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...
Thursday, September 15, 2011
City of Ghosts
Well, I found out where I want to live. It is Savannah. I planned to visit it for a day and jump back on the bus, but ended up staying the night. It is such a beautiful city...and an OLD city. The Antebellum architecture - with statues of Michelangelo, Ruben, and others...and cemeteries filled with war heroes and scoundrels - looms quietly over the city reminding the people of unknown energies working in the world. People beleive in ghosts here, at least my hotel clerk did. She was also very kind, as was the waitress at the restaurant on River Street where I ate breakfast, the lady at the cafe where I camped out and charged my phone, and the waitress at the one of the best Italian places I've ever eaten at, in the city market. All three were born and raised here and all didn't really care to live anywhere else. An idyllic place, almost...for all around the fun and evergetic happenings you see the homeless or downtrodden coming in and out off the edge of the outer dark. But everybody and everything is part of one thing, one big thing, and moss drips everywhere for that one thing is very still. And deep. I'm not sure what that one thing is, but you can feel it...maybe ghosts are real, and maybe they tap you on the shoulder on your dark walk to the hotel. Some places just have more access to the rest universe than others. Savannah is in its own little area out in space.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Good Morning America Where Are You?
Greetings from deep down in Appalachia!
Well, I've decided once again to travel the country by bus. I'm about a week in, rolling through Chattanooga, Tennessee as I type. So far its been New York to Burlington,VT to Montreal, Canada to Boston, MA to Louisville, KY and I'm on my way to Savannah, GA now and its beginning to feel like a Johnny Cash song...finally. I'm out to see what America looks like from the inside and so far the inside of it is filled with some wonderful people. Some have been less tjan wonderful, but hell, its a bus and sometimes the toilet smells like a county fair porta potty, so who can blame 'em? So far, I've sat by Amish, Pakistani, Indian, Mexican, Alabamans, New Englanders, mid-westerners, bible readers and meth addicts. Its both calm and crazy and its All American. I hope you wanna follow along, it is your country after all and, who knows, I just may run into you along the way. And, if you want me to stop by and say hello to anybody you know out there, lemme know. If I can, I will. 10-4, good buddy, be well and take care.
Todd
Well, I've decided once again to travel the country by bus. I'm about a week in, rolling through Chattanooga, Tennessee as I type. So far its been New York to Burlington,VT to Montreal, Canada to Boston, MA to Louisville, KY and I'm on my way to Savannah, GA now and its beginning to feel like a Johnny Cash song...finally. I'm out to see what America looks like from the inside and so far the inside of it is filled with some wonderful people. Some have been less tjan wonderful, but hell, its a bus and sometimes the toilet smells like a county fair porta potty, so who can blame 'em? So far, I've sat by Amish, Pakistani, Indian, Mexican, Alabamans, New Englanders, mid-westerners, bible readers and meth addicts. Its both calm and crazy and its All American. I hope you wanna follow along, it is your country after all and, who knows, I just may run into you along the way. And, if you want me to stop by and say hello to anybody you know out there, lemme know. If I can, I will. 10-4, good buddy, be well and take care.
Todd
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Greece Two and the Heart Shaped Print Shop
Greetings from Astoria, Queens, Everyone,
A hard rain's falling as I write, playing steady high hat to the bass line rhythm of the trains on the "N,Q" Elevated Subway line. Its Sunday morning, so the trains are running a little slower, slowing the tempo of the song even more. I don't want to go anywhere today. Those of you who live or are keen on Queens subway weekend travel should understand. It took me two hours to get to Brooklyn yesterday. And this gray rain just wants to make Sunday a blues tune. But I will forge on and keep the day in the world of Jazz magic. Oh, Astoria, the land where anything can happen.
And anything does. I've been in and around Astoria - the western and northern most area of the burrough of Queens - for years now, but never spent a great deal of time immersed in it until now, this passed month where I've been couching it with friends while I figure out what the hell to do with my life after I finish performing in...
***SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT INITIATE***
"Trousers" by Dan Monaco
Produced by The Straddler and performed at IRT
Performed by Marty Brown and Todd Pate
March 24th thru April 9th
154 Christopher Street, 3rd Floor
NYC, NY
Here's the link to buy tickets!
http://irttheater.org/developing/trousers/
***SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT DISENGAGE***
I've had a wonderful time here hanging out with good friends, enjoying their hospitality and trying to repay with good will and a small footprint. Its been a little over a month and 1 couch and 2 air mattresses and 3 initially suspicious yet ultimately friendly Greek landlords later, I feel a tiny bit more comfortable about commenting on the neighborhood of Astoria, so I will. Ladies and gentlemen, the Olympians are alive and well here on the western most tip of Long Island, just across the East River from Manhattan. Manhattan, where the Gods have merged, blended, just like the neighborhoods, and the ultimate philosophy is the dollar bill. Maybe Manhattan's not completely like that, but Little Italy is just a few blocks on Mulberry Street now. A lower east side tenement flat requires a master's degree or a trust fund. The Irish, Italian and Jewish poor that created that neighborhood couldn't afford the furniture and nick nacks that the current residents discard as unwanted trash. It is a wanted neighborhood now, and there's no longer room for the unwanted that had no choice but to live there back in the day. You still see the rements of those "immigrant wave"generations, huddled in the rent controled apartments in those astronomically expensive faux-hemian neighborhoods, and the realty buzzards are soaring in circles above them, just a waitin' to eat up the real estate when they die and poop out $2500 studio apts. There's no mistaking Chinatown, consuming Canal Street and running out in the cavernous streets off it. But try to rent there. Its a place for money makers to live. And Koreatown's just to industrialized, situated down deep in the shadows of The Empire State Building. Manhattan is a constantly blending island, I should know, for this Texas honky lived in Spanish Harlem for 3 years. I lived in the lower east side too, where I lived in a smaller apartment and paid more $$$ in rent in one year alone. That was the only year I lived there, and boy was it shiny and "the best night ever" was available every night to anyone who could afford to drink there and the walk of shame in the morning was never too far a walk because "Hey, I'm in Manhattan! Life is good. Life is fast."
Life is slower in Astoria. Its still fast, but slower. Yes, it is a blended neighborhood. Lots of young people and lots of energy, EVERYWHERE in NYC has a lot of energy, that's what makes it great. However, Astoria is Greek town, and no matter how many and different people move in, it is unmistakably Greek. This neighborhood has held onto its European identity more than the ethnic Manhattan neighborhoods, which I believe is due to its distance from Manhattan. The diners are Greek, the nightclubs are run by young imposing men who are unmistakably Greek. Young guys from the neighborhood, but loyal to their parents and grand parents who were loyal to theirs. Every generation is present in every generation out here. You got Olympian murals on the walls, Greek lettering on many of the businesses and the diners exude a brilliant Mediterranean aire. Every street has about ten old graying men wearing driver's hats fiddling about outside their apartments at any given moment. They look at you as you walk by and they know if you live here or not. They're not rude, but they know.
I was walking to my friend's house the other night, passed the various and sundry Greek American Men's clubs, under that Kraken's spine that is the "N,Q" train line that rattles the walls as I type, and I see an elderly man locking up the doors to his tiny print shop. "Print Shop?!" I gasp. Yes, "Print Shop," Zeus answers. "He's been there a long time," Zeus, in his profound white toga and olive branch crown, continues, "the Staples Office Supply Store down the street didn't put him out of business when it opened 10 years ago, and the internet won't put him out either." I look down the street. Zeus was right, a Staples, that dinosaur of retail "the office supply store" was just down the street from this old man and his print shop. Zeus tells me to go into the Staples, and I obey. I walk into the belly of a dying mysterious sea creature. Empty aisles, sprinkled with pens, paper, folders....objects that are disintegrating due to the computer, and this mysterious sea creature's digestive process. I look to the wall on the left and see all the computers, where I see all of the employees, helping all of the customers. Zeus taps me on the shoulder and says, "See, this place is dying, not the little Greek man's livelihood. He will be here long after this silly little experiment will." Zeus and I walk out of the Staples and I turn and ask him, "Ok, but how does the little Greek man keep his print shop open? The computer is killing his..." But Zeus is gone, and in the air I hear the faintest thunder. I am left to ponder.
So I ponder, I love to. The waitress's face, the lady who waited on me earlier at a diner, popped into my head and helped me find the answer. There wasn't anything special about the diner, or the waitress, she was rather indifferent to me during the whole business, yet did a great job and when I said goodbye she smiled and said goodbye and thank you right back. I knew she was grateful that I ate there. She exuded gratitude, more so, she looked happy. She went on talking to the guy behind the counter, went on with her day, without concern if I heard what she was telling him or not. This is her livelihood and she's surrounded by people she knows in her neighborhood. She lives her life and she is among her fellows, her people. Getting paid comes with that, not the other way around. Everyone in her community plays a part in the community. She will be taken care of, as long as she plays her part in life. She wants me to come back, whether its on the front of her mind or not. Why not, its life. And I think that is what's the difference here in Astoria. That old world sense of communion that has all but disappeared in the universal struggle to make a buck.
A self contained community finds roles for all its inhabitants. In older barter and trade communities, or indigenous communities, banishment was the worse thing that could of happened, being forever condemned to roam the plains alone. We live today with ideals of "self sufficiency", "stoicism", and in some financial circles its honorable to have many enemies while succeeding at a high rate. We go it alone here in the New World, and the founders of online dating are so happy for that. We have dogs locked in apartments all day, and walk them twice, pick up their poop then eat handfuls of "Cheeze-Its" and take shots of longing in front of a TV transmitting an interview with Charlie Sheen and whisper to ourselves, "boy, he's in a bad state." There were places in society for crazy people back in the days of barter and trade and teepees. They would babble out by the watering hole and no one would mind and every now and then they let out a zinger that the others would question and allow to help shape a little more of their community. The babbler had something to say and the people would listen. The babbler was right! So is Charlie Sheen when he said, "funny how sleep rhymes with sheep." Nowadays we have safe homes for the babbler, places they belong: padded rooms, prisons and the streets. Home sweet safe homes. Safe for us, that is, the "normals."
Astoria has a place for this little Greek man and his print shop. It is his contribution to life. It is his livelihood. And when something is one's livelihood silly little matters like money do not matter. Only the fear of losing money runs people out of business. I have a feeling that this little print shop here in Astoria will close when that little gray and wrinkled 2oth Century man's heart stops beating, leaving the high hat rain and the bass line train and the other heart beats filling in pockets of the beat...then they'll be another heart to take its place, and it will know who's place its taking.
I have a grand view of the phenomena of Metropoli Homogenization by calling NY my home. Grandfathers and fathers die and prejudices, blatant and some we never even conceived of, get faced and hopefully get tossed into the East River and flow out into the ocean for that legendary Kraken to devour. But like memory, who we come from is always there, and I believe should be. However, we need to live in our times to see how we need to change them. I don't believe in "going back to the good old days". One man's good old days are another man's slavery. Yet, we may wanna rethink this race to make money. Hey, I like money and I love its smell and my current circumstances are a result of my having it, but when I was a kid I was told by my cute elementary teachers I could do anything I wanted to do because I live in the USA. Then when I was older my teachers and professors told me that I should look at the industries that are paying well. I took a look at all the people that were telling me this and saw they were all people who were all working just to pay the bills, they loved their weekends and their vacations, times when they could do what they want. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Didn't life create money, not the other way around. Everyone I know is in debt, or got out of it after a long trial with it. What about you? So we work harder and more. But that little Greek man in this little Greek neighborhood is alive...engaging his livelihood in his community. I know money is not going to go away until an asteroid slams into this planet and the gophers finally get their chance to rule, but what if we focused on finding our livelihood, everyone of us....hmm?
The customer is not always right. In fact, after years of working in online and telephone sales, they are wrong most of the time and seek pleasure in your admitting, succumbing to that falsehood. Tell 'em they're wrong and if they don't like what you have to sell they can go down the street to one Staples or another. But if you are alive, engaged in your community and livelihood, people will want what you have to offer, whatever it is.
Enjoy the rhythm of the rains and trains,
Todd
A hard rain's falling as I write, playing steady high hat to the bass line rhythm of the trains on the "N,Q" Elevated Subway line. Its Sunday morning, so the trains are running a little slower, slowing the tempo of the song even more. I don't want to go anywhere today. Those of you who live or are keen on Queens subway weekend travel should understand. It took me two hours to get to Brooklyn yesterday. And this gray rain just wants to make Sunday a blues tune. But I will forge on and keep the day in the world of Jazz magic. Oh, Astoria, the land where anything can happen.
And anything does. I've been in and around Astoria - the western and northern most area of the burrough of Queens - for years now, but never spent a great deal of time immersed in it until now, this passed month where I've been couching it with friends while I figure out what the hell to do with my life after I finish performing in...
***SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT INITIATE***
"Trousers" by Dan Monaco
Produced by The Straddler and performed at IRT
Performed by Marty Brown and Todd Pate
March 24th thru April 9th
154 Christopher Street, 3rd Floor
NYC, NY
Here's the link to buy tickets!
http://irttheater.org/developing/trousers/
***SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT DISENGAGE***
I've had a wonderful time here hanging out with good friends, enjoying their hospitality and trying to repay with good will and a small footprint. Its been a little over a month and 1 couch and 2 air mattresses and 3 initially suspicious yet ultimately friendly Greek landlords later, I feel a tiny bit more comfortable about commenting on the neighborhood of Astoria, so I will. Ladies and gentlemen, the Olympians are alive and well here on the western most tip of Long Island, just across the East River from Manhattan. Manhattan, where the Gods have merged, blended, just like the neighborhoods, and the ultimate philosophy is the dollar bill. Maybe Manhattan's not completely like that, but Little Italy is just a few blocks on Mulberry Street now. A lower east side tenement flat requires a master's degree or a trust fund. The Irish, Italian and Jewish poor that created that neighborhood couldn't afford the furniture and nick nacks that the current residents discard as unwanted trash. It is a wanted neighborhood now, and there's no longer room for the unwanted that had no choice but to live there back in the day. You still see the rements of those "immigrant wave"generations, huddled in the rent controled apartments in those astronomically expensive faux-hemian neighborhoods, and the realty buzzards are soaring in circles above them, just a waitin' to eat up the real estate when they die and poop out $2500 studio apts. There's no mistaking Chinatown, consuming Canal Street and running out in the cavernous streets off it. But try to rent there. Its a place for money makers to live. And Koreatown's just to industrialized, situated down deep in the shadows of The Empire State Building. Manhattan is a constantly blending island, I should know, for this Texas honky lived in Spanish Harlem for 3 years. I lived in the lower east side too, where I lived in a smaller apartment and paid more $$$ in rent in one year alone. That was the only year I lived there, and boy was it shiny and "the best night ever" was available every night to anyone who could afford to drink there and the walk of shame in the morning was never too far a walk because "Hey, I'm in Manhattan! Life is good. Life is fast."
Life is slower in Astoria. Its still fast, but slower. Yes, it is a blended neighborhood. Lots of young people and lots of energy, EVERYWHERE in NYC has a lot of energy, that's what makes it great. However, Astoria is Greek town, and no matter how many and different people move in, it is unmistakably Greek. This neighborhood has held onto its European identity more than the ethnic Manhattan neighborhoods, which I believe is due to its distance from Manhattan. The diners are Greek, the nightclubs are run by young imposing men who are unmistakably Greek. Young guys from the neighborhood, but loyal to their parents and grand parents who were loyal to theirs. Every generation is present in every generation out here. You got Olympian murals on the walls, Greek lettering on many of the businesses and the diners exude a brilliant Mediterranean aire. Every street has about ten old graying men wearing driver's hats fiddling about outside their apartments at any given moment. They look at you as you walk by and they know if you live here or not. They're not rude, but they know.
I was walking to my friend's house the other night, passed the various and sundry Greek American Men's clubs, under that Kraken's spine that is the "N,Q" train line that rattles the walls as I type, and I see an elderly man locking up the doors to his tiny print shop. "Print Shop?!" I gasp. Yes, "Print Shop," Zeus answers. "He's been there a long time," Zeus, in his profound white toga and olive branch crown, continues, "the Staples Office Supply Store down the street didn't put him out of business when it opened 10 years ago, and the internet won't put him out either." I look down the street. Zeus was right, a Staples, that dinosaur of retail "the office supply store" was just down the street from this old man and his print shop. Zeus tells me to go into the Staples, and I obey. I walk into the belly of a dying mysterious sea creature. Empty aisles, sprinkled with pens, paper, folders....objects that are disintegrating due to the computer, and this mysterious sea creature's digestive process. I look to the wall on the left and see all the computers, where I see all of the employees, helping all of the customers. Zeus taps me on the shoulder and says, "See, this place is dying, not the little Greek man's livelihood. He will be here long after this silly little experiment will." Zeus and I walk out of the Staples and I turn and ask him, "Ok, but how does the little Greek man keep his print shop open? The computer is killing his..." But Zeus is gone, and in the air I hear the faintest thunder. I am left to ponder.
So I ponder, I love to. The waitress's face, the lady who waited on me earlier at a diner, popped into my head and helped me find the answer. There wasn't anything special about the diner, or the waitress, she was rather indifferent to me during the whole business, yet did a great job and when I said goodbye she smiled and said goodbye and thank you right back. I knew she was grateful that I ate there. She exuded gratitude, more so, she looked happy. She went on talking to the guy behind the counter, went on with her day, without concern if I heard what she was telling him or not. This is her livelihood and she's surrounded by people she knows in her neighborhood. She lives her life and she is among her fellows, her people. Getting paid comes with that, not the other way around. Everyone in her community plays a part in the community. She will be taken care of, as long as she plays her part in life. She wants me to come back, whether its on the front of her mind or not. Why not, its life. And I think that is what's the difference here in Astoria. That old world sense of communion that has all but disappeared in the universal struggle to make a buck.
A self contained community finds roles for all its inhabitants. In older barter and trade communities, or indigenous communities, banishment was the worse thing that could of happened, being forever condemned to roam the plains alone. We live today with ideals of "self sufficiency", "stoicism", and in some financial circles its honorable to have many enemies while succeeding at a high rate. We go it alone here in the New World, and the founders of online dating are so happy for that. We have dogs locked in apartments all day, and walk them twice, pick up their poop then eat handfuls of "Cheeze-Its" and take shots of longing in front of a TV transmitting an interview with Charlie Sheen and whisper to ourselves, "boy, he's in a bad state." There were places in society for crazy people back in the days of barter and trade and teepees. They would babble out by the watering hole and no one would mind and every now and then they let out a zinger that the others would question and allow to help shape a little more of their community. The babbler had something to say and the people would listen. The babbler was right! So is Charlie Sheen when he said, "funny how sleep rhymes with sheep." Nowadays we have safe homes for the babbler, places they belong: padded rooms, prisons and the streets. Home sweet safe homes. Safe for us, that is, the "normals."
Astoria has a place for this little Greek man and his print shop. It is his contribution to life. It is his livelihood. And when something is one's livelihood silly little matters like money do not matter. Only the fear of losing money runs people out of business. I have a feeling that this little print shop here in Astoria will close when that little gray and wrinkled 2oth Century man's heart stops beating, leaving the high hat rain and the bass line train and the other heart beats filling in pockets of the beat...then they'll be another heart to take its place, and it will know who's place its taking.
I have a grand view of the phenomena of Metropoli Homogenization by calling NY my home. Grandfathers and fathers die and prejudices, blatant and some we never even conceived of, get faced and hopefully get tossed into the East River and flow out into the ocean for that legendary Kraken to devour. But like memory, who we come from is always there, and I believe should be. However, we need to live in our times to see how we need to change them. I don't believe in "going back to the good old days". One man's good old days are another man's slavery. Yet, we may wanna rethink this race to make money. Hey, I like money and I love its smell and my current circumstances are a result of my having it, but when I was a kid I was told by my cute elementary teachers I could do anything I wanted to do because I live in the USA. Then when I was older my teachers and professors told me that I should look at the industries that are paying well. I took a look at all the people that were telling me this and saw they were all people who were all working just to pay the bills, they loved their weekends and their vacations, times when they could do what they want. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Didn't life create money, not the other way around. Everyone I know is in debt, or got out of it after a long trial with it. What about you? So we work harder and more. But that little Greek man in this little Greek neighborhood is alive...engaging his livelihood in his community. I know money is not going to go away until an asteroid slams into this planet and the gophers finally get their chance to rule, but what if we focused on finding our livelihood, everyone of us....hmm?
The customer is not always right. In fact, after years of working in online and telephone sales, they are wrong most of the time and seek pleasure in your admitting, succumbing to that falsehood. Tell 'em they're wrong and if they don't like what you have to sell they can go down the street to one Staples or another. But if you are alive, engaged in your community and livelihood, people will want what you have to offer, whatever it is.
Enjoy the rhythm of the rains and trains,
Todd
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Two Lovers on the Bed of Truth and the Visiting Species
Greetings from New York, everyone.
There's nothing like a many states spanning, regions spanning, ideologies spanning plane flight. In one day, hell, with jet plane technology, just a few hours, one can feel the palpable differences sharply bordered in this country. Well, lets just say Texas is not New York, and vice versa. Up here, global warming isn't a myth. Or is it???
I lifted off from San Antonio under a sunny sky and as I flew deeper into the gray winter my concerns over my time away from New York grew shapes, became things to reckon with. What will I do now, in New York, have I faded from the public eye, am I a has been? I know better than to entertain such thoughts for any notable length of time, and I know better than to believe I've been in the public eye. But I'm well acquainted with rabbit holes, and my need to doom the future, so I mindlessly stared into the gray rain coming down steady through an Atlanta International Airport window, a rain's rain, soaking everything and defying the winter and washing the stains of Antebellum away and out of the Deep South. But the South is really deep, and no matter how determined the rain, there's always a little Lost Cause Mythology left in the corners which becomes a sprawling vine in no time. Well, as you can tell, it got my mind off of my little worries about failed personal ambition. A little loitering outside of that wonderful Atlanta International accoutrement, the smoking lounge, helped, too. Oh, rabbit holes, just one harmless little step...
Yet I remained a non-smoker and with self righteousness intact, I got on my connecting flight with a renewed excitement and when I flew lower and lower over Queens toward LaGuardia's runway I was ready to touch down. I love New York and in my adult life it has been my home. And, I'm fortunate to call it home. I feel it has accepted me, and it has, because it accepts everyone. If one doesn't feel accepted here, they really aren't accepting themselves. Trust me, personal acceptance has been a battle for me, and at times I felt so far away from New York when I was deep in the canyons of Manhattan, but those were times of inner turmoil, lost in my own canyons. It wasn't New York's fault. I'm a little healthier now, in mind and body, I think, and well, just a little older, and I just like the way New York feels. And it feels differently for all, as it should. New York is at once, for all, and just for you. Remember all that talk about the "melting pot" this country's supposed to be? Its sad you hear very little about that nowadays - along with that whole "give us you tired, your weak, your poor, your huddled masses" - due to it being drowned out by all the "don't tread on me" and "come and take it" paranoia inducing anger indulging, well, madness that really makes a TV screen dance. The melting pot lives though, and it is New York. Of course there is racism, prejudice and, despite the high gloss Democratic Blue paint job, a LOT of resistance to change. But that's everywhere, fear I mean, no matter if its painted blue or red or that Independent Multi Party Primer that I so want more of if we just get even a slight bump in voter registration. Fear is the equation of Human + Thought of Future - Change. But the essence of the ideals of the country are represented in the subways and streets of New York. Co-Existence is alive and well and there's not a whole lot of room in between humans to develop differences between gods, color of skin and indulge in gun toting hate. Again, don't get me wrong, these things do exist up here, but I've been all over this country and I've seen the inflation of differences on far grander scales in far smaller habitats. New Yorkers are just too busy and work too hard to worry about something so small as differences, or at least to let those differences define there lives. The streets and subways do smell from time to time, but whats so bad about smelling other humans? Really?
So I get off the plain and hop into a cab and tell the turban sporting cabbie to take me to my friends house. I bitch him out thoroughly for not knowing how to get there, even though I didn't either, but "hey, its not my job!" I promptly apologize. He promptly accepts. I apologize again, "you know, I've been on a plane all day....its just soooo grueling." And I feel at home. I visit with my friends that night and next day, then I get ambushed, paralyzed, obliterated - and please fill in the rest with like words - by a stomach virus that would get Montezuma to thinking about turning onto a path of forgiveness. But I get better, which I knew I would - I know longer pray for death when those things happen - and vetnure forth in my cowboy boots. And I can do that, because the city doesn't mind. Hell, I can carry on through my day dressed in woman's clothes, and I'm not talkin' fabulous drag queen women's clothes, I'm talkin' Mama from Mama's Family women's clothes. I know I could, because I know men who do, but I would never call them a man to their face. I call them what they want to be called, a woman. I like to be called what I want to be called, too. And what's so wrong with that?
And what do I want to be called? Hmm....that's a good one. I've called myself an actor, a writer, a musician, a horse wrangler, a baseball player, a lover (yes, i have), an alcoholic (yes, recovered), a traveler, wanderer, wonderer, a spiritualist, and fill in the rest with like words, or what you like. Because it doesn't matter what I call myself. Sure, I like to be called the above things, I've got an ego, after all, its alive and well, but it really what adjective I ascribe to myself. Its like in science, where nothing can be considered to truly exist unless it is observed, and like my old friend Don Luna says, that we are only the sum of the company we keep. I like that. And, no matter what I wear, do, or say, I will exist as long as I'm observed. I'm overwhelmed and fortunate beyond any measure to have the loved ones that I do in my life. They give my life shape, a form in and through which consciousness can do its thing. And, to top it off, I live in New York City, where I'm observed in so many ways and from so many angles that my life gains dimension that can never be imagined until experienced. And, at the same time, I can enjoy the fact that I am just one head in the heard. That smallness is truly beautiful to feel, and necessary if we are to understand, and embrace the "melting pot." But who am I? I don't know. As I walk through New York I am certain that the only thing that changes in New York is the scaffolding. The changes I see I see when I'm looking inward. So what can I be if I'm forever changing? Why does it matter? I'll be different tomorrow.
But New York will be here. Its funny, I didn't know how scared I was to leave the city until I left it. I was so married to it. Then I realized, when gone, that if I stayed burrowed down in the borough of Manhattan, holing up in an apartment writing plays I would soon only be able to write about a guy holing up in an apartment in Manhattan writing plays. Maybe people wanna see something like that, but I'm pretty certain they don't wanna see me do it. Trust me. If I'm holed up anywhere I am observed less. I fail to exist. I walk around and I feel something weird. I feel a disconnect to the city. Not in a bad way. I think what I'm feeling is the absence of the fear of getting booted out of the city and its gates being forever closed t me. Like my marriage to it is dead. Now, I think of the city as if she is a madame, and I her faithful customer. We come together and live vibrantly under the light of low lit lamps and strong perfume, have a few drinks (metaphorically, of course, always metaphorically), fool around in each other's comfortable arms that can only be called home, then say goodbye in the gray light before sunrise, with a wink to each other that is all the commitment we need. We have thrown away the false faith of monogamy that we don't even know how to question and want each other more now than we ever did. Or not, who knows, it is just a city after all. Its not human, its just a place to be human.
But, oh, the struggle for identity. During my morning, afternoon and night haunts around Gotham, I think about such adjectives as "driven", "ambitious", "determined", terms I used to have a high regard for, but terms that also almost put me in the ground. New York is THE city to be ambitious in, no doubt, but I had to let that go. I traded all those terms in for a sanity transplant. Now I just have a slogan: "I will do my best". Five words, five syllables. I consolidated all my debts of insecurity for one simple slogan. I got so caught up in my drive to succeed at all costs as an actor I lost touch and stopped living, stopped enjoying life. I couldn't see the city for the theaters. But I'm certain of something, as I learn to move through and embrace my own little role in humanity - to observe and to be observed - I'm stone certain on one thing, and it is the greatest realization a human being - and especially a caucasion male like me - can gain, and that is this:
I am an immigrant.
We all are. We have all traveled to where we are from somewhere else. Indigenous, imperialist, native or colonial, we have all simply "ended up" where we are to stay alive. The great wrong turn in humanity was the development of the concept of the ownership of land. Is it a wrong that can be righted, or, should we go extinct for the betterment of the universe, and allow for the coming about of a species that can appreciate the cosmos? I was talking to a lady who travels the world teaching empowerment to the down trodden all over the world and the importance of eradicating humiliation by embracing one's own humility (yep, it took me several visits to get her vibe) and she speaks of humanity as a species that is forever traveling and that movement is imperative to its survival. We stay still, we don't change. We don't change, we die. Change is good, go figure. There is freedom in embracing travel, physically and mentally. If we are just visitors, then we cling less and change happens to be less painful. That is as far as I go in that direction as I am not a Buddhist, although I think its a great idea. I think all the great religions are great ideas. I can do that in New York City. I can like everything, no matter how different things are. I can do that anywhere. We all can. There are no contradictions, just the refusal to change. "I am an immigrant"...it has a nice ring to it. I feel peaceful and light when I say it. Give it a shot, say it out loud. You don't have to tell anyone you said it. I gain perspective when I say it. It helps me see the immigrants for the city, for the world. It helps me see myself.
Well, identity, who cares? I can say one thing, I like the fact that I can be what I want to be. New Yorker, ramblin' man...etc. Like I said, I've been many things over the years, but I'm kinda likin' the now, the me that is now, and that is a traveler who feels right at home.
Take it easy or don't take it at all,
Todd
There's nothing like a many states spanning, regions spanning, ideologies spanning plane flight. In one day, hell, with jet plane technology, just a few hours, one can feel the palpable differences sharply bordered in this country. Well, lets just say Texas is not New York, and vice versa. Up here, global warming isn't a myth. Or is it???
I lifted off from San Antonio under a sunny sky and as I flew deeper into the gray winter my concerns over my time away from New York grew shapes, became things to reckon with. What will I do now, in New York, have I faded from the public eye, am I a has been? I know better than to entertain such thoughts for any notable length of time, and I know better than to believe I've been in the public eye. But I'm well acquainted with rabbit holes, and my need to doom the future, so I mindlessly stared into the gray rain coming down steady through an Atlanta International Airport window, a rain's rain, soaking everything and defying the winter and washing the stains of Antebellum away and out of the Deep South. But the South is really deep, and no matter how determined the rain, there's always a little Lost Cause Mythology left in the corners which becomes a sprawling vine in no time. Well, as you can tell, it got my mind off of my little worries about failed personal ambition. A little loitering outside of that wonderful Atlanta International accoutrement, the smoking lounge, helped, too. Oh, rabbit holes, just one harmless little step...
Yet I remained a non-smoker and with self righteousness intact, I got on my connecting flight with a renewed excitement and when I flew lower and lower over Queens toward LaGuardia's runway I was ready to touch down. I love New York and in my adult life it has been my home. And, I'm fortunate to call it home. I feel it has accepted me, and it has, because it accepts everyone. If one doesn't feel accepted here, they really aren't accepting themselves. Trust me, personal acceptance has been a battle for me, and at times I felt so far away from New York when I was deep in the canyons of Manhattan, but those were times of inner turmoil, lost in my own canyons. It wasn't New York's fault. I'm a little healthier now, in mind and body, I think, and well, just a little older, and I just like the way New York feels. And it feels differently for all, as it should. New York is at once, for all, and just for you. Remember all that talk about the "melting pot" this country's supposed to be? Its sad you hear very little about that nowadays - along with that whole "give us you tired, your weak, your poor, your huddled masses" - due to it being drowned out by all the "don't tread on me" and "come and take it" paranoia inducing anger indulging, well, madness that really makes a TV screen dance. The melting pot lives though, and it is New York. Of course there is racism, prejudice and, despite the high gloss Democratic Blue paint job, a LOT of resistance to change. But that's everywhere, fear I mean, no matter if its painted blue or red or that Independent Multi Party Primer that I so want more of if we just get even a slight bump in voter registration. Fear is the equation of Human + Thought of Future - Change. But the essence of the ideals of the country are represented in the subways and streets of New York. Co-Existence is alive and well and there's not a whole lot of room in between humans to develop differences between gods, color of skin and indulge in gun toting hate. Again, don't get me wrong, these things do exist up here, but I've been all over this country and I've seen the inflation of differences on far grander scales in far smaller habitats. New Yorkers are just too busy and work too hard to worry about something so small as differences, or at least to let those differences define there lives. The streets and subways do smell from time to time, but whats so bad about smelling other humans? Really?
So I get off the plain and hop into a cab and tell the turban sporting cabbie to take me to my friends house. I bitch him out thoroughly for not knowing how to get there, even though I didn't either, but "hey, its not my job!" I promptly apologize. He promptly accepts. I apologize again, "you know, I've been on a plane all day....its just soooo grueling." And I feel at home. I visit with my friends that night and next day, then I get ambushed, paralyzed, obliterated - and please fill in the rest with like words - by a stomach virus that would get Montezuma to thinking about turning onto a path of forgiveness. But I get better, which I knew I would - I know longer pray for death when those things happen - and vetnure forth in my cowboy boots. And I can do that, because the city doesn't mind. Hell, I can carry on through my day dressed in woman's clothes, and I'm not talkin' fabulous drag queen women's clothes, I'm talkin' Mama from Mama's Family women's clothes. I know I could, because I know men who do, but I would never call them a man to their face. I call them what they want to be called, a woman. I like to be called what I want to be called, too. And what's so wrong with that?
And what do I want to be called? Hmm....that's a good one. I've called myself an actor, a writer, a musician, a horse wrangler, a baseball player, a lover (yes, i have), an alcoholic (yes, recovered), a traveler, wanderer, wonderer, a spiritualist, and fill in the rest with like words, or what you like. Because it doesn't matter what I call myself. Sure, I like to be called the above things, I've got an ego, after all, its alive and well, but it really what adjective I ascribe to myself. Its like in science, where nothing can be considered to truly exist unless it is observed, and like my old friend Don Luna says, that we are only the sum of the company we keep. I like that. And, no matter what I wear, do, or say, I will exist as long as I'm observed. I'm overwhelmed and fortunate beyond any measure to have the loved ones that I do in my life. They give my life shape, a form in and through which consciousness can do its thing. And, to top it off, I live in New York City, where I'm observed in so many ways and from so many angles that my life gains dimension that can never be imagined until experienced. And, at the same time, I can enjoy the fact that I am just one head in the heard. That smallness is truly beautiful to feel, and necessary if we are to understand, and embrace the "melting pot." But who am I? I don't know. As I walk through New York I am certain that the only thing that changes in New York is the scaffolding. The changes I see I see when I'm looking inward. So what can I be if I'm forever changing? Why does it matter? I'll be different tomorrow.
But New York will be here. Its funny, I didn't know how scared I was to leave the city until I left it. I was so married to it. Then I realized, when gone, that if I stayed burrowed down in the borough of Manhattan, holing up in an apartment writing plays I would soon only be able to write about a guy holing up in an apartment in Manhattan writing plays. Maybe people wanna see something like that, but I'm pretty certain they don't wanna see me do it. Trust me. If I'm holed up anywhere I am observed less. I fail to exist. I walk around and I feel something weird. I feel a disconnect to the city. Not in a bad way. I think what I'm feeling is the absence of the fear of getting booted out of the city and its gates being forever closed t me. Like my marriage to it is dead. Now, I think of the city as if she is a madame, and I her faithful customer. We come together and live vibrantly under the light of low lit lamps and strong perfume, have a few drinks (metaphorically, of course, always metaphorically), fool around in each other's comfortable arms that can only be called home, then say goodbye in the gray light before sunrise, with a wink to each other that is all the commitment we need. We have thrown away the false faith of monogamy that we don't even know how to question and want each other more now than we ever did. Or not, who knows, it is just a city after all. Its not human, its just a place to be human.
But, oh, the struggle for identity. During my morning, afternoon and night haunts around Gotham, I think about such adjectives as "driven", "ambitious", "determined", terms I used to have a high regard for, but terms that also almost put me in the ground. New York is THE city to be ambitious in, no doubt, but I had to let that go. I traded all those terms in for a sanity transplant. Now I just have a slogan: "I will do my best". Five words, five syllables. I consolidated all my debts of insecurity for one simple slogan. I got so caught up in my drive to succeed at all costs as an actor I lost touch and stopped living, stopped enjoying life. I couldn't see the city for the theaters. But I'm certain of something, as I learn to move through and embrace my own little role in humanity - to observe and to be observed - I'm stone certain on one thing, and it is the greatest realization a human being - and especially a caucasion male like me - can gain, and that is this:
I am an immigrant.
We all are. We have all traveled to where we are from somewhere else. Indigenous, imperialist, native or colonial, we have all simply "ended up" where we are to stay alive. The great wrong turn in humanity was the development of the concept of the ownership of land. Is it a wrong that can be righted, or, should we go extinct for the betterment of the universe, and allow for the coming about of a species that can appreciate the cosmos? I was talking to a lady who travels the world teaching empowerment to the down trodden all over the world and the importance of eradicating humiliation by embracing one's own humility (yep, it took me several visits to get her vibe) and she speaks of humanity as a species that is forever traveling and that movement is imperative to its survival. We stay still, we don't change. We don't change, we die. Change is good, go figure. There is freedom in embracing travel, physically and mentally. If we are just visitors, then we cling less and change happens to be less painful. That is as far as I go in that direction as I am not a Buddhist, although I think its a great idea. I think all the great religions are great ideas. I can do that in New York City. I can like everything, no matter how different things are. I can do that anywhere. We all can. There are no contradictions, just the refusal to change. "I am an immigrant"...it has a nice ring to it. I feel peaceful and light when I say it. Give it a shot, say it out loud. You don't have to tell anyone you said it. I gain perspective when I say it. It helps me see the immigrants for the city, for the world. It helps me see myself.
Well, identity, who cares? I can say one thing, I like the fact that I can be what I want to be. New Yorker, ramblin' man...etc. Like I said, I've been many things over the years, but I'm kinda likin' the now, the me that is now, and that is a traveler who feels right at home.
Take it easy or don't take it at all,
Todd
Friday, January 28, 2011
A New York for a New Man/Where Have All the Craftsman Gone?
Hello Everyone,
Well, in a few days, I head back for New York. Its hard to believe that it has been six months since, being saddled with good fortune and feeling the pain of the need for change, I left. Everything feels so different, or, I should say, I feel so different. I left a good job with good enough pay and friends for coworkers and threw up my hands in an email and asked for that change. My dear friend, Cristina Duran, was the first to get back to me, with a lead to work on a horse ranch in southern Utah, which she had come across in her own search for herself. I figured, "hell, I'm a gemini, and an alcoholic, I can make that drastic of a move," so I told her to see what she can do. It all fell together in a matter of days. It was just too big a thing in my path to ignore, fate was palpable, so I turned myself in that direction. I left on July 22nd. At 8am I was in a cab in Manhattan, 8pm that night I was on a horse deep in a canyon my mind could never concieve without seeing. I told myself, "This is your life now," and I meant it. It was hard to at first, but then I let go and it became real. I was also thinking, "Just don't fall off in front of anybody."
I planned to stay on the ranch for the whole six months I was away from the Big Apple, but my dad's health issues were weighing on me so I decided to leave the ranch and spend some time with my family. My parents did an awesome thing and drove up to the ranch to get me. We went to the Grand Canyon together, and though I'd seen pictures of it and thought I understood it, my mind could not grasp the cosmic event that is the grand canyon, even in its presence. It is an event, the Grand Canyon, that is the only way I can describe it. I'm looking at a picture of me and my dad at the Grand Canyon right now...that's just it, isn't it? Life, moments, events can't be grasped, can they? They stop for no one, they just change us forever and all the way through. It didn't stop during my attempted crossing of these United States, that's for sure. Its been so good to spend time with my mom and my sisters, even with dad gone. I haven't spent much time with my family in the last ten years, but questions and principles that I had all that time just aren't that important anymore, so I'll be spending more time down here in Texas, which is my home, and no matter where I go, I'll always be a guy from Texas. That was an answer I was running from all those years, but no more. Events have changed that.
I've grown a new affinity for Texas. However, when driving down the highways and farm roads around south Texas I marvel at all the new hospitals and medical complexes. Illness is big buisness in Texas right now, just like Prison construction was about 15 years ago. Hell, big business is big business in Texas. But I've guessed they've mined out the mountains of crime and have moved on to the mountains of sick people which are far more vast, and lucrative. Unless your poor, that is, then you better just get tough. But with the hospitals and renal, cancer and heart centers and assisted living quarters come new pharmacies and hotels for the families to stay while they debate pulling the plug. That's a tough decision to make, but thankfully there is a whole slew of new banks and credit unions to pull your money out of just in case you haven't spent enough time and money on the whole business of sickness and dying. Oh, and if they appear to be jackpotters, that is, long term patients and sickos, you can just take out a mortgage on a new house in one of the many burgeoning subdivisions on land that used to be a farm that once grew vegetables that are good for us. They're safe to live in, but you never know, so get a handgun just in case....you can carry it around with you if you want to!
On these drives, I take a look at all these buildings, hospitals, houses, nursing homes, pharmacies and even the banks and I can't help but think of that iconic capitalist creation: The Lowest Bidder. I see a society moving in and out of buildings that couldn't even handle the smallest of biblical winds. And all things biblical are big business down here, too. As if the old Protestant churches and one Catholic church in each town wasn't enough, you see - like glass mountains rising out of the plains - the ever imposing mega-churches altering the ideological landscape. How can anyone find Jesus now with all these churches in the way? Oh, thats right, the evangelicals on the various and sundry "Christian" television channels will tell you all about him, and of the myth of the dinosaurs, and they'll tell you how YOU can support them...cha-ching...the sound of another glass mountain oozing out of the ground.
One would think Texas was soooo rich, with all this building going on. And, many Texans thought the state was rich, because Gov. Rick Perry told them it was. A 25 billion dollar surplus! Wow. That's almost enough to secede, but apparently it wasn't, because they didn't. And, funny how, after the November elections, nobody seems to know anything about any 25 billion dollar surplus. Thats crazy talk, because, ladies and gentleman, we need to make budget cuts here in the Lone Star State. We're in a recession, and the end times are coming, for God's sake. And, now, friends of mine who are teachers down here are worried about their jobs...and all they can do is pray. But, hey its just education....why worry about substance and what's underneath when we have lowest bidders to make the outside look so pretty, but in a masculine way, obviously. Gov. Perry's a handsome, fella, he's got nice broad shoulders and perfect hair and a profile that reflects so well off a mega church window underneath that Sunday sun. And, I honestly don't know what's underneath his surface, but it is worth the citizens to rent for him his $10, 000 a month mansion? Lean in and look real close with your good eye, is there anything underneath? Is that a shiny new Moses, or a low bidder? Well, he did get elected. Elections are expensive. Winning them, that is. Losing an election only costs money. But winning them requires lies. Maybe even 25 billion dollars worth. Time, that unstoppable juggarnaught, always brings lies to light, but in regards to whole societies, they don't come to light until after the poison has gotten into the water. And whereas one person's lies usually fall back on the liar, in a bigger picture, in a society, the sufferer is the next generation, the children. The children who will soon have less teachers to teach them.
My friend was telling me that there is legislation in the state house right now to make it possible to carry concealed weapons on university campuses in Texas. Personally, I'd like to see more students on university campuses, but hey, maybe that's just liberal talk. Guns have a colorful history on campuses, down here, after all. But maybe I shouldn't worry, without teachers in primary and secondary schools there will be less students on college campuses in the future. Whew...
But I love Texas. I believe that a beautiful, quirky, cosmic awareness can be attained when tuned in to its varied and beautiful landscape and its varied and beautiful people. The "hippy cowboy" is a beautiful creature and neccesary for the betterment of humanity. There is a sound connection to the Source of all things when one's feet are planted on Texas ground...and when one's mind is absent of lies...and fears. And, I hate it when the bravado and swagger that is associated with Texas gets more ink. All that bravado is is smelted fear. It is misleading, blinding, and a lie. It is a skin that must be shed to reveal the truth underneath...the essence.
I don't have any applicable answers, I'll be the first to tell you. I only have questions. I like to call myself an artist, answers and money are not plentiful...but questions and ramen noodles sure are. I can't eat a question like I can the noodles, so I have to ask them. They will kill me, us, if we do not ask them, sure as a gun will.
One question I will never have to ask: Did my dad love me? I have no question over that, whatsoever. He made sure I knew every time I saw or talked to him. And, as the shock over his death drifts away and I move down a path of deep sadness, that I believe is necessary to walk down, I just hope he knows how much I love him.
Thoughts as grand as Texas society and politics, thoughts as big as the Grand Canyon, take a back seat when I think of him. I start thinking inward. I left New York in an attempt to answer some questions I had of myself. What I'm here for and what I'm supposed to do and whatnot. Some of those questions I searched for and found answers...some were answered for me through love and loss. Some, of course, are still unanswered. That's ok. I thought I'd take a break from New York, and it became something so much more...my life changed. I don't know what's in store but I'm sure it won't be as bad as I can forsee or as brilliant I can forsee...but if I throw out trying to forsee it period, it can be something I never imagined. I'm gonna believe that for awhile. Life, peace, the essence is in the moment, living in the past or the future is just living in the lie. And to all those I have told that I love, that is not a lie.
Take care, and remember, even if its 99% true, you still gotta call it a lie,
Todd
Well, in a few days, I head back for New York. Its hard to believe that it has been six months since, being saddled with good fortune and feeling the pain of the need for change, I left. Everything feels so different, or, I should say, I feel so different. I left a good job with good enough pay and friends for coworkers and threw up my hands in an email and asked for that change. My dear friend, Cristina Duran, was the first to get back to me, with a lead to work on a horse ranch in southern Utah, which she had come across in her own search for herself. I figured, "hell, I'm a gemini, and an alcoholic, I can make that drastic of a move," so I told her to see what she can do. It all fell together in a matter of days. It was just too big a thing in my path to ignore, fate was palpable, so I turned myself in that direction. I left on July 22nd. At 8am I was in a cab in Manhattan, 8pm that night I was on a horse deep in a canyon my mind could never concieve without seeing. I told myself, "This is your life now," and I meant it. It was hard to at first, but then I let go and it became real. I was also thinking, "Just don't fall off in front of anybody."
I planned to stay on the ranch for the whole six months I was away from the Big Apple, but my dad's health issues were weighing on me so I decided to leave the ranch and spend some time with my family. My parents did an awesome thing and drove up to the ranch to get me. We went to the Grand Canyon together, and though I'd seen pictures of it and thought I understood it, my mind could not grasp the cosmic event that is the grand canyon, even in its presence. It is an event, the Grand Canyon, that is the only way I can describe it. I'm looking at a picture of me and my dad at the Grand Canyon right now...that's just it, isn't it? Life, moments, events can't be grasped, can they? They stop for no one, they just change us forever and all the way through. It didn't stop during my attempted crossing of these United States, that's for sure. Its been so good to spend time with my mom and my sisters, even with dad gone. I haven't spent much time with my family in the last ten years, but questions and principles that I had all that time just aren't that important anymore, so I'll be spending more time down here in Texas, which is my home, and no matter where I go, I'll always be a guy from Texas. That was an answer I was running from all those years, but no more. Events have changed that.
I've grown a new affinity for Texas. However, when driving down the highways and farm roads around south Texas I marvel at all the new hospitals and medical complexes. Illness is big buisness in Texas right now, just like Prison construction was about 15 years ago. Hell, big business is big business in Texas. But I've guessed they've mined out the mountains of crime and have moved on to the mountains of sick people which are far more vast, and lucrative. Unless your poor, that is, then you better just get tough. But with the hospitals and renal, cancer and heart centers and assisted living quarters come new pharmacies and hotels for the families to stay while they debate pulling the plug. That's a tough decision to make, but thankfully there is a whole slew of new banks and credit unions to pull your money out of just in case you haven't spent enough time and money on the whole business of sickness and dying. Oh, and if they appear to be jackpotters, that is, long term patients and sickos, you can just take out a mortgage on a new house in one of the many burgeoning subdivisions on land that used to be a farm that once grew vegetables that are good for us. They're safe to live in, but you never know, so get a handgun just in case....you can carry it around with you if you want to!
On these drives, I take a look at all these buildings, hospitals, houses, nursing homes, pharmacies and even the banks and I can't help but think of that iconic capitalist creation: The Lowest Bidder. I see a society moving in and out of buildings that couldn't even handle the smallest of biblical winds. And all things biblical are big business down here, too. As if the old Protestant churches and one Catholic church in each town wasn't enough, you see - like glass mountains rising out of the plains - the ever imposing mega-churches altering the ideological landscape. How can anyone find Jesus now with all these churches in the way? Oh, thats right, the evangelicals on the various and sundry "Christian" television channels will tell you all about him, and of the myth of the dinosaurs, and they'll tell you how YOU can support them...cha-ching...the sound of another glass mountain oozing out of the ground.
One would think Texas was soooo rich, with all this building going on. And, many Texans thought the state was rich, because Gov. Rick Perry told them it was. A 25 billion dollar surplus! Wow. That's almost enough to secede, but apparently it wasn't, because they didn't. And, funny how, after the November elections, nobody seems to know anything about any 25 billion dollar surplus. Thats crazy talk, because, ladies and gentleman, we need to make budget cuts here in the Lone Star State. We're in a recession, and the end times are coming, for God's sake. And, now, friends of mine who are teachers down here are worried about their jobs...and all they can do is pray. But, hey its just education....why worry about substance and what's underneath when we have lowest bidders to make the outside look so pretty, but in a masculine way, obviously. Gov. Perry's a handsome, fella, he's got nice broad shoulders and perfect hair and a profile that reflects so well off a mega church window underneath that Sunday sun. And, I honestly don't know what's underneath his surface, but it is worth the citizens to rent for him his $10, 000 a month mansion? Lean in and look real close with your good eye, is there anything underneath? Is that a shiny new Moses, or a low bidder? Well, he did get elected. Elections are expensive. Winning them, that is. Losing an election only costs money. But winning them requires lies. Maybe even 25 billion dollars worth. Time, that unstoppable juggarnaught, always brings lies to light, but in regards to whole societies, they don't come to light until after the poison has gotten into the water. And whereas one person's lies usually fall back on the liar, in a bigger picture, in a society, the sufferer is the next generation, the children. The children who will soon have less teachers to teach them.
My friend was telling me that there is legislation in the state house right now to make it possible to carry concealed weapons on university campuses in Texas. Personally, I'd like to see more students on university campuses, but hey, maybe that's just liberal talk. Guns have a colorful history on campuses, down here, after all. But maybe I shouldn't worry, without teachers in primary and secondary schools there will be less students on college campuses in the future. Whew...
But I love Texas. I believe that a beautiful, quirky, cosmic awareness can be attained when tuned in to its varied and beautiful landscape and its varied and beautiful people. The "hippy cowboy" is a beautiful creature and neccesary for the betterment of humanity. There is a sound connection to the Source of all things when one's feet are planted on Texas ground...and when one's mind is absent of lies...and fears. And, I hate it when the bravado and swagger that is associated with Texas gets more ink. All that bravado is is smelted fear. It is misleading, blinding, and a lie. It is a skin that must be shed to reveal the truth underneath...the essence.
I don't have any applicable answers, I'll be the first to tell you. I only have questions. I like to call myself an artist, answers and money are not plentiful...but questions and ramen noodles sure are. I can't eat a question like I can the noodles, so I have to ask them. They will kill me, us, if we do not ask them, sure as a gun will.
One question I will never have to ask: Did my dad love me? I have no question over that, whatsoever. He made sure I knew every time I saw or talked to him. And, as the shock over his death drifts away and I move down a path of deep sadness, that I believe is necessary to walk down, I just hope he knows how much I love him.
Thoughts as grand as Texas society and politics, thoughts as big as the Grand Canyon, take a back seat when I think of him. I start thinking inward. I left New York in an attempt to answer some questions I had of myself. What I'm here for and what I'm supposed to do and whatnot. Some of those questions I searched for and found answers...some were answered for me through love and loss. Some, of course, are still unanswered. That's ok. I thought I'd take a break from New York, and it became something so much more...my life changed. I don't know what's in store but I'm sure it won't be as bad as I can forsee or as brilliant I can forsee...but if I throw out trying to forsee it period, it can be something I never imagined. I'm gonna believe that for awhile. Life, peace, the essence is in the moment, living in the past or the future is just living in the lie. And to all those I have told that I love, that is not a lie.
Take care, and remember, even if its 99% true, you still gotta call it a lie,
Todd
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