Ola senors y senoras....
Greetings from Texas, everyone. Yep, I went from Amarillo to Chicago and the wind up there blew me right back down to the Lone Star State. And, as the winds in my mind subside I see a few memories of the passed week.
I see Chicago. I see it in that wet, cold and dreary pre-winter gray that serves as a reminder for what lies ahead: a bone crusher of a winter that never ends until it does. I see looks on people's faces that say, "Oh, yeah, that's right, winter's on its way...damn. I don't know if I want to do this again. But I am gonna go through this again...and I'm late for work...shit..."
An old friend of mine started a new theatre company in Chicago. Its made up of a group of Texans, fittingly called the Ex-Pats. Its purpose is to produce work through the perspective of an ex patriot, commenting on subjects familiar to them, yet from different and removed angles. They were having a fundraiser that featured several short plays and I was fortunately able to contribute a short play of mine, so I thought it'd be cool and I could help out and be part of the company, if only for a weekend. What a weekend it was. It was a whirlwind of weather and of mind. I saw old friends, felt the weight of old times passed by haunting old haunts and feather-like quality of time by seeing the same people and same places I'd swirl in and around ten years ago. I wanted to stay. Yet nostalgia's a tricky lady, it can fool you into thinking its a young vixen who wants to give you everything you've ever thought you wanted. Only when the parties over do you find she's a corpse...and you're just a weirdo. Yes, I figured out that what I longed for while I was there was just the urge to long for something. I can't go back to that Chicago of ten years ago. And, I really don't want to. So, I told myself to be here in the Chicago of now, and I had a great time. I was able to have a blast with my friends, feel like a playwright and act like an all around jackass. And after all the theatre stuff, when the parties really started, all I really had to do was jump from one to another of the several wagons that I am on. Though the cliffs along the wagon trails were deep and jagged, I fell off none. How? I really don't know. I guess I'm just more accustomed to the wagons in the Chicago of now.
On the fuel of the two or three hours that I slept that weekend, I made my way back south. I went to Wichita, Kansas. Why? I asked myself that question over and over for a bit. It looked like another one of those cities that looks like an online civilization game. Clean, sparse downtown. Little sculptures like a little girl feeding a dog, or a boy playing with a ball...Old America stuff. I immediately got the feeling that I've felt in other "nice" towns west of the Mississippi: as if any moment a hoard of zombies will eat the brains of the slower humans, and leave the rest of us to roam the dead country...until there are just too many zombies and we've got one bullet left in the chamber and....Then I walked into a fast food joint because health is the last thing on my mind after traveling the country by bus for the passed 7 weeks. Then I see the reason. I see people eating, waiting in line, sitting with each other. Some have far away looks, so still you can see their thoughts. They have bills to pay, they are tired and have half a day left at a job they don't really want but its not so bad. I know somebody in there had a sick kid, an old parent that they have to make sure eats right but doesn't set the house on fire, or someone they love with whom they had an argument with that morning. Some of them chuckled with each other...before they went back to that thousand mile stare. Then, the reason I came to Wichita was oh, so clear: This is America. And, that other America that we are told we can be apart of, that America where all is well and we are working at what we love to do and paying our bills and driving our cars and watching our kids grow up in a safe environment and our government serves our interests and wants us to thrive - a world where Uncle Sam gives us a thumbs up and smiles at us, his shiny teeth glistening with sunshine - does not exist. Those fast food people are the majority of America. The bus people are the majority of America. People with accents are the majority. The people that don't quite have enough dough to pay rent, the people that didn't pay last month's cell phone bill, the people who can't beat the monthly interest on their credit card, the people who have nightmares of swamp creature-like student loans chasing them in the darkness, the people who want to buy their special lady or man something nice for their birthday, but those monsters will eat them...and their special lady or man for good measure, the people who have no one at all, you, you are America. There's no happyland America. We all have something that's just not right, but if it was, we would be happy, happy and free. But Uncle Sam doesn't smile at nobody. He only points and frowns, and whatever he's thinking...he means it. Sure, some Wichita people have shot and killed abortion doctors, and that's not cool, but there's a little Wichita in all of us.
I stayed with my dear friends, Kathryn and Chris, who live near Dennison, Texas, just south of the Red River. I met them in New York, although it feels as normal as can be to hang out together in Texas. Kathryn lost her parents in very short order a few years ago. Certain things become unimortant after parents die, and she and Chris decided to live on her parents land, where they grow a lot of their own food, and try to live as simply as they can. And they care...about stuff. They were part of a group that was able to prevent the building of a coal processing plant in the area. They are now part of a group that is trying to bring attention to the dangers of fracking for natural gas, and trying to prevent a pipeline bringing dirty oil from Canada to Corpus Christi, Texas, for refinement, which, according to many analysts and scientists types, would mean big eco disaster. They wake up in the morning, get the Chicken's out of their coup, and participate in government on the local level. And, they have been able to change things, or at least get heard. That ideal America, that we're told to strive for yet does not exist, tells us that as long as we do what we're supposed to - work, make babies and pay bills and worry about losing it all - it won't bother you with such things as government. No, government will be something you vote on every four years, maybe every two years if you really wanna bother with voting for governors or state reps, that kind of thing. But for the most part, government will be this guy in the corner, just making sure you're eating your peas so you can have a little dessert...kinda like a Big Brother.
What will the downtown statues of our children depict a hundred years from now?
I'm going to the Mexican border tomorrow to ride horses with an old friend. I am a very, very lucky guy. I have no job right now, I sunk every dime into this trip. I have credit card balances that I don't know how or when I will pay off...but I am a very, very lucky guy. I am an American. God bless America and god bless you, fellow Americans.
Todd
Friday, October 28, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Amarillo's on my mind...
Hello from Amarillo, everybody...
Well, I made it out of the desert. Nobody set anybody on fire this time, yet we were delayed 2 hours in Albuquerque because the BUS caught fire. Luckilly, it did so before we boarded, but I don't think anybody fell into too deep a sleep on the overnight jag to the cattle country of the Panhandle. I know I didn't. That's why I decided to stay a day and night here, in Amarillo, another town I really, really, like. All the towns along the old Route 66 get to me. They are alive with ghosts, with one vision of America over another, until you really can't tell when you are, and your own memories grow arms and legs and carry you to the past.
I walked along the Route 66 corridor in town, now called 6th Ave, and marveled at the old timey fillin' stations, mechanic shops and cafes. Of course, most of them are abandoned, the signs rusted and hanging on one hook in the bustering prairie wind. Some have resigned themselves to housing tattoo parlors, bars, antique shops and bail bondsman offices. But for the most part, its a shell of an earlier time, and my memories ushered me into that time, which was already fading when I was very young, but I do remember it, when those fillin' stations were still fillin' stations and there was a choice of "leaded" or "unleaded" gasoline, and a high school kid pumped it into your car for you, cleaned your windshield and ushered you down the highway to whatever you're chasing or running from. Maybe if you went inside to get a bottle of Coca Cola you would smell the combination of cigarettes, after shave and motor oil on the manager of the place. He smiled a big smile under his super oiled and parted hair while lighting his 80th cigarette of the day.
I'm not a fan of the "good old days"...I don't even think the "good old days" ever existed, and I didn't grow up or even visit Amarillo until I was in my teens. Yet, it is Texas and Its reminding me of times long passed, and very clearly doing so. I'm also very tired and really feeling the 6 weeks that I've been on the bus, so that could be adding to the strole down memory lane, but I also feel at home here, more than I have anywhere else on the trip. Texas is a crazy and compromised place right now, in fact you can see the fires of hell to the left and Jesus sharpening his sword on the right, but Texas is my home. I feel I understand it more than I do anywhere else. Things, as crazy as they seem, make sense to me here, and my memories are so, so fond. I don't know where this is going, I'm kinda ramblin', but hell, its Texas, one can ramble here. Maybe I'm ramblin' home.
As I walked passed the brick road streets named after different states in the union, the sun sunk lower to the horizon as I floated higher out of my childhood. I saw the once fortress like fillin' stations, with those huge glass plane windows, and brick arched verandas, for what they were in today's vision of America, hollowed out shells. Carcasses, a skull and ribcage in a desert, no longer a thriving animal on a plentiful grassland. Its hard to beleive we thought that grassland would last forever.
On the side streets of the Mother Road, dodging the ghosts of Steinbeck and Kerouac, were a few drifters here and there. They were just kinda roaming around, no particular place to go, it seemed. They seem distant to me, like they are trying to find their America, but got lost. Or, they stopped trying to find it. Maybe they just decided to get off that western trip...maybe they could see that the gas stations were going out of business. Maybe they could see that mythical journeys on mythical highways were going the way of the dinosaurs, and outlet stores and very unimaginative interstates just weren't for them. Its a cold night tonight in Amarillo, but its colder out there, where people don't pick up drifters and drive them through their dreams anymore.
I head north tomorrow, through Oklahoma, Missouri and into Chicago for a few days to hang out with good friends. They are part of my past, but just like everything else, very much apart of my present.
Take care...
Todd
Well, I made it out of the desert. Nobody set anybody on fire this time, yet we were delayed 2 hours in Albuquerque because the BUS caught fire. Luckilly, it did so before we boarded, but I don't think anybody fell into too deep a sleep on the overnight jag to the cattle country of the Panhandle. I know I didn't. That's why I decided to stay a day and night here, in Amarillo, another town I really, really, like. All the towns along the old Route 66 get to me. They are alive with ghosts, with one vision of America over another, until you really can't tell when you are, and your own memories grow arms and legs and carry you to the past.
I walked along the Route 66 corridor in town, now called 6th Ave, and marveled at the old timey fillin' stations, mechanic shops and cafes. Of course, most of them are abandoned, the signs rusted and hanging on one hook in the bustering prairie wind. Some have resigned themselves to housing tattoo parlors, bars, antique shops and bail bondsman offices. But for the most part, its a shell of an earlier time, and my memories ushered me into that time, which was already fading when I was very young, but I do remember it, when those fillin' stations were still fillin' stations and there was a choice of "leaded" or "unleaded" gasoline, and a high school kid pumped it into your car for you, cleaned your windshield and ushered you down the highway to whatever you're chasing or running from. Maybe if you went inside to get a bottle of Coca Cola you would smell the combination of cigarettes, after shave and motor oil on the manager of the place. He smiled a big smile under his super oiled and parted hair while lighting his 80th cigarette of the day.
I'm not a fan of the "good old days"...I don't even think the "good old days" ever existed, and I didn't grow up or even visit Amarillo until I was in my teens. Yet, it is Texas and Its reminding me of times long passed, and very clearly doing so. I'm also very tired and really feeling the 6 weeks that I've been on the bus, so that could be adding to the strole down memory lane, but I also feel at home here, more than I have anywhere else on the trip. Texas is a crazy and compromised place right now, in fact you can see the fires of hell to the left and Jesus sharpening his sword on the right, but Texas is my home. I feel I understand it more than I do anywhere else. Things, as crazy as they seem, make sense to me here, and my memories are so, so fond. I don't know where this is going, I'm kinda ramblin', but hell, its Texas, one can ramble here. Maybe I'm ramblin' home.
As I walked passed the brick road streets named after different states in the union, the sun sunk lower to the horizon as I floated higher out of my childhood. I saw the once fortress like fillin' stations, with those huge glass plane windows, and brick arched verandas, for what they were in today's vision of America, hollowed out shells. Carcasses, a skull and ribcage in a desert, no longer a thriving animal on a plentiful grassland. Its hard to beleive we thought that grassland would last forever.
On the side streets of the Mother Road, dodging the ghosts of Steinbeck and Kerouac, were a few drifters here and there. They were just kinda roaming around, no particular place to go, it seemed. They seem distant to me, like they are trying to find their America, but got lost. Or, they stopped trying to find it. Maybe they just decided to get off that western trip...maybe they could see that the gas stations were going out of business. Maybe they could see that mythical journeys on mythical highways were going the way of the dinosaurs, and outlet stores and very unimaginative interstates just weren't for them. Its a cold night tonight in Amarillo, but its colder out there, where people don't pick up drifters and drive them through their dreams anymore.
I head north tomorrow, through Oklahoma, Missouri and into Chicago for a few days to hang out with good friends. They are part of my past, but just like everything else, very much apart of my present.
Take care...
Todd
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The Wild West Show
Hello everybody,
Greetings from one of my favorite towns in the union, Flagstaf, Arizona. Its sits on the old Route 66 and in a different era, yet embaraces the new. You can eat at a resaurant that's been there since 1960 and hear some guy out on the sidewalk singing a whiskey soaked cover of a modern song. Its a place that is either just fine with contradiction, or has the cosmic awareness that there are no contradictions...none, whatsoever. It may be the old west, hell, its even Arizona, but you can be what you want to be out here, the old cowboys don't mind, although they may shake their heads a little. Its beautiful out here, and the skies are big. There is room for everything.
From LA I went to Denver via a very cold night outside in Grand Junction, CO (I DON'T reccomend doing that). I rolled through the Rockies in the pre-dawn and the snow was falling and it became real clear real quick another year was ending soon. Time fooled me once again.
Denver was bright and sunny, though, even a little warm. Pleasant, one would say. My friend from California, Kelly, told me I should hang out with her brother, Brett, here so I called him and he was waiting for me at the station. Brett's a great guy. We hit it off and laughed and reveled in conspiracy theories and after a while they didn't seem so conspiratorial anymore. Along those same lines, Brett and I could be said to live on far ends of the political spectrum, but after spending a day and a night talking, guess what, we're weren't so far apart at all. Granted Brett stockpiles food, and owns a few guns, but wiping any Red and Blue political shading away, we want the same things. We want to live free, be able to pursue work we love and, hmm...be who we want to be.
From Denver, I double backed up to Boise, Idaho, because I want to be able to tell people that, "Oh, Boise, yeah, I've been there, nice town." And it was a nice town. Almost perfect. Profoundly American. People smiled, the streets were clean, none of the darker elements of Urbanity, yet I had this little feeling that I was walking around in a computer program, or, to be more dramatic, a transmition was about to run through the small city and signal all the so called human beings to rip off their flesh disguises and reveal themselves as robots and the real revolution would begin. Luckily, my bus was scheduled to leave, and I was saved.
Speaking of revolution, the Occupy movement is all over the country. I'm sure you know that, but I have to tell you to SEE it in many of the cities and even towns (go Ft. Collins, Wyoming!) is truly an impressive thing. MANY people, hell, damn near everybody does not like the way the country is going. Much of the people are having a hard time paying the bills as bills are getting higher and higher. There are tent cities in every large city I've been through and many of the smaller ones. There are homeless people roaming the country. More so, the country that is being shown to us in the media is not the country I have seen at all. The only people that have the time to really be a Republican or a Democrat are the people with a little money in the bank...them and the news people telling us that its a big deal. Most of the people I've met on the road are simply Americans, and there's not a lot of difference, or if there is, most are willing to live with the differences, but our gov't and news empire will tell you that they are profound differences and must be reckoned with, one must WIN over the other. THis is a REALLY big country, there is enough room for all types. There's definitly room for more voters, how can we have a mojority if only 45% of us vote. There's definitly more room for more parties running for election, which would really confuse the lobbyists, they only have two eyes, they can only handle two parties...they'd get real dizzy if all of us used our voice.
The people protesting are bearded and a little grungy. They are also in suits and clean shaven. They are also veterans. They are of all ethnicities. They don't look like democrats or republicans. They look like us.
Didn't mean to get all up into social strife in the post, but, well, we are in a time of social strife. Take care and take a look at the person next to you, they look a lot like you...
Todd
Greetings from one of my favorite towns in the union, Flagstaf, Arizona. Its sits on the old Route 66 and in a different era, yet embaraces the new. You can eat at a resaurant that's been there since 1960 and hear some guy out on the sidewalk singing a whiskey soaked cover of a modern song. Its a place that is either just fine with contradiction, or has the cosmic awareness that there are no contradictions...none, whatsoever. It may be the old west, hell, its even Arizona, but you can be what you want to be out here, the old cowboys don't mind, although they may shake their heads a little. Its beautiful out here, and the skies are big. There is room for everything.
From LA I went to Denver via a very cold night outside in Grand Junction, CO (I DON'T reccomend doing that). I rolled through the Rockies in the pre-dawn and the snow was falling and it became real clear real quick another year was ending soon. Time fooled me once again.
Denver was bright and sunny, though, even a little warm. Pleasant, one would say. My friend from California, Kelly, told me I should hang out with her brother, Brett, here so I called him and he was waiting for me at the station. Brett's a great guy. We hit it off and laughed and reveled in conspiracy theories and after a while they didn't seem so conspiratorial anymore. Along those same lines, Brett and I could be said to live on far ends of the political spectrum, but after spending a day and a night talking, guess what, we're weren't so far apart at all. Granted Brett stockpiles food, and owns a few guns, but wiping any Red and Blue political shading away, we want the same things. We want to live free, be able to pursue work we love and, hmm...be who we want to be.
From Denver, I double backed up to Boise, Idaho, because I want to be able to tell people that, "Oh, Boise, yeah, I've been there, nice town." And it was a nice town. Almost perfect. Profoundly American. People smiled, the streets were clean, none of the darker elements of Urbanity, yet I had this little feeling that I was walking around in a computer program, or, to be more dramatic, a transmition was about to run through the small city and signal all the so called human beings to rip off their flesh disguises and reveal themselves as robots and the real revolution would begin. Luckily, my bus was scheduled to leave, and I was saved.
Speaking of revolution, the Occupy movement is all over the country. I'm sure you know that, but I have to tell you to SEE it in many of the cities and even towns (go Ft. Collins, Wyoming!) is truly an impressive thing. MANY people, hell, damn near everybody does not like the way the country is going. Much of the people are having a hard time paying the bills as bills are getting higher and higher. There are tent cities in every large city I've been through and many of the smaller ones. There are homeless people roaming the country. More so, the country that is being shown to us in the media is not the country I have seen at all. The only people that have the time to really be a Republican or a Democrat are the people with a little money in the bank...them and the news people telling us that its a big deal. Most of the people I've met on the road are simply Americans, and there's not a lot of difference, or if there is, most are willing to live with the differences, but our gov't and news empire will tell you that they are profound differences and must be reckoned with, one must WIN over the other. THis is a REALLY big country, there is enough room for all types. There's definitly room for more voters, how can we have a mojority if only 45% of us vote. There's definitly more room for more parties running for election, which would really confuse the lobbyists, they only have two eyes, they can only handle two parties...they'd get real dizzy if all of us used our voice.
The people protesting are bearded and a little grungy. They are also in suits and clean shaven. They are also veterans. They are of all ethnicities. They don't look like democrats or republicans. They look like us.
Didn't mean to get all up into social strife in the post, but, well, we are in a time of social strife. Take care and take a look at the person next to you, they look a lot like you...
Todd
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
***LA monsoon news flash***
Greetings from a very rainy LA everyone,
Yep, the palm trees are hanging their heads today, ladies and gentlemen, and if L. Ron Hubbard were still alive he just might start collecting all the humanoids two by two, relieved their man bodies of thetans, brought them of a status of "clear" and put them on an arc and sailed them away from Planet Earth and to Tom Cruise's personal planet, spinning around somewhere in Andromeda. But, hey come on, Tom doesn't really own it, does he? He's just a caretaker, kinda, right?
In short its raining in LA and its hard to shake the weak but patient chill thats come with the precipitation. So, I figured I'd blog about my trip down the coast. So here goes....
I left Seattle last Friday, somewhat prepared for the 22 hour trip down to Frisco. I say "somewhat" because you can NEVER prepare for a bus trip. Just when you got it figured out, there's always delays, or a new smell that's yet to inhabit your nostrils, a drunk that cancels out any formula for safe, quiet bus travel, or a new definition of "bat shit insane" that comes on to the bus and is magnetically attracted to the seat next to you, and needs to tell his life story, then put plastic bag on his head and unzip his pants. You know, stuff like that. Gee, I'm so self involved, I thought I was the only one not wearing any underwear on the bus.
Portland is a very pretty town, as is all the Northwest, and I have to say when we headed out south, out of Portland, I started to feel a bit down. I'm a big Lewis and Clark guy, and I thought about their little jaunt out west often while traversing the Nortwest Passage. When we were heading out of the region, I felt that there was nothing more to discover. I thought, "well, my journey is done, I will now head back, I guess." But then we reached Eugene, and plastic bag man boarded, and I once again knew nothing about the universe. I rolled into San Francisco, into the downtown area with its liquor stores and late night massage parlors, checked into a hostel and bunked with some Europeans who, guess what, aren't into underwear either. From there I walked, walked and walked some more. I don't know what that was about necessarily, but I just really wanted to walk and be alone. I walked clear out to the coast line where a sunset happened to me, and yet again, conceptions about anything were eliminated...I was a newborn, gasping, "what the..."
I guess thats it. Just when I think I know anything about anything, the universe, says, "whoa, slugger, not so fast..." The frontier ran out of land, and is now in our spirits. That need to discover, to go where we've never been, to meet new people, resounds in America's collective psyche, but it gets shouted over by dreams of owning homes and cars and laptops and the music filling our brains through earbuds as people in our lives come and go and the sun rises and falls. But in the quiet, when we unplug all the plugs and kill the engines, we can hear the undiscovered country calling us, yearning for us to find it, to be part of it. I'm typing all this from my laptop, and I've even blogged a time or two from my smartphone. Hey, I say its ok to surrender to the times, just don't worship them. I do know that the journey back east will be a journey I've yet to take. There's people I haven't meant and places are always new again if we don't see them from the angle of the past.
San Fran to LA is filled with high grassy hills, tree topped mountains, vinyards, cattle and signs all down the interstate that read "Stop the Congress Created Water Shortage", or, "Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl." Its pretty, but a kind of pretty that comes with a cost. The sunshine makes LA look real pretty, and its hard to believe a bad neigborhood is a bad neighborhood here until the sun gets a little low, and the night picks up its paintbrush and mixes in the shade of urban darkness. But the whole of LA is getting a bath today, a complete scrub down, even behind the ears, as I type. The sirens are abound in the bathwater of Hollywood, some kind of emergency seems to be taking place...well, it is slippery out there.
Talk to you soon from somewhere I've never been, even if I have...
Todd
Yep, the palm trees are hanging their heads today, ladies and gentlemen, and if L. Ron Hubbard were still alive he just might start collecting all the humanoids two by two, relieved their man bodies of thetans, brought them of a status of "clear" and put them on an arc and sailed them away from Planet Earth and to Tom Cruise's personal planet, spinning around somewhere in Andromeda. But, hey come on, Tom doesn't really own it, does he? He's just a caretaker, kinda, right?
In short its raining in LA and its hard to shake the weak but patient chill thats come with the precipitation. So, I figured I'd blog about my trip down the coast. So here goes....
I left Seattle last Friday, somewhat prepared for the 22 hour trip down to Frisco. I say "somewhat" because you can NEVER prepare for a bus trip. Just when you got it figured out, there's always delays, or a new smell that's yet to inhabit your nostrils, a drunk that cancels out any formula for safe, quiet bus travel, or a new definition of "bat shit insane" that comes on to the bus and is magnetically attracted to the seat next to you, and needs to tell his life story, then put plastic bag on his head and unzip his pants. You know, stuff like that. Gee, I'm so self involved, I thought I was the only one not wearing any underwear on the bus.
Portland is a very pretty town, as is all the Northwest, and I have to say when we headed out south, out of Portland, I started to feel a bit down. I'm a big Lewis and Clark guy, and I thought about their little jaunt out west often while traversing the Nortwest Passage. When we were heading out of the region, I felt that there was nothing more to discover. I thought, "well, my journey is done, I will now head back, I guess." But then we reached Eugene, and plastic bag man boarded, and I once again knew nothing about the universe. I rolled into San Francisco, into the downtown area with its liquor stores and late night massage parlors, checked into a hostel and bunked with some Europeans who, guess what, aren't into underwear either. From there I walked, walked and walked some more. I don't know what that was about necessarily, but I just really wanted to walk and be alone. I walked clear out to the coast line where a sunset happened to me, and yet again, conceptions about anything were eliminated...I was a newborn, gasping, "what the..."
I guess thats it. Just when I think I know anything about anything, the universe, says, "whoa, slugger, not so fast..." The frontier ran out of land, and is now in our spirits. That need to discover, to go where we've never been, to meet new people, resounds in America's collective psyche, but it gets shouted over by dreams of owning homes and cars and laptops and the music filling our brains through earbuds as people in our lives come and go and the sun rises and falls. But in the quiet, when we unplug all the plugs and kill the engines, we can hear the undiscovered country calling us, yearning for us to find it, to be part of it. I'm typing all this from my laptop, and I've even blogged a time or two from my smartphone. Hey, I say its ok to surrender to the times, just don't worship them. I do know that the journey back east will be a journey I've yet to take. There's people I haven't meant and places are always new again if we don't see them from the angle of the past.
San Fran to LA is filled with high grassy hills, tree topped mountains, vinyards, cattle and signs all down the interstate that read "Stop the Congress Created Water Shortage", or, "Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl." Its pretty, but a kind of pretty that comes with a cost. The sunshine makes LA look real pretty, and its hard to believe a bad neigborhood is a bad neighborhood here until the sun gets a little low, and the night picks up its paintbrush and mixes in the shade of urban darkness. But the whole of LA is getting a bath today, a complete scrub down, even behind the ears, as I type. The sirens are abound in the bathwater of Hollywood, some kind of emergency seems to be taking place...well, it is slippery out there.
Talk to you soon from somewhere I've never been, even if I have...
Todd
Thursday, September 29, 2011
A Northwest Passage
Greetings from Seattle, everybody!
That naked baby on Nirvana's debut album "Nevermind" is 21 damn years old now! Eddie Vedder's middle aged and has already drifted in esteemable older rock icon deaconism: the making of film soundtracks. My, the time flies...remember the stripped down EP by Alice n Chains: Jar of Flies? I do. The gunge scene was of course over when it started, it seemed, and drug overdoses and suicides and the documenteries about the overdoses and suicides have all occured. The candles in effigy have melted long ago...but the city still smells like coffee, and there is just the smallest smell of teen spirit in the air...and always will be.
I like Seattle a lot, and I've already bumped my facebook friends up by 3! People are really friendly here. They like living here, it seems. However, the weather has turned over the last three days, and my three new best friends have all told me they are bracing for the long gray hopefully 6 but more than likely closer to 8 months ahead.
Mother Nature rules all, still, no matter what we've done. That grand and mighty interstate, that concrete river route I easily rolled into town on (the traffic by natives in little canoes made by Ford, Chevy, but more so by Toyota and Honda, were the only hindrances, and we thank God we were not shot by their arrows and spears) gets closed down in Snoqualmie Pass, a beautiful mountain route outside of Seattle, at least 6-9 days a year. That's total shut down on an interstate, folks, and it has been closed for as much as 21 days in a single winter. That's a long time in a long winter to cut access down a long road in America. I'm surprized there's not more cannibilism due to lack of supplies in the winter by the the colonists, but I guess the natives have teached them how to fish by now. Mother nature still rules, I say again, and people of the northwest know, and revere her, they just hope she's not too moody.
The trip from Grand Forks, N.D. to Seattle was filled with dynamic landscapes and dynamic people. Its a long way, around 1,500 miles, and I saw arid zones, forests, big rivers and big rigs along the highway. Sunsets that a mortal is foolish to explain and colors I've never seen before on the great plains of the nation. I also saw Texans. Yep, a fracking oil boom is alive and well in North Dakota, and towns like Minot and Dickenson, N.D. aren't building hotels enough to house their boots and spurs. A native North Dakotan was telling me its the wierdest thing, "I grew up here all my life, and now all the sudden everbody's got a Texas accent." The oil rigs still can't take away from the grand skyline one can see up here...at least, not yet.
Huckleberries grow wild in Montana and Idaho, and I went into a cafe in St. Regis, MT, where I was when I got the news that my father died last year, and if there's anything you like, they have a Huckleberry based recipe of it. "Huckleberry" in front of anything just makes it sound better, lighter, happier, and St Regis looks a lot better to me now than it did last December.
Well, there's coffee to drink and when in Rome...
Take care,
Todd
That naked baby on Nirvana's debut album "Nevermind" is 21 damn years old now! Eddie Vedder's middle aged and has already drifted in esteemable older rock icon deaconism: the making of film soundtracks. My, the time flies...remember the stripped down EP by Alice n Chains: Jar of Flies? I do. The gunge scene was of course over when it started, it seemed, and drug overdoses and suicides and the documenteries about the overdoses and suicides have all occured. The candles in effigy have melted long ago...but the city still smells like coffee, and there is just the smallest smell of teen spirit in the air...and always will be.
I like Seattle a lot, and I've already bumped my facebook friends up by 3! People are really friendly here. They like living here, it seems. However, the weather has turned over the last three days, and my three new best friends have all told me they are bracing for the long gray hopefully 6 but more than likely closer to 8 months ahead.
Mother Nature rules all, still, no matter what we've done. That grand and mighty interstate, that concrete river route I easily rolled into town on (the traffic by natives in little canoes made by Ford, Chevy, but more so by Toyota and Honda, were the only hindrances, and we thank God we were not shot by their arrows and spears) gets closed down in Snoqualmie Pass, a beautiful mountain route outside of Seattle, at least 6-9 days a year. That's total shut down on an interstate, folks, and it has been closed for as much as 21 days in a single winter. That's a long time in a long winter to cut access down a long road in America. I'm surprized there's not more cannibilism due to lack of supplies in the winter by the the colonists, but I guess the natives have teached them how to fish by now. Mother nature still rules, I say again, and people of the northwest know, and revere her, they just hope she's not too moody.
The trip from Grand Forks, N.D. to Seattle was filled with dynamic landscapes and dynamic people. Its a long way, around 1,500 miles, and I saw arid zones, forests, big rivers and big rigs along the highway. Sunsets that a mortal is foolish to explain and colors I've never seen before on the great plains of the nation. I also saw Texans. Yep, a fracking oil boom is alive and well in North Dakota, and towns like Minot and Dickenson, N.D. aren't building hotels enough to house their boots and spurs. A native North Dakotan was telling me its the wierdest thing, "I grew up here all my life, and now all the sudden everbody's got a Texas accent." The oil rigs still can't take away from the grand skyline one can see up here...at least, not yet.
Huckleberries grow wild in Montana and Idaho, and I went into a cafe in St. Regis, MT, where I was when I got the news that my father died last year, and if there's anything you like, they have a Huckleberry based recipe of it. "Huckleberry" in front of anything just makes it sound better, lighter, happier, and St Regis looks a lot better to me now than it did last December.
Well, there's coffee to drink and when in Rome...
Take care,
Todd
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Up River and Out West...
Hello everybody
Greetings from the sacred land of the Sioux. Of course, the Sioux did not believe land could be o wned but we showed them, for a little while, anyway, the Great Spirit has seen it all and will correct these little mistakes we foolish humans are prone to make. In the meantime, it looks like every last Sioux indian has joined me in this bus station in Sioux Falls, SD. I'm guessing the Sioux don't fly much. I'm guessing not too many people who made the trip up with me, from Memphis do, all the way up through cotton country where the Memphis blues morph into the St. Louis Jazz and over and around Lewis and Clark's little trip on the Missouri, do. Hmm, is it because theyed be damned if the Man makes them take their shoes off? Hmm, I don't think so. I think it has more to do with the money in their pockets, or lack their of. Its hard to think, with all the people you see in airports and all those damned annoyances due to airlines making cuts and the fact that you still can't make phone calls or to be told when to use our smart phone, etc..., that flying is a luxury that MANY people can't afford to take...not just Indians! I see so many people along the way that are desperately trying to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, to the point of tears, and they're not even halfway there. The only solace is seeing a really beautiful country go by. There reallry are amber waves of grain, and I think I heard banshees shrieking in the Ozarks. Its funny, just when you think the scenery goes on forever, it changes before you know it. Its beautiful. The people traveling with you change before you know it. They're beautiful, too.
Greetings from the sacred land of the Sioux. Of course, the Sioux did not believe land could be o wned but we showed them, for a little while, anyway, the Great Spirit has seen it all and will correct these little mistakes we foolish humans are prone to make. In the meantime, it looks like every last Sioux indian has joined me in this bus station in Sioux Falls, SD. I'm guessing the Sioux don't fly much. I'm guessing not too many people who made the trip up with me, from Memphis do, all the way up through cotton country where the Memphis blues morph into the St. Louis Jazz and over and around Lewis and Clark's little trip on the Missouri, do. Hmm, is it because theyed be damned if the Man makes them take their shoes off? Hmm, I don't think so. I think it has more to do with the money in their pockets, or lack their of. Its hard to think, with all the people you see in airports and all those damned annoyances due to airlines making cuts and the fact that you still can't make phone calls or to be told when to use our smart phone, etc..., that flying is a luxury that MANY people can't afford to take...not just Indians! I see so many people along the way that are desperately trying to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, to the point of tears, and they're not even halfway there. The only solace is seeing a really beautiful country go by. There reallry are amber waves of grain, and I think I heard banshees shrieking in the Ozarks. Its funny, just when you think the scenery goes on forever, it changes before you know it. Its beautiful. The people traveling with you change before you know it. They're beautiful, too.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Old times there are not forgotton....
Howdy,
Well, I traversed the entire deep south in the last 6 days, from Savannah all the way over and up to Memphis, just short of the Canaan's land of the north. I saw a sunset across a cotton field today that eliminated all questions in the universe for just the smallest moment and everything was one...then that moment passed and the wharehouses, truck stops and strip malls came back into view. Let me tell you the salt of the earth travels well on the back of the greyhound. And, everywhere down the interstates across the marshes, pine forests, cotton fields, strip malls, truck stops, dollar generals, family dollars, super dollar stores, old brick five and dime stores long gone out of business which now house taquerias in the middle of once thriving small towns, and one Hardee's after another I hear one word over and over: jobs. People going everywhere, up, down, left and right all over the bus routes looking for jobs. Some have the hope in their voice of going somewhere for a job, others with the hollow hopeless voice of not finding one where they thought they would and going the only place they know to go to: home. Home is a state of mind in the south, a place of, at once, despair and sanctuary. Home is where the world makes the most sense to us, with or without hope. Ok, enough preaching, besides I'm leaving the south tomorrow, to St. Louis, and the gold beyond. I plan to visit a tent city there, aptly named: Hopeville. Take care and see you round the bend...
Well, I traversed the entire deep south in the last 6 days, from Savannah all the way over and up to Memphis, just short of the Canaan's land of the north. I saw a sunset across a cotton field today that eliminated all questions in the universe for just the smallest moment and everything was one...then that moment passed and the wharehouses, truck stops and strip malls came back into view. Let me tell you the salt of the earth travels well on the back of the greyhound. And, everywhere down the interstates across the marshes, pine forests, cotton fields, strip malls, truck stops, dollar generals, family dollars, super dollar stores, old brick five and dime stores long gone out of business which now house taquerias in the middle of once thriving small towns, and one Hardee's after another I hear one word over and over: jobs. People going everywhere, up, down, left and right all over the bus routes looking for jobs. Some have the hope in their voice of going somewhere for a job, others with the hollow hopeless voice of not finding one where they thought they would and going the only place they know to go to: home. Home is a state of mind in the south, a place of, at once, despair and sanctuary. Home is where the world makes the most sense to us, with or without hope. Ok, enough preaching, besides I'm leaving the south tomorrow, to St. Louis, and the gold beyond. I plan to visit a tent city there, aptly named: Hopeville. Take care and see you round the bend...
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