And They All Fall Down

Hello everybody, There's a pretty cool phenomenon out here in North Dakota. Most of the houses and crops out here are surrounded by windbreaks, shelterbelts consisting of tall trees to keep the wind from blowing everything across the prairie. The farm house I'm staying is no different. During the day I'll be milling out about on the grounds and feel no wind, whatsoever. However, there will be a low constant roar, like a running river, off in the distance. But there's no water for miles. I'll look up and see the weaker branches of the tall trees leaning over greatly, the sound coming from the wind rushing through the leaves. One feels like they are in some kind of capsule, a cocoon from the elements inside of these windbreaks. I went out the neighboring field yesterday and when I stepped out of the trees the wind, dirt and incoming rain hit me head on. I was suddenly in the middle of the weather. The winds were green and stormy, low to the ground, swirling, and got me thinking of a recurring dream I've had since childhood, of being chased and hunted by many tornados, they're just about to get me and I wake up. I got nervous. But all I had to do was step back through the trees, and I was protected again. The difference of the weather on either side of the trees was so drastic, what I'm hoping interdimensional will be like. A few of the huge birch trees on the property have fallen recently, as they have all over region. Some trees out here are over 100 years old, big fellas, and after a century of madness inducing wind, the just fall down. Most everybody out here's agreed not to replant new trees. Farming and plowing techniques have developed so that they really aren't needed anymore. At first thought, it seems a shame, like a change is coming, and something will never be the same, when the last tree falls. But every tree out here, -excluding those by a river, or a lake, or the rare solo tree that sprouted due to a bird's droppings- were planted by men in the first place. So it's actually an institution of mankind that is coming to and end out here. Its a full circle thing, and on second thought the whole thing feels soothing, like all things come back around. I still haven't figured out what the tornado dream is about. I've gotta few ideas, but none of them wow me. Any ideas? Don't tell me it's about me running from myself, or anything like that. I gave up trying to ditch me a long time ago.

Days 2,3,4,5

Hello everybody, I'd planned to do this daily, in an effort to see my day to day progress in solitude, however, my internet connection was on the blink this week. Or, I should say, the neighbor's internet connection was on the blink. I'd been jumping on it, at the side of the road in a lawnchair. Some would say that's not much of an office, other's might say its a very large office, depending how one looked at it. But without the internet, I have to say its been pretty sublime. I threw myself into my book, focused in a way I'd not been in some time. I'm relaxed too. The constant gentle hum of the wind in the trees, the crickets and bird chirps is one hell of a calming soundtrack to life. Lets see, one day I walked as far as I could in one direction until the sunset. The next I walked in another direction until the sunset. The next day, another, and another the next. A squirrel knocks pine cone down on me while I have my morning coffee under the tree that houses his or her nest. And I've been chopping up a giant birch tree that was felled during a storm, that's a good workout. The day is long enough to do all these things when I'm not plugged in. I really don't think I'd notice that damned squirrel if I was online. Just more proof for me that ye ole web is not so much access to the world, as it is a block from it. I'm in Grand Forks righ now to get a few things, and already, my shoulders are tense, and I feel rushed...and Grand Forks is a LOT smaller than New York City. I'd like to tell you I'll try to stay this relaxed in New York, but I think relaxation is territorial bound, even if you're the most blissed out Zen head on your block...whatever, I've got two more weeks left and I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of it...take care.

Day #1

Hello Everybody, Well, what can I say? Probably a whole lot if you walked up to me because I have not seen a single person all day. But that's ok, a few birds and some crickets have kept me company. And a spider I found in my bathroom, until I flushed it, it just wasn't my kind of company. I woke to the ringing in my ears I've had since childhood. Not sure what that's about, but I don't notice it much in the big city, where there is a constant hum that drowns the ringing out. I only hear it in really quiet places, and folks, McCanna, North Dakota is a quiet place. I hear there's about 10 people that live in the greater McCanna area, but I've yet to see them. The only sign of humanity thus far has been the odd grain truck way off on the horizon, as it is harvest time. The ringing got to be almost deafening, but after several cups of coffee I started talking to myself and that took care of that. Lets see, I worked on my book for several hours. I played my guitar and sang like a no one's a listenin' for several more. Then I went for a very long walk down a very straight road and soon was surounded by very tall fields of corn and sunflowers. I ventured up to the sunflowers and they towered above me, all faced to the west, where the sun was trying to communicate to them through the clouds. They looked like an alien race trying to communicate in some kind of telepathy, but alas, the obstacle of my humanity kept me ignorant their cosmic message. But that's ok, maybe tomorrow... I found a swell walking rock. It was of smooth granite, and had the density of a full sized potato. I tossed it from hand to hand as I ventured further and further out there, pondering all things between the first memory I had of that ringing in the ears to the fact that I'm 37 years old and once again walking around alone out in the middle of nowhere. But that's not really true. Everywhere is somewhere to somebody, and to less than a dozen McCanna is home. And, hey, I'm not really alone, cause I have you and the internet voodoo. Something caught my eye when I was walking home and I dropped my rock. I felt like I'd betrayed it for a half-second and thought for a few steps that I should go back and pick it up. It was a good rock. But I kept on walkin'... So long for now,

If you're goin' to the North Country Fair...

Hello Everyone, Well, I'm back out on the road again, on my way to a three week artist residency in North Dakota. I'll be alone for most of the time, and look forward for the solitude to adminsiter a profound enlightenment, or madness, depending on the angle from which you are standing in regards to me. But whether I get wise or get wild, I will try to document my daily progress, provided there is internet access. If there is no access to the interweb, consider the umbilical cord to reality severed, and I'll be taking the express to the cosmos. Speaking of express, I took the Greyhound Express from NYC to Cleveland to Chicago. It took sixteen hours, which is still pretty quick for cross country bus travel. But as I waited in the NYC and Cleveland stops, and exited the Chicago stop, look crowded and throbbing lines of people waited at the "express" gates, whilst the gates to regular schedules were desolate. I'd noticed online when I was looking for departure times that 5 out of 7 trips to Chicago were express, too. Hmm...I thought. Could it be possible that we who are so fortunate to shun flight and take a wonderfully intimate bus now have the convenient option of "expressing" ourselves to our destination? Or do we now simply have less places to go, and through witty "mind control" we are treating less choices as more advantage? I thought about that, the way I think about things when I wait in line at a department store, movie theatre, or basically anyplace in the country where everybody waits in one line for one clerk at one cash register while there are seven closed registers. When I left the cattle pin that is the Chicago Bus terminal, I wondered anybody else was thinking about there good fortune as they smelled the armpits surrounding them and listened to the golden chorus of screaming babies... From Chicago, I barrowed a friends car and drove north, up eastern Wisconsin and onto Michigan's western peninsula, or as I like to call it: Tunguska. Driving across this part of Michagan is like driving into a classic rock station. Folks, wanna know what's in between Iron Mountain, Michigan and Iron River, Michigan? Nothing shiny, that's for sure. But that's not to say that there was nothing, and of course you knew that. But what I forgot, was how much of America one can really take in when they're only allowed to see 55 miles of it per hour. I was on the winding highways, not the streamlined interstates, and I had to stop at red lights, slow down while rolling through small town after small town. I saw America, or at least a little part of it, that wasn't homogenized by suburbs and interstates and fast food. I got to see the stuff that goes in the blink of an eye. A kid walking on the side of the road with about three or four fish on a string, carrying his fishing fole over his shoulder, the misunderstood rockers hanging out at a gas station in a country town. I got to see just a bit of true America, in the moment and away from any definition from a history book, just people like you going through their day however they can. I crossed a small stream that struggled to find its way through a marshy area. It didn't look like a river, but it the sign at the bridge said it was, said it was the Mississippi River. I went to Hibbing, Minnesota. In the fifties a kid named Robert Zimmerman felt like he didn't belong there. Only when things flow away do they become Old Man River and Bob Dylan. But life still goes on in the North Country. Well, I gotta split. I gotta drive from Bedmiji, Minnesota (say that real fast ten times and you will get high) to Grand Forks, ND and settle in at my monastary, or looney bin. If you read along, you can be the judge. Take care...

Most of America

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

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

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