popcorn, Ike&Mike's, or stale Reese's Pieces and over priced watered down pop. They do the whole coffee, soup and sandwiches thing, along with all the usual coffee boutique items... coffee mugs (though not ByBee Pottery... a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.) froo-froo coffee contraptions, French coffee presses, ground and whole bean coffee, and a plethora of teas.

"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has NO IDEA what it means to have a plethora."

But if ever there was a town that needed a bar... it would be THIS one.

The problem, however -- at least according to conventional wisdom -- is that no bar in downtown has ever succeeded for very long.

Scratch that. No downtown bar has ever been ALLOWED to succeed for very long.

At least, that's the assertion of an old friend, Clark. Back in the day, Clark was one of those Those Guys. He played guitar. Girls liked him. Generally people thought he was something of a pretentious ass... but he was still likable too. Clark has been living in Morehead almost exclusively for the past 20 years. One of the things we sat and talked about -- in the newish location of the Fuzzy Duck/Coffee Tree Books was how much town had changed since the last time I was here. The new Wal-Mart. The new Public Library, which, while it's not in the middle of town anymore ... which is decidedly inconvienent if you don't have a car... is a much nicer, much bigger space.

The old library is being adapted into the new home of the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, which now occupies a Main Street storefront location.

The new space will have class rooms, recording studios, and will generally be a  nicer space. 

The other advantage of the new space is that it won't be owned by this guy... the biggest, sleaziest slum lord in town.

The Dixie Grill... one of the downtown townie restaurants knowns as much for the oderiferious air as the cheap food, is now a hair salon. Main Street Records is now a bakery. One of the bars where I used to go for dime drafts on Thirsty Thursdays is now a church children's youth center. (I blame the Bapists.)  The other bar -- the one with multiple names and multiple owners -- is now a Thursday night Karaoke /Dance Club. (Not sure if the Soot Scootin' Boogie or the Macarena is still in vogue.

When I told Clark that I didn't know how I felt about the coffee shop residing in the lobby of the old movie theater he nodded, but said "It grows on you."

As we continued our conversation, he admitted to a certain ambivalence regarding his life in town. "I don't know," he said," whether I'm really stuck here or whether I stay out of a sense of obligation."

The obligation he meant was his the obligation he felt to his children. He has a son, who is 13, and a younger daughter. Both of his children are with different mothers. Both mothers still live in the area, and he has to see them on a regular basis. But he also seems to understand that a parent is more than provider, protector, soundboard, bank, and bed and board landlord. He also knows that maybe the best function a parent serves is an object lesson.

Clark told me a story about taking his son, at the time 12, with him on a road trip to a city. Clark, who's early drinking experience was made up of house parties and music gigs (with him on stage); he admitted that to not really ever having a bar experience until the Buffalo Wings and Things, took his son around to different bars in the city they were in. Clark sipped on drinks while his son took in the general atmosphere.

This is BW3's. It's too bright, too plastic, and costs too much.
Oh yeah, and the bartender, who looked 10, didn't know how to make a proper Bloody Mary.

This sorority girl and others like her,. who will probably be praying  for forgiveness on Sunday when they go to church, is one of the things that makes BW3's entirely too loud to be a place worth drinking in.

"He was loving it," Clark said. "And that was the point. I told him..." he paused briefly, as if he were gathering the words, or maybe thinking about his own life for split second. "I told him if he ever wanted to DO anything, that he needed to get out of here."

That pesky left foot is always late.

Morehead is the kind of place people go, stay for a specific but undetermined period of time, and then leave. It's like most college towns in that way. For that matter, it has always been a suitcase campus -- students would pack up and go back home for the weekend, and I saw nothing that made me think that had changed. It's easy to think it's almost planned out... that the university Board of Regents, the Chamber of Commerce, and the town council all got together with the cops and decided to make the town as unappealing to college age people as possible without being too overt about it.

There are other, less subtle but nonetheless accepted forms of creeping fascism. Yes, I call it fascism. When the corporate institutions intermingle interests with the political and financial life a community, the prevailing system becomes something like a a slightly more benevolent form of fascism. It may not be too intrusive, and certainly not enough to upset the too young to be paranoid college age kids who, by their silence, accept the rule of the regime.

Don't even get me started on what's wrong with this... I would like to point out, however, that tobacco money built the fucking campus. It's the #1 legal cash crop of the state. I'd also like to point out that there's a Taco Bell in the student center.

This is the entrance to what used to be  the English  Dept. Building. Now  it's the College of Business, which is kind enough to allow the English Department to say. See the sign? English Majors are people too!

This is one of the places we used to stand and smoke... before the  fast food financed fascists took over.

And this, dear readers, is where all the money really goes.

The new and updated Adrian Doran University  Center (ADUC) Your tuition and tax dollars at work.

There are still a few remnants of my past here, though. And some aren't even all that depressing.

The front door to 122 W. Second Street. The house I shared with  Jared, Bobby, Dave,and  sometimes, Eric. My primary function was to screw over the landlord, who charged per student rather than a lump sum of rent.

Douchebag apartments next door. They weren't there when I was  a student. Merely  pointing out that they're a blight. And Douchey.

I did more drinking than I can remember here. Really.  Pictures would  be appreciated. Really. Or... you know, forget it.

When I started here as a Sophmore, these two urinals was  a single long narrow trough. Keep your eyes on your own winkie, dammit.! God is watching.

I just think this is cute. Like those poor dumb kids are really going to find JOBS.

Oh, and see that diminutive bell tower behind the signs? Once upon a time, there was a tall, healthy, beautiful pine tree there, that had stood for as long as anyone remembered. It was cut down because someone with money wanted to put up a bell tower with her name on it.

 Did I mention diminutive? It's more like a vibrator for a hollowed out porn star. It plays show tunes sometimes, too.

[I need to extend my thanks to Paul V. Christensen, Mike Frazier, Brian Parsons, and Dixie Parsons for some welcome donations. Thanks to you, I've bought my train ticket from Ashland and expect to be in Norfolk on THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9th.

If you like what you read here, you can help by:

1. Passing the link around.
2. Graciously donating to the cause using the button on the right hand side of the screen;
3. Contact Catherine Sellers at Greyhound, 415-331-6049. Tell them you are asking about a sponsorship when the operator picks up. I write about them enough. They should be helping me help them. Right??

Thanks for reading.]

An Expert Destruction

Main Street is crooked, runs right past

City Hall, the police station, empties

right in front of the University

Administration building.

All things tend southward here... the slopes,

the hollers, the crosses. Life has moved

out to the by-pass: movies, libraries,

community.

The school is a warehouse

of long dead ideas, stored up

for future kindling.

Boxes of unread books provide warmth

and nourishment the nests of rats

and legions of insects pouring over

our mistakes.

Outside, the street signs are picture perfect,

and the old buildings are either

scrubbed down or destroyed;

an expert destruction

of all evidence to the contrary

that once upon a time

there was something else here.

Bars converted to youth centers;

cigarette stores to ice cream stands.

The future is piling down upon us

barreling 80 miles an hour down

the new wider highway

past the mega store where

all hope is lost and sold

at discount rates.

But the banks,

at least, are solid

and are open for business. New restaurants,

same old food.

The movie theatre converted

into a mausoleum for ancient idealism.

Everything is fine. Everything is dandy.

Self help books sell well. No one reads

the classics anymore. Too many big words.

Too many big ideas.

Poetry is for little girls and for fags.

Rumi was a terrorist. Poe liked little girls.

Whitman needed a shave

and real job.

No one remembers the year the mountain burned.

No one remembers the year the north end of town flooded.

The people who carry the memories

have fled east, into the mountains

or west, into the desert –

searching for moonshine or for messiahs

that will give them answers

to nagging questions that have not

formed the words to articulate properly.

Baboon In The Bluegrass, Part 2: Willow Drive

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the light of a story. A great event has happened; the pilgrim hears the reports and goes in search of the evidence, inspiring to be an eyewitness.” - Paul Elie

This is not a pilgrimage.

There are a lot of bookshelves, filled with all kinds of books for everyone in the house; pieces of pottery, colorful knick knacks (the evidence of journeys taken and returned from); elementals: rocks and fish tanks and polished drift wood; proof of life: the inevitable innocent chaos children leave in their wake... toys bicycles, the rumble of feet; the inevitable proof of two artists under one roof: public spaces, private space; self-sufficiency – the space where the garden was and will be again once the still mild winter is over; chickens in the chicken coop.

In addition to the pleasure of seeing George and Laura again and of meeting their young children, I also got to spend the evening and into the early morning with my old122 W. Second Street Outlaws(You Know Who You Are!) roommate Jared and his wife Shannon, as well as with Mike and Elizabeth and their friend (and my Facebook friend) Misty. There's a special pleasure being able to sit around a table with other writers, poets, and artists who also happen to be old friends with a common geographical reference.

Laura cooked a fine meal and we drank and talked and traded stories. Jared and his wife Shannon are expecting their first child; true to form, Jared is both exciting and scared shitless – which is, of course, the only appropriate response. He and I went through graduate school together... he and I and our friend Dave, Dave's girlfriend (now wife) Jamie, Eric Collins (evermore known as the Protestant Saint), along with Stephanie Stobaugh, Jessica, Jay, Mike and Elizabeth, and Bobby (and eventually his girlfriend now wife and baby mama Amanda... who I met the first time she ever got drunk... yes, I'm a bad influence....) – musician, poet, and mathematically challenged – were among the core people who made up my close circle of friends during my graduate school years at Morehead State University. There were others that, if opportunity arises, I will speak of. There was Tara, who was also a graduate student, who was often amused by the fact that people would stop by the office to talk to me; there was Joy, Brooke, both undergrads; there was Lonnie, who later died and his friend Phil, who for some reason thought I was a cool guy.

There were so many characters, all of them coagulating at the same unlikely time and same unlikely space. It's the sort of fish bowl community that, if you tried to plan and organize something similar, would implode on itself upon implementation and potentially cause the entire universe to go super nova.

Willow Drive is a safe enough distance from Morehead and the university that George feels safe. He still teaches there, attending to his students and fleeing the ridiculous nest of politics and petty personal fiefdoms (not that there's any difference between the two) that make up the English Department.

The English Department – formerly the Department of English, Foreign Language, and Philosophy – has always been a shark tank. The literature people resent anyone who's not a literature person; the future teachers feel like they're looked down on because they don't want to teach at the college level; the future librarians just try and keep their heads down to get out as close to intact as possible; the linguists think they're better than everyone; and the writers get the shaft from all sides because nobody thinks they have any place in decent (academic) society.

(Fuck 'em all. Squares on all sides. - William S. Burroughs)

I'm fairly certain that the only reason I survived and graduated from MSU was poetry and the circle of friends I encountered while I was here.

Drinking probably helped, too.

( NOTE: Though I'm sure it got me into as much trouble as it saved me from.)

Funny thing is, I always end up back here. And no, it's not nostalgia that draws me back here. I am not – most of the time – a sentimental person. No, this place, like Cincinnati, is one of those places that so heavy with memory, a place that's tied to so many of the profound events in my life. And over the years, when I have returned to this part of the country, it has always been at times of dramatic change.

I first came here as a high school band student, to a music camp. On the bus ride here, I met my daughter's mother. She eventually went to college here, and I followed in order to be near her. We married – mostly because we were dumb and young and stupidly in love – but also because we could get more financial aid as married students than as dependents on either of our parents' tax returns. My daughter was born in St. Claire Medical Center. My divorce from her mother was finalized in the Rowan County Courthouse. I dropped out. I returned. I finished. I escaped. I returned. I fast talked my way into graduate school so that I'd have an excuse to write and not have to work for a few years.

Here was also the place where I met George and where, sitting in his office – then atop the hill in Faculty House 5 – he told me that I could do this. That I could be a writer. It was a 2 minute conversation that changed my life.

It was also here that I met Melissa – twice. And when I ran into her again when I was a graduate student... we both returned at exactly the same time … it seemed like destiny was smacking me in the head with a 2x4 and saying, “See here, you thick-headed jackass. This is your future.”

(And YES, like any thick-headed jackass, it took me some time to realize it. I've always maintained that writers are slow learners. I haven't been proven wrong yet.)

And I always end up back here.

It's not even something I necessarily plan. I just sort of decide to come back and see the place. Seeing it change is always a bit depressing... but like all change, it's impossible to stop. I mean really stop. The most anyone can do is try and shape the direction of that change in such a way that can be more positive.
George pointed out last night, after everyone left and Laura had gone to bed, that journeys like the one I am on have less to do with nostalgia as much as it does a kind of re-energizing. You go back to the places you've lived to find those pieces of yourself you left behind... maybe because you knew you might need it again someday. Maybe because you didn't know anything at all. And it occurred to me that the first leg of this journey is as much about me picking up those stray pieces of myself – breadcrumbs in the wilderness – as much as it has to do with putting the past – and the recent past – to rest.



It occurs to me that while I may have been a lousy husband – because I most assuredly wasn't a very good one – that there's still something in me worth redeeming, worth holding onto. It occurs to me that sacred places have that effect on us; they are places where time and space coagulate, where things stop, merge, diverge, become something new. It occurs to me that I am here, not just to visit old friends whose company I've missed, but to pick up one of those breadcrumbs that I will need in the journey forward.
This is not a pilgrimage.

But then again, maybe it is.