tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69997779002068013502024-02-18T18:24:48.879-08:00The Reverse Frasierjameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-59777803751456206672009-12-24T07:52:00.000-08:002009-12-24T09:46:02.443-08:00At the bottom of everything - αχανές (day eighty one)The Useless Sums & Equations-<br /><br />Distance driven - 12,581 miles<br /><br />Distance travelled (including flights) - 21,381 miles<br /><br />Average miles per day (with car) - 179.73 miles<br /><br />Average speed over 80 days - 6.55mph<br /><br />Average speed over 80 days (with flights) - 11.41mph<br /><br />States visited - 29 (Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoaQQzudCfZ_V5n7cntsHtuhoRmpNB2erTrRiIt7G_jc15oKYDGsfNG_7xZQDhCCCmmNublkldiFVu7q2DinDJkfJIQSOuNS-G_mlEZU8NE90VrUOzJo8nxfDtvdbkQnAWj0lww5J_4B69/s1600-h/james+photos+114.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoaQQzudCfZ_V5n7cntsHtuhoRmpNB2erTrRiIt7G_jc15oKYDGsfNG_7xZQDhCCCmmNublkldiFVu7q2DinDJkfJIQSOuNS-G_mlEZU8NE90VrUOzJo8nxfDtvdbkQnAWj0lww5J_4B69/s400/james+photos+114.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418834530947651058" border="0" /></a><br />Flopping down on the old sprung mattress, my permanent indents still matching me, I look out at the old view I know by heart, past starry curtains the same since I was eight. Hordes of paper and clothes spread around me, flung out of bags, travel battered and stinking. The room is still the same, and it feels like I've only returned to the idea of home. In the dark I stare at the glow in the dark bugs, the way I always used to when I couldn't sleep, listening to 'The Sea Is A Good Place To Think About The Future', revelling in temporary perfection and perfect meeting of melody, mood and atmosphere. My words are running out, the glass spilt its contents. The leopard still wedged in its usual spot, betwixt bedframe and cream walls. The cat has forgotten who I am. We all slot into our family roles and it feels no different. What have I learnt?<br /><br />Eventually nostalgia for the old empire is sated. BMX boys make wanker signs at each other on the opposite platform as I sit in the faded carpet seats of a train - my heart sighs. The girl opposite is reading Ginsberg, I'm reading Kerouac - in a parallel universe a confident man has approached her with a winning opening, swooped and grabbed. Nothing has changed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGRdnm_LkuxVMN31UpYNwXTjYODDDWRGB4u5AUxQp1ZoYOJA1hVNiyxVl3LfPsrqvKUok2Q7tYGl5UrLwejw4Dwt2RRwfMvZh-mYbSvNrzj9xuyuPDB7Hye10OZfL864GQl4xPyOJ9rac-/s1600-h/winchester+to+bakersfield+032.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGRdnm_LkuxVMN31UpYNwXTjYODDDWRGB4u5AUxQp1ZoYOJA1hVNiyxVl3LfPsrqvKUok2Q7tYGl5UrLwejw4Dwt2RRwfMvZh-mYbSvNrzj9xuyuPDB7Hye10OZfL864GQl4xPyOJ9rac-/s400/winchester+to+bakersfield+032.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418859842951423618" border="0" /></a><br />Endings are hard to write without conclusions to structure and balance the narrative. So take heed, young sirs; where appropriate I bent the truth, outright lied, romanticised, fantasised, pretended and distorted. There are more truths created that way. To condense an American road trip into an emphatic bravado rousing finale will not do. I cannot do it.<br /><br />Think this - What did he <span style="font-style: italic;">learn</span>? What did he <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span>?<br /><br />This is the end.<br /><br />Here.<br /><br />Anywhere.<br /><br /><iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=116934729425460419327.000474f2d122bdc95d5cf&ll=38.780786,-97.256241&spn=18.670896,54.529266&output=embed" frameborder="0" height="350" scrolling="no" width="425"></iframe><br /><small>View <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=116934729425460419327.000474f2d122bdc95d5cf&ll=38.780786,-97.256241&spn=18.670896,54.529266&source=embed" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); text-align: left;">The Reverse Frasier</a> in a larger map</small>jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-75879736350946628372009-12-19T12:52:00.000-08:002009-12-20T06:15:13.959-08:00I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New York (day seventy nine and eighty)Lost in the galleries, the donations and estates hung in white walled cubes, we wander from room to room, accelerating. Sometimes the view onto the angular skyscrapers is more interesting - when we face blank Rothkos, or blank canvases, or blank walls - that juxtaposition of stones and tiles and steel and glass and a century of design. Then you spy a Lichtenstein or a Klimt or a Matisse or a Picasso or a Warhol or someone you've never seen before, but how do they do that? No time to...pass through...go....to the next image....soak in pigments onto retinas....more....art becoming drudge if you don't put the thought in...obliques...graph paper and text. Slowpacers wander and ponder with chin in hand, glasses just so betwixt fingers, reflecting. I need some energy, the movement of Jackson Pollock, the still of a photograph capturing a portrait of grey faced children - something tangible. Grab your bags and flee the MOMA, past design classics inflatable armchairs and coffee mugs to the outside smog. I'm sick of foreign accents, so take me to the estuaries. I'm finished in this town.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE71C75AUaM3F-HzfqPnetCwSLZM6alQxfMD6-mdz8igLrdgLTWofouAwngY1zMzdyKf2B_b3G6U9FtA1Obz_QM3YHslD5aRJGmDcszuyIfyXGYOjDwLudgcdF-LBGoHWS5eaefwATdlcA/s1600-h/09092009437.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE71C75AUaM3F-HzfqPnetCwSLZM6alQxfMD6-mdz8igLrdgLTWofouAwngY1zMzdyKf2B_b3G6U9FtA1Obz_QM3YHslD5aRJGmDcszuyIfyXGYOjDwLudgcdF-LBGoHWS5eaefwATdlcA/s400/09092009437.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417320865334364498" border="0" /></a>The Greenwich village is the real New York. No one lives where we stay - amongst the businesses and headquarters and food stalls. Amidst the workplaces is where we sleep, looking up at fire escapes and down on the pilgrims on their way to Times Square; glittering lights and billboards and emporiums. The stoops are scrawled in child's hand drawn chalk fish, or community socials, but mostly empty. They're all where we were, always left too early. Le Petite Puppy treats their dogs well, playing in the window. The answer to the song's question is either $699 or $999. Romance is always fading. John McCain's daughter buys her puppies here. Three storey red bricks and stoops, quiet behind the trees. No one is home. The basketball courts reverb to the bounces and jeers of the vested men, gaming away and swooshing the net - done the same thing for years now, sweat crusted into the same blue baggy T shirt.<br /><br />Rest on the wooden benches, wild flowers high up on a recycled railway track, perfume spreading the breeze. It rolls beneath concrete buildings, the sixties leftovers they forgot by the Hudson. In a recliner reading the Village Voice, roads flowing beneath us, it all feels eroded. Traffic moves in cycles, circling Times Square beneath all the city's neon. Spinning around, we soak it in, the final moments at the end of the road. To bed to sleep to forget to remember to all of it to fading out to dreams... I wandered the square, hoping to glimpse your jet hair and freckles in the swirling crowds. This was my farewell to it all, but you didn't turn up. I could have walked miles that night, trying to wear out my sadness. Billboards reflected in my eyes and I couldn't sleep.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAQjcS2g0Gqu4q7y3pU3VBY8dDqhb-qTsfIw3XPQefDzHm0cBpOc0UEdq2f9M-Qmuv__yRfT5GLj3VBZoHILEKZnNOXPCFlRAk1g6SB9_ck023tWssHfUwM60sQqmA3oNXp9CKthcKTH1/s1600-h/09092009458.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAQjcS2g0Gqu4q7y3pU3VBY8dDqhb-qTsfIw3XPQefDzHm0cBpOc0UEdq2f9M-Qmuv__yRfT5GLj3VBZoHILEKZnNOXPCFlRAk1g6SB9_ck023tWssHfUwM60sQqmA3oNXp9CKthcKTH1/s400/09092009458.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417320589875301506" border="0" /></a>While I was away I became better and you weren't a part of it. Gone in another economic confederation pretending to be the adult we could see you would never become. Pushed pennies into a hundred arcade games, waiting for the chinking of coins to validate my existence. Fired the ball into the red circled hole like I knew what I was doing, collecting the ticket chains to trade quarters for plush toys. My bowling arm grew strong again and I can throw without the rails now, mother. Drank beer with people I'll never see again, surrounded by people I'll never see again, surrounded by people who don't know who I am, and still I didn't raise my voice. Smashed children at laser tag, like a sharpshooter with single figure accuracy. Ran around ghost towns with hands shaking at the slightest noise. Progressed. Learnt to fire baseballs back from a classic pose, all the while making myself a diluted Kerouac for the twenty first century, scrawling worthless thoughts under gold leaves. Didn't learn anything that can be explained in ink.<br /><br />This road trip finished on the other side of a continent. Condensing eighty days of adventuring and exploring into some pithy evaluation/conclusion is not a sensible goal. The previous pages of this journals are my summing up. Get back to me when you've done your revision.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1l37WueFtACooUdZn2Buv6BmGvSzLRpoXHArDacBnNbCRxQ15sz6FMZINj9mmbZMZjpi08jKgLqWtSlbBVCBxtiWuSTL45FJYNBFSq1mq52osvGosZ1NtdgOBU9nR3fGVCeIzVZgfJdmu/s1600-h/07092009362.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1l37WueFtACooUdZn2Buv6BmGvSzLRpoXHArDacBnNbCRxQ15sz6FMZINj9mmbZMZjpi08jKgLqWtSlbBVCBxtiWuSTL45FJYNBFSq1mq52osvGosZ1NtdgOBU9nR3fGVCeIzVZgfJdmu/s400/07092009362.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417321496290558370" border="0" /></a>Journeying home is empty - time filled with killing time, like this is a way to spend time, sitting. New York I love you but you're bringing me down. Emotions are absent, they'll catch up with the time change and the discombobulation of jetlag. As I write from this air conditioned nightmare, a fractioned final entry, all I can hear are the sounds of Terminator Salvation, explosions, screams, gunfire and robot sound effects - the screen is blue and broken. And somehow I try to see more in this final memory than actually exists, as if it is a final observation, a final telling synecdoche for the whole trip, a statement on America, but all it really is is a bad movie on a 3 inch square screen, 6 inches in front of my head, 36,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean and a thousand miles from everyone.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-87613118974932305342009-12-18T10:56:00.000-08:002009-12-18T12:57:50.338-08:00Sproadic dreams distant (day seventy seven and seventy eight)Your brow shouldn't be so wrinkled, boy, you're only twenty one. Subway wanderer, he switches carriages at every stop, patrolling with a face so pathetic and diffident, saturnine disposition. Cardboard sign with a list of simple needs - socks and a sleeping bag. His T shirt is all holes, worn out too young. Nothing is easy as a vagrant - to get to the subway you need a fare, to write a sign you need a pen, to do anything you need money. These young netjumpers, the small fry who escape downward and out through society. Reminders of the slips that could lower us all - we are all downcast and guilty.<br /><br />Notices are everywhere - security and fear in early September. Report any suspicious activity, eyes everywhere, metal detectors and so on. It all goes slow motion as the carriage behind explodes, debris spiralling past my head. I am calm and seated, and my eyes are closed in rapture and reverie, glorious doom. At Ground Zero they sell magazines entitled 'Tragedy' and photos of the dreadful impact - rubbernecking death tourism - this is not appropriate. Add in panpipes playing 'More Than A Woman.' Overcoming disaster has never seemed so mawkish. Rebuilding has begun, foundations are down. In a few years this will be a place of sombre reflection - for now just stare at capitalism and cry your big salty tears.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhz1gMpUkdjXeZVcUuKdo0dKWCrrG2Vf5Hn8gKZC944hLJbA8Xj0z1LqkZ70qn6883oF_ASZJp-KuL_HhPHghLNst4czCvqzAXOVyYPKs5XlyqLaiPwA3Yd8VyVpxUCdkztDV-c7-dxNXS/s1600-h/07092009314.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhz1gMpUkdjXeZVcUuKdo0dKWCrrG2Vf5Hn8gKZC944hLJbA8Xj0z1LqkZ70qn6883oF_ASZJp-KuL_HhPHghLNst4czCvqzAXOVyYPKs5XlyqLaiPwA3Yd8VyVpxUCdkztDV-c7-dxNXS/s400/07092009314.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416682782287485170" border="0" /></a>Presidents began on Wall Street, when it was the capital, and before the bankers moved in and made it toxic. The floppy haired, striped shirted hordes, with briefcase and braces, are absent, spending Labor Day with the family, not the mistress, not walking down the narrow stone streets so security conscious with their barriers and pillars. Global economic misery is left behind, down to the bull where tourists crowd round, clambering, hustling, shoving for photos. No wonder it looks ready to charge. When did the bull replace the yellow taxi as a symbol for the city?<br /><br />The kids in Times Square spray paint a skyline in minutes, space smeared spattered onto laminate. A few techniques mastered and you have a business. The Naked Cowgirl is less successful - makeup and a bikini do not do her sixty year old frame any favours - she just looks startled. Ellis Island was an entrance, now we're passing through on the way out. Millions passed through terrified and full of hope, sold an American dream, said goodbye to parents, examined and tested and mostly accepted (unless you're disabled or ill), and failed or succeeded on the streets of a burgeoning city, eking out an existence. Photos of moustachioed Russians, beshawled Polish girls - wide eyed and tight lipped, weatherbeaten Irish farmers - all filed away. They passed the Statue of Liberty, loaded with symbolism, half seasick/homesick looking at the torch of freedom, unshackled. Too obvious, just a tourist photo opportunity, meaning and origins pre-established. All of it just representative of America, unsubtle and massive and opportunity always. Spy it all under the glittering nightlights, the towers random window lights sprinkled, all glinting down in the financial district, up in downtown, across in the Bronx and Staten Island and Brooklyn, all yellow lights, all around, under a purple clouded darkness, spread wide over above us.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNmgg3XZyHuT2xgTh-L-arAshC49xZC3mFCEZgIlePWj9UuLE5cQLqXyFPkOt6XWTBVzwcxsdkK4oTISegGXLJ9tKoZS7QxG8knGMaR3MHNzGOYHgv2fagfO0fOzAKfkG7rwOhYlGFP86/s1600-h/08092009372.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNmgg3XZyHuT2xgTh-L-arAshC49xZC3mFCEZgIlePWj9UuLE5cQLqXyFPkOt6XWTBVzwcxsdkK4oTISegGXLJ9tKoZS7QxG8knGMaR3MHNzGOYHgv2fagfO0fOzAKfkG7rwOhYlGFP86/s400/08092009372.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416682241479290002" border="0" /></a>There are few sights more depressing than a man taking photos of himself with the New York skyline. No one to take it for him, he snaps, checks it on the LCD screen on the back of his camera, and goes back down the Rockefeller. Alone and rushing on. The MOMA is closed - it's a Tuesday, duh. Back to 5th Avenue with us, to watch the immaculate spend their dollars to keep themselves immaculate. Another movie set is in place - Sex and the City Two is drawing crowds, straining over the barriers to glimpse Carrie, Charlotte, or Miranda, behind the makeup artists and screens and the PAs and the cameramen and wardrobe and continuity and grips and best boys and the battery of paparazzis keeping the machine of publicity oiled. Passers by wonder why all these women have gathered at a distance. They snicker when they receive their answer. Core demographics suggest the crowd will be exclusively female - I am the only exception to this rule.<br /><br />The Home Alone toy shop doesn't look the same anymore, now it's a spacious Hamleys, the soul stripped out to sell toys. Tom Hanks still dreams of it, the Big piano tucked in a corner to let you try your hand -or your feet - so much trickier than thought. Trip over yourself before you play a melody. The horde of girls have scarpered into the Apple Store to tweet about it - playing with the aluminium clad circuit boards, aspiring.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT19R8cJ2AnZT8rmlwOOILWazLnAoy4qkO85TbEGFg-ZkPzHQ7kWzfAqBFnTDdWe-QRGEBp3_Q01fF9JFidzLbi2AsXkWv8qpInBV2L5VcSdR68HKTlKMr7uB2R888uCdra8zU1Pyx3SJt/s1600-h/08092009389.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT19R8cJ2AnZT8rmlwOOILWazLnAoy4qkO85TbEGFg-ZkPzHQ7kWzfAqBFnTDdWe-QRGEBp3_Q01fF9JFidzLbi2AsXkWv8qpInBV2L5VcSdR68HKTlKMr7uB2R888uCdra8zU1Pyx3SJt/s400/08092009389.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416682471806750082" border="0" /></a>Macy's is Debenhams with elephantiasis; overlarge but still dire - capsule stores superglued into a nine storey stone clad boredom centre - all carrying a little but never the things you want. Somehow it gained a reputation for shopping. Tapering to a point, impossibly narrow, mapping the diagonal cross point of Broadway and 5th, ornate carvings line iconic Flatiron. You've seen it, we've all seen it. Beautiful early 2oth century elegance, all perfect ratios and fractions on a draughting pad, translated into stone and pictures. Streams of cars are fleeing across the Hudson into Brooklyn, under the arches and the cable spans. Pedestrians climb the boardwalk jumping away from hellspent cyclists swerving down as everyone photographs the skyline and the span. No one crosses, heads back to their hotels and squirrel away in their hotel rooms, feeling sick watching network news.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-52370114920054808182009-12-08T07:16:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:06:15.443-08:00They act like Romans, but they dress like Turks (day seventy five and seventy six)O, the joy of rattling on steel rails across state borders. No interstate rest stop merging filter lane debacles. Just head nodding sweet and lo fi tinny melodies out of an iPod, and Homer writing great tales badly. Odysseus has conquered the rose fingered dawn once again. I'll walk into Heathrow with my fists above my head, expecting cheers, whoops and claps like the most popular character in any given 90s American sitcom. The noises will fade down and I'll pick a pithy wry aside with a smirk sneer smeared on my face.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNTUBdGc01d1ZBDYOvZJNHQ07RzHV_PAF5tjISyRxqaq6sn1ON-nPEyraPw0Za4t3BQxYKDIb9C-qS83YKEXZrNnysamkqPhcfCMCdTexwll6AsgzD3HSI2yMsLo4LF81yMyfl-fRQjs1/s1600-h/05092009238.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNTUBdGc01d1ZBDYOvZJNHQ07RzHV_PAF5tjISyRxqaq6sn1ON-nPEyraPw0Za4t3BQxYKDIb9C-qS83YKEXZrNnysamkqPhcfCMCdTexwll6AsgzD3HSI2yMsLo4LF81yMyfl-fRQjs1/s400/05092009238.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412896353275699538" border="0" /></a>Behind us the ladies bond over their shared love of Twilight - one is ashamed - too old for this she reckons - she's right - everyone's too old - for books for people who don't like books. A besuited businessman mops his brow on the summerheat of the subway, telling everyone to "get away from me", fiddling with papers, tattered, folded into a creased leather case, zip long broken, half shambling and half jogging away at the next available stop, another neurotic stereotype swallowed up by the swirling crowds.<br /><br />Rhode Island is full of boats and weekend sailors. Rowing boats are paddled out into reed fringed lakes from weather beaten jetties, a man perched on the bow, topless and muscled, a net in hand, staring down and waiting, sunbathers perched on towels, egrets perched on banks, while the traffic crosses all the iron bridges, all the same triangular girder arrangements, always. We're just skirting little Rhode Island, past the boat houses and the boarded pale blue buildings, into Connecticut. Black boys gather in white T shirts, sitting outside a house to talk the day away. Old abandoned shops and vacant lots are all around - the poor black / rich white social bisection observable from up high on the railway tracks. Escaping the Penn station pillared maze takes time and a clear head, but we weary carcasses tumble it down into a taxi in New York City.<br /><br />This is the end of the road, where Kerouac began it all, before we all finish - the last city. Yellow cab rides to the hotel, past the pillared Post Office that never closes, and all those skyscapers that draw your eyes up to their teetering turret; blue, grey, brown. The gargoyles are out of site.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMITcYFhdvIyi_OwoEqRgFwDuHij-Api2KDvNGREw-dRMVyJ9Ijclk9Gcbk01qnwLlQqX602KIuFfYd6hJYai6PQW6aEE64aYvfa0j7aQRvFBPxhPHs6SVIxUvHzWeeZUOGpA-GdhMMA9X/s1600-h/06092009260.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMITcYFhdvIyi_OwoEqRgFwDuHij-Api2KDvNGREw-dRMVyJ9Ijclk9Gcbk01qnwLlQqX602KIuFfYd6hJYai6PQW6aEE64aYvfa0j7aQRvFBPxhPHs6SVIxUvHzWeeZUOGpA-GdhMMA9X/s400/06092009260.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412895530908784546" border="0" /></a>A million people line the streets of Manhattan tonight, sweat prickles on their forehead reflect the endless cycling of neon billboards above their heads. It's the shuffle pace that drags you down, sapping energy. Insistent girls foist tickets on me, I protest and they don't listen. This is why no one remembers me at Tiananmen Square. Adverts are everywhere, shops and restaurants and all the horns blaring from the jaundiced ranks of taxi; you must spend to exist, to be. Hustle and bustle are making me tense - to the hotel. Robbery blues and all the accents.<br /><br />The whole of New York is clogging Central Park, learning to rollerblade, sunbathing in swimsuits in the middle of a city, riding bicycles in lycra shorts and lycra zip up tops - racing machines trapped on leafy boulevards - whishing past bent low on sheephorn curved handlebars, competitive walking with cheeks pumped wide to suck down all your oxygen, so determined for so slow a pace, throwing pigskin or frisbee, watching tourists ride in carriages or pedicabs getting the slickpatter spiel. All this intersects behind in front and side to side of the churning wheels of our hire bicycles, sit up and begs cog wheel spinning fast as we weave through it all. The road opens my brain to thinking, to space, and lying down under trees to stare through the gaps in the leaves to the sky, spearing sentences with a harpoon and saving it all for never. Slack time we sit by ponds and watch a thousand New Yorkers moving away in every direction while reading books as if we were natives.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZXKqVqAQtwVUURmqlRiYq-2ERrIcS7-ovkE_DBgaiLeDW6QDyDGTqxIRl0hwFPqOwrTtPHHZfry2BnkUvc04FaPXXNunT4KFJ-EtSgEIKp-Ex10__YlbYWYwTedtg6Q6wn0htuT5fzgdi/s1600-h/IMG_8062.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZXKqVqAQtwVUURmqlRiYq-2ERrIcS7-ovkE_DBgaiLeDW6QDyDGTqxIRl0hwFPqOwrTtPHHZfry2BnkUvc04FaPXXNunT4KFJ-EtSgEIKp-Ex10__YlbYWYwTedtg6Q6wn0htuT5fzgdi/s400/IMG_8062.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412895924986895138" border="0" /></a>Brazilians swarm the streets - a national day for every nation, yellow and green cheering purloining from all the stalls. Observable even from up here on the Rockefeller, looking down 65 storeys from the top of a lift shaft, to the Empire State and the Hearst Tower and a million apartments and offices in stone, metal and glass, built by old folks who laid girders and clambered around, posing for iconic photos because it was important, because it was. Trump Tower has trees on the outside, sumptuous like the artwork strung around the Rockefeller Plaza, Art Deco classicist forms elegant and perfect. This is where the ice rink is in winter, that one in all the movies. Grand Central the journeys all begin, in a cavernous hall beneath painted stars, pulses of pedestrians pacing past a phalanx of photographers trying to do the long exposure photo that everyone does, where the people are blurred but the background is still; romance in its open spaces, the couples kissing goodbye, farewells from dampened lungbreaths. Central Park gives breath to the city, an open space of green in all the grey black mass always growing up cos it can't grow out. The Statue of Liberty only welcomes tour groups and cruise ships, just a dot from up here, behind the plate glass on a clouded Sunday, perched eagles on an eyrie. The designer stores don't need to advertise, hide themselves behind smoked glass, doormen ready for the well to heel, stitched up and made up, not the rest, or those with cardboard signs, more weathered and faded than the rest, in a corner, placed there, a model, a statement in the lush waste of Fifth Avenue. We see it all from our eyrie, sweeping away again.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-17427956978727828802009-12-03T10:58:00.000-08:002009-12-03T12:02:56.390-08:00Threaded (day seventy three and seventy four)My knowledge of American television schedules has improved beyond even my wildest expectations. Nickelodeon shows iCarly, everywhere shows Frasier, HBO shows movies and pornography. Throw out the TV Guide, there's a new cowboy in town. These three sentences show that the thousands of debt are all worth it.<br /><br />Post watermelon slices we drag our weary carcasses onto the T, away from the cathode ray tube and its million entertainments. They all head to college or work, reading books as personality notations - it best be battered and vintage to show you love it hard - or in the splendid isolation of headphones pincering your skull, eyes closed and away from the meetings/business lunches/tests/seminars/dates and the yatter yatter yatter of daily grind you escape for just one moment in the underground cocoon tunnel air conditioned chill, dressed for success. The only similarity between the Cheers Bar and the Cheers TV show is they share a trademarked logo. The pubs themselves don't even look similar - a moose head hangs in here, and the clientele all snap photos swinging beer, too early in the day for bear. Norm only ever visited as a cardboard cutout.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqLcG_nalIEX-qLbR7lnKOg4vi1XTweJjkcQUXTMvWPwLAiDLsQefpFEaKyrSi4BFqDrngxzqJlRGeSXLso1QrXqUYwZO5th5ZKhErTjtnPCXDGvgneGeFUeiKIU-i3oaxVD56hFT0lJP7/s1600-h/03092009187.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqLcG_nalIEX-qLbR7lnKOg4vi1XTweJjkcQUXTMvWPwLAiDLsQefpFEaKyrSi4BFqDrngxzqJlRGeSXLso1QrXqUYwZO5th5ZKhErTjtnPCXDGvgneGeFUeiKIU-i3oaxVD56hFT0lJP7/s400/03092009187.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411101259123940994" border="0" /></a>We all follow the red brick road, looking at historical markers that don't mean anything anymore. Graveyards filled with bodies, the tombstones in ordered rows, marked with flying skulls, the soul is leaving the body, shallow carved into granite. Crossing battle lines, past massacres, winding through the endless intersections of red brick houses, to the markets, where the black guys dance for us all, contorting and straining muscles to make a buck - "Come forward. Black guys dancing. No weapons. Giving us money keeps us out of two places - the courthouse, and your house" - this is how to patter your way to $2, all taking turns to spin and headstand to raise cheers and applause; from there to the downtown panorama, steel glass turrets tower to other towers, clear, with six million numbers etched in, tiny digits, inconsequential, that represent a human life, a Jewish life ended, affecting and horribly poignant, and on, to the North End, with I-talian men and all the restaurants, and on to the waterfront at last, our freedom trail ended - where a vagrant shades herself by a tree, trolley parked a way off, buried under a hundred carrier bags of every hue, Joseph's technicolour junkbag - who knows what's inside the vintage boutique yardsale. Downriver lie boats, and water spills into the sea turning saline and tidal. All the bridges take the traffic crossways in pulsing waves with the lights redgreenred. We're already underneath, with the commuters and the tourists and the students, riding home on curved tracks, second guessing it all.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CuW14cUWVwlh23I9-WLhsR-pnLs-Ezfk6lhz2W16bZ4g3RYyjjIkcB2NzXkzF_IHSrykfbulGITsG-qd6mLRrYc_zrKtzABFSBFP_Z9XcNhwZsttv0AOa9MUfId2ixdn7OXgmiEuc3oM/s1600-h/IMG_8056.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CuW14cUWVwlh23I9-WLhsR-pnLs-Ezfk6lhz2W16bZ4g3RYyjjIkcB2NzXkzF_IHSrykfbulGITsG-qd6mLRrYc_zrKtzABFSBFP_Z9XcNhwZsttv0AOa9MUfId2ixdn7OXgmiEuc3oM/s400/IMG_8056.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411100552327575858" border="0" /></a>I see you, you're walking across the campus, cruel professors studying romances. Harvard lacks the charm of Cambridge or Oxford. No Cam to punt on, no cobbled street spires. Red brick elegance is all they have, Georgian symmetry round a shaded tree covered lawn, chair sprinkled and student scattered. America's finest are networking, not working, coffee drinkers. Harvard Natural History Museum is keeping taxidermists and formaldehyde manufacturers in business. Hides are worn, some rips showing the straw and wood beneath. The fish look plastic. The jars have bleached the colour out of the insects, but the pinned butterflies still shimmer. Fossils line all the walls, skeletons frozen in a moment in time when the asteroid smashed down and covered it all in a layer of dust. These are the Navajo plunder - Henry is seething over his herbal tea. A chiseled out dinosaur egg behind glass, next to a thousand other natural marvels - a dodo, an extinct duck and ancient sea monsters. This gallery is curating a fish phobia, mouths wide open, exposing teeth. Fumes are tripping me out, hummingbirds swarm out of the case, in size order spiralling around my head, flapping wings beyond visible frequency. Under an Aztec mural I lie, triangles pecked from my flesh.<br /><br />A crowd is gathered beneath the painted monument atop Bunker Hill, watching the shielded activities behind black shreds. A famous looking man swings his arms to syke himself up, looking taller and thinner than he does on camera. It is Ben Affleck. All the famous people I see are ones I don't like. Extras are timed to walk across the shot at the same point - women, men, children running, man, man. The clapboards clap and take after take fills the camera. The screens move to block the light. Nothing can be done to enliven the process. In the future, in the cinema, we will see this second scene and proclaim "we were there". We have nothing to be proud of. No one knows why they stay to watch, they just do. In hushed awe of a boring silver screen star. All the glitter got blown away in the wind.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6jqzKKY0TW_Vmfz1pwP5rISDa0sYvSqRmCfnCRdWmcYpO3VRqUD9-VgvDw9RnImBJUA0cgXlhV_zQUlxCN7Axd_3CaTtMzYhoLTU3-g6t_JB4mO62dkVpVR2yLGqHEsVvrPqD_GGieXc/s1600-h/04092009216.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6jqzKKY0TW_Vmfz1pwP5rISDa0sYvSqRmCfnCRdWmcYpO3VRqUD9-VgvDw9RnImBJUA0cgXlhV_zQUlxCN7Axd_3CaTtMzYhoLTU3-g6t_JB4mO62dkVpVR2yLGqHEsVvrPqD_GGieXc/s400/04092009216.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411101531672172514" border="0" /></a>Rock n' roll lifestyles have blurred it all together. These cities are all the same. Museums and cafes and restaurants and hotels and galleries and shops and cinemas, a business district with skyscrapers quiet suburbs, tree lined, ghettos a way away but close... run together, the edges smeared. Suitcase living is bringing me down. None of them are any different. Harvard bristles like an upmarket Portland which was a less developed Seattle which was a less bohemian San Francisco which was a less Mexican Albuquerque... it goes on. Students hustle on a Friday night, in finery and shirts to carouse, around the cafes and bars on the square, or riding the T across the city, spirits firing. Jealousy is written in green ink on my wrinkled forehead. In my shins, and in my mind, I am old at 22.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-86232376388861321552009-11-26T11:22:00.000-08:002009-11-27T06:24:20.221-08:00θάνατος (day seventy one and seventy two)Down the stairs, across the sand, down there, below the lighthouse, where petal waves splash down gently, hushed flops onto the sand, that's where the Atlantic is. Two months ago the Pacific was hugging the right hand side of the car. Now it's 10,000 miles behind us on a hundred different roads. Hours spent contorting beneath a steering wheel, chin rested in redundant left palm, thumb, index and middle fingers steering, rested on my leg, mouth howling a caterwaul of half remembered lyrics from none of your favourite tunes. Through cities and interstates and intersections, highways, curves and corners over and over until my shoulders ache from hauling a tonne if aluminium around the mountains. Now we contemplate an ocean, a continent behind us. Two speeding tickets the only red marks in the jotter. Silence but for seagulls and children.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEF-Exfkb-DoaD8gCe7yJZnpyZOqf_dssAPp_V9ggElLS9jsSl94MvMv1N1qxR3vI39ohKflUF_V2g8k_zFz7XTVw-7rCvF_Nbpv0CE3r4qSkf4a2y_1YffJcLJxyjkUaURdxqhoCDR1Dz/s1600/01092009137.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEF-Exfkb-DoaD8gCe7yJZnpyZOqf_dssAPp_V9ggElLS9jsSl94MvMv1N1qxR3vI39ohKflUF_V2g8k_zFz7XTVw-7rCvF_Nbpv0CE3r4qSkf4a2y_1YffJcLJxyjkUaURdxqhoCDR1Dz/s400/01092009137.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408787506705879170" border="0" /></a><br />Martha's Vineyard remains unsighted - the car parks were too hidden so we missed the boat (you always miss the boat). Economic calibrations lead to a tasty lunch; sandy crunch of onion rings and a panini. When did I become so predictable? The moustachioed hipsters say I'm losing my edge. My tae kwon do jacket says they're wrong. Falmouth wants to be so much more than it is - the shops die after a couple of hundred metres of sidewalk. Ran out of puns - Sundae School, Dog Days A-Rover... They're needed to add the quaintness they so deserve. Past a million mini golfs we stop counting everything (these blank paragraphs are nothing but numbers and whimsy) and go to Chatham, the elbow of Cape Cod. The Tap N Tin and Billy Childish and centuries of ship building never felt so far away. Name filching pilgrims. Keep your mitts off or I'll send you down me own bleeding self. National pride was restored this morning when Britain retained its binge drinking world champion title. Our teenagers win, once more. They stay within their designated parks, swigging and swilling, for dearest Blighty, swinging fists and snogging. These are our boundaries. My suitcase is overpopulated and the borders are closed. High rise living is bringing me down. Take me to my cottage, darling, I feel a little faint.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzDQ5VeUJHZEks4Jv78R8Ry9FgijXeNPIlzLx5t3PUIjp9IEZok1eaV2KjGGilv7prQayRBpHm2FvJP6CNhcgo6Op4tLrCxQm8pIkLJ5FWbyamfyaDft6htkS59vZ3v2wXLaGBQQE6tcbd/s1600/02092009142.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzDQ5VeUJHZEks4Jv78R8Ry9FgijXeNPIlzLx5t3PUIjp9IEZok1eaV2KjGGilv7prQayRBpHm2FvJP6CNhcgo6Op4tLrCxQm8pIkLJ5FWbyamfyaDft6htkS59vZ3v2wXLaGBQQE6tcbd/s400/02092009142.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408788353257774994" border="0" /></a>Farewell to Oscar. Just another Hyundai Accent that rolled off a production line last year. Undramatic, cantankerous silver car. Not a groan or a complaint for 12,581 miles. The whole journey was undramatic -two parking tickets, a couple of near miss bumper swipes, and hundreds of hours of plain driving, plane driving through every different American landscape. Our hands wave at the Alamo lot, as we leave him behind. Evacuees. The keys were nearly locked in the car... this is the closest we came to an incident. Our possessions lie behind us in a kilometres long Where's Wally? picture. Awkward goodbyes got left behind in Cape Cod. They are our last hosts. Yoga and weed in the forest. They all bemoan the drugs culture - what else is there to do? Stare at tourists or fish or putt. Visitors fill the guesthouses and youths chase dragons over the dunes. The final drive curves is round to Boston and one hotel from home. The dead autumnal cape is behind, some leaves red already, before the sun sinks down to a low arc.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin1JVUgqydFj9lIYcQAyIRbZcFIX3N46IQNDQBppWUWPzDdHiN7WYh4a_UcqKZdLBt-Cv1YGRMNaJmihjKuxtXgLcasJC0YF5J542ecI450NYP9ETRz1ApUQ93_k39YHX-yM-tQTtPxZsE/s1600/02092009146.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin1JVUgqydFj9lIYcQAyIRbZcFIX3N46IQNDQBppWUWPzDdHiN7WYh4a_UcqKZdLBt-Cv1YGRMNaJmihjKuxtXgLcasJC0YF5J542ecI450NYP9ETRz1ApUQ93_k39YHX-yM-tQTtPxZsE/s400/02092009146.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408787027367795442" border="0" /></a>Two buses and two trains to haul our luggage on and off of - heavy weights carried round a continent. The frat houses are putting up their Greek emblazoned signs. Papier mache entrances are being created, ready for keg parties. These town houses were built for the merchants of Boston to grow old in - now they youth wastes away in hurried brewer's droop romps and weak ale binges. Back Bay is flooded with college kids emptying their minds, in high fashion clothing, skinny and lithe. Stand outside bars and in cafes drinking coffees. Nostalgia for the university days is stalling my every step. Snatched conversations talk social engagements and homework, we sit in the park and ignore them all. Red brick churches hide in the shadow of blue monolith towers - juxtaposed ancient and modern. Trees line the pavements and malls by the designer boutiques - wealth is everywhere, the homeless denoted to the 7/11 stoop, heads bowed. They can't bear the eyes that stare and judge. Mani is ashamed of it all - he can only think of how he ended up here, alone, outside, a cardboard sign and a cup. Back in the public gardens businessmen perk their walk home with tinges of manicured green, watching the bored tourists on their slow pedalboat swan rides round the pond, getting close up views of ducks and algae. Lysergic horticultural preened, police mounted horse clopping around to administer justice to the coffee drinkers and the geese feeders. It all zings and sleeps at the same time. Everything is moving, everything is stationary.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-60066659538084672812009-11-25T13:26:00.000-08:002009-11-25T14:27:31.779-08:00Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars (day sixty nine and seventy)On every road trip one must pay their respects to the master. In a quiet cemetery, south of town and away from it all, rests the plaque of John Kerouac. Ti Jean, Duluoz, Jack Kerouac. The self denounced 'King of the Beats'. A small turquoise Buddha sits atop a hidden note. I nod my head, wishing that one day I shall be as successful a writer as he. There is no posing of photographs, just that quiet contemplation your brain always sinks to when it enters a graveyard, overcome by the masses of dead and damned underneath Massachusetts soil. The skate kids in the memorial park don't know who he is. Think they've heard of him at some point. They film grind tricks, jumping over the benches and falling, skateboard sliding off at angles. "At least my cousin did one thing right with his life." There is no telling how much of a porky pie white lie fib this is. Speaks of a family not to sad that the boy pickled himself to death, alcohol taking him at 47. Lowell still looks the same. The Merrimack, black flowing past the redbrick mills, some abandoned, old Boott still commanding the riverfront, some historic landmarks, national park service run. Walked here as a boy, splurging words into a typewriter rattle ding and throwing pigskin. We near the end with his end, reading his final chapter. You never read your own.<br /><br />Persecution blues make a tourist industry make a destination make preservation of old houses make child friendly. There are books about the Salem witch hunts. Volumes filled. Tonnes. A history graduate wants to write an essay. I left all that behind in another country. Hanged the afflicted girls, accused by a child playing power games, hysteria driving it higher and higher. What happens when good men stand by and do nothing. Wars. This is what happens when the good men lose any sense of perspective. Research equals complex social causes and elaborate academic sentences of multiple clauses. The beech panelling of a library has not been on my retinas for months. These cheap dioramas haven't taught me anything.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKo1dHy5NDyPDgc5uCMMhpuLHgwnWD7AmnuQnINgfElIjiVaOz3Ym4_sSoQSvqu8Fqta7WkpbdI6Qsn8K8LDRTuxhDRz2w_8ROhCNImKFVPdNg-56Sj00MDqnL30PR3mP4O3AZvNzRDZE/s1600/31082009120.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKo1dHy5NDyPDgc5uCMMhpuLHgwnWD7AmnuQnINgfElIjiVaOz3Ym4_sSoQSvqu8Fqta7WkpbdI6Qsn8K8LDRTuxhDRz2w_8ROhCNImKFVPdNg-56Sj00MDqnL30PR3mP4O3AZvNzRDZE/s400/31082009120.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408169827602958658" border="0" /></a>The Super 8 sidewalk is a domestic scene and we are the audience. Hurry hurry, back to your separate beds - 'Cereal Bridges II' is on and they're carving rice krispie cakes into the most impressive shapes. My palms are sweaty in anticipation for the conclusion of this trilogy.<br /><br />This is the eastern extent of our journey - out on an eastbound spit, whispering into the breeze. The road won't take us any further, only backwards, homewards. Flick to rewind on the remote control. Atop a giant sand dune, basking lizards, shoes down the slope. Grass holds it all together. We skitter down again, feet plunging deep into the viscous thick grained sand, dampcool between our toes. Provincetown is gayer than San Francisco - rainbow flags strung across the street. The minority of couple are heterosexual. Most are all male, ticking off the stereotypes - bald, tattooed, over preened. That they can be so openly together makes me muchly glad. An overweight Midwestern family stand amidst the human traffic, staring all around them - a lost and vacant gawp stuck on their faces, They look at the sexshop, posters for masturbation, lube proudly emblazoned. Nobody knows how they ended up here. Sold a lie in a travel brochure. "Provincetown sounded so nice, but then it was full of fags. Couldn't stand it. We lasted half an hour. Linda felt sick."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvlCcAUzXgC0QwwEknfuozhp_v85mAkwauOvj_CagJiFC40e3n78nO1D0SiTUFTGv2lbrvKE9mkpIaig8y9qYo6ZRFlPSdTxZUGmW6YLXarddU3t_yNuLfMvvAoTAnvmxemQRxerpiPfPY/s1600/31082009121.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvlCcAUzXgC0QwwEknfuozhp_v85mAkwauOvj_CagJiFC40e3n78nO1D0SiTUFTGv2lbrvKE9mkpIaig8y9qYo6ZRFlPSdTxZUGmW6YLXarddU3t_yNuLfMvvAoTAnvmxemQRxerpiPfPY/s400/31082009121.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408170186062290418" border="0" /></a>Independent shops dominate, clapboard wrapped houses in varying shades of grey, silver and white and guesthouses proclaiming their vacancies to the cycling contingent. Trellis separates us from the leather shackles of next door, eating vegetarian cuisine under the whitegrey clouds. The Karoo Kafe feeds us up. The Atlantic is away in front of us, an ocean that separates us. Heart strings stretch over waves.<br /><br />Another ball hooks right, a rusty swing sending the ball low and lost. Head came up, feet too close, bent too much, knees too rigid. Never going that far, but some glorious middle, straight to the hundred metre sign. The child in the next booth does not take to the teachings of the driving range owner. He can do it if he wants, could hit it to the two hundred mark. Just doesn't want to, Papa, my golf lessons were wasted. Stuart taught me well. I've still only ever crashed one golf cart.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsP_4OOaMICAHq_0e8V9Z_xoVWtaCQS-a_4kCA999AWsEZa-TSpxL-rnahK4TeTnvylbZsCU5Y_fQojxmefNHVNwxcRhK_gaVPO3Py2VXTZSc3oLcsZ4xgNHAk5RHMh2By6aZGHa2ZN0Vo/s1600/31082009127.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsP_4OOaMICAHq_0e8V9Z_xoVWtaCQS-a_4kCA999AWsEZa-TSpxL-rnahK4TeTnvylbZsCU5Y_fQojxmefNHVNwxcRhK_gaVPO3Py2VXTZSc3oLcsZ4xgNHAk5RHMh2By6aZGHa2ZN0Vo/s400/31082009127.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408170742841943170" border="0" /></a>Rachel's house burnt down so we are staying with Sarah in a pothead hideaway - Kerouac would be proud. The basement has to be deep cleaned before it is habitable, fragments of herbage spotted onto every surface. House party sweatstains / smokestains / drinkstains - a ballyhoo old ruckus sweet vibe goodtime. You can feel it. The space is quiet now, bar the cricket chirrups sounding outside in the sandy forest, far away, chirrups, and everyone gazes at the same stars from different telescopes, sighing, whispering hushed tones and scrawling into notebooks, empty chirrups, staring upwards at old constellations, twinkling arrangements they all named ages before, before Galileo and everything going wrong, when he scrawled into notebooks, on the sun and the moon, where the crickets hid underneath in the sandy forest, chirruping.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-90772220797876008382009-11-19T09:39:00.000-08:002009-11-19T10:16:29.700-08:00Mistwreathed wraiths (day sixty seven and sixty eight)Playing spy games - stealth and creeping back to the room on sideways tiptoe footsteps. I listen in to your conversations. I make notes of your lives. I know your movements. I have a dossier. I will use it. Over coffee I learn you are sending your daughter to UVM. She is a transfer student, this is her first time. Your booking at the Sheraton fell through, dearies, so you had to drive through the night time blank space Vermont to arrive here. I know how you each like your coffee. Papa is English, isn't he? Looks it, and the accent gives it away. How's life back at the farm? The owner of the inn comes from Cape Cod, bases his rules one experience. One choice at breakfast because of the New Jersey folks exploitation. Set down for the day. He encourages toiletry thievery - it's all branded. (I am not a creeper) (This is what happens when you eat breakfast alone).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVpsOZ4YCWU4FHOTWapEokQ0e7TPe5HGUlniZLg1lhHOsJZzwwfSE9wgqXgS5DjwNzsy0UvD1DYJ8cH9q4uzj2cWuCziTUwPq3SIdHMtPm7d5VhFASQq3jH4HjaGwI5VZJhSNIx_LU5AC/s1600/28082009104.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVpsOZ4YCWU4FHOTWapEokQ0e7TPe5HGUlniZLg1lhHOsJZzwwfSE9wgqXgS5DjwNzsy0UvD1DYJ8cH9q4uzj2cWuCziTUwPq3SIdHMtPm7d5VhFASQq3jH4HjaGwI5VZJhSNIx_LU5AC/s400/28082009104.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405879788050994290" border="0" /></a><br />Cosmo used to ply his trade on Johnny Carson in the 1980s. Now he's on the street in Burlington, performing his slick routine on a fold up table, hiding coins and guessing cards. Patter still has conviction, a thousand run throughs later. Passes the hat around, fills it up with bills. He's never had a $20. Liar. What happened? Why is he not in Vegas? The radon shirt speaks his loneliness, a sadness passes across his visage rapidly every time he pauses. How did he get the signed bill in the lemon? Double U. Tee. Eff. And the disappearing wand. Cosmo has got the beat down on the one man band, and the hippie lady with the guitar, sitting cross legged on the sidewalk. Burlington waterfront is quiet grassland, volleyball and couples straddling each other under a tree. The Adirondacks lie across the lake, yachts cruising in the breeze, sails tumbling round, tacking portsternaft rudder. We were there once, now we watch boats drift over there. It lies behind, everything behind on a long ribbon of crooked tarmac.<br /><br />Painting everything in gaudy cartoons does make your company ethical. Even when you sell yourself to the man. Ben and Jerry do other things now, they're too rich. The company churns out pints of 'super luxury' ice cream, all day/every day. Whitewashing with cuteness. The Flavor Graveyard (where are your 'U's America?) etc etc. Commercialism has never been so much fun.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWR7Wtcb3bmzT9hyphenhyphenTPVtAcWcZmj8NqvjnDd69y0n8MxkZrip1MXVk4-T_lj2DuE8neMqvl1eMNsoUnE6oz2XR-DUMhwNjLIIeOWUS-RIZZUnuMya0r-fMMZvLmiTYfGQuLeUSVl6j45Ln4/s1600/28082009095.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWR7Wtcb3bmzT9hyphenhyphenTPVtAcWcZmj8NqvjnDd69y0n8MxkZrip1MXVk4-T_lj2DuE8neMqvl1eMNsoUnE6oz2XR-DUMhwNjLIIeOWUS-RIZZUnuMya0r-fMMZvLmiTYfGQuLeUSVl6j45Ln4/s400/28082009095.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405878834398529218" border="0" /></a>Insomnia is taking me captive. Sleep eluded me, the pillow blocking out the light suffocated me. Noises jerked me awake. Thoughts never ceased. The only thing more boring than insomnia is reading about insomnia. We spend all day half asleep, drifting over mountain ranges, a woolen blanket of cloud hanging low. All is green, or white. They are your only choices.<br /><br />Montpelier covered the dome of their state capitol in gold. This is their only concession to bling culture. Only 10,000 people live in the small city, in timber framed Alpine houses. The chocolate and the cheese is letting everyone down. The state buildings are two storeys high, closed for the weekend with the shutters down. River flows idly by under rusted iron bridges. Autumn will be over in a month, crammed into a few weeks of redcrunch leaves spiralling down and blocking drains and gutters. Snow burying the sidewalks, glaciation in miniature, frost heave on the roads. Verdant shades don't last for long.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2zFgUSkfEszpJbz3yHyQdVlw-dRf3VIwSG6e-ZpQqDIO_3NUhkYgeqW5XbaWIzhCK8mganiWPnAzuGINyLk6ngbqHaB1FhuG3B7-lDZ4cQp9ER-VNwt-cUQ0s4CoweC2ZG2F1ERNcXCig/s1600/29082009113.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2zFgUSkfEszpJbz3yHyQdVlw-dRf3VIwSG6e-ZpQqDIO_3NUhkYgeqW5XbaWIzhCK8mganiWPnAzuGINyLk6ngbqHaB1FhuG3B7-lDZ4cQp9ER-VNwt-cUQ0s4CoweC2ZG2F1ERNcXCig/s400/29082009113.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405879040864065186" border="0" /></a>California is burning, but Vermont and New Hampshire are veiled in permanent drizzle, spattering the windows to wipe away the pale smears that mark the countless graves of the night time bugs that launched their attacks at our glass walls, impenetrable. You can't see the White Mountains any more. Fir trees extend upwards until they fade into misty white, away on a mountain peak we can't see. Mount Washington is somewhere above us, the cog railway sounds a desolate ghost horn far away down the valley, whistling to nothing, travelling a rising bed, then sinking back to the floor.<br /><br />New Hampshirites see the numberplate and stare. Yes, we are a long way from home, just further than you think. Hostile glares from their pickup trucks. They hurl your sandwich at you. Live free or die. I prefer my mottoes to be passive aggressive, it helps keep me perky through the day. Low budget movies fill the night, CGI sharks limited to two second cameos in their own film. The actors who thought they would never be in a movie. Now look at me, mother. You said I'd never succeed, but I'm in Spring Break Shark Attack. My name is on IMDB - a sure sign of success. We practise our mean faced laughs from beige duvets in a cold motel in Manchester - every place name stolen from a better place. Lebanon is everywhere. This town brought the red brick factories and the mill chimneys. Tarmac takes us south, with Boston a finger's stretch out of reach, lean further and you're there, further, further, done.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-35808351229635001582009-11-13T07:21:00.000-08:002009-11-13T08:40:40.146-08:00Dive bar remedies (day sixty five and sixty six)A breeze blew in my face all night. I couldn't sleep, the air bed deflating slowly underneath our combined bulk. Slow pace morning we race at Mario Kart to unlock the circuits and Homer tells tales of heroes long gone from the rose fingered dawn.<br /><br />This indie coffee house is helping my self image, collage of art styles and photos hodge podged onto the wall anyway they'll go, hipsters with hipster tattoos and thrift store junk clothes $10 outfit an odd angular face like a clock tower or the Guggenheim razor edged. The mocha tastes fine out of a plain white cup while we talk politics, incessant politics. Old bluesmen look down from 12 inch record covers, missing New Orleans or Chicago or Memphis, or wherever, but not Utica. Never Utica. No one misses Utica.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeENIgHlky-IIL5s2lftWCuKat9qmGHuqLY0LGnTpKusDdp1wf6ksrGyRYY8zPzhhtGzwLpJi_UqbDr4awzMv0M53Rj8lF_pKN86iuXBO_AndsBFN0FjwBKbK9Qvxe1KU54ElRSFfFjOqZ/s1600-h/27082009077.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeENIgHlky-IIL5s2lftWCuKat9qmGHuqLY0LGnTpKusDdp1wf6ksrGyRYY8zPzhhtGzwLpJi_UqbDr4awzMv0M53Rj8lF_pKN86iuXBO_AndsBFN0FjwBKbK9Qvxe1KU54ElRSFfFjOqZ/s400/27082009077.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403627559915206674" border="0" /></a>Father stares off middle distance, splurging out his throat with raspy phlegmballing coughs. He'll pipe in with the odd portion of advice from his considerable archive, but his interest is the cat he rescued. Let the women do the talking, it's what they're good for. We must pop by if we ever come through this way again. He only says it because he has to.<br /><br />The camera charger is in another state so I'll never remember any of this. My mind's eye reached its capacity back in Memphis. New York State is nowhere. Vocal mannerisms will never convert into typed out words, too flat and repetitious and never getting anywhere in too many words, surrogate and surfeit. You know, I'm sorry y'all, you know, like, in a way... Realism is not accuracy. I write through my teeth. And I never finish off my thoughts.<br /><br />A dead aim arm wins beer pong, from hours on the oche firing darts into hog hair compacted down down. Rome is a working man's town and my hands are soft and unblistered. Their fat heads are baseball capped, hair cropped short. Barrel bellies pull their T shirts, or polo shirts taut, top heavy bodies tapering down to skinny legs. They holler and whoop at the lacquered local girls, tight jeans and JC Penney going out tops, day's dirt left in the shower cubicle, to be covered by make up dirt and fake tan in the morning. The karaoke man has tucked his T shirt into his shorts and pulled his socks high, and he has no idea how to marshall the hordes, soaking abuse like a damp sponge. This is their night out, where they cut loose, and sing away the factory day, still lit up across the way, monoliths in metal visible through the frosted glass windows, industry fading out in a wheezing wheedling asbestos fed coughspluttercough. Peanuts half fill a barrel in this divebar, brick exposed walls bestriding a wooden floor with sawdust stains. The men rattle the table football, twirling poles. It's all in the footwork. Girls yowl along to the tuneless tunes, and you only listen to your friends, because that's who you're here for. It's some kind of community.<br /><br />Another car passes, its rearview mirror blocked out with the pillows and the duvets and everything a college kid needs. Every parent's least favourite weekend. The University of Vermont is filling up with hormones and empty minds (morals?), loose limbed teens ready for sororities, societies and beer pong. We should have read this omen in yesterday's tea leaves (coffeegrounds). Every motel is full in Burlington, sad parents and excited sons and daughters, flush and nervous. The sky is streaked, looks like a daytime galaxy, clouds radiating outwards and outwards from a pulsing ball of yellow incandescence, blurring out in dark blue and white striations. It's still August, but it feels ominous in Vermont. Above, it seems other worldly, and the air is chilled. Kentshire rural shire farmland, wooded and verdant, fields of Friesian cows just like on the ice cream label. It might as well be the caricature it has become. Ben and Jerry sold out years ago, shipped out and died in Americana museums.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGxgCTKvHUodvyOEc15vDPiGXnjATjJZTARhstmG1rEGTcYW-PD7lJdr3aI7Rjj5Hj6cLUntzNo9CqXceKspMV6vV8GcVvp6oZptrl66vqi9zGXJCa0HwDox7QqcwgeKOKtQqBDKf2ecz2/s1600-h/27082009089.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGxgCTKvHUodvyOEc15vDPiGXnjATjJZTARhstmG1rEGTcYW-PD7lJdr3aI7Rjj5Hj6cLUntzNo9CqXceKspMV6vV8GcVvp6oZptrl66vqi9zGXJCa0HwDox7QqcwgeKOKtQqBDKf2ecz2/s400/27082009089.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403627798787801954" border="0" /></a>Dubstep booms its clubshaker subwoofer lowdown bass, throbbing the air, vibrating so slow you can see the rubber speaker oscillate. This is the only way to drive in the dark. With a sense of doom, as if a giant or a wolf were chasing you. It is dark here. Nowhere is lit up, and nobody advertises. Billboards are prohibited, and the signs can only hint as to where you should go. Pssst, there might be a gas station to your left. It is a hidden consumerism. I like it where I can see it.<br /><br />The Thatcher Brook Inn is a hunting lodge, weatherboarded with fireplaces in every room, logs piled up in readiness for the forthcoming autumn snows - the sun shines briefly. Your skin gets thicker here, furrier hide, solidified, frozen. There is no television so what are we to do - talk... or older past times. Pinning wraiths with fountain pen nibs to thick cartridge paper (0! the romance of stationery - cedar pencil crayon / pastel / quill), conjuring sentences from withered wrists, filling pages in a journal (so rudimentary).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKQvtKHzK3FWsIe3u8f_WNFMpFgFQtDFv14skCSlT6Zr_32faEsWPKHF33dFzg41Nnsy2tNRrjzllo7E_KXh4QN_PHEKfe7bpbi9L13XTw6WuVt8fsgYFBVfwr8eGEy7YqSmyg1yePHWe/s1600-h/28082009103.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKQvtKHzK3FWsIe3u8f_WNFMpFgFQtDFv14skCSlT6Zr_32faEsWPKHF33dFzg41Nnsy2tNRrjzllo7E_KXh4QN_PHEKfe7bpbi9L13XTw6WuVt8fsgYFBVfwr8eGEy7YqSmyg1yePHWe/s400/28082009103.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403628361867555730" border="0" /></a>Albany is passed in a minute, odd looking mimicry skyscrapers bunched together, hiding Troy, where the poor people live. We ate omlettes in a diner in Rome, chrome glinting round laminate counters, overweight staff walking round with dentist's crying after them. They didn't have dentists in the 50s. The grease is antiquated, left over from a hamburger twenty years ago, or a hash brown from 1967, when hair was longer and you didn't care so much (you were never here, or there, or anywhere in particular). Waved goodbye in a Utica sidestreet, car rolling on soft tires, everything deflating.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-23177974379162887132009-11-10T04:30:00.001-08:002009-11-16T11:13:12.193-08:00At the honky tonk badonkadonk (day sixty three and sixty four)I'll tell you about the night sky - a million pinpricks of light travelled a million lightyears to be here with us tonight. You can see the Milky Way and Cassiopeia and all the constellations we don't know the names of, parked up on the hard shoulder by the roadkill, with bugs swarming in front of the headlights. We stared until our necks were sore, and drove on, no brakes, on curveswooping bends through the Adirondacks, after a sunset over Lake Tupper, cloud hidden. Before that we sat by a lake, facing Canada, waiting for the sunshine to emerge so we could photograph in better light. Amish children rode their horse and cart to the bait shop and stared back at us as we overtook. A yacht cruised past in the breeze, in front of the castle (old mansion) treeshrouded and far away. This was a slow moment of calm, lake stilling my heart into slumped beats.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUgUfHVd_reVhAgDfVSN8sZNW_SO1bYGUfQJZPM9Am5K9Yj6pwyf2PSrIho6xaMkJo_AzJtgY91bf0VnUPGNaL1WVK-rcQ2f5LWyvwi_5w9mxKdd68CG_uRL7fKeM3tyqeIc26B_LIIOaf/s1600-h/IMG_8050.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUgUfHVd_reVhAgDfVSN8sZNW_SO1bYGUfQJZPM9Am5K9Yj6pwyf2PSrIho6xaMkJo_AzJtgY91bf0VnUPGNaL1WVK-rcQ2f5LWyvwi_5w9mxKdd68CG_uRL7fKeM3tyqeIc26B_LIIOaf/s400/IMG_8050.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402485974309963954" border="0" /></a>Andi left us to put in another shift, filling the boxes, fulfilling the orders. Another parking ticket is stuck under our windscreen wiper. Facing the wrong way on the street. Watertown sheriff's department are short of money.<br /><br />Everyone stares at you. The teenagers in McDonald's nursing Coca Cola's, bending straws, the pick up truck drivers as you turn in the road from another wrong right hand bend, the neighbours when you make the dogs bark returning back to the apartment with pizza to fill my empty stomach too full, far too full. Patrol cars sit at every junction with radar guns. They all get suspicious up in the mountains.<br /><br />"At the honky tonk / Ba donk a donk /Keepin' perfect rhythm / Make ya wanna swing along / Got it goin' on / Like Donkey Kong / And whoo-wee / Shut my mouth / slap your grandma."<br /><br />"The banana slug is my sense of adventure. Let's go to the forest - This is your top 9 at 9 with Dave Valentine - Frog FM. Ribbit - You say this is an O'Reilly-ism, but you won't appear on his show? - My best friend Lesley says 'Oh, she's just being Miley."<br /><br />The radio is our only company this far north, an empty ghost filled highway. There are no glowing eyes in the pine trees to watch out progress. We race away to be watched, back to the squat houses, the condemned houses, where the drug parties roll on the weekend noisy trash filled kitchen raves, pulling off the cupboard doors for firewood, needles in the garden and tinfoil in the bedrooms until the cops arrive, or don't, and the crackhouse flophouses, clientele oscillating wildly, until the cops arrive, or don't.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpSedcBewX3_Wsi2vVBCDdnRIaTrZFQZQ-wEh_S4eSUok1pYkLHVQBoA5oFDBo2khaGYo0gQPeV9DnOA1KMTMSz0lpsPejgluPe8IbwhrPOxade-oOds7wMHppgsAuhpoC9TpIr-WqEQBe/s1600-h/27082009081.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpSedcBewX3_Wsi2vVBCDdnRIaTrZFQZQ-wEh_S4eSUok1pYkLHVQBoA5oFDBo2khaGYo0gQPeV9DnOA1KMTMSz0lpsPejgluPe8IbwhrPOxade-oOds7wMHppgsAuhpoC9TpIr-WqEQBe/s400/27082009081.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402485183607551282" border="0" /></a>The playground kid is left behind, sitting on a doorstep, reading books cos it's all she ever did. Here she spent recess, with friends in the far back corner, reading books silently together, ignoring the footballs that come their way, studious. City Hall is a bureaucratic sham in gleaming marble and aluminium, but the staff are friendly and overpleased that someone is paying off a fine. We flee to the dairy farms, a half sphere topped tower and gabled barns surrounded by yellow speckled green meadows, rolling farmland each way to the horizon. All the settlements feel western, terrace fronted tall narrow stores line the main streets of Copenhagen and Lowville and Boonville. The landscape repeats over; until Utica emerges. A scrawny lady stares bewildered at traffic, unsure when to cross, tentative baby steps across the asphalt, as we turn into the Bagel Store for lunch.<br /><br />You can tell everything about a person by how they eat. Gobblers - guarded, suspicious, paranoid. Slow eaters - thoughtful, relaxed, saviours life. I smear hummus around my chops - what does that say? Ryan Jenkins has been found dead in a Canadian motel. He married a glamour model in Vegas, killer her, removed her teeth and her fingers, sailed north on his boat to the border and hold up in a fugitive motel. They identified her by her breast implants. And now they're cancelling Megan Wants A Millionaire- how will we know who she chooses? At least Real Chance Of Love is still going. God sits above, smiling faithfully.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-6E5dqsg4VaeAc23VnmBY6a9zqS8HpPxUOzGi3hHifvyqowoG9LLBYGvui5TAaxlGF052MKLyfe_m5Ckn5wE0unu9YaSEF-XTD7_j2GNMpkksKNWx3RDGjmXXlcv-O6uPqwPs2ZwLTCv9/s1600-h/IMG_8049.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-6E5dqsg4VaeAc23VnmBY6a9zqS8HpPxUOzGi3hHifvyqowoG9LLBYGvui5TAaxlGF052MKLyfe_m5Ckn5wE0unu9YaSEF-XTD7_j2GNMpkksKNWx3RDGjmXXlcv-O6uPqwPs2ZwLTCv9/s400/IMG_8049.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402486166028452066" border="0" /></a>Brad Pitt is killing another Nazi on the big screen carving a swastika into their head. The dialogue is very Tarantino- it always is. The Jews have their vengeance, everyone leaves happy. They sneer at Watertown - all it has is the claim of being the originator of the scented tree - every state needs its whipping boy. Jennifer offers us all and acts the perfect host. She dreams of Europe like we dream of America. Everyone looks across oceans, full of hope. Then you make it across, by ferry or plane, and it is all the same, or different in minor ways, and all you learn is more self absorbed rhubarb about yourself. Should have kept it locked in the attic along with everything else, staring out of a telescope at distant objects, conjuring words from the dust and the ash.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-47623937939991865662009-11-08T10:20:00.000-08:002009-11-08T11:27:38.234-08:00"Hello, and welcome to the Talk of Akron" (day sixty one and sixty two)"Hello, and welcome to the Talk of Akron on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">WNIR</span>, I'm Howie <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Chizek</span>, what do you want to talk about?"<br /><br />"Hi, Howie. My problem is with the police."<br /><br />"What exactly about the police is bothering you, caller?"<br /><br />"The way they look, you know? They go walking round with their shaved heads, it's intimidating. Look like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">jailbooted</span> thugs, ready to bust your head in. Got them dogs, like wolves, snarling."<br /><br />"Well, this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">shaven</span> headed business comes from immigrants, you know? White guys saw how successful the black guys were with the ladies, how they thought it was sexy, so they copied it."<br /><br />"I don't know, they look like some damn alien, or something. Then they got tattoos, some going up their necks. They're meant to protect us, you see, but they just scare us, Howie."<br /><br />"Let's not get started on tattoos. The young are crazy about their dirty tattoos, and I can't understand it. They'd rather mark themselves with horrible ink designs than get a job. Let me tell you, this country is going downhill fast. Anything more you want to add, caller?"<br /><br />"No Howie, I'm done. Just wanted to talk about them ugly police, intimidating me in my neighbourhood."<br /><br />"Well I think you got that across. You have a lovely weekend. Hello, and welcome to the Talk of Akron on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">WNIR</span>, I'm Howie <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Chizek</span>, what do you want to talk about?"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4tVULYV0MDb7wORMx6Oj0NItIiMXWHLTf6jkGXKw3FV1FInaoHfCTsVx3Er9re_gSyhwE0SwMv2bZXpJtN12carrH2qOs-mHD5CUJpLW8j8N-2Cyzan7-RqM76pevc8gUTFHAkhsMK8o/s1600-h/IMG_8028.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4tVULYV0MDb7wORMx6Oj0NItIiMXWHLTf6jkGXKw3FV1FInaoHfCTsVx3Er9re_gSyhwE0SwMv2bZXpJtN12carrH2qOs-mHD5CUJpLW8j8N-2Cyzan7-RqM76pevc8gUTFHAkhsMK8o/s400/IMG_8028.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401815083399657634" border="0" /></a>Niagara Falls leaves me empty. So much smaller in real life - like actors. Water pours over the edge, gallons of murky green plunging downwards onto rocks and spraying up, drifting over to Canada on the breeze. The Maid of the Mist bobs like a cork underneath, drenching us blue poncho wearing folks in thick drops of water. Everyone damages their cameras snapping through the drizzle. Cormorants and gulls float above, breaking through the sun refracted <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">spectrums</span>. It's all over in 10 minutes, like bad sex. On our magic quest we must cross the Rainbow Bridge to get to the land of maple leaves to vanquish the portly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">gatekeeper</span>. Canadian immigration is friendly, we wander the other side of the gorge for a mildly different perspective on the falls, Horseshoe hidden behind a misty veil. Niagara Falls town is the same as the other side - tacky and tourist driven. Half an hour is not enough time to judge Canada, just to observe the other side, removed. Back on the steel arch span all the cars are leaving America. The US border guard questions us closely. Suspicious of anyone entering the country. No wonder everyone wants to exit.<br /><br />Buffalo is collapsed industry, old <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">factories</span> antiquated in the way they are, faded, paint peeling on the edge of tottering down into rubble. It is impossible to tell whether they are still in operation or not. Pipes and electricity run in and out, feeding it all, like the kilo of pasta that sits on my plate rapidly cooling. That mattress factory looks doomed. Another family is fearful over the dining table. The old trades are dying. No one wants sprung mattresses any more, they want <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Tempa</span> foam. No one can save the high windowed brick walls, flat roof, chimney sprouting square and tall from crumbling down, down, down.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixK62D9Gx0jkUqvl7UyundfBK9fUFhLKqMfG1qflTvmUpy7wI7yxzp1DZcH-e_g3NwpjkOersJj-33Hx61E82SAyH5eTMAZjQ0Ou9woPL3-iYqZfPoJBaPsTZ8GS2fqtSyk0wy1OMLs-o-/s1600-h/IMG_8044.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixK62D9Gx0jkUqvl7UyundfBK9fUFhLKqMfG1qflTvmUpy7wI7yxzp1DZcH-e_g3NwpjkOersJj-33Hx61E82SAyH5eTMAZjQ0Ou9woPL3-iYqZfPoJBaPsTZ8GS2fqtSyk0wy1OMLs-o-/s400/IMG_8044.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401815507586600754" border="0" /></a>The light doesn't shine so much now we're up in the north, past Lake Erie and the Finger Lakes and the Thousand Islands. It could be Canada. Pine trees and waterways. Darker and cooler. Quieter. The border is 30 miles away from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Watertown</span> - closer to Montreal than we are to New York City. Strange little place where the locals hate the army and the army hates the locals. The soldiers go COW (citizen of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Watertown</span>) hunting - for the fattest local girl to screw and take to the parents. The girls compete to be the fattest. It gets dark early - what more is there to do? The bars aren't friendly - framed by the everlasting conflict. In winter ice storms shut everything down and shut everybody in. All the babies are born in the fall and for years after every federal emergency hibernation lock in the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">kindergartens</span> are all full.<br /><br />They work in a tree shop, making the scented pine tree shaped cardboard hangers for deodorising your car. It sounds like the premise for a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Palahniuk</span> novel. First the strippers punch the pine trees out of the moulds. Then they're dried, to absorb more of the smell. Then the whirlwinds punch the holes and string the trees. When you're working the whirlwind you count to 24 for 10 hours. The banana nut (discontinued) was the worst smell - you wouldn't get it out of your nostrils for days. Some dusty lingering of scent attached to the hairs within. You seek emancipation through the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">internet</span> and your pets. Work is not what defines you - hopefully. Existing or existence - where is that fine line now?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8dx5_MXax1I50ATv_Sx_-7SwkyZhPbrrFFBzqiiLBuASM8WKVtmrqHU3Mn4LndUo3drYE8_HdmGhCOW_D2eXa1UbQr9XUjwQy6rO_yyfZrhwxEpXJd7FsRq-5RC16oBdHhn3rSDLLuzhU/s1600-h/27082009080.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8dx5_MXax1I50ATv_Sx_-7SwkyZhPbrrFFBzqiiLBuASM8WKVtmrqHU3Mn4LndUo3drYE8_HdmGhCOW_D2eXa1UbQr9XUjwQy6rO_yyfZrhwxEpXJd7FsRq-5RC16oBdHhn3rSDLLuzhU/s400/27082009080.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401815741691999122" border="0" /></a>Another storm is rolling in while we play putt putt golf. The guy behind the counter is full of enthusiasm for everything - talks like the Californian surfer stereotype - awesome - depression is an attitude problem. "Are you getting a ship or a plane back to England?" The clouds are monstrous billowing up - we beat the rain through handicap 18 style putting - holing out from five feet with a satisfying rattle as it bounces into the cup. A drink and we all sing - badly - destroying the tunes with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">offkey</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">hushtone</span> warbles. None of us are street enough for Baby Got Back. It swelters in here, a weedy fan nudging us with breeze. I sleep with no covers, exposed.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-57514743673772383402009-11-05T16:07:00.000-08:002009-11-06T06:37:00.144-08:00Soft porn Bible studies (day fifty nine and sixty)The race started an hour ago and we're still sitting on the suburban sofas talking to Katie's grandma. She bought pineapple cheese for the bagels, didn't think about cream cheese. I cannot wait to be old, when my actions will raise mild exacerbation and bafflement. Sunny mews constantly, worrying for attention. I cannot wait to be a cat, when I can sleep most of the day, and spend the rest being petted. Katie turns her back as we reverse out the drive- tears were appearing in her wide eyes- I'd have been the same. It's left to Grandma to wave smiling farewells at us. Farewell to Illinois. The flat plains are replaced by more flat plains as we cross into eerie Indiana. This prairie is never ending. The only entertainment is the place names. Slight alterations in the orange sign, green sign, blue sign hegemony. Jamestown, Lebanon, Farmer City, Belgium.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgBo0cYM90yyXfww3gO16wWycCH8Xk2voq5QNOOpFo_ydCA5-jQNd7Jz03mo4mCdN7VCwzg5-oNG5IMaWum13Hf84i57r9QRGdYfMavuiJlfffNKgOcTkvNL5tj648c6LJQc2Q7aFNTO-/s1600-h/IMG_7999.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgBo0cYM90yyXfww3gO16wWycCH8Xk2voq5QNOOpFo_ydCA5-jQNd7Jz03mo4mCdN7VCwzg5-oNG5IMaWum13Hf84i57r9QRGdYfMavuiJlfffNKgOcTkvNL5tj648c6LJQc2Q7aFNTO-/s400/IMG_7999.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400999228690344386" border="0" /></a>The truck stop is a true truck stop. Portly men with hubcap thighs (only on the right leg) and stick shift biceps. Inevitably bearded, distended bellies full of corn dogs, and juju fruits, they make use of the facilities, laundry and showers. They check out the radios and steering wheel covers, looking for ways to make the dirge slightly less dire, even if it's only for a day of novelty, before it doesn't even stand out as new anymore, it's just part of the whole cabin, something that's always been there, unchanged. They clear out the detritus of food wrappers and cups, layers built up, archaeology. There's that Junior Mint I dropped a week ago, crisp crumbs coating. "Professional drivers only." 10,000 miles has to be the qualification mark, right? I swagger to the restrooms, ballooning my stomach and nonchalantly rubbing my three year stubble. I pass the glances from the trucker in a sideways squeeze. All I need is a CB radio.<br /><br />The airport at Champaign is empty and smaller than all the others- twinprops land occasionally. The only activity in the terminal is someone replacing the towels in the bathroom. The Alamo lady looks half asleep. She only wakes up for the once a week customer. Otherwise she sits on standby, decommissioned and waiting in her cradle. Sleepwalking eastwards, drowsy eyes faltering- I want her naptime.<br /><br />If the distance divides in half each time you move closer, you never reach your goal. Infinitesimally small infinite divisions of time until the end of time. This is the way it goes on road trips. Talk to you never.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRG5HIPzuItdYbLrDrXkOK-yTATKXa4nz41L0zLTzj6X2RV_CQfCy1sddZeH5tDnfynlSgZmPHK5gcRwUis81TuGrZmKcd9isk5Iyicrr0xJxQ6XVT5G88uW-JxhPYip8n82M2Lz__E6S/s1600-h/IMG_7990.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRG5HIPzuItdYbLrDrXkOK-yTATKXa4nz41L0zLTzj6X2RV_CQfCy1sddZeH5tDnfynlSgZmPHK5gcRwUis81TuGrZmKcd9isk5Iyicrr0xJxQ6XVT5G88uW-JxhPYip8n82M2Lz__E6S/s400/IMG_7990.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400998386972064290" border="0" /></a>Hallelujah. I think I had an epiphany five minutes ago. And on the sixth day, they went to the Creation Museum. And they observed, and they saw all, and proclaimed that it was bad. Never has so much willful misinterpretation and distortion of true science been concentrated in one place. This is by far the most lush and luxurious museum we have been to. There are a thousand better ways to spend the money, and none of them involve associating evolution with genocide. On my trip to the museum I learnt that cavegirls sat eating carrots next to velociraptors, and that penguins wandered freely in the Garden of Eden with chimps and dinosaurs, iguanadons were allowed on the Ark, and that life descends from a creation orchard, not an evolution tree. Ranting is an unappealing habit, i will stop....NOW.<br /><br />Everyone was unfailingly polite, and held doors open, and the children were seen and not heard. I am going to hell, straight after I walk through the gritty urban realism exhibit with siren playing over tannoy system to show what happens when you sin. And here endeth the lesson.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyle_j_nq99JZeh2JiUgUHknOl_mOXMKRXnicnaZFKdT8zQMR0ADpmOcZlyut_4XjzgcHkDw4IQQVFUonQJRzGEbXNwZ6r5hc2GV47V5oY1dtoLF2_L5-DRiRvKVA7lKK-NA-Tb2chmy3Y/s1600-h/IMG_8020.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyle_j_nq99JZeh2JiUgUHknOl_mOXMKRXnicnaZFKdT8zQMR0ADpmOcZlyut_4XjzgcHkDw4IQQVFUonQJRzGEbXNwZ6r5hc2GV47V5oY1dtoLF2_L5-DRiRvKVA7lKK-NA-Tb2chmy3Y/s400/IMG_8020.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400998676119226130" border="0" /></a>Cincinnati airport is our third in two days, and like a claustrophobic, we never get on a plane. Alamo maintain their incompetent record with enviable success. They do not allow long term rentals. Shirt patterns hug sandalled holidaymakers in their travel wardrobe - we escape as Oscar growls the pedal surges, cornering onto backroads at Columbus as Times New Viking pour fuzz headrush riffs into our speakers. This is Amish country. Do you have an image in your mind? Rolling hills, barns, and bearded fathers driving bonneted mothers and daughters and son in horse driven carriages, in simple garb in simple lives in simple homes? Big tick, smiley face in red pen on your paper. Cows wander the fields- Ohio is green and wooded, all shades of green, verdant, buildings places perfectly for photographers and paintings. It makes me think of a quainter version of Kent, or Devon. The only vague nods to tourism, and commercialism, are the cheese factories and furniture shops- centuries old industries. The Amish live the simple life I desire. One day a fashion designer will appropriate their look for a collection, and it will all be ruined. For now we pass through, neck crushing into shoulders on reverse camber overbrow hillbends. I've missed these sweet curving roads, straight into my heart.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-25313218059439589642009-11-04T12:17:00.000-08:002009-11-04T13:28:58.026-08:00A saturnine disposition (day fifty seven and fifty eight)My shorthand skills are the only interesting thing about me. Watch me bamboozle you with my useless hieroglyphs. Your open mouth speaks of amazement, and I am smug. This is my proudest achievement of the past year and it means nothing, other than my determination to complete. We never completed Chicago. By the end, onward galloping, but three and a bit weeks now away, I will have completed America, but I won't have finished. NYC is a Russian winter and too many waysides fell by like waysides fall. All the sideshows were missed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jpNeJaqB375T31jAlau7ZX_aqdWKuag3rtkiiT6Atql-Rm4T6HJV1GsCpIAtkcwH84r3mJ4lY-LoQDCleGLCEqJfKTaTVJtIqAq4VfDZ6fTal_oL9etXRbltLGN7PKDrO_A9DClyTDbD/s1600-h/IMG_7927.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jpNeJaqB375T31jAlau7ZX_aqdWKuag3rtkiiT6Atql-Rm4T6HJV1GsCpIAtkcwH84r3mJ4lY-LoQDCleGLCEqJfKTaTVJtIqAq4VfDZ6fTal_oL9etXRbltLGN7PKDrO_A9DClyTDbD/s400/IMG_7927.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400353583114475570" border="0" /></a>Is this anything more than an accomplishment, one too tick off that endless To Do List? Identity destruction is not something to be proud of. This is no spiritual quest for a self I can hold on to, and it was never meant to be. All my old selves are dying out, though, and crocodile tears won't bring them back. The road trip is a demarcation point, a placer to the future, a lighthouse. I mistook truth for accuracy, sketching false words on gold leaf pages. Trust these words at your peril. All I know is - I am alone and I always will be. A romantic blueprint for my future that I already knew.<br /><br />The tidemarks on the toilet and the drool patch on the bathmat speak of a night spent caressing the tiles. Bacchus' fingers are rammed down her throat. We never made it out of Arlington Heights - sprawled around on sofas until we head to the golden glow of the projector. District 9 is the same plot told in an interesting way and for that it is to be congratulated. Script needs some work. Only eating Frosted Wheats means I pour popcorn into my mouth until my stomach starts to protest. I am empty and I am full. The synthetic butter flavour has turned my tongue into jerky- salty and dry. Old arcade games give me an RSI, flicking my wrist to reload and destroy the endless zombie hordes. Time Crisis has a broken gun and Mario Kart is loose. Jurassic Park, Star Wars, shooting games. Such choices, such little time. The first McDonald's is no longer open, just a historic relic, a glass fronted neon lit little hut. The only history in America is corporate history. The same ghosts every night.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOW9xa3jgqpxgqbS1HnOJyqX9Gyi1TSdpMvWyejL1oMWMRH5adxDzmd9Mg1ag_hiXQIOJL9mKvtq5Ce20JUMIA0GpaRMO2JdF5FIxUcNp2kBaDYZVvbi_D9mzfnbc8m-f1u30VQ3ZMq9NA/s1600-h/IMG_7961.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOW9xa3jgqpxgqbS1HnOJyqX9Gyi1TSdpMvWyejL1oMWMRH5adxDzmd9Mg1ag_hiXQIOJL9mKvtq5Ce20JUMIA0GpaRMO2JdF5FIxUcNp2kBaDYZVvbi_D9mzfnbc8m-f1u30VQ3ZMq9NA/s400/IMG_7961.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400353799644079170" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">I have run out of relevant photos for Illinois. So here's a stained glass window...<br /></span></div><br />When we grow up we won't laugh at the Jiffy Lube stores. The Gaylord Indian restaurant will raise n'erry a snigger. And Normal, Illinois will not seem as quaint. The cars ahead flick their lights on - the sunlight has disappeared behind a thick marble of grey clouds. Wipers cajole the water away too slow and we have to pull over, hazard lights flashing. The sky is flashing purple every 10 seconds, thunder following too closely behind. Storm is near, above us, low hulking rainsmothering all around. I have no idea why I'm not scared, sitting on the hard shoulder hoping everyone else can see me, wind whipping horizontal water and rocking the car. Further on and the sky is split, a flat high black line dividing, blue and orange sunlit land off to the east; the deathly marble westwards. Barns and masts are silhouetted against, a wind farm looks doomed. The twenty metre high corporation signs mark the town out. We can't see anything more. This is my favourite weather. Storms calm my soul, balance. Sixty miles per hour we emerge the other side, splatter splash descending into spitspot drizzle.<br /><br />They wave goodbye from a congested parking lot as she leaves to meet other friends. A large part of me knows I'll probably never see most of these people again. I am a minor ripple in an overlarge pond. The pebble sinks to the bottom, never to be seen again, mixing with all the other mottled greysmooth stones.<br /><br /><object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7440011&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7440011&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="300" width="400"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/7440011">Illinois thunderstorm</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user2383750">jim</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</p>A startled stare is being pointed at me. Curly haired wide eyed - they're supposed to be having a romantic meal - so why can she not stop looking at our table? Let us eat our fajitas in peace, darling. Conversing in Dairy Queen and comparing and I tell the same old facts I tell everyone we meet. We were all bored the first time I said them. Like these towns I see again and again, ribbon development spreading outwards - no one needs infill. The alcoholic drank our beers so we collapse under blankets in the teenage basement; dreaming aspirational dreams. School starts again tomorrow.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-48391187050632790832009-10-21T09:59:00.000-07:002009-10-21T17:02:25.686-07:00Shooting children in the dark (day fifty five and fifty six)These 8-year-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">olds</span> ain't got nothing on me. Duck and cover, duck and cover. That's how you win at laser tag. Top score of the day, bitches. There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained beating small children at a game, with the heavy laser pack reaching their knees, slowing them down. I sweat and crouch down behind the thick barricade, glancing over for those telltale green and red lights, or white clothing glowing blue under UV, or the general hubbub rattle crash of the packs of children, feral and hunting. Is this what war is like, daddy? No, son, this is far worse. I never knew I could so merrily beat children at a game. This makes me a bad person.<br /><br />The post game sandwich fills me to bursting point- greedy sod asking for a large. Pet stores are depressing. Puppies fight in too many ways, yelping and biting at each other, licking each other's shit as it emerges light brown and sloppy. Cute eyes staring out of dull cages, a water bottle and a food bowl. The kittens jangle my keys as I dangle them out the bars, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">needleprick</span> claws lashing out. The turtle dives and the guinea pigs skitter and hide. Nature designs it cute and the pet store makes it macabre and disturbing. The only play they get is customers petting them. The mothers in some pet farm churning out their next litter already, industrial magic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkbVK1nGbJSo-USFH0ikaXMnR6iB2b6HS9hHcA4FMDlPSd3QHnOZGwakpBYUc59hfD3N9-XA5sXb-viO1XtjozoeOc-oVz28PMmARxBIvjPcYmi8-Yjurh_ojhkQpubokb8C3nHCU8Lh8/s1600-h/IMG_7920.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkbVK1nGbJSo-USFH0ikaXMnR6iB2b6HS9hHcA4FMDlPSd3QHnOZGwakpBYUc59hfD3N9-XA5sXb-viO1XtjozoeOc-oVz28PMmARxBIvjPcYmi8-Yjurh_ojhkQpubokb8C3nHCU8Lh8/s400/IMG_7920.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395200861799403602" border="0" /></a><br />We spend an evening like we spend every evening. TV bound or computer game bound- <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">sofacore</span>- pretending we're not competitive but caring far too much <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">deepdown</span>, or just under the surface in our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">littlebig</span> celebrations and our bitching. Drinking is boring now, like the boy in a cupboard forced to smoke a pack of cigarettes. My body is giving up limb by limb, organ by organ. Blood is a sludgy slump around clotted veins and my left thigh is turning to stone. Toothache, headache. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Bitemarks</span>, pockmarks. I feed it processed junk food as medicine, fizzy pop to wash it down. My liver packed in a minute ago, braincells drowning in bile. She speaks like she's a mouthful of sludge and I can't understand her any more. Enunciate, darling. The rain is Chicago falls mainly on the plain. That drizzle is singing my heart song, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">pitterpatter</span> on bug screen and glass and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">roofslate</span>, puddles forming on the grass. Welcome home.<br /><br />We're back at the beginning. Parked in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Rosemonnt</span> with jumbo jets flying low loud whooshes over our heads. Everywhere is drizzled with a layer of rainwater, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">shinyslick</span> and darkened. Ticket machines aren't like oyster card machines- i struggle. These coloured routes are not as clear. From our leafy silent suburb we head in through other suburbs which buzz with people and culture, Malcolm X posters stuck in the windows and corner shop bodegas. I am back in London, riding through <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Brixton</span>, on my way to see the Big Smoke. Brownstone houses and subways make me think of New York City where I've never been, but I'll be there soon, back at the end.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifs_VpNTQ0lfayTvWBqYBfauh4D6vzCXLFPD9SYJTfc9Ir17T7KaXOEFvSBFst-1q47mhnEnVPn8lCEGV73C2rs6WZsbExLlpvlU9evFHQaNK5Wzs2_H3mWdhsO-SscSt0NYguayme-v_/s1600-h/IMG_7912.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifs_VpNTQ0lfayTvWBqYBfauh4D6vzCXLFPD9SYJTfc9Ir17T7KaXOEFvSBFst-1q47mhnEnVPn8lCEGV73C2rs6WZsbExLlpvlU9evFHQaNK5Wzs2_H3mWdhsO-SscSt0NYguayme-v_/s400/IMG_7912.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395199895684874130" border="0" /></a>Emerging on elevators at street level and the head leans back. Crane it further, you still can't see the sky. Chicago, where the architects play. I am no student. This is just a modern skyline, the archetype, in blue, grey, and black. Gradation from stone clad frames to the black hulk of the Sears Tower (I care not for its current name), nine separate towers joined and rising up 110 floors, tottering above the Windy City skyline. There are glass boxes cabled to the side so you can stand 1000 feet above the sidewalk. My legs warp and wiggle. Vertigo is a hereditary condition, and it's not getting cured. My sense of danger is keen.<br /><br />Legs carry you down, down to the fountain where the patrol cars creep and the homeless sell free newspapers for their own needs. That hug was worth $3 and I hope you make it some place better. You sure can hustle. Drizzle drizzles drops of drizzle, soaking my T shirt to see through as I talk art and writing and dreams. Katie has the same dream of punching someone and it having no effect. Do we both feel that inconsequential? Trains spark <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">bluewhite</span> on the rails as they screech round corners and the bikes/cars/taxis/buses bustle and honk the intersections, by the marina where the yachts are moored on the lake for the pleasure cruises for the tourists for the fishing for the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">pootling</span> for the locals.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTjTN6DxwHscDxTyfAj6cieeKzrFYDZXlFqfg-wRELe8GRXzHko_NBwQ3xBTbNR3Vc0xYw-pIUUC2mt2QlLniEJeVBMHGUmlVL9g3IHqS9Mh9GsdICElwSiDqCxpQpr6WbzNcNOTvvijX_/s1600-h/IMG_7964.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTjTN6DxwHscDxTyfAj6cieeKzrFYDZXlFqfg-wRELe8GRXzHko_NBwQ3xBTbNR3Vc0xYw-pIUUC2mt2QlLniEJeVBMHGUmlVL9g3IHqS9Mh9GsdICElwSiDqCxpQpr6WbzNcNOTvvijX_/s400/IMG_7964.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395200529451101218" border="0" /></a>We arrive on the Navy Pier, commercialism in its shops and its fast food, gaudy red yellow colour scheme stunning eyes. The stained glass museum is another sideshow devoted to the minutiae. They have no consequence bar their beauty and their status symbol inherent. Long legs stride (why must I remain part of the group- what necessitates me walking with them- i do not have to pose for the group shots- i am a misanthrope) away weary, dusk falling and an orange sky fading to blue but my blood sugar is crashing down so I am cranky and fed up of this dynamic. A long ride home on a sleepy train where everyone cradles their faces and stares at the floor and we are back to do the same again; again.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-27387314764741324682009-10-14T13:54:00.000-07:002009-10-14T15:13:25.234-07:00Caught in the updraft (day fifty three and fifty four)My voice cracks with emotion as I choke out my thank yous and my goodbyes. It wasn't meant to be this hard. The car is heavier, topped with food mountains from our over generous hosts. Oscar growls sluggishly as he accelerates away, tear pricks starting in my eyes. Farewell to St Louis, where happiness was found and sweet drunken nights were wasted. Livers were pounded like steak in a tenderiser, dimple marks left in our hearts as well. All things go, all things go. Jessie "Kicky" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Schmitz</span> recedes into the background, a dot in our rear view mirror.<br /><br />We cross the Mississippi like we always do, hugging its meanders and oxbow lakes as we ascend northwards, the nights getting shorter and the days getting longer and the heat tempering down down down to pleasant summertime warmth. No more bayous, no more desert, no more swamps. Verdant shores await in Illinois.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAB6Z_VZZSX8oM0I_rrSry_8jeUwWFyDH4jFNTJPUnOeW2IgRFPYUvKQJvyyA6a3x5IYVzTRBC53CJMLqV82A6zeMTxbrR1V93SpDWhFpxwsg2nDnIHrL2ZsZ9rzi3O_u03lMYXndbULlj/s1600-h/IMG_7982.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAB6Z_VZZSX8oM0I_rrSry_8jeUwWFyDH4jFNTJPUnOeW2IgRFPYUvKQJvyyA6a3x5IYVzTRBC53CJMLqV82A6zeMTxbrR1V93SpDWhFpxwsg2nDnIHrL2ZsZ9rzi3O_u03lMYXndbULlj/s400/IMG_7982.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392579483293820658" border="0" /></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Bloomington</span> is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Ashford</span> stretched out, more space added and (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">shhhh</span> now) less charm. Another water tower with another name emblazoned. Basement living in the suburbs, Katie takes us bowling to an empty old venue. This is Friday night in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">smalltown</span> America. No one goes out. The balls are slammed down and travel mainly diagonally. By the end of this trip I will be a professional bowler. The bar next door has pool (i lose) and karaoke (i watch). Three inch thick binders contain your options- anyone for The Wedding March (instrumental)? Lunchboxes are bought for us and I feel like a docker, Nicky <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Sobotka</span> in the bar with Ziggy after shifting some crates. Drunken alcohol purchase, with flirtatious puns and we are back to drink cheap acid <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">poison</span> wine with ring of fire. The idle boasting and jesting. One of those people quiet until drunk, then loud and splendid and why aren't you like that all the time? Eyebrow shaving threats are sending me to sleep so I fold into a sofa and kip fitfully til morning, an empty airbed lying next to me in fevered dreams. The cushions keep sliding out from under me, escaping their paisley suffocation and flopping to the floor. I have drunken every night of the week. Can I stop now?<br /><br />Hanging out with the divorce kids- sometimes it's better that way. Alcoholic or adulterer, by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">jove</span>, don't stay together for the kids. John has a blind girlfriend. There are no jokes here. The youth of America cares little for DUI fines. Every single one- even the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">godfearing</span> goodies- <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">drinks</span> and drives. Is this bravado, or arrogance?<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlEx7O7Czqq24eGejFm6JvuCLVqjigi9Fvp5MOkQm9MnEcVcUmaxiipeImudPaIuKJUAZzSnnaAeO1i4_Z06SDRmE6d-ErG_7_xwu0av1eFgesYGC_EGMdyxBpsSiLP_fl9D0SeCp7vKEM/s1600-h/IMG_7895.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlEx7O7Czqq24eGejFm6JvuCLVqjigi9Fvp5MOkQm9MnEcVcUmaxiipeImudPaIuKJUAZzSnnaAeO1i4_Z06SDRmE6d-ErG_7_xwu0av1eFgesYGC_EGMdyxBpsSiLP_fl9D0SeCp7vKEM/s400/IMG_7895.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392579685262270754" border="0" /></a><br />Davenport is another town in another state with another strip mall. Me and Katie search long for a cinema, but all we find is deadbeat chain stores full of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">deadmeat</span> and junk food and a boarded up <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">moviehouse</span> long closed. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Sophie</span> absconds with a lesbian vegetarian for a "GPS hunt" while we sup our smoothies defeated in the juice bar while the owner croons to some teenage girls, trying out new material. Jason <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Mraz</span> songs are not new material, and those ladies are underage. Keep it in your pants, boy, no one wants to see what you've got. Time is filled with conversation, comparing lives and cultures. This week I mainly want to teach shorthand.<br /><br />Bye bye <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Molene</span>, look at the water. Filthy, dirty, cloudy, muddy, messy, mucky, crystal clear. This is the last crossing of the Mississippi, so we nod to Huck Finn and go. On and on and on we drive, never looking back. We hit toll roads and blast math metal as we hand over our tuppences and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">thrupenny</span> bits. In our deluded states this is endlessly hilarious. One day none of us will be comedians. The Great Plains spread outwards, grain growing forever to the horizon and back again on either side. Bread basket boring. I long for the mountains and the forest.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4i8QvA9LJWgr-hJoDXOuLRZWkKP36G6KamT6Z28HmY-UOKyajXwFjZocmzoy97nrTnSrhRizpp9_FJpK_fgg_42XtZADk-loQApZ1zKrlNilt6j7lM8ugeqw_LsDfzGaNfuh_yhr_LXm/s1600-h/IMG_7901.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4i8QvA9LJWgr-hJoDXOuLRZWkKP36G6KamT6Z28HmY-UOKyajXwFjZocmzoy97nrTnSrhRizpp9_FJpK_fgg_42XtZADk-loQApZ1zKrlNilt6j7lM8ugeqw_LsDfzGaNfuh_yhr_LXm/s400/IMG_7901.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392579888278468466" border="0" /></a><br />There is no wind in Chicago tonight. It would be the same anywhere- computer games and snacks and cable television. What is making this a unique experience? Sometimes this expanding black hole of red numbers seems like an exercise in waste. Not tonight though, tonight is horizontal <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">gossipmongering</span> beauty. Necessary slowdown, handbrake applied, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">parkup</span>, unload, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">sleeptight</span>, sweet.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-49858687690483718852009-10-06T10:04:00.000-07:002009-10-06T11:50:57.746-07:00Howling at a luminescent moon (day fifty one and fifty two)Take me down to the ball game. A sea of red shirted Cardinal fans, mushing peanuts and mopping up the chemical orange cheese spill in their thin cardboard nacho box. Dessicated peanut pieces gather under foot as balls are pitched- only half the crowd are watching at any time. The fireworks explode in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">glittertrail</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">whistlebangs</span> when <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Pujols</span> hits a home run, as he inevitably does, because he is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Pujols</span>. Foul balls hit <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">flyers</span> and a crowd scramble to get it for a trophy and the glory. We must cheer and do the Mexican wave, pepped on by the famous ballgame organ ascending and accelerating to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">dadada</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">da</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">dada</span>. Up in the rafters we chatter and giggle (arousing jealousy and bitching, heaven forbid someone has a conversation) and carouse the night away, until we seek the ice cream at Ted <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Drews</span> before we ride the metro along quiet routes, where the North <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Carolinans</span> are lost and jesting with the ticket collector. They're riding for fun, they only have cars where they live. A long way from home for Americans. The crowds are huge outside the ice cream parlour. A post game tradition, a right.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivu7Y4LV7hZYvvbN8yM5v_X1iXvpvHxtWHV11Yps-8MnL57CAp71WBgxFj1HaBQ4K38N5G4U_AlWFB601H8y_SX9uXFEg7Sm_fJRDMMZGOx4rrWeBIO1O3V6cf2p1cXYjFA2TOGrjml7B6/s1600-h/IMG_7860.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivu7Y4LV7hZYvvbN8yM5v_X1iXvpvHxtWHV11Yps-8MnL57CAp71WBgxFj1HaBQ4K38N5G4U_AlWFB601H8y_SX9uXFEg7Sm_fJRDMMZGOx4rrWeBIO1O3V6cf2p1cXYjFA2TOGrjml7B6/s400/IMG_7860.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389557772700964018" border="0" /></a>We stay up forever, talking and talking, but mainly watching television, films and fighting. I am so weak. The puppies follow us and yowl howl bark at the moon. These nights fill me with nostalgia for past nights <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">where</span> we did just this on past nights where we laughed and sparked electric shocks between on invisible networks. Those past nights were beautiful. Trembles in my knees at the very memory. My lips curl upwards, wide smile splitting my face in two, cleaved. We are surrounded by photos of poses, families together for one moment to plaster their smiles and play nice. You can read the arguments in the stress lines, the bickering written into a sly smile. Tokens of unity, like the red shirts the crowd wear as they wander into Busch Stadium, munching peanuts and mopping up the chemical orange cheese spill in their thin cardboard nacho box.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWRXmA51H403hUwjZPcDYt0OQO4lyrbLPGS55bIRm7QbFObDASQQ1MULoaUpr-GZJFH-n3YAox9fHyf61YmAf_CVUPhzxYa8ep9nDtBxSoFEsCdSZ84NjF3lfu55XXRcl-9hZGJ2aHdGL/s1600-h/IMG_7889.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSWRXmA51H403hUwjZPcDYt0OQO4lyrbLPGS55bIRm7QbFObDASQQ1MULoaUpr-GZJFH-n3YAox9fHyf61YmAf_CVUPhzxYa8ep9nDtBxSoFEsCdSZ84NjF3lfu55XXRcl-9hZGJ2aHdGL/s400/IMG_7889.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389558511469624770" border="0" /></a>Fuck, I'm already nostalgic. The old boat <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">pooters</span> around the lake post fuel change, rocking in the bow waves and moving towards the sunset, a burning <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">orangeyellow</span> heading towards a splashdown scattering sparkling glints over the water. The grandparents ask us questions, always curious about the differences an ocean makes. Frat boys ride the surface of the water, dragging a barefoot skier a-whooping and a-hollering. O, there's Nelly's old <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">lakehouse</span>. It's hard to see why the ninth best place to live in America isn't the first best place. Steps lead from mansions down to jetties where purple paddle boats are moored, all of it wooded, the stone hidden opulence just behind. This is the dream, isn't it? The aspiration and the aim. One day we will own a house on Lake Charles. If we save up, cut back, and hope.<br /><br />The fire pit is spitting with its logs red hot spilling ash into the bottom. These things don't change. Ghost stories are told, and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">smores</span> are filling, marshmallows flame grilled into <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">gloop</span>. Insects bite your legs, but it doesn't matter anymore. Sacred nights, where we watch the firebugs frighten young babies. The grandparents bring out the blackberry pie and the ice cream. I lost it back there. Is this how Americans live, or is this the ideal, what they feed the visitors? My expectations are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">exceeded</span>. This is one of those days, the ones you remember when you're alone at night and you think back to your happiest moments and you smile on full beam because this was it, you romantic old sod, this was it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMKOn6YixBKM0ZXm5fSR0d4vjFdFQReGdnc0v2G3ebOpaGft524wu9oOHoWZeHE57BdiAw0m3niMIkxbrB7p1zNM-R6wFVeKIWedRwBZ6ERtRl55pqxxojdy2GWOUm9uy3EzIdFcByiGG/s1600-h/IMG_7891.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLMKOn6YixBKM0ZXm5fSR0d4vjFdFQReGdnc0v2G3ebOpaGft524wu9oOHoWZeHE57BdiAw0m3niMIkxbrB7p1zNM-R6wFVeKIWedRwBZ6ERtRl55pqxxojdy2GWOUm9uy3EzIdFcByiGG/s400/IMG_7891.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389559377865642722" border="0" /></a>The old rope swing and the hammock in the trees where you swung and stared at the stars through the leafy green trees. Talking til five in the morning about all the world's nothings, closeted together and the soul's warm drunk swoon in inebriated flophouse fall. Talking shorthand while the dogs chase each other and howl at the moon because of the wolf blood and you eat eat eat as they feed you up still exhausted from the road and this was it, this was always it. You file it away in that compartment of your memory to draw on when you need it. You always need it.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-41850272990739879752009-10-02T16:14:00.000-07:002009-10-03T11:05:53.011-07:00I swapped the brusing for a bumping sensation (day forty nine and fifty)This is a lazy day. Transatlantic telephone calls are made, caramel rolls are eaten, television is watched. An American sporting afternoon is to be had. The putt putt is full of devious curves and metal gates. The challengers line them up, and sink them... eventually. I win. (I always win). The batting cages are netted/protected and full of American youths, gloved and helmeted, smiting fast pitched baseballs into the netting. A swing and a miss. A swing and a miss. A swing and a glancing blow. Then a connect, the ball swishing back over the machinery that spits them out rapidfire. This is how Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols feel. I am the winner. That ball is told. The blue water fountains sploosh past the fibreglass fairytale turreted princess castle and the tree with a house inside. Every mini golf course must have them. Otherwise they take the rubber putters away. It's all in the legislation. Check if you don't believe me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaq7ArhatOjuJWo0UST_Z_HdQAMvYHUjO7ina_r40s2_iLRELc2F9fSKEZ2qw33js4zjlRDzPVDz95YV6qnkLX1UejFfEPchBCMdlrETME7yXMbb5rfvas1hOT9iFY0_wm0rLpgkmwcbZH/s1600-h/IMG_7777.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaq7ArhatOjuJWo0UST_Z_HdQAMvYHUjO7ina_r40s2_iLRELc2F9fSKEZ2qw33js4zjlRDzPVDz95YV6qnkLX1UejFfEPchBCMdlrETME7yXMbb5rfvas1hOT9iFY0_wm0rLpgkmwcbZH/s400/IMG_7777.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388434983070445186" border="0" /></a><br />Where's the Hollywood explosions? Not here in this suburb. Low budget film and we are on set. If only I had the motivation I could act and I could organise. Jessia does her kissing scene. Twice. In the mouth. Tensions are high- joking around on set makes it all take longer. What a bunch of amateurs. Conner rides triathlons- he's got the build. Piles of clothes are gathered on the floor, ready for the thrift store. Me and Sophie vulture circle and make off with our purchases.<br /><br />In this town the churches all look like convention centres- glass and brick hulks without spires or crosses- just fields of regimented car parking, ready for the pious and pretending come Sunday morning. One must keep the Sabbath holy. These arenas with headsetted preachers, concert seating and hotdog vendors and hymn books. Facebook flirting is never a good idea, and now how are you supposed to keep yourself pure for marriage? Keep it in your pants, boy, you'll only get diseases. Us old couples, we get competitive in the presence of others- a game of one upmanship in sly barracking and corrections. There will only be one winner. And as the sweat drips from my brow, my bones vibrate with ball smacking, resonance and the yellow sphere goes tumbling back the way it came, in a country nearly conquered where I own the roads, the winner is me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxXl_rP8r4UICa9RnsF4fRaEV0BMRa1aME1BFIgwiE9HiuWzU4b84QqDW_uj3In_HVFbmbHgGwFQGfd8jdk6xXc1tTDL3SNJUxrTF1Cg-OgzmtXAW_sUzm5aiu3TMaFs1Sk0gNOI-iKdeB/s1600-h/IMG_7798.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxXl_rP8r4UICa9RnsF4fRaEV0BMRa1aME1BFIgwiE9HiuWzU4b84QqDW_uj3In_HVFbmbHgGwFQGfd8jdk6xXc1tTDL3SNJUxrTF1Cg-OgzmtXAW_sUzm5aiu3TMaFs1Sk0gNOI-iKdeB/s400/IMG_7798.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388435164583737314" border="0" /></a>We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo. You can't come. The authorities know what you did last time, boy. There is talk of furries- screwball sex perverts. Is it bestiality? She came so far and all she wants is to talk of marriage and coo over the kitties. There is no sense of who she is. Most of the animals sleep- bar the monkeys. They crouch down and examine themselves, licking off the juices. Stingrays are slipsliding by, splashing their wings and opening divided mouths to hoover up fish heads. Tailwhips swim by, sanitised and domesticated with stingers removed. Child friendly rays- I want my frisson of danger back. Open all the cages and let's have a safari. Bring the car and wind down the windows. Lions hunting wildebeest on a giraffe covered savannah. Flamingos taking flight as crocodiles snap at their twig thin model legs.<br /><br />Passing flirtations are dark galleons in the night. anything to avoid falling into that deep black (blacker) pool as I cling to the wet rocks above, a small ragged opening somewhere above creeper hung and white bright with early morning rays. I flee because I always flee when I feel awkward. "Night." The galleons are fading back into the mist.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdNxBVs0TR2uu4wVu8FNOp1TJ7rEFR-p21D0Va_ruOMG_ftIJcncVnKzZRMwZS0yxSipvLAwO2FtsXNgQjpYBNUmUGgA6JjhyphenhyphenwWL8btntIS0wqsuTuR3pMuNezSdUXRdCjnUwJfI3yugXe/s1600-h/pic24.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdNxBVs0TR2uu4wVu8FNOp1TJ7rEFR-p21D0Va_ruOMG_ftIJcncVnKzZRMwZS0yxSipvLAwO2FtsXNgQjpYBNUmUGgA6JjhyphenhyphenwWL8btntIS0wqsuTuR3pMuNezSdUXRdCjnUwJfI3yugXe/s400/pic24.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388435348683476930" border="0" /></a>Gareth is singing my song tonight- we dance and we dance and we double handclap and we dance. Aleks needs to eat some good. "You could juice lemons on her shoulders"- (c) Sophie Driscoll 2009. They are so wry and indie, the scenesters snarf under their big glasses, denim cut off shorts and baggy T shirts. They are beautiful, they are doomed. The guitars spiral just that bit out of kilter, before the drums bring them back under the beat and the violin wheels, glockenspiel twinkles and that is that; the Los Campesinos! kerfuffle, endorphins rush with the ears the wrong side of fuzzy on a post gig high. We drove through ghettoes to get here, tumbledown projects half gone and nobody cares. Blissful cruise home, the nighttime wind blasting my face and I can't hear anything any more. Then we try to spy shooting stars and discourse and drinks and so so tired that we are asleep like a Beatrix Potter book before our heads hit the pillow.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-36748817969191403492009-10-01T12:38:00.000-07:002009-10-01T15:41:45.283-07:00Kismetic (day forty seven and forty eight)<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Shhhh</span>.... you'll wake the trolley mean, asleep in the shade behind the abandoned lot, hand gripping tight to the shopping trolley full of life's detritus. Memphis went for a nap and not even Elvis Presley week can wake it up. Sultry air hangs thick like velvet, closeting your breath and body, surrounding in a misty embrace. Graceland pulls in nostalgia tourists to the south suburbs. The boundary wall is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">scrawled</span> with adoration masking proclamations of the self and marks that say "Frank was here in 1997". There are no respects to pay. He is not our hero. Bloated addled gun obsessive wanders mansion bemoaning the rhinestone adorned stage clothes he'll never fit in before dying an icon, an iconic death, an icon, forever. The city centre is a snooze. The intersections are slow and car less. Cars cruise slow, petrol station visits with curlers all in place. Gas pumps and forecourts are all I know. The click of the nozzle and the flush of the gasoline. Juiced prehistoric seashells fresh crisp cut in the air.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGYugCjdZn8Vu24oEps2fBUdZ1JxMlg0WnHPBMF6f2H9kycRu2we963uucO_5vQIys89GIH2ctB34wFg1mH-asMfVT4xzUv8b3TYl9WE32m1G8_OZoPp0i0c4uFy3BVIB-HDxY4-_xEqYf/s1600-h/IMG_7703.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGYugCjdZn8Vu24oEps2fBUdZ1JxMlg0WnHPBMF6f2H9kycRu2we963uucO_5vQIys89GIH2ctB34wFg1mH-asMfVT4xzUv8b3TYl9WE32m1G8_OZoPp0i0c4uFy3BVIB-HDxY4-_xEqYf/s400/IMG_7703.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387760176071143458" border="0" /></a>The Memphis pyramid is empty. Whose body lies in the centre? The doors are locked, the signs behind the ticket office still advertising Bob <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Seger</span>, years on. Extra seating rots beneath our feet. They won't let me into the exhibition. Where's my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">urbex</span> badge? The monorail trickles out to Mud Island, with its <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">museum</span>, amphitheatre, and scale model of the Mississippi. Inside, steamboat replicas and a timeline teach us the history of this little area- gun battles and industry and shipping. Man beats nature, dredges channel and builds.<br /><br />These faces shall haunt my nightmares tonight. Preened and bouffant hair piled up in curls, faces smoothed to a satin finish with a layer of foundation and false eyelashes. The teeth shine white, and it's nice and wide- but it's false. Grinning automatons drilled by vicarious parents. They've been sent here to destroy us. Foreheads are bulbous premature. Mothers recreating their childhood, or erasing their childhood with a new one, playing with dolls. One day they will leave you, they will all say goodbye. Child beauty queens are not made of porcelain.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh2pabCByKHiZfw6f-gt1GZvjH6tj7kOhnavqnE_JvlQ8gMp5dqxFaKHUVqkxNdZhnjG6pxVwGuH_CizadB06L9eV9KPrEqLahIrWGn2wlQj1gpEO9MKy03pc4UIP2uRpXOIf7xDugyy6U/s1600-h/IMG_7754.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh2pabCByKHiZfw6f-gt1GZvjH6tj7kOhnavqnE_JvlQ8gMp5dqxFaKHUVqkxNdZhnjG6pxVwGuH_CizadB06L9eV9KPrEqLahIrWGn2wlQj1gpEO9MKy03pc4UIP2uRpXOIf7xDugyy6U/s400/IMG_7754.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387759647613664930" border="0" /></a>"Are you looking for anything in particular?"<br />"No, we're just having a look around."<br /><br />Were you looking for a summary? A handy recap in two sentences. Cape Genevieve is the small town. It's fete is packing up, stalls stripped bare down to poles and planks. The tombola ready to come out again next year, cakes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">tupperwared</span> for later. The fayre hasn't changed for years. It will never change. Mrs Reynolds needs something to keep her out the house. Illinois is just across the Mississippi there, but the ferry is down for repairs. We park by the rusted rolling rail stock on red brown tracks; it doesn't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">skitterscreech</span> out of here anymore. The white part is being colonised by iron oxide, gradually. Huck Finn passed through here, stopped on the sandy shelf of sand amongst the trees. Now barges glide down, pushed by straining tugs past industrial vats and red brick slow paced St Genevieve, green leafed suburbs leading out to barns and tobacco <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">fields</span>, red white pointed barns a picture postcard. We're just having a look around.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFvb6G4ni8yckgJ_LA_6ZDzWmHhFI-t3BIjK5xEulIsMYVV5AYxjlAXUebYQq_1Ggf2YCVqQSOckK5SUWwhU9zTQ9PuudqZPD4IMpaEyrI2S271zp0zOCQArElr4C1hrN0Zkr-rvUJioF/s1600-h/new+orleans+to+bloomington+164.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFvb6G4ni8yckgJ_LA_6ZDzWmHhFI-t3BIjK5xEulIsMYVV5AYxjlAXUebYQq_1Ggf2YCVqQSOckK5SUWwhU9zTQ9PuudqZPD4IMpaEyrI2S271zp0zOCQArElr4C1hrN0Zkr-rvUJioF/s400/new+orleans+to+bloomington+164.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5387759981276484322" border="0" /></a>The greaser from the 50s is a walking memorial- Buddy Holly inked onto exposed arms, white wife beater underneath a jet black (dyed) quiff. The face isn't youthful anymore, callused from carousing; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">now</span> he's sedentary, sedimentary. He fits in here, at Sun Studios, where the tiles fall down around the photos of the Millionaire Quartet and all the other fading glories/legends/whatnot. Does Elvis bestow his magic on the objects he touches? I'm not getting any feelings from this microphone.<br /><br />These anti-abortion signs are getting me down- the pro choice groups are quiet round here- shouted down by phlegmatic preachers strapping crooked morals to their breastplate like golden coins to buy their way to an absent heaven- they buy billboards to manipulate the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">simplehearted</span>- clouding complex issues into innocent/evil/murder <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">trichotomy</span>. The road is spooling up behind us, 10,000 miles long. It sprawls out, in front of us, endlessly rolling and twisting until a gravestone blocks the path, 100 feet granite wall with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">chiselled</span> letters 10 feet high- R.I.P.<br /><br />Missouri homes are more welcoming, piles of snacks and jesting from the off. An evening of nothing but TV and conversation in the dry St Louis night. The dogs flop around and yowl and beg and entwine us all and we are done and we sleep under a fan forever.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-35563770104556336962009-09-27T13:45:00.000-07:002009-09-28T04:20:57.257-07:00High tide mark (day forty five and forty six)We came to hear the jazz. It's not here in the Maison Bourbon, on old Bourbon Street, in the old French Quarter, in old N'Orlans. The signs tell you not to videotape, not to smoke cigars, that every person needs one drink per set. The quintet sits separate and listless, staring into the middle distance. Only Jamal Sharif talks, nattering to the manager. Their performance hasn't raised a sweat- it never could- they're too cold- they don't care. Blank staring ahead- it's all so rudimentary. They've done this show a hundred times. They hate the songs and they hate the way the tourists snap them and they don't clap at the end of the solos. My $6.75 soda tastes pretty sour.<br /><br />The drum rattle and the brass snap and rasping slur is burbling down the muggy street. Strolling faster, we pace towards the cacophony. Black youths with borrowed delaquered trombones, duetting with goldenglitz trumpets and drum strapped chests pounding. This is jazz. The real stuff. Hobos are dancing, raising a sweat and mopping the brow with a handkerchief under the fishnet hat. A brother in a wheelchair is rocking back and forth, boosting himself out of the seat, swinging his legs. He is lost in the moment. We're all lost in the moment. The soul of New Orleans is found. We are floating.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht_9E0ASLXKmq_3iX7ls_BISxv9B-54mcleICh1P5vY_w1vDotLSl5o82vtDMfr5UgdA7qPRR6zk7TpJ5tjRdlLDV4jPU6RLyw26oKF61qJt5u48f1CYM0wKh3Uddcp4tYwzGDP7ESyYSD/s1600-h/new+orleans+to+bloomington+056.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht_9E0ASLXKmq_3iX7ls_BISxv9B-54mcleICh1P5vY_w1vDotLSl5o82vtDMfr5UgdA7qPRR6zk7TpJ5tjRdlLDV4jPU6RLyw26oKF61qJt5u48f1CYM0wKh3Uddcp4tYwzGDP7ESyYSD/s400/new+orleans+to+bloomington+056.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386476559834820402" border="0" /></a>People wander around here, shellshocked. A man blending his skin with his clothes, all a burnt red tan; monotone. The musical statues change spots, their silver skin running in this sweaty weather. I can still see your moustache. And your boobs are made of sponge. Some of the buildings still bear the damage, graffitied government marks emblazoned on the side. Others are recovering, or the same as they ever were- Fritzl's full of memories and paintings of old musicians. The street outside is filling up with tourists; strippers and hustlers trying to motion you into their bars; standing their in lingerie, ogled by passing eyes. They look tragic and desperate and their eyes sparkle with sadness. Or is this patronising... are thye happy to make their money this way? Are they proud? A buck is a buck is a buck.<br /><br />In Treme the kids look out from the stoop across the street. School buses drop children- invariably black- the whites fled long ago to leafy Garden District, tree lined streets shielding the pillared and balconied mansions from everything. This is Nicolas Cage's hideaway. The Voodoo Musuem celebrates the post modern religion- reconstituting Catholicism and African beliefs into something new, creating zombies. No central organisation, or text. An orginator. Wooden carvings and skulls and offerings, and an altar covered in possessions given up to enact some good, somehow; hotel keys and food wrappers and hundreds of one cent pieces. It has as mich truth as anything does. Music and voodoo fuel this dark swampland- where the tallest buildings are empty hotels, and they still cry for Katrina and rub weak balm into its scars.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzjranu9sYmGRGS2WOvDDlJ3NJvC3uOg9gUJ5mv_sExNQvTqJ4wcyEQnH1h-iJQSm00HdvRGOAe9GxzF2w3HH32XUKcFJV3g586AhdOOHprIPth1v8pDFpVJgJYdyWqwNBY5iVVeN6IMv/s1600-h/IMG_7672.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzjranu9sYmGRGS2WOvDDlJ3NJvC3uOg9gUJ5mv_sExNQvTqJ4wcyEQnH1h-iJQSm00HdvRGOAe9GxzF2w3HH32XUKcFJV3g586AhdOOHprIPth1v8pDFpVJgJYdyWqwNBY5iVVeN6IMv/s400/IMG_7672.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386476161179493810" border="0" /></a>Or maybe the scars are healing up.... Maybe. The lower 9th is filled with cicatrices, keloid scars covered in scrub, the lots cleared. Concrete steps still stand, but they no longer lead to a porch. Abandoned boarded up hovels still bear the government marks. The neighbourhood really opened up when the waves came in. It's so airy... So many lives gone. The stories moved away; the family photo albums, the kitchen table, the threadbare sofa; they went to another state, or they never went away, or they didn't... The spray can diagonal slashes would be so much more poignant if we could understand what them, we simple tourists ogling the catastrophe, snapping the heartbreak, feasting the recovery. Hammer blows are echoing around, exposed frames becoming slowly clad, pipes and wires and a roof and windows- a house and a rebirth.... and a home one day. It's a 10 year pregnancy barely in its second trimester.<br /><br />The causeway bisects Lake Pontchartrain, the longest bridge over water, 9,500 pillars. N'Orlans recedes and fades back into haze before Mandeville emerges ahead on the north shore. The scenery is like one of those cheap repeatinf backgrounds cartoons use to save production time. Grass leads to green leafed trees. All the settlements look the same, the same Walmart blueprint, the same petrol forecourts, the same motels. Are we caught in a time loop? Only the mileage going up and the petrol meter going down suggest otherwise.<br /><br />Oh, so this is why Britney is the way she is? Kentwood is a railroad town where the trains don't stop anymore. Bungalows are largely falling down, paint peeling lost hope homes. Britney gives hope of escape, maybe.... Stores are closed down, or soul sucking corporates that take the money elsewhere, away and gone, and Kentwood dies a little more. No one knows why Britney left. Some say it was ambition, shopping mall singsong competitions precocious brat show off celebrations where only the parents clap with any gusto. They're probably wrong. It was desperation.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivmhrb3qRSXNPb6pLsmbXIlYZv3Vn_wDvSLp5akRRzxHK-hP0gQRYxqvS7eTp0dSPetq7ZG4QNlP0QrYtaqVGKghJSVUgH-MNzvhy9zI85cPltNpqNxfvPA52rCP-2e256wmTpwLIvWkXK/s1600-h/new+orleans+to+bloomington+101.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivmhrb3qRSXNPb6pLsmbXIlYZv3Vn_wDvSLp5akRRzxHK-hP0gQRYxqvS7eTp0dSPetq7ZG4QNlP0QrYtaqVGKghJSVUgH-MNzvhy9zI85cPltNpqNxfvPA52rCP-2e256wmTpwLIvWkXK/s400/new+orleans+to+bloomington+101.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386475830792994642" border="0" /></a>In Grenada they question whether there are black people in England. I have no idea why they're working in Burger King. They are truly wasting their potential. Mississippi is a fearful state for the foreign born. A sludgy accent and a distrustful temperament. We speed out of the gas station; beer buying pick up drivers, ragtag black hobo talking about court dates and mumbling. I can't deal with all these stereotypes.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-67726809200904152582009-09-26T12:29:00.000-07:002009-09-26T16:33:47.370-07:00Voodooswampland (day forty three and forty four)Texas is a strip mall. Shops lining the interstate, warehouse sized with fast food chains sprinkled along salt and pepper. It's dead in the gaps, empty fields with nodding oil pumps slurping out the earth. Old river/ghost river crossed by road bridge, a watery highway back up north. Beaumont is one aisle in the shopping centre in this flat grassland. The Subway staff haven't heard a foreign accent in a while and they love it. Behind in the queue the man asks what we make of Tony Blair. We dodge the political intent (which now seems like mere <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">curiousity</span>) and centre our attentions on the sandwich. Too long searching for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Blimpie</span> we starve and wolf down anything.<br /><br />Way back when we were in Austin, American Apparel gave us snickers like it always does- i wish i could dress like them- i wish i could wear gold lame. Snide comments attack- don't bitch about the employees as an employee walks past. Crane your neck in, son, you don't want to raise your dukes against this welterweight whelp. He'll duck and weave, a merry dance he'll lead you on within the ropes. The tacos will only show you up, echoes of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">eggy</span> cheese and guacamole and lettuce bloating ye up.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcdA5Qd1sm11k1tNyceqgJdE-oRy19E5tcWVu_6KQqE8RLM_u_XI1BgSbxRv8sUzOIw5qZtRTvp_bttJ6ULqvm0kyTYru3vm0lABwtz3JvqFZmORWwCL0AilK7pchF_eOWpIkffGHPmFp/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+262.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcdA5Qd1sm11k1tNyceqgJdE-oRy19E5tcWVu_6KQqE8RLM_u_XI1BgSbxRv8sUzOIw5qZtRTvp_bttJ6ULqvm0kyTYru3vm0lABwtz3JvqFZmORWwCL0AilK7pchF_eOWpIkffGHPmFp/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+262.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385922079319852706" border="0" /></a>The kidney pool is cold in the Texan sun, Germans smoking feet deep as i paddle lengths. Austin is a chic beautiful city and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">i'll</span> be sad to see it go into wing mirrors and fade out. Facts that help you understand a place in one sentence- the Texans built their state capitol a foot higher than Washington's. Fact #2- it is the Lone Star state. This Texas attitude craws in my maw and throat. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Meh</span>. Off to Louisiana, to the sea, to the Gulf of Mexico, and we reach the south east corner, to turn north, to the snowbound Arctic we won't reach- flood damaged <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">jazztown</span> in the hurricane's path, forgotten by federals. Toot toot.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVfa1EZ7J092btcUoThVgFdsqr40vb1ImSPOt2ZiQg5e-d-HUil65gMCDLojAcYU-tZO3EUZO-rJMoNmKxrpOdqI_gZvEQX_glFLOF6mrS04Zpi5_Egw-o9vFEXuNrL-Lzgq6mZp_fZvZN/s1600-h/IMG_7579.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVfa1EZ7J092btcUoThVgFdsqr40vb1ImSPOt2ZiQg5e-d-HUil65gMCDLojAcYU-tZO3EUZO-rJMoNmKxrpOdqI_gZvEQX_glFLOF6mrS04Zpi5_Egw-o9vFEXuNrL-Lzgq6mZp_fZvZN/s400/IMG_7579.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385921652509221378" border="0" /></a>Louisiana sleeps away its muggy days, insects tracing lazy circles. Bridges cross the swamps below on concrete spokes, miles long highways passing herons and hidden alligators <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">toothyglum</span> under the grimy mire, nostrils <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">snorkeling</span>. Drowned trees green and creeper ridden or spiky stumps slow rotting. This is a swampland. Factories are plumped into the towns, skeletal towers and turrets thronged with ladders and stairways and pipes, the insides outside and chemicals inside- industry driven to an area by an area's need (bribery). Lessons learned from the Dutch in land reclamation and living below sea level. It's so much safer in the mountains, anywhere up high, in a tower, or up a tree, climbing. We are lost. We are sinking.<br /><br />Down, further down, and a little bit further down and we strafe the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Superdome</span>, ominous and imposing in white and brown. Is there an elephant in this paragraph? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Shhh</span>... you'll wake Katrina.... Unavoidable catastrophe. It is everywhere, and it is now, and then. The roads lose their names in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Treme</span>, narrow and uneven, bumpy. Jazz developed its loose swing and brass cacophony <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">badoopbop</span> down these timber housed streets. Now it's lost. Now it's sinking. Half abandoned, lonely bums wondering the pavements pushing black bag filled carts. Stores closed, pastel shaded homes tumbledown abandoned or ramshackle and fading. Is there culture here, or just neglect? Is neglect a culture. This feels... vibrant. We'd be lying if we said we didn't lock our doors.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-SGwQ-A9OMDtl7_Vh5r6o4G21dpRYip88pplztCVYgpUQ1AbeGixzKbSnGIeNtfNAb6BQz2Bz5sKObqhWVrAIkbBDszMPMKWXSJEGdmgOuMri4hv4YB-tLGXpSVGUTOLks2qcyXoChXF/s1600-h/new+orleans+to+bloomington+064.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-SGwQ-A9OMDtl7_Vh5r6o4G21dpRYip88pplztCVYgpUQ1AbeGixzKbSnGIeNtfNAb6BQz2Bz5sKObqhWVrAIkbBDszMPMKWXSJEGdmgOuMri4hv4YB-tLGXpSVGUTOLks2qcyXoChXF/s400/new+orleans+to+bloomington+064.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385921349824772994" border="0" /></a>"Exposure to the Son may prevent burning." Religion using jokes on its billboards is a winner. Sign me up. This is the South- mouth mangling accents and they won't understand ours- godly billboards and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">crayfish</span> billboards and BBQ billboards. The home of voodoo and the home of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">godfearing</span>, they bury their corpses above ground to stop them floating to the surface with each flooding from Old Muddy, the Mississippi that we cross and that we'll recross a few more times, carrying sediment to build the land further out towards Cuba, towards the storms. American daring, an epic game of bravado, that's all this city is. Now it's lost, now it's sinking.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-1836938368716096032009-09-22T09:34:00.000-07:002009-09-22T10:34:26.999-07:00Hipster, scenester, loser, spy (day forty one and forty two)These transsexuals are getting me all flustered. Am I supposed to be attracted to them? Silicon breasts jiggling in stripper dresses, glittered. They mime and dance and it is funny, glamourous and somehow sexy. The club is full of lasers dancing with the spotlights dancing with the rainbow couples and their $1 spirit mixers. I am drinking vodka orange like I'm on a student bar crawl trying to forget my long distance relationships. Sophie meets a Mexican beauty and likes it- making out as the lights spark the bass throbbing air.<br /><br />The Alamo is "balls". An old facade hides an empty inside with tourists conga lining around, looking at the memorial to the dead who tried to hold off hordes of Mexican soldiers. Their futile deaths hold massive significance for Texans. My history degree can see why, but it's such a small, insignificant event. It's no turning point (that's right, Mr Jackson), or trigger. Just a monument celebrating death. This is no memorial. It is a shrine though, so take your hats off, gentlemen. I am shaking off the shackles of history.<br /><br />Sci fi chic on the River Walk- concrete channels and blocks mix with arch bridges over the ferry paddled green river, strictly controlled by a phalanx of paraphernalia flaunting shops and a manmade course. The air is a mug and sweatstains my T shirt.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHHPB7A3KfvZeMmiJNFkuUCAksjkQ61mMk8cajmvkLANtOM_qFMkjileJELcrhk7i0iPXHX-6gvOijwZW8oQ90eruCGjmkXl3gyhrzwl_ggIx27NdT5o2gd4dZhVq7E1HCUPHdzEix3rF/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+027.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHHPB7A3KfvZeMmiJNFkuUCAksjkQ61mMk8cajmvkLANtOM_qFMkjileJELcrhk7i0iPXHX-6gvOijwZW8oQ90eruCGjmkXl3gyhrzwl_ggIx27NdT5o2gd4dZhVq7E1HCUPHdzEix3rF/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+027.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384345945325503634" border="0" /></a>Cowboy boots are purchased- the look is complete. I've been Texaned, in this hodge podge city of lavaterias- all Spanglish dropping words in like puto- makes it more vibrant, like this family meal with all the in jokes and smiles and grandma and grandpa the bedrock so proud of what they did and so they should be- a happy happy family who I feel at one with. My stomach is bursting pregnant with a foodbaby. They've done me in with hospitality- like the True Blood drinking games that lead to the drag show, stoopit, which completes the circle which completes the day.<br /><br />Sleep whittles away the morning into a lunchtime breakfast taco burpy mess. Oli the ginger cat joins me in bed, nurdling his way under the duvets and curling up underneath my knees. The static in my skull slowly recedes- this is the last night I drink. We must say bye to the grandparents and head on our way to Austin. The parents have been spoken to for the first time in 40 days. I have been a bad son, and I shall be punished in good time. The group liases at Vicky's house and it all feels quite like Kerouac- a gang travelling to see the world and drink and drugs (there were no drugs) and converse about it all. TJ, and Ian, Tom and Vicky travel in the Scion, gunning up I-35 to Austin, and we follow in Oscar, overtaking and sweeping and nearly crashing or nearly getting crushed under a yellow juggernaut, impatient, post its conveying messages across lanes. Honk if you love the Navajo.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY-zd7TnXYvNvuBspMWOoOxA5bD25xtELwEuoQIH3aFmJzSDRd1YAVh-X4Co9GozMfqdig8ly0OQpXuINBsaEPyDXKklx0ygCqIOznH9EJkNiR2u9kAMk_Xrp4NwdtwYG3oUyWNELyx7tc/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+150.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY-zd7TnXYvNvuBspMWOoOxA5bD25xtELwEuoQIH3aFmJzSDRd1YAVh-X4Co9GozMfqdig8ly0OQpXuINBsaEPyDXKklx0ygCqIOznH9EJkNiR2u9kAMk_Xrp4NwdtwYG3oUyWNELyx7tc/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+150.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384344941924839890" border="0" /></a>The Snake Centre is depressing little sideshow sinkhole aside the freeway. Rattlesnakes and lizards lie in their small tanks, idle under the lights, digesting a kill or shedding pale skeletal skins. There is nothing for them to do. Diamondbacks and mambas are coiled up asleep. Are my human conceptions of living affecting my judgement? The turkey is folded up in the corner and looks ill, plucked out feathers and piled up shit surrounding. The monkeys peer out from wire mesh and concrete bases, faces asking for release. The alpaca is fed up of being petted, and the pigs are squealing and nipping each other. This is what Noah had in mind. The park is what zoos exist to eradicate. Sometime in the 1950s this was a good idea. Once.<br /><br />The Austin Motel is all individual and different and therefore all Austin. Chestplate tattoos and cartoon inkwork is a citizenship requirement, along with flesh tunnels and American Apparel. Congress Avenue is full of the quirky shops that litter Brighton- costume/vintage/modern antiques (deploying oxymorons is totally Austin). Frans is a burger chain formed by a divorce and it hasn't changed since. Chequered tables and a low slung counter flanked by fryers and hot plates. We wander the dark streets, a flood of bars and venues. Austin is a puddle of booze. The bats flew out the bridge earlier, August making friends via a band T shirt, endless clouds of black blots swirling in the dusky gloom. Families come to watch the free shoe, sweaty pecced joggers moving on by, buttocks jiggling in short shorts. Monday night is never a busy day. Empty, tiled floors gleaming, underlit dancefloor barren. The Spider Cafe is for stoners. Erin has no idea who we are, and the saggy lobed emo scenester steals her away as soon as she forgets our names and faces. The city is friendly and hip, just quiet, so so quiet but that's no one's fault. Ian and co slip away to San Antonio and I sleep first. That never happens.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR_ietuc9DUaFFuRQMa2VQKc9V5d4jQnw6IpexK9l-TmgLvInE-JebGHf1zfH4WEWgOOqRS3buI6JIrZYrbnZqTrhb6wvKXvoUU0_IK3aLt2v20tHaqfyodEkeYb0QoNMrseYZhqc7fZtR/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+194.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR_ietuc9DUaFFuRQMa2VQKc9V5d4jQnw6IpexK9l-TmgLvInE-JebGHf1zfH4WEWgOOqRS3buI6JIrZYrbnZqTrhb6wvKXvoUU0_IK3aLt2v20tHaqfyodEkeYb0QoNMrseYZhqc7fZtR/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+194.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384344392234595762" border="0" /></a>jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-56269275147491309922009-08-08T17:27:00.000-07:002009-08-08T22:35:04.594-07:00Post deluge (day thirty nine and forty)Puddles still lie, idly reflecting blue skies and turning silver when the sun hits them just so. A new former river blocks our road, the yellow line dissolving downwards into the murk. We can't cross that, it runs fierce. Hyundai can't cross Ford. Out in the farmland, where the road signs are threaded with bullet holes, jet crows feed on jet cows dead by the roadside with sharp jet beaks. They flap idly away with ancient wing beats with each passing car, to quickly return a moment later.<br /><br />The landscape is featureless and empty, again. Green grass and ghost towns, always dead petrol stations- always. Old adverts fading away on the wooden boards, Coca Cola still recognisable. An old warehouse is surrounded by rainwater, rusted barrels scattered inside, walls, window and roof collapsing down but still standing, still in essence a building. Forgotten places, driven past and barely remembered, forgotten lives of the deceased, dying and decaying, forgotten in some other place, or still inside, in an old pale oak rocking chair, blanketed and forgotten. A rotting skeleton rotting in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">summerstorm</span></span> winds as they roll across the empty countryside.<br /><br />All the way to Carlsbad Caverns, but no stop. We must get on to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ozona</span></span>, where the feral cats scrawny roam beneath the orange lamplight, living off the Subway scraps where the staff keep an earphone in. I can emphasise.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8PL5aWiLKusqPtcQmU99mDOH3C7hF3XIBga8sVknPT-VLiTsAmrITfkuKWILHFzh5ddS3TPeMEwqpsCuz01dgL3mZjLnm7S-dJJ03z6_2dE3tBgPVvrcgi7kLqvWlLwnZsTOsaUMiZDb5/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+252.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8PL5aWiLKusqPtcQmU99mDOH3C7hF3XIBga8sVknPT-VLiTsAmrITfkuKWILHFzh5ddS3TPeMEwqpsCuz01dgL3mZjLnm7S-dJJ03z6_2dE3tBgPVvrcgi7kLqvWlLwnZsTOsaUMiZDb5/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+252.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367832324302820434" border="0" /></a>Cable television is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">freakshow</span></span>, right wing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">horrorshow</span></span> anti-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">everythings</span></span>, documentaries on any family that twists the chemistry of the nuclear unit- midgets or multiple children or female police officers or tattoo artists or cheaters or bounty hunters or loggers or truckers or fishermen. Any occupation deserves a series. Bass rattles the air by Sonic in Pecos as a red pickup truck pulls up. Then a cacophony of a train horn changing tone as it changes town echoes the muggy summer soup. I drink my strawberry milkshake, slurping, i think of you across an ocean curled under a duvet not experiencing this moment and I am bittersweet.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmRaDSvVeJkIGW9ruuaQkJoGpsIive5sADeqZv_RgqBx0qj2v6t2-XYSA9B320KSZ829DdyMryGICgaYJukAp5B2YSyhiXTlzfTK7gbBeW0HWVsvKOTMbKmGf1LcePIfCKaVm0CEYXqJ4/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+097.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmRaDSvVeJkIGW9ruuaQkJoGpsIive5sADeqZv_RgqBx0qj2v6t2-XYSA9B320KSZ829DdyMryGICgaYJukAp5B2YSyhiXTlzfTK7gbBeW0HWVsvKOTMbKmGf1LcePIfCKaVm0CEYXqJ4/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+097.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367832040312954114" border="0" /></a>And now a man has slipped his hand inside my T shirt and he's stroking my supple love handles, whispering "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Sooo</span></span> sexy" into my fearful ears. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. My British heart is fearful of confrontation so I sit rigid and pretend it isn't happening, hoping it will go away, move off, forget. This is what too many jello shots do to a man, lascivious and lusty. Tom tells me to release the right <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">pheromones</span>, project my girlfriend out of every pore. We stare at the label on the bottle of beer, two guys wishing we were somewhere else, with a girl or our friends or something, swigging and not in this awkward moment, sweating and damp in this desert heat, spurning and away from this man whose <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">leering</span> affections can never be returned because i just don't lean that way and i just can't lean that way. It's always good to be wanted. Maybe me and the drunk floppy fringed Mexican have a future together, a happy home, an adopted boy called Alex we can bring up together, me the housewife baking, him the office worker, or the builder, or the CEO. One can but dream of domestic bliss.<br /><br />Never have I seen so many stereotypes in one place- skin tight V neck T-shirts, fabulous hair and glitter, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">shaven</span> headed overweight <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">dykes</span>, bewigged and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">bedressed</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">transsexuals</span> and transvestites. They all have to start somewhere, the cliches ticked off like an I-Spy book. A surreptitious slide by, icy wet glass nudging my arm while a hand grasps my buttocks for half a second. I feel so abused. Somehow I harness my dark place and sing karaoke. I toast Ian and drop the F bomb loose and low. In another life I was a garage MC, but I missed the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">MJ</span> Cole, Artful Dodger, DJ Luck and MC Neat boat. I am loving it like that.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQDJgRpoV1upUrCh5MT1w2K4HJpPEsfk9GG8K82auw8N2k3PgOaB0EWX5TivbK_XYzJvkOecwBsOdCUYo5MW179sc0rb-2mUbZg8OUQxlFqlUfefJCegjbxi_eHpQvURwjBVilGh8d8vfB/s1600-h/san+antonio+to+beaumont+004.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQDJgRpoV1upUrCh5MT1w2K4HJpPEsfk9GG8K82auw8N2k3PgOaB0EWX5TivbK_XYzJvkOecwBsOdCUYo5MW179sc0rb-2mUbZg8OUQxlFqlUfefJCegjbxi_eHpQvURwjBVilGh8d8vfB/s400/san+antonio+to+beaumont+004.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367831622766754242" border="0" /></a>On a road trip we hunt for giant things- the giant strawberry at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Poteet</span>, the giant cowboys at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Northpoint</span> Mall; the heart of America is giant. Independence is valued like a gold locket. They still talk of secession and fear central government like a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">betrodden</span> peasant feared God, and witches, and science. Oil and natural resources and land. They don't need anyone. Don't mess with Texas.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-24054549538035436742009-08-06T22:05:00.000-07:002009-08-07T22:20:17.614-07:00Atmospheric electrical discharge (day thirty seven and thirty eight)It's all gone a bit Biblical outside. Lightning bolts are smiting down out of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">blackgrey</span> clouds, all around east, west, north and south. Water is being cajoled off the window by overworking windscreen wiper blades, as dust is blasted into the side panels of our Hyundai Accent and all the other vehicles headlights up brake lights on in a flurry panic to get to safe ground. To our left it looks like death, like a curtain of muddy obliteration is settling. Brown clouds of dirt whipped up and billowing over the suburban blocks. Another million volts forks down to earth. Daddy, is the world ending? No, son. God's just angry with you for eating three cookies. Never have I seen such awesome scenes. I am not scared. I am not worried. I am impressed and I am excited and I am in awe and I wish it was like this more often, but then I would be less in awe, so I'll just remain in childish wonder with no sense of danger and relish every moment of this drive and wish it would last forever. By <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">jove</span> I've missed the storms, and never have I seen a storm like this.<br /><br />Soon, Albuquerque is lazing under blue and white sun stricken skies, adobe walls adorned with Aztec chic, angular line patterns in pastel red, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">turquoise</span> and buff. Bars and emporiums devoted to any possible need line old Route 66, before the cheap motels take over further up the hill, before the university and its thousands of polo shirted and slack students take over further up still, fast food, cheap stores, video stores, book stores servicing their needs. The uni names its nearby streets after the Ivy League- Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Harvard and so on. One must always have aspirations- always- even if these aspirations lead to ridicule at their hopeful naive nature. Vagrants contemplate the hissing trains that creak out east and west, chewing and looking nowhere in particular. There's nothing more to look at.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs-p8fdzyiXQK7roEv2loBlU4Zsr_U5w1ow4i6KEKQ5ERXoXn8fem8bmCQWW47TIuZRV5LRLZhL3Jzp7cvSXwrpBwmG8XVmBOIiFSTAfQhxwy7xSDTDELh2GN5p9pJcc4JveSv-mshjR1W/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+249.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs-p8fdzyiXQK7roEv2loBlU4Zsr_U5w1ow4i6KEKQ5ERXoXn8fem8bmCQWW47TIuZRV5LRLZhL3Jzp7cvSXwrpBwmG8XVmBOIiFSTAfQhxwy7xSDTDELh2GN5p9pJcc4JveSv-mshjR1W/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+249.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367454245422222530" border="0" /></a>The mountain settlements are dying. No one lives in this one any more. Rows of rusting pick ups and tumbledown <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ramshackle</span> shacks, keep out signs boarded over the doors. Pie Town sells pies, out on this high green grass plateau, up in the alpine air. Everybody needs a gimmick.<br /><br />Some people never left the road. You see them walking, a wooden pole leaning forward, mottled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">dustblown</span> leather boots worn in then worn in some more. A knapsack carries all they need. Others are stopped at intersections, a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">cardboard</span> sign with "Arkansas" hopefully scrawled, eyes watching the traffic ignore them. In the passing cars conversations start as to wishes of picking up the hitchers, the tales they could tell, their life stories, the Kerouac dreams that fuel their stuck out thumb. These proclamations have no intent behind them, shallow and faint sketches in sand soon to be tide smothered. They're still out on those grass plains, featureless bar the fences that parcel the endless land into slightly less endless land, and the telegraph wires that map the contours.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9BSKnHTN2J1GkhAXgGdG83QKW5vP1f6Mw5tnvBvQI3yOnXj6fFlil8ZQwdgm0gn9_atIyKQTuS6cdbq5ObKmfZdq68SiroLrIlcy_r7iKktT-ZKoq5_cl-sPUE-YWmXen7WYeI5ww__eW/s1600-h/roswell+031.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9BSKnHTN2J1GkhAXgGdG83QKW5vP1f6Mw5tnvBvQI3yOnXj6fFlil8ZQwdgm0gn9_atIyKQTuS6cdbq5ObKmfZdq68SiroLrIlcy_r7iKktT-ZKoq5_cl-sPUE-YWmXen7WYeI5ww__eW/s400/roswell+031.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367453826308653986" border="0" /></a>Roswell is divided- to celebrate their most famous event, or not. The International UFO Museum and Research Centre says "yes", and so do the extraterrestrial themed shops that huddle round to gather its scraps of tourists as they spill out. The welcome sign for the town says "no", announcing the town as the dairy capital of southwest New Mexico. The museum itself tries to convert the sceptics, boards of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">affidavits</span> and irrefutable photographic evidence to bludgeon an interpretation into thin skulls. No one will read it all, just the headlines. "The Great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Coverup</span>." I remain a sceptic. It was a weather balloon, and a smart bit of journalism, an imagination and a typewriter. A recruitment poster for the New Mexico military academy sits incongruous in a back corner. The cashier welcomes us as earthlings or otherwise. Is that cute? All the whelps gathered round the big attraction are fading, their storefronts shut up with closed signs gathering dust.<br /><br />The Roswell Museum does not celebrate the aliens. There are no extra terrestrial shaped streetlights here. Modern art mixes with older art and traditional art showcasing that New Mexican feel- a certain <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">desolation</span> emptiness, ruin and desert beauty. The photographs capture the paint peeling abandoned gas stations and ripped open caravans that I can never. My photographs never work this <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">well</span>. I am not an artist. These life sized oils are realistic and sexy and stunning, please can I have one? Children giggle their way around, oblivious like I was when I walked over the sofas in the German art gallery.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtdb1R9I83FHrr8V5k4SLyQSxNY2S3YmgVs8grB0bjrJ6_ZVBUvxGx5NEUYHxPlyrJ39PApsDhEQZeN7CfOjC8hfE9rvV6gwo2bmQNW_ZKGA2np8itAiCUMXSWbJrcdtRtnEU7uSXiisuz/s1600-h/roswell+049.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtdb1R9I83FHrr8V5k4SLyQSxNY2S3YmgVs8grB0bjrJ6_ZVBUvxGx5NEUYHxPlyrJ39PApsDhEQZeN7CfOjC8hfE9rvV6gwo2bmQNW_ZKGA2np8itAiCUMXSWbJrcdtRtnEU7uSXiisuz/s400/roswell+049.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367454718734081538" border="0" /></a>Rocket prototypes fill the museum, prototypes and testers. Pioneers of space transport, mixed with the bead work and gun holsters of older battles, boots and farming tools before the land became the dust bowl when the top soil got stripped. The serge of officer's uniforms next to the natural dyed jerkins adorned with feathers. Nature goods and invader goods side by side. The evening sees another thunderstorm- yet more violent. A wall cloud blowing in, a-billowing and gusting fast, dark grey, darkening the day prematurely. Rain is plunging down, covering the road in a 3 inch deep, 3 lane wide, mile long puddle. They can't hear you on the intercom at the Dairy Queen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">drivethrough</span> any more over the noise of this climate. It's a Hollywood disaster movie, and not a very good one. No one died, just drove a little slower, or cracked jokes in the lobby.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-55977256547042586502009-08-05T20:54:00.000-07:002009-08-05T22:11:31.584-07:00What's wrong with calling them cacti? (day thirty five and thirty six)This story tells how two friends went on a road trip. And while on that road trip they decided to go on another road trip. It was a road trip to see some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">cactuses</span>, down in Tuscon. On the road trip they met untold perils- a car not checking its blind spot, emergency braking, rattlesnakes (there were no rattlesnakes). They saw some really big <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">cactuses</span>. They were old and sprouting, with birds nesting inside. The road bucked and twisted l<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ike</span> the best old <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">rollercoasters</span>. There were smaller <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">cactuses</span> too, because everything has to start somewhere. And prickly pears, with purple red bulbs radiating out from the fleshy palm sized discs. Poisonous beasts lived in the fearsome land, but they hid from the heat, heat that could dehydrate a man in hours. After driving many miles around this arid land, they turned round and headed back home, weary from their travels, after half an hour. The motorway was busy and petrol ran low. They were not sure they would make it back. "Is that a mirage?" they wondered? But no, it was a gas station, and lo, their noble steed could be fed. Dusk was falling quickly, and they were unsure whether they would make it through bandit country, past the ostrich farm and the ranch resorts to the safety of Phoenix. After many trials and tribulations they successfully returned home, after six hours on the road (round trip).<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiABABZN4x_EkH_eZM1I6Sy7prCWOOsrn-JcrhwP9u4k90tyXrYIXSo4hkaN12-UhX7iuWMfCaNRvUQhW7wY2FvZlg55Ym9xwUJD1o0_GnpUOhDdSl3UT6-wKLzFj1G4C-XlLgI6AOmvoW9/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+128.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiABABZN4x_EkH_eZM1I6Sy7prCWOOsrn-JcrhwP9u4k90tyXrYIXSo4hkaN12-UhX7iuWMfCaNRvUQhW7wY2FvZlg55Ym9xwUJD1o0_GnpUOhDdSl3UT6-wKLzFj1G4C-XlLgI6AOmvoW9/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+128.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366709735414048402" border="0" /></a>We have an average teenager's night. A flick at the cinema, fast food at Sonic, Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. Bruno is ridiculous and funny and ridiculous and funny. If I never see a rotating <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Brazilianed</span> cock in my life again, I will die a happy man. This vaccination against reality, old consumerism. There's nothing else to do. Don't seek knowledge- seek escape. Eat and drink and spend your way to happiness and freedom. I am Tyler's unoriginal thought. If I express my own opinion I will die.<br /><br />The Arizona Mineral and Mining Museum is in downtown, where the homeless push their trolleys in the fiery heat, sweating down. They have to be healthy here, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">glugging</span> back water from a gallon bottle in shorts and T shirt. Who would be a vagrant here? Trapped in a maze of single storey crumbling abodes, no energy to find a way out. Inside are a lot of rocks, gems, geodes, minerals and all you could ever want to know about them. They celebrate the open cast mines that sear the Arizona landscape, welts exploded craters into the desert soil. The older guys knew how to do it- dig a tunnel, a network underground. Where's the challenge and where's the romance? It ain't here in this $45 room where nothing works and the beds face each other out on the New Mexico border.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfY4v8Lo9RWFq2Lq7nYRWIan6842eSxqxe2hlaIy2WgLPh3lORU39KHRX5XSywkJZKEgANVYgWtF0Jp7aE8kpvIioW68ZWQ6G4fqwyJNN8RZ370UpsGWL-E_oN6BhElhPjphTdaAwVSDQX/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+184.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfY4v8Lo9RWFq2Lq7nYRWIan6842eSxqxe2hlaIy2WgLPh3lORU39KHRX5XSywkJZKEgANVYgWtF0Jp7aE8kpvIioW68ZWQ6G4fqwyJNN8RZ370UpsGWL-E_oN6BhElhPjphTdaAwVSDQX/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+184.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366710691956772770" border="0" /></a>The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Thunderbird</span> Motel was last open in 1973. New owners just took over, today. Does this sound like a Hollywood pitch to you? The ceiling tiles are falling down, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">everything's</span> cracked, or worn... Three air conditioners, one working. Four <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">lightbulbs</span> above the mirror. One working. The paintings above the bed have faded into a purple mauve smudge in the sunlight. And by paintings, cheap prints of nature; some idealised dream of nature by a Victorian author who never left London. An approximation of a second hand tale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglioH48J6PXIRVG9Bi-Z8RqOwbJgg3C5LQuhBMw77k7mV9-JUzMvVowM6SfU3pu-IzptmAgJRsD-pFxt5MYBOLKyak00YOSk78T57oYxlo4K00hk02uSasfHag_TAEv52btJ5JCMul49wx/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+220.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglioH48J6PXIRVG9Bi-Z8RqOwbJgg3C5LQuhBMw77k7mV9-JUzMvVowM6SfU3pu-IzptmAgJRsD-pFxt5MYBOLKyak00YOSk78T57oYxlo4K00hk02uSasfHag_TAEv52btJ5JCMul49wx/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+220.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366711849562073266" border="0" /></a>The sun is setting in the mountains and we're freaking out. We're going to get lost or drive off the edge or kill an elk or get eaten or something. But, gosh, that sky is beautiful. Orange blending upwards to blue and green and blue blending sideways into the orange and my god that is nothing if it isn't the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">darnedest</span> heart splitting oh wow that is amazing moment of my life. The ranges layer up underneath and the road curves and takes us away. It gets dark quick when you're wearing sunglasses. These headlights are weak aren't they? We use comedy to keep the spirits up- shouldn't we have left Phoenix earlier? No. Lightning flashes up the sky, obliterating the pinpoint million year old pulsing bright light stars for a moment, all that journey, to never reach my retina. Poor star, are you sad now? I can see the eyes glaring in my headlights, this road is a dead end. Turn, quick. And oh so suddenly we feel like the couple in the movie that are killed at the beginning to scare the audience before the main characters come along to get emotionally invested in. We are extras in our own lives.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999777900206801350.post-39172449268253224762009-07-31T22:50:00.000-07:002009-07-31T23:18:37.475-07:00Drinking the desert dry (day thirty three and thirty four)This Phoenix night is still sweltering. Sitting still in the balmy <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">air</span> and we sweat. A jog down to the baseball field sprinklers cools you, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">vigourous</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">spraysplatters</span> your clothes with goblets of cool, agricultural smelling water. The picnic table is a beacon in the night, four sat round imbibing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Walmart</span> alcohol; drinks we got illicitly for the underage drinkers. Eyes flicker at the passing cars looking out for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">po</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">pos</span>, ready to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">lickity</span> split scatter ways. Cards are dealt and the Americans learn a new game. We talk sexuality and love and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">exes</span> and more brouhaha ballyhoo.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczhKg2bpSP8o1KuDfrUHQ83ujqJEMUFh3VVzxaAOvuXZLssidI7irVnSylddMqlGsI4w2wwRRA77O8bTtTviSt4H78rgcYYkCa4PLvIHNToLxHVEPWYLKzliZxrwDbJ4yi7Mb1K-9CVa_/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+124.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczhKg2bpSP8o1KuDfrUHQ83ujqJEMUFh3VVzxaAOvuXZLssidI7irVnSylddMqlGsI4w2wwRRA77O8bTtTviSt4H78rgcYYkCa4PLvIHNToLxHVEPWYLKzliZxrwDbJ4yi7Mb1K-9CVa_/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+124.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364874973498101058" border="0" /></a>The military base is protected by a slalom of concrete barriers, but we pass through, past the barracks and the neatly <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">aligned</span> rows of planes. "Does Maverick live here?" No. The bowling alley is full of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">buzzcuts</span>, muscles and tattoos, accompanied by faithful wives and military brats, well learned in loss. Gutter balls and strikes alike are all animated on the screen, just like back home. This bowling is none too extreme. I demand more neon and more strobes. Sarah doesn't bowl- a childhood telling off for bouncing the ball created a phobia, like a premise for a quirky <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">romcom</span>. You will one day win a bowling competition, thanks to the love of your one true beau. The phoenix in Phoenix, red hair flaming over a tattooed build, lives in a condo round a pool, a family <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">nightswimming</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Shere</span> Khan and Duncan are trapped inside, cats with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">poofed</span> up tails in a two room apartment.<br /><br />The city itself is an endless sprawl. Takes two hours to cross on its four lane roads, stopping at all the intersections. All the houses look the same; Mediterranean style in terracotta, walls a dusty brown pink. No attractions, only suburbs swallowing up smaller cities and other suburbs. , spreading outwards like an ink blot on a crisp white sheet. The fast food chains look romantic by night, the deserted forecourts lit up and empty and an American dream.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitFlUeoMTk_372AruDIKknJcqet8vuxMryTga10ZAofPG0VkhwFZiwLuWMMun4JuXfS6t2p_v5u7O1c8RXm0ZQTQQ8pbJOgXo1bP6gWd8rH8uFl4JBZGzDf8pVfQRxv1tSGZAIEyf-AhIZ/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+201.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitFlUeoMTk_372AruDIKknJcqet8vuxMryTga10ZAofPG0VkhwFZiwLuWMMun4JuXfS6t2p_v5u7O1c8RXm0ZQTQQ8pbJOgXo1bP6gWd8rH8uFl4JBZGzDf8pVfQRxv1tSGZAIEyf-AhIZ/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+201.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364875276914145890" border="0" /></a>Once the tepid white Zinfandel rose is gone we head inside to sneak to bed. The dogs still awake clip around on their paws, claws out to get a grip on the tiled floor. It is cool inside all day, no one goes out in this heat, apart from dashing from air con to air con, holding their breath. There are no pedestrians on any of the sidewalks.<br /><br />Would I like to see photos of your grandchildren? I doubt it. Your son used to play for Florida state, but I don't know if I'm supposed to be impressed. Sharon always wants to talk, but no one wants to listen, leaving the room before she starts another monologue. She lodges here, pickling herself on the gallon bottle of acid bath white wine. Her hair is up in curlers and her tasseled slippers give the appearance of an East End housewife from the 50s, turned to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">tendony</span> leather skin by the desert sun. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Blonde</span> hair dye is not hiding the age process, i can see your veins dear. Smoke another cigarette, it'll clog them soon enough. It's too hot here, she says. She lives here. Why does she live here? Her son is in the military, transferred here. She's ever so proud, tends the kids while the parents are away. Some relatives were born back under the clouded English skis- she doesn't know where. They never know where. Just England. Or France.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMz6J5n355xt3Y5YGrAzWVyvAAdXDud-tOB1a5_1GFSdycoOaRQTHHmCdeNF7jD5rQDD-M_Fg976cSvc1JFnq0mbzF-DXcS2V02Os6siIk2TjSLvjud2q4ujHkkq_hXSebpFmmGXx4jKd/s1600-h/green+river+to+albuquerque+218.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMz6J5n355xt3Y5YGrAzWVyvAAdXDud-tOB1a5_1GFSdycoOaRQTHHmCdeNF7jD5rQDD-M_Fg976cSvc1JFnq0mbzF-DXcS2V02Os6siIk2TjSLvjud2q4ujHkkq_hXSebpFmmGXx4jKd/s400/green+river+to+albuquerque+218.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364875483930982530" border="0" /></a>This night is a repeat of last night- card games and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Walmart</span> booze- wine warming rapidly in the star spangled night- talking about tattoos and piercings- text arguments with our next host. Miss <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Rebecca</span> Middleton talks for an hour and it's grand to hear an English accent. The dogs watch Breakfast Club with us- we have conversations about what Club character we'd be-<br />I'd be the one that dies. (No one dies). Well then what's the point? I fall asleep two thirds through, not even Molly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Ringwald's</span> Sandra Dee charms can filter out the pulsing waves of drowsy dreams. Night night.jameslawrensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07362997643212168469noreply@blogger.com0