15APR2012 – Part of this is my job description, part of this is a dream. There are moments in the light of day when I cannot tell them apart. Sometimes, I travel from place to place at the direction of (a certain government agency) and perform tasks — which began as uncomfortable and tedious but have grown progressively more rewarding.
“Head south, drive for twenty miles. Pull over at (a certain gas station) just outside (a certain town). The station will be abandoned. Open the envelope located under the passenger seat. You will find a pair of gloves. Put them on and pocket both the lighter and the box containing paraffin-soaked cotton. You will break into the office at the back of the building without being observed. Force the lock on the top left-hand desk drawer. There will be a large square package wrapped in plain brown paper. Do NOT open it. Instead, carry it with you to the lot behind the gas station and look for an old rusted drum. Place the package in the drum and set fire to the package using the lighter and paraffin, making certain to scatter the ashes thoroughly and bury the fire. Once you’ve finished, return home. Speak to no one about this.”
Next. “Catch the first flight to (a certain place). Rent a car and drive to (a certain pier) and wait there for six hours. Purchase a sandwich from a food cart at the end of the pier if you get hungry. When (a certain vessel) moors to the pier, board and ask to speak to the captain. When you meet him, hand him a one-dollar bill and take his picture. He’ll know what it means. Once you have his photograph, return to the airport and fly home. Speak to no one about this.”
Next. “Travel by train to New London, Connecticut. Be at (a specific address) by 0800 Wednesday. Someone there will give you a large green bag containing a knife, a compass, a space blanket, a warm coat and a whistle. Purchase sufficient food and water. Then, drive to an old airfield at the edge of town. There you will board the large white military aircraft with an orange stripe on the side. They’re expecting you. It will take you to Newfoundland. When you arrive, walk to the end of the runway and board another white plane. This one will have the word ‘surveillance’ painted along the side in big red letters. They’ll be expecting you. They will fly approximately 375 SE to position 41° 46′ North, 50° 14′ West. When you arrive, there will be a boat waiting. Photograph the boat and any activity you observe. The aircraft mechanic will jettison an object through a drop tube located in the rear of the aircraft. Photograph this event and anything you think might be of interest. Return home. Speak to no one about this.”
There’s never a definite end to the tasks. Sometimes they come in the middle of the night. Sometimes they come very early in the morning. “Tomorrow at 0400, you will don this dress uniform complete with colorful ribbons, insignia and a fancy hat. You will travel to attend (a certain function) at (a certain place). You will be introduced to (a certain person). When you meet him, take his picture. Wait twenty minutes. When he is introduced to (a certain person), you will photograph them together. The photograph should appear natural. It must NOT appear posed. After this, you are free to go. Speak to no one about this.”
Next: “Catch the first flight to New Orleans. Rent a car, drive to (a certain place) and wait for instructions. After two weeks, you will drive to an airfield on the edge of town and board a helicopter. They will be expecting you. It will take you to an oilrig located in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon arriving, you will photograph the drilling equipment, the interior of the control room and anything you think might be of interest. Once you have these photographs, board the helicopter and return to (a certain place). Speak to no one about this.”
Sometimes I receive these instructions in the middle of the task I’m completing ordering me to drop what I’m doing and begin another task, or walk from it away entirely. The standard guidance is simple: “Travel light. Pack a duffel bag of clothes, a laptop, a camera and your passport. Use this card for expenses, and present this piece of paper when challenged. Speak to no one about this…”
I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized that I sucked at math. That was the fourth grade. I’d failed the same stupid test for the third time in a row, consequently developing a deep, psychological hated for red ink pens…
My next “when-I-grow-up moment” didn’t really come until high school, when I decided I was either gonna be the guy who made monster suits and spaceships on movie sets, or I was gonna be a writer. I’d been writing since I could hold a Crayon and figured it was as good a destiny as any.
I was still a freshman in high school when I typed up a nine page short story about a guy who drove around the country hunting down the losers of a state-sanctioned lottery as an alternative to global thermonuclear warfare. I sent the story to my parents, who unbeknownst to me sent it to a publisher, who in turn called me up and told me that if I finished the story before the end of the summer, I’d have myself a book deal. I panicked, blindly polishing every spark of creativity out of the story, missed the deadline and shelved it forever.
But the experience gave me a real push toward words. From that point on, I became obsessed with writing. Maybe this was a doable destiny! I started forming the idea in my head that if I just focused on this lone and immaculate objective, I’d someday perform a great and magnificent feat: I envisioned doing something amazing, something that could change the course of history and unite the world in a common emotion, like an athlete who trains their whole life for one shining moment while overcoming great obstacles along the way.
I decided that I wanted to be able to express human emotion in a way that no one had ever done before.
Still in high school, I looked into haiku on the advice of a much-respected English teacher, quickly becoming a fan of the medium’s prison shiv beauty — short, sharp and, inserted just beneath the ribcage, designed to take your breath away.
In just seventeen
syllables, I swore I could
smell cherry blossoms.
As you can imagine, I was crap at writing haiku. Everything I wrote looked suspiciously like something someone else had already written a long time ago and I felt ashamed. Plus, I’d made the mistake of telling the wrong people my dreams. Presently I gave up on haiku. Why not? I was nowhere near a temple, and there were no monks to guide me. Sweeping the floor was just sweeping the floor, and a glass of water was just a stupid fucking goddamn glass of water.
Still obsessed with words, I then had the notion that a person could somehow open their mouth and let brand new sounds tumble forth — words and phrases never before spoken by a human mouth, in any language, by any race, anywhere on the face of the Earth. Beyond dead languages, beyond glossololia. I thought that maybe the key to expression was locked inside this new box…
Except I had no database or monthly scientific journals to base my findings upon. So I made a lot of retarded noises and jotted them down, hoping one of them might be even slightly virginal in nature.
(It’s no wonder that I remained in a similar physical state until I was in my early 20s.)
After that, I wanted to come up with an answer for the question of why we find some people more attractive than others. I thought that maybe it had something to do with the measurements of the human face — the height, width or angle of the nose, the spacing of the features, the length of the jawline, the width of the mouth, or the specific color of the eyes. What if all these factors added up to some sacred number, one that doomed a small group destined to succumb as prey to holy integers? Years later, I would find this on the internet:
It’s nice to know that as an adolescent, I wasn’t completely off the mark; just off my rocker. And understandably horny.
Following high school, I gave up on my dream of being a special effects artist. It seemed the only way to achieve this was to move to Los Angeles and hang around on movie sets until I found someone to teach me. Instead, I applied and was accepted to a prestigious Midwest art college. I was hopeful — until they told me how much it would cost. So I revisited my writing dream and, after reading too much Hunter S. Thompson, decided I wanted to be a war correspondent.
And Uncle Sam was gonna fund it, because I sure as fuck couldn’t.
At first I considered a stint in the army, or maybe the Marines. I’d need to learn some very valuable survival skills before setting out into the wild. I had a vision of myself in four or five years time; a half-smoked cigarette permanently attached to my bottom lip, a gaggle of battered cameras slung around my neck, an ancient carbine across my back, dust-caked goggles pushed high on my forehead, and an ancient Underwood under one arm. Once I finished my enlistment, I’d take any assignment, no matter how dangerous. And wandering to some of Earth’s far-flung shit holes, I’d explore the last remaining exotic lands still hidden from the light of Western progress. I would write stories about the things I saw there, and take photographs of the fascinating people I met.
And one day I would simply miss my deadline, never be heard from again. That was my retirement plan.
I was not yet 21.
So I approached several recruiters and attempted to make an intelligent decision based on the horrible lies they were paid to tell me. I tested well, and applied for jobs in photography, journalism and for some reason, cryptology. But the recruiters all told me those fields were closed, and that I should pick something else. We went round and round in this manner until finally, disgusted and hopeless, I stormed into an office and spoke thusly to a Navy recruiter:
“I want the most far-flung, whacked-out job you have, something that will take me to the far side of the globe, without threatening to bring me one inch closer to the chair I’m sitting in.” And that’s the story of how I never became an astronaut, or a war correspondent, or the guy who makes monster suits or spaceships for movies.
Had I known that recruiters are instructed to ‘guide’ people into certain job fields where their respective service was experiencing shortages, or had I only been willing to wait. Well, the outcome might have been different.
Instead, I went to Europe and built bombs for four years.
I’m pleased to say that the desire to write came with me. I started keeping a journal just after high school, and I took it with me where ever I roamed.
Journal writing frustrated the fuck out of me at first. I lacked skill, and I was impatient. I was in a big damn hurry to write perfect things and powerful sentiments. I didn’t know the first fucking thing about real writing but I still wanted to do something amazing, something so insightful that it could lift the veil of reality, and part the curtain to another world. I wanted to write modern spells and conjure new truths.
I wanted to surpass all previously written works for their ability to inspire and split foreheads with the lightning of the profound. I didn’t even know what the fuck I was gonna write about, but I figured that once people read these holy words the message would spread like wildfire…
The world would lay down arms. Millions of people would wake from a terrible dream, weeping and gnashing their teeth. The leaders of the world would turn to one another and exclaim, “Goddamn, but we’ve been going about this all wrong! The last book has been written, all words can rest! We must now aspire to fuck one another with the cock of peace and harvest grain together under the same sun, washing our clothes together in the great river and turning our swords back to plowshares yet again. God won’t save the world. Science won’t save the world. The earth plain-ass wasn’t meant to be saved. This book has said everything we’ve been trying to say, everything we ever thought about saying, and everything we probably would have said in the next ten thousand years, but didn’t know it yet!”
Sure, I was a pretentious ass. I wanted to write magic holes through mountains, and weave spells, blah, blah, blah. But I also genuinely wanted to understand beauty, and lust, and savagery. I secretly hoped I’d go crazy when I got old so I could map my experience in a journal, holding on clarity like a fading lamplight as I ventured down that last and darkest of tunnels. I was convinced that there was so much more to the world, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond my diet of tabloid headlines, song lyrics and science fiction movies. Sometimes the words were right there on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to be able to communicate anything to anyone, and make the whole world understand everything.
But how could I? I didn’t understand myself, and I couldn’t separate myself from what I wanted to write about. I didn’t know where to begin, or where I ended. I didn’t know jack shit.
So I kept writing.
I continued to write through my early twenties, but without success. Journals came and journals went. I wrote letters about this, that and the other thing. My friends were full of praise, and they let me live in the world I’d created. I was The Writer.
I devoted years of attention to the recommended greats – the Beats, those who’d come before me and who by measure of their poverty and fearlessness were far more devoted to the craft than I knew how to be, each of them a pioneer in some regard. They explored and exploited their own wormhole, staking their claim to a particular voice or style one step ahead of the gold rush.
The voices that called loudest to me were: drugs, music, sex, and road trips – oh, my! And the strangest of those voices? Assassins. (Giant fucking millipedes?? Really??)
I wasn’t prepared to give up on writing, but I also realized I wasn’t very good. Still, I promised myself one drunken night in a land very far away that if I ever became homeless I’d still carry a pen and a piece of paper. “You can abandon your work, but your work will never abandon you.”
Years passed, and I thought that perhaps stronger measures were called for. Suppose I made a Robert Johnson deal with You-Know-Who, and waited my turn at the midnight crossroads, armed with the wing of a bat and the eyes of a newt. Would the Horned One grant me my deepest desire based on the strength of a pinkie swear, or was I going to have to slit my palm with a crude dagger carved from the jaw bone of a murdered stag? Headless hooves stomping in the bloodied winter grass, the end result of my quest to harness above as the below…
But I didn’t believe in the Devil, and I didn’t actually think I could murder a stag. So that plan was out.
Time passed. Journals were purchased and filled. The majority were dog-eared, covered in duct tape and existed pretty much as ad space for my ego, their pages weighted with stapled concert stubs, proclamations, one-liners written on airliners, photographs of models, quotes torn from magazines, strange things and coffee rings, but mostly drunken heartache. Twenty years, nine countries, five states, three islands, one Indian reservation, and one snow globe later, and still I have no idea of what I was trying to say.
My apartment is pitch black tonight, and my hands look so much older by the glow of this laptop screen. Time is out there, snorting and stomping the snow, exhaling demons from its nostrils, waiting… sometimes I think I can almost feel it at my elbow.
Like right now.
I’ll be 40 in a few months, and no closer to writing anything more powerful than a good one-liner. In the absence of my all-powerful epic, I’ve managed one novel, sixty short stories and thanks to a second enlistment in the other nautical-sounding of our Armed Forces, a stack of official-sounding press releases — none of which has ever escaped being disemboweled by a red pen.
There is the known, which we sometimes tire of. And then there’s the rest of it.
All I’ve learned about life is that I don’t know much. And from what I can tell, neither does anyone else. Everything we think we know takes place on this planet, and in this dimension. We are born here, and we die here. We are bound to this rock. The stories we tell are of this world, for this world, and by this world. They describe our experiences in this dimension, and how we live this life. And we know only these stories and their endless spin-offs. We’ve described our home to death, and pretty much worn out our tongues. I don’t think there are any virginal sounds left.
I recently deleted The Doors from my music collection, but I’ll give Jim Morrison one last nod: “No one gets out of here alive.”
There’s no such thing as magic, only science we haven’t figured out yet. Emotions are not facts, and love – as much as you wish it wasn’t true – is purely chemical. Relationships are all about timing, security and chemistry. And one man’s words aren’t gonna change the world, so long as there are people around to disagree with them.
Being successful in this life only means that your physical needs and comforts will be taken care of while you’re alive; inhabiting your body, existing in this dimension and playing your role in this traveling production.
The pawn and the bishop go back in the same box when the game is over.
But there has to be more! Something just beyond, something left behind, maybe something we’ve forgotten? I feel as though we’re living in a collective dream, standing tall on the edge of a trance: All the while you thought you were having a lengthy conversation with Iggy Pop in a half empty bar late one summer night in 1993, in reality you’ve been standing in the checkout line of a Memphis convenience store for the past ten minutes, transfixed by the mutated face staring back at you from a Pringles can on the conveyor belt, and frankly people are beginning to notice…
In the end, maybe Words have failed me. Maybe I failed the Words. Maybe there was nothing to fail. George Washington Carver once said that if you love something long enough, it would give up its secrets. Was I deemed not worthy to peek behind the curtain? Did I perform the wrong spells? Whatever the reason, whenever the moment, when it came time to select my Holy Path, I chose the soft option.
And so my reward was a different life. Instead of leaving this world on a pillar of fire to walk among the stars; instead of traveling to distant lands and capturing beauty reserved for only the bravest; instead of a day-to-day fight for survival and a life lived on the edge of a fast-moving knife; instead of summoning sentences both sage and surreal, crafting tales with the power of the Old Gods like the Jackie Chan of Juxtaposition, or the Wolverine of the Who, What, Where, Why and When…
Instead, I’m writing this blog.
Thanks for reading.
(There may be secrets left, but I’ll be damned if I know where to look for them.)
IN WHICH I have less than 48 hours to get to New York City, find a place to live, seal the deal, and return home, victorious. Period. This is my account of my housing reconnaissance, May 7 – 8.
I’ve always had this thing about New York City. Ever since I can remember, it seemed to me a terrifying mixture of too much concrete, too much hype and too many people hell bent on doing each other too much harm. Obviously, I have entire storehouses of negative New York memes running rampant through my already imaginative mind. I pictured NYC as a cruel and uncaring place; a wretched empire for the young, the rich, the jaded and the exceptionally greedy, where being pick-pocketed, mugged, and robbed was just something that happened while you stood in line for coffee.
And then I learned I was being transferred there.
Once I stopped hyperventilating, I began pouring through the history of the city; spending hours hunched over Google Earth, memorizing subway maps, bus schedules, and generally reading everything there was to know about this mecca of perpetual insomnia. I imagined that IF I found a place to live, it’d be an overpriced cubbyhole beneath creaking stairs in a condemned building. I imagined that crackheads, pimps, thieves and junkies would take turns breaking into my apartment while I slept, stealing everything that I owned, over and over, until I went mad. I further imagined that if I went to my employers and complained, they’d somehow blame me for negligence. (I pride myself on being a law-abiding person, but I’ve had some bad experiences with authority figures in the past, instances which I’ll not expound upon here, but which have nonetheless left me permanently mistrustful of bureaucracy of any sort. Die, trust. Die.)
Two pieces of information did wonders for my mood: One, NYCScout, a production location specialist I follow on Twitter, revealed that there were only three “real” New York alleys left in the whole city. The odds of me being dragged into one of them by a gang of vicious 6th graders and beaten within an inch of my life was officially slim to none. And two, there was the legacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; a blitzkrieg on the underbelly of New York of old, which many say resulted directly in the dwindling crime rate.
Your predicted response: “But I miss the whores in Times Square!” I realize that NYC means different things to different people, and there are some of you who probably love it. Awesome. I’d like to point out that you already have fond memories and experiences on which to base your opinions. I, at the time of writing this, do not. So please, allow me the opportunity to be wrong.
Housing: I knew I was going to need a place as close to the subway line as possible. There is such a thing as a real estate triangle in NYC; SPACE, LOCATION, and PRICE. You can have two. Unless you’re a household name, you probably won’t get all three. There was no way I could afford anything in Lower Manhattan or Greenwich Village, which was a straight shot uptown on the 1 Red line. My secondary was Brooklyn; specifically, the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods of Williamsburg.
The subway and bus routes were like colorful rivers that cut through the city, flowing straight toward the mouth of the Staten Island Ferry, and without a better source of info, I based my apartment-hunting strategy on this. A stroke of good luck: a fellow photographer and good friend introduced me to his brother Anthony; an up-and-coming real estate broker who just happened to work for the largest firm in NYC. This made all the difference in the world. I contacted Anthony; we agreed on a time and a place to meet, and he advised me as to what forms I would need to bring along. There was nothing left to do but go.
I caught the 0635 train departing Union Station on Friday, May 7. Next stop: facing my fears.
Friday, 10:36 – Climbing up out of Penn Station, I was immediately overwhelmed by the mass, movement, meat, and metal around me. If I were an asthmatic, I’d have been sucking on my inhaler like it was my job. Truth be told, I’m not a big city guy. I like small towns, quiet neighborhoods, and lots of silence. An ideal afternoon is spent hiking along in the woods, or exploring abandoned buildings. I can’t really explain the tightness in my chest brought on by my first glimpse of the city.
Time to focus. I moved east toward my hotel until I looked at my watch — holy fucking fish fingers! I had less than 25 minutes to find the subway, make my way to Brooklyn, and meet my broker! Fortunately, I believe in redundancy and prior planning. I’d already downloaded HopStop and plotted out my course in the event that I ran late, and everything I needed for the weekend was on my back. I tightened the straps and turned South along 6th, making a beeline for Herald Square. After a few wrong turns, I descended into the subway. (I’m going to miss the swipe card technology of Disco Charlie’s Metro system.)
AWAY TEAMS: DEPLOYED, NAVIGATION SWEEP: ACTIVE. SUBWAY: CONQUERED. Good morning, New Yorkers. A tattooed giraffe walks among you…11:09 AM May 7th via Tweetie
Friday, 11:59 – Now in a rental property office somewhere in Brooklyn. Arrived just minutes before my broker. (Go, me!) I’d dressed sharp for a change; new brown shoes, khaki trousers and a respectable navy blue button down. I lost all sense of “with it” in the restroom when I sprayed room freshener on my hands after mistaking it for hand soap. The upside? I smelled like flowers. The bathroom mirror had fallen from its mounting brackets some time ago and was propped in place with bricks of Styrofoam and blocks of concrete. At least I could see that my shoes were tied properly.
Friday, 1:30 - I found a place! (*sigh of relief*) MAYBE. The property hadn’t even been listed yet. One bedroom, gas stove, new appliances, wood floors, fresh paint, great view, plenty of floor space, tile bathroom, NNE-facing windows with a balcony, and plenty of storage space. Third floor, steel doors, secured building, good locks. I’d have rooftop space with a view of Manhattan, AND it’s in a tree-lined neighborhood just a few blocks from a Lego-simple train ride to the office, AND and it’s within my price range. It even included a giant wardrobe that matched my writing desk and bookshelf. I thought about how great it would be to move in.., clean the place from top to bottom, stock the fridge, arrange my bookshelf, open the windows, light some incense and wait for the rains to fall…
Conflict: I wanted to get my hopes up. / I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up.
Even as we were viewing the apartment, I was told that the top floor apartment had *just* been taken. I immediately staked my claim on 3R, and hoped for the best.
Later: Turns out my broker has a similar interest in pulp sci-fi, and he’s been working on an “old time” radio show, but hasn’t had time to get it off the ground. We talked time travel, wormholes and exchanged globe-hopping experiences over beer and tacos in a Mexican place nearby.
Later still: Man, they aren’t kidding about Williamsburg being the capital of hipsters. I think I’ve seen Beck about thirty-five times in the past 6 hours. Painfully thin and bearded is where it’s at, apparently.
Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It’s a very obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.
Friday, 5:00 – I checked into my hotel on 6th and 37th. Unpack, unwind. I laid out my gear in an orderly manner, everything spaced evenly along the counter from largest to smallest and in order of use or importance. (Yeah, I’ve got a little problem…) Ventured out to get some food, returned to my room. “Oh, but you should have explored! I would have looked around! I’d want to see everythin –” Yeah, I’m sure you would. I wasn’t in town to spend money or explore. I needed every penny for tomorrow. There’d be time for that later. Hopefully.
Not surprised, I couldn’t get a signal in my room after 9 p.m. Watched TV, once again reminded of why I haven’t had cable in over a decade: because it sucks.
Saturday, 1230: Once the application forms were signed, I walked around my (hopefully) new neighborhood, figuring the best thing to do with all this nervous energy was learn the lay of the land. I found a grocer at the mouth of the Graham Street subway stop with all my favorite things on the shelves. (see also: Guinness, Naked, fresh fruit and vegetables.) I was so optimistic about my apartment and a new life in this neighborhood that I must have wished ten little old ladies a happy Mother’s Day. (Kind words from a 6-foot boy scout in Buddy Holly glasses makes old ladies smile.) I found a Thai restaurant, a coffee house, AND they’ve got a little something called Barcade; a happy marriage of beer and electronic nostalgia. Galaga and Guinness, here I come!
From their Twitter page: 2 new games just arrived: Satan’s Hollow and Paperboy.3:41 PM Mar 24th via web
I walked back to the Frost Street apartment and stood across the street, visualizing myself living there, establishing a routine, and becoming familiar with my surroundings, a fixture in the neighborhood. If this didn’t happen the way I hoped it would, I had no idea what I would do. I wouldn’t have the time and money to make another trip north. This was all or nothing…
Next objective: I took the subway to my new office and timed the route. Thirty minutes later, I was standing at the front door of the southernmost building on Manhattan Island, buffeted by the wind and squinting from the dust being blown up around me. Easy! I’d be up and out the door no later than 0655 every weekday. Plus, I could work as late as I wanted and still catch a ride home. Checked my watch again. My train pulled out of the station in four hours.
After I left Battery Park, I walked north along Church St to Sixth, to the Avenue of The Americas to Greenwich to 11th the whole way to 35th. I reasoned that with all the tourist traffic this town had, it’d probably worked out the transportation bugs long ago. And if 8,363,710 could live here then I could, too.
Presently on foot moving up Ave of the Americas toward Penn Station, eyes peeled for grafitti… about 20 hours ago via Tweetie
Apparently the economy is having an adverse effect on everyone.
Once I got over the vertigo and the overwhelming amount of concrete, craziness and carbon-based lifeforms, I was OK. I tried hard not to get my hopes up about the apartment, but I had to have something positive to focus on. Without a home to call my own, I’d be in dire straits. Imagining that I would have a place to call home in this busy biomass did wonders for my mood. Lately, I’d had the feeling of being backed into a corner. I just needed an even break, and I began to feel that NYC might just be what I was looking for.
I felt as though my perception of the world had just grown from a two-lane dirt road in a school zone to an eight-lane superhighway complete with triple-cloverleaf overpass. Sort of.
7:00 – Saturday evening. Now in Penn Station, waiting for my 9:00 train home. Sipping at an iced coffee with two shots and enjoying a cold Guinness while I recharge my physical batteries, and attempt to replenish my iPhone’s power supply.
BASTARD! My 167 Regional ride home is :35 min late. “…as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” about 16 hours ago via Tweetie
I talked to a DeNiro look-alike while I waited, another soul hoping to make it as an actor: “So I finish my head shots, ” he says, “and I’m on H street, walking along, minding my own business, right? I put a cigarette out and this guy says to me, ‘Hey, gimme a cigarette.’ I says to him, ‘I got no cigarettes, and I ain’t tryin’ to sell ya one, either!’ And so he says to me, ‘Man, you’re a fucking asshole!’ How the fuck am *I* the asshole, here?” We laughed, then he says, “You’re a pretty big guy, he prolly wouldn’ta said shit to you.” They called Deniro’s train and he walked away.
After a :50 minute wait, I boarded my train back to Disco Charlie. I managed to pick a crap seat. No electricity.
We’re stopped at Newark airport. An express train whips past; a fantastic display of the Doppler effect. WEEEEEEOOOOwwwww…
Moments later, one of the porters comes by and flicks a switch just out of my view. Electricity! “Master Blaster runs Bartertown!” With nothing good to read (William Gibson’s “The Difference Engine” had failed to scratch my itch), I proceeded to Tweet my ass off:
Travelling by train is easier than flying, but they should look into installing hammocks – or lining the seats with hippie/gypsy pillows.about 12 hours ago via Tweetie
Apparently May 8 is National Train Day, so if you know any one who’s a train, please show your support and take them to lunch.about 14 hours ago via Tweetie
L/T: Black Moth Super Rainbow on my way through Baltimore. Can’t sleep, can’t shut up – but you probably know that about me by now.about 12 hours ago via Tweetie
At last, Union Station, Disco Charlie. End of the line. This concludes our programming day. Please stand by for our National Anthem. -30-about 11 hours ago via Tweetie
With a tremendous rush, the 5 o’clock yellow line comes thrusting out of the tunnel near the platform where I’m standing, driving before it the musty and mysterious smells of a dozen subterranean concrete wombs that it’s penetrated along the way. Headphones in, hat pushed back on my head, squinting into the wave of grit and wind, I wait till it stops before boarding the last car and sliding into a seat. Never cheat children, women, the elderly, or the infirm of a place to sit. These are rules to keep you honest, rules to live by. Remember them. A pair of gushing teenage girls take a seat to my left, giggling about something on their camera. I think for a moment about how much power and kinetic energy they hold. In their young lives, they will gain access to places I only read about in magazines based solely on their looks and implied access to their sexual favors. Spending this currency too readily means they’ll have the hardest time being taken seriously when they get older. I can’t remember being that excited about anything when I was their age, and that’s probably a damn shame. I’m sitting in a rail car moving backwards at X speed telling you first hand that the distance between Crystal City and DCA is remarkably short.
It’s Friday. Don’t believe me? Look it up.
TWM
01DEC07 – Sitting in Chipotle on King Street on a Saturday afternoon nearly paralyzed with pleasure, my legs tingling from the cold bite of the wind, my lips basked in flames from the heat of the salsa. The girl who assembled my burrito asked me twice if I was sure I wanted it this hot. I’ve been indoors for most of the day (the internet is evil!) but I got some work done as well. I have a camera, a notebook, coffee, and food. My Maslow’s are met for the moment.
The brown paper wrapping used to cushion my burrito is covered with the names of musicians. I read through them, and wonder at the tastes of someone who might own all of these albums. The selection is so bland! Who the fuck was the marketing department hoping to reach? Thirty-something’s in pressed jeans and color coordinated wardrobes, the relaxed faces of people you see in advertisements. Every race and gender represented, all with perfect teeth. They have a lot to laugh about. Their sparsely decorated homes feature the latest in labor saving devices, check their bank balances at the beach, and they drove there in a brand new Acura, maybe a Saab. These are decent people who live in respectable neighborhoods, vote responsibly, engage in vanilla sex, and spend lots of time shopping. They genuinely like Jack Johnson, and invite their college friends over for taco night.
Who the fuck has taco night? Men with perfect feet, lean physiques and six-figure incomes, that’s who. Women who own their own businesses and never get periods, that’s who. Couples with picture perfect weddings who name their daughters McKenzie and their sons Blake. People who shop at Eddie Bauer, wear their alma mater on sweatshirts, talk down to their children, and refer to themselves in the third person as mommy and daddy, that’s who. I don’t know what fucking planet these aliens came from. I only hope they come in peace.
Later, walking down King Street as I often do, immersed in observations and remote participation, exercising caution on the wet cobblestones. DASH buses entombed in a soft blue glow glide past on glass wheels, carrying no passengers. Everyone gives a stink eye to the poor around here, and no one wants to be reminded of the Facts this close to the Season of Giving, or how unpleasant things can get just beyond the walls of their personal Empire. A dollar won’t do shit. Anyone who knows anything knows that. That’s almost as good as taking the money and flinging it into the street. People only give to make themselves feel better.
Passers-by emit clean wi-fi, broadcasting their likes and dislikes in the clothes they wear, the products they sip, the shoes on their feet, and still we fail to understand one another. Someone once told me that ninety-five percent of the people you meet in your entire life are sound asleep, but that the remaining five live in a state of panicked awe, doomed to stomp the high ground alone, misunderstood and feared.
Everyone has issues, no one is exempt, all of us serving time here on the Pale Blue Dot. We are born, we become aware of ourselves, our surroundings, but seldom do we grasp the length and breadth of our lives until somewhere close to the end of the film, looking back over our shoulders one night with a glass of Scotch and seeing at last that our wild adventures took place within the narrow confines of a dog run, understanding for once and all that we lived each day according to a set of rules we didn’t vote for, experiencing a sense of guilt when we sought to please only ourselves. Then one day, we’re introduced to the concept of our own mortality, and it becomes the only name and face we remember, despite having met literally thousands of interesting and attractive people at parties throughout the years. Nothing lasts forever except nothing and forever, and there is no such thing as security. Our lives are over in the blink of an eye, like the shadow of a great bird crossing the surface of a lake by the light of the moon. There are no rollover minutes, and nothing is carried over, because none of us believe in the same version of today, tomorrow, forever, Heaven, or Hell. It’s just that simple, and just that complicated.
People in their cars scatter like sparks from a fire. Who knows where they go?
TWM
11JAN08 – I have difficulty with time; an ailment if you will. Things that happened to me years ago feel like yesterday, and vice versa. I think most physicians would refer to it as a Billy Pilgrim moment. Walking to the Metro, I suddenly find myself slinging ‘Pink Panty Pull Downs’ split three ways and bottles of Bud Lite served ice cold at that crappy little dive in Hilton Head, making hundred dollar bills hand over fist and spending all my free time inebriated pool side. When I opened my eyes again, I was on a Metro train twenty minutes late for work in the year 2008, older, wiser, and just as uncertain about tomorrow. How did my predecessors manage to live in this world, and create the great works that made the world sit up and take notice? I’m barely able to keep my head above water, spending much of my day finding new ways to stay interested in my job, with little success. My roaring 20s are just a memory, and I’m nearing the end of my depression-era 30s. Time just keeps marching. Most of the greats died young, unheralded.
Burroughs managed to hang on for the long haul with only his guns and his cats for company in the end. Kerouac drank himself into regressive stupidity, mummified in his mother’s apron strings and denying all that he’d accomplished. Thompson far exceeded his own predetermined finish line, and put his wife on hold while he ate the business end of a shotgun. Kesey went quietly, Casssady died counting railroad ties. These Junkies, drunks, malcontents, wandering madmen, Zen poets, and acid-suckling Pranksters were heroes to me, and yet I spend my days slumped in an ergonomic chair, manipulating electrons and shuffling file folders for Big Brother, living a life straddling both sides of the fence. I feel spikes of pride when I read about the lives we’ve saved, but this false sense of security, this wet blanket I live under is sapping me dry, and every day I’m that much closer to breathing my unhappy last.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s a fact of life,” chides a co-worker. “We all have to work!” says this stupid son of a bitch with a pair of dog’s balls sitting in the pan where their brains were meant to go. Is this your call to arms? Is this the trumpet call that spurs you to battle every morning? Maybe you’re in worse shape than me.
Enough of this talk. It’s Friday, and for once it’s not freezing.
Two days later, making observations in Murphy’s (God Hell, I swore I’d never come back here again.) Some relationships go on much longer than they’re meant to, like a Christmas sweater from your grandmother you’re told to keep wearing long after you’ve outgrown it. You get sick of the role you forced yourself into when you were lonely and you’d rather be anywhere else, but here but Here is the only game in town. Don’t think I’m alone in this. Someday you’ll get to a point where you can’t call the shots anymore. They’ll call you, and you’ll have to wait by the phone.
Still, these precious hours are the apex of the weekend, the part we all wish could go on forever. It’s as though we were in a carnival ride, swinging high out over the cornfields, closer to the stars in this moment that we have been all week. In this time and place we can see forever, and in a few more hours we will have begun our re-entry into the atmosphere of Sunday morning. Right now everything is clean and holy, and all we need is a few dollars in our pocket, a place to sit, and a strong drink with which to wet our lips. We can ignore the slappers, the bad Irish music, and the constant sports feed (on not one but two big screens!) Our ancient home continues its orbit around a prolonged nuclear explosion. All we ask is a few more precious seconds of this warmth, this innocence, this endless stretch of hassle-free nothingness. Monday morning is coming up like a sunrise on the horizon, but right now the Earthbound tedium of our workaday existence is a million miles away…
CUT TO: Monday morning. The hustle and bustle on the road to Doom, people racing each other out of the Metro station, up the escalators, fighting for a seat on the shuttle – just headed to work. The faster they travel up the ramp to that daily abattoir, the better they like it. The girl with the violin legs is back, in her tall brown leather boots and a skirt like theater curtains…I’m listening to the Rolling Stones, watching it all happen, as I always have, as I always will.
(“Tell me, Sister Morphine / when are you… coming ‘round again?”)
