Ruby's Diner, Oceanside, CA

LOGISTICS UPDATE

I've just arrived in Los Angeles after a series of day trips to Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Tucson and San Diego. That's the order in which I visited them and the smart-eyed will see they're not in geographical order. I've spent five nights on the Greyhound in a row and am exhausted. Hence the lack of posts for a while. In lieu of proper posts, a couple of teasers from the road (unrelated to each other):

1. 'Oh hey! Nice to see you again. How am I? I hurt bad: my hips hurt, I can hardly walk, and check this out!' [pulls aside green Disneyland hoodie to reveal seven bite marks on her neck]

2. Jeannie points up high with her beef jerky, brandishing the meat at the country's political stratosphere. 'Laura Bush called them up about me - ME. I mean, when Laura Bush has to call the State Department to tell them that you are crazy, you know you're doing something right? That's when I knew the Mafia were involved in everything'. Can a crazy person comprehend of someone thinking them crazy?

Bank of the Colorado River, Austin, Texas

It's time I told you about Bruno.

Bruno has been with me on every step of this journey. I've slept on Bruno and under him. He's as shabby as I am, which means we don't intimidate each other, and when we walk together our arms swing to and fro at the same speed without trying.

Bruno is made by the Driza-Bone company of Australia and is probably twenty years old. This means he is seven years younger than me, but, being made of waxed cotton, his scratches and tears don't heal so he has a large amount of visible life experience. He lends this experience to me whenever I wear him.

He is called Bruno because he is brown but really he is tending to black as I keep stuffing him in the dusty lockers of the Greyhound bus. Under the arms, which swing in time, the dust is ingrained and will probably never come out so it looks as though I have sweated heavily. And over the left should and down the front there is the suspicion of a shadow of the strap of my bag, which I should alternate on shoulders but don't. I'm not as good to Bruno as I should be: he needs a clean and a rewaxing but he won't get one as I can't give him up for even one day.

My two favourite things about Bruno are:

First, the hole in the lining of the right hand chest pocket which is an excellent joke on his part. It is big enough to allow my cellphone through, into the fluffy linty abyss in which only gum wrappers and valueless coins dwell. This means I cannot find my cellphone for hours at a time which is a terror particularly piquant given how far I am from my infrastructure. And more, the hole is not big enough to allow the cellphone back out, so for ten minutes I have to milk the phone out of the hole. This action alienates me on public transport, which is where it always occurs.

Second, the poacher's pocket in the back where the buttocks would be if Bruno was human. There is room for a whole pheasant or a half-dozen books. The corners of the books dig into my own buttocks and remind me not to get too comfortable.

Bruno smells, he smells of wax and smoke and he picks up a little of the smell of each state I visit. At the moment I am in Texas and he smells of mesquite, and of mangroves and old water from Louisiana, and of Spanish moss from Mobile, and echoes of every state north, right back to pretzel salt and steam from Manhattan.

What I miss on my travels he picks up after me: smells and dirt which leave tracks on his skin and in his fibres, a dirty map of our progress hand-in-arm.

Lulu's cafe, Birmingham, Alabama

From Studs Terkel's Talking to Myself, Pantheon, 1973:

One day, in explaining how he writes a blues, [Big Bill Broonzy] chose the knife as the subject. 'How many things can you do with a knife? You can cut fish, you can cut you toenails. I seen guys shave with it, you can eat beans with it, you can kill a man. There. You name five things you can do with a knife, you got five verses. You got yourself a blues.'

LOGISTICS UPDATE 7th March 2009

Black and White Taxi, 4.45am, Norfolk, VA:

'Headed for the Carolinas, uhuh? Let me tell you something real quick. Further south you go, the more dirty the folks get on the Greyhound.'

'I'll watch my step.'

'I don't mean more nasty, I mean more dirty, their clothes and bodies and such. Uhuh.'

After four days in Virginia I am heading south. I'm going to:

Charlotte North Carolina
Savannah Georgia
Fort Lauderdale Florida
Birmingham Alabama
Atlanta Georgia
New Orleans Louisiana
Houston Texas
Austin Texas
Santa Fe New Mexico
Tucson Arizona
San Diego California
San Francisco California
Los Angeles California

and that excludes deliveries picked up between here and the West Coast.

Conservatory Water, New York City, NYC

A Story Told in Black and White -

A black girl and a white girl are looking for treasure. They have climbed down into the Conservatory Water which is a large pond or small lake of man-made origin like everything else in Central Park where when the wind is good but not too strong people bring small boats that they have made or bought and sail them using luck to guide the sails.

The pond or lake now has no water in it. It is empty of everything except a foot-thick layer of gray sandy mud and black spherical fuzzy cobs from the trees and these two girls and a dog that is with the girls and maybe treasure.

The black girl wears a white coat. The white girl wears a black coat. The dog has a black and white coat. This story is real.

The girls dig at the sandy mud with black sticks that were until recently attached to spherical fuzzy cobs. They make foot-long curved gashes and poke in the gashes but if they find anything in these gashes they are playing it cooler than I could play it.

They make their way into the centre of the pond or lake and the dog squats. The black girl in the white coat pulls a white plastic bag from her coat pocket. She picks up a small black turd and puts it in the white bag in the pocket of her white coat.

I am not a parent or a park keeper but from the shore of the lake or pond the turd looked small and black and spherical and very like a small black spherical fuzzy cob.

Church of the Epiphany, 74th Street, New York City, NYC

Reading Werner Herzog's On Walking in Ice (from which I've quoted heavily below) on a bench on York Avenue. The Church of the Epiphany on York and 74th has a pink marble bench outside, above which hang photocopies on bright paper clothespegged to green wire. A bulletin board and mobile, it dances in the warm wind and flashes pictures of priests and adverts for BIBLE AND BREWSKIS.

On this bench I made a discovery: sitting on benches is publicly accepted, lying on benches is frowned upon, but in between, as your angle approaches but doesn't reach the horizontal, you become more and more interesting to the passerby. First I sat and read with the book in my lap; then I lifted up my stiff left leg in a baseball-slide position; then I reclined as on a chaise longue (a friend of mine slept on a chaise longue at boarding school so I am practised at this) propping up my scarf-swaddled neck on one elbow.

The attention I received from pedestrians doubled with each adjustment. When I was in the last position, reclining in my public boudoir, a distinguished man of fifty who might have been Mayor of the Upper East Side if they had one walked past me and slowed as he walked. 'Now there's a man who knows how to relax', he said, just to me and the cosmos that we shared, and felt no need to look at me for a reply.

Herzog's book is a tremendous, poetic account of a shattering journey on foot from Munich to Paris towards a friend who may be dead when he arrives. In one direction - towards Lotte Eisner, the friend who lies in hospital - his friendship is so strong it is preposterous; Herzog knows this, and the push of the preposterous seems to keep him going through life (in this book he claims to have swum fifty miles from New Zealand to Australia).

In other directions, though, specifically towards strangers, in my area of interest, Herzog is not a friendly man. He makes few connections with other humans on his trip and perhaps his closest companion is a dog who follows him for many miles - even then 'he didn't want to be seen, and he just trotted behind me in the roadside ditch'. Herzog is no wandering troubadour, singing for his supper: he makes a habit of breaking into empty houses for shelter.

All this rugged alienation makes me feel embarrassed and bourgeois. I want to impose myself on my surrounding rather than react to them; I want to lie down on the bench properly and sleep under my rapidly tinting spectacle lenses: the sun is warming the grey streets, the pink bench and my grey-pink skin, but I fear a tap on the shoulder from a leather glove.

I rescue myself by telling myself that I'm not Herzog: I want to connect with people, I want at least the option of making friends, and I can do this better reclining than lying down.

Whitney Gallery of American Art, 75th Street, New York City, NY

My favourite map belongs to Jeff. I first saw it in the kitchen of Jeff and Quinne's apartment in Cow Hollow, San Francisco. I think it's just a pull-out map from a Sunday supplement: the map covers the whole Bay Area but adverts for Bay Area Rapid Transit and sushi restaurants obscure large squares of the city. Only downtown is bare, and on downtown Jeff has made dozens of annotations in writing so dense it pretty much makes the map unnavigable.

Homespun phrases like 'grass not good HERE + good HERE but they dont let you play' and 'WALGREENS good for steal toothbrush' and 'HERE be monsters' overlap like the writing on old letters where, to save expensive paper, sheets would be written on horizontally, vertically, and in both directions until the whole sheet was covered in meshes of letters like the webs of a pompous spider.

I love this map because, like the whole enterprise of Google Earth, the space shown on this map is coded with one man's intimate experiences but, unlike Google Earth, the experiences are more important than the map.

Jeff's map is the first symbol I've found of my kind of geography, a geography that deals with space only as far as people live, meet and make friends in that space. This geography is non-linear, it doesn't conform to a grid, it is flexible in ways I've just begun to imagine: A standard geography might have a globe as its symbol: the lines of latitude and longitude are like a coat of mail over the earth, protecting with their impartial straightness the inhumanity of borders. The geography I'm going to write about strains at the coat of mail. I'm going to take off the coat and tickle the flesh underneath.

Beanocchio Cafe, 75th St and York Ave, New York City, NY

A man comes into the cafe wearing two pairs of glasses. Small black-framed nose-perchers threaten the tip of his nose, pushed forward by gold wire rims. He looks over both pairs as he orders a regular filter coffee with a shot of espresso. He turns to survey the room, below the gold wire, above the black frames, and as he turns I see the ashen cross on his forehead. Two things hit me: first, it's Ash Wednesday, the first in five years on which I haven't worn such a cross myself; second, why did I assume the man was Jewish?

Two girls aged perhaps ten years are eating by my side. I'm on the end of the cushioned bench facing into the room: all I have to do to watch them intently is stare into the reflection on the bright copper tabletop. Bright it is though puckered: I only see movements and gestures rather than features, so it is good training for a screenwriter, and I feel like a gladiator practising with a lead sword. One girl - in dark blue, I cannot make out the cloth - is eating a bran muffin (I cheat and look up but only at the dishes); the other is wearing a pink Puffa and picking at a complicated salad.

The ritual of Ash Wednesday seems unique in the Christian calendar because it dirties you: all other ceremonies from baptism on are cleansings. I can't remember the rules on wiping your forehead after the ashing, but it surprises me that the man has not cleaned himself. I think one reason America is so hygienic is that dirt has narratives attached: it tells stories, usually of wild nature - the wilderness refusing to be tamed - or individual weakness, the precise opposite of the American Dream.

The ashen-faced man is angry. He ordered his coffee angrily, he waits angrily, as there is a problem with the espresso machine. There is a public nature to his anger: like so many Americans I've met, he seems willing to use the hard red tiled walls of the cafe as a sounding board, echoing his anger off them until they sound like rage. He doesn't say anything but he paces. He is wearing a green windcheater and his rambling fills the cafe. Why is he angry? Is he angry at the first day of Lent? Isn't Lent, like America, supposed to be about self-control? What is he giving up? Would he tell me if I asked? Why does he generate so many questions? I know I'll never ask him: there is a jagged world beneath the portliness.

'This muffin is heaven on earth! Isn't it good to be out of school?'

This from the girl in dark blue. There is no extra, empty seat for an adult. They sit opposite each other and the girl who is not sitting on the cushioned bench has her legs crossed at the knee.

'Do you want me to get you something?'

'No, why don't we go to the candy store and I'll treat you to something.'

'Fifty cents for candy! It's incredible, isn't it?'

The age of the girls, which I'd briefly forgotten, comes back to me with a jolt. They are wearing this weird sophistication like medals for girl guides: urbane discourse, pin it to the sash. I try to imagine their parents, trusting, accomplished, domineering, surely proud at the meek facsimiles of New York adults their daughters have become. I wonder what puberty will do to these contraptions? And how much do they understand of the jagged adult world that needs to be lubricated with this politeness they're blithely trying on?

The man grabs his coffee, pushes up the black frames (which push up the gold rims) and pushes past the girls and out the door. The girls are tidying as he leaves; a few seconds later they bus their trash and walk out of the cafe. Three people, wearing badges of things they don't understand. In the street the dark blue girl takes the other girl's hand. Suddenly they are children again. I wonder when the man is going to wash himself?

Angel Shoe Repair and Watch, 77th Street, New York City, NYC

My new watch has a Tyrannosaurus Rex on its face. The T-Rex ('T-Rex' is scrawled on the face below its chin) is attacking 9 o'clock but its mouth is open a little too wide, so I think it knows the camera is on it. Yesterday I got drunk and waved it in the face of a near stranger, shouting 'It's five to five! RRRRRRR!' It wasn't five to five: the watch battery was dead.

This morning I got a new battery from a grotesquely cramped, dusty and hyphenated store: a cobbler-mender-keymaker-jeweller-watch repair store which I guess uses the same tools for everything and might perform surgery if the hardware allowed.

The floor, windows and walls are grey on purpose, but would probably have ended up that colour because there is a fine layer of grey dust on my boots when I leave. Worn brass footplates for a hand shoeshine look like ancient, well-fondled bronzes; the seats of the chairs are duct-tape grey and are held together with duct tape. There are hand-written signs all over the walls, no two at the same height, in bold letters spelling gruff words:

NO CCS NO CHECKS CASH ONLY

NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OBJECTS LEFT FOR MORE THAN 30 DAYS

DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT AS WE WILL OFFEND YOU

I am scared as I ask the two men for assistance. One is clean-cut, my height, looks like Jimmy Smits: he runs the cobbler and the clothing mender. He points me at the the other man.

A huge, spherical rubbery head of an incredible mossy green-brown looks down at me in spite of my two-inch height advantage. His spine is bent so I suppose he looks down out of fifty years of habit, habit not lost in twenty years of physical decline. He says nothing but already I know he has an indomitably middle-European accent, a detail he confirms with 'walk this way pliss' as he walks two yards to his desk.

He screws a jeweller's glass under a fold of his sagging right eye-lid, thicker and fuller than his left eye-lid through all the years of clenching. I wonder at what point he stopped using his brow and had the self-assurance to use the lid-fold? I have only just started to rest a cup of tea on my belly when reading in bed.

'Can I watch you do it?' My journalistic ambitions kick in.

He looks at me as if I've told him I want to be present at the birth of my child: warm, tolerant, but dubious of new values in a new time. He reaches for a small, strong-bladed knife.

'What's that knife you're using?'

'Oyster.'

'I'm sorry?'

'It is oyster knife.'

When I first saw his face I wanted to look at his fingers, but I forget them as he shucks the watch - it's incredibly quick, done with one hand, as if he's shaving a sliver of cheese. And then the guts are exposed, and he looks at me inquisitively, and my guts are exposed. What does he want from me?

His eyes, milky eyes, one only a pupil in its black metal tunnel, stay on me as he tests the battery. The machine beeps and a smile crinkles his lips.

'New battery.'

Long pause- he takes out the eyeglass and turns both milk-eyes on me. I start to understand - he's looking inside me, he's interested in how I tick. He is a philosopher in the medium of tiny cogs. He and I are engaged in the same investigative project, except he gets at humanity through delicate machines, fixing up the perfect creations worn down and soiled by imperfect creatures.

What stories the watches must tell him! The substances they are dropped in that coat the mechanism, the scratches that scar them from polo sticks or lovers' teeth, the inscriptions of love on the backs erased in hatred with household cutlery... a half century with sentimental objects must have bestowed on him an anatomy of human sentiment and sentimentality. And now he is appraising me, seeing what cogs are misaligned and what springs are worn.

He slowly parts his lips. 'For this....ten dollars?'

There are no price lists on the walls. He has looked deep inside me, analysed my machinations, seen the workings of my heart and worked out my price. Who can say what his criteria were? Was he considering what I could afford, or what he could take me for?

I love this man, now, I love his fleshy lids and I love writing about his fleshy lids, so I want to assume the former - but in either case he has pulled the price out from me, not from a policy, and I'm happy to pay it and also I've experienced a new and mystical form of capitalism called metaphysical haggling, soul bargaining with soul. I say nothing but smile as I hand him the money.

The signs in this dusty store are misanthropic, alienating, and they rip apart language and friendliness, leaving only human charisma to make bonds between customer and craftsman. Down the street a Starbucks offers its wares in cups with friendly slogans on them: Starbucks' words, like so much of the modern rhetoric of friendliness in cafes and on soup cartons, are empty and bland, human contact processed and pasteurised like American cheese. The friendliness of this aged man is European cheese: it is smelly, it might be rancid, it might give me strange dreams or upset my stomach, but it is flavoursome and home-made and the smell of it will be with me for days.

New York Public Library, 42nd Street, New York City, NY

I was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned among the stage company, and their broad and invulnerable good humor. They were what is called free and easy, and met one another to advantage, as men who had at length learned how to live. They appeared to know each other when they were strangers, they were so simple and downright.

They were well-met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met as well as they could meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any impediment. They were not afraid or ashamed of one another, but were contented to make just such a company as the ingredients allowed.

From Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod, Thomas E. Crowell, 1966

New York Public Library, 42nd Street, New York City, NY

Haile Selassie was executed. His corpse was burned together with an executed greyhound, an executed pig, and an executed chicken. The intermingled ashes were scattered over the fields of an English county. How comforting this is.

- from Werner Herzog's Of Walking in Ice, Free Association, 1978

New York Public Library, 42nd Street, New York City, NY

I fly and fly and don't stop. Yes, they scream. Why doesn't he stop? I think, "Better keep on flying before they see that my legs are so brittle and stiff that they'll crumble like chalk when I land."

- from Werner Herzog's Of Walking in Ice, Free Association, 1978

New York Public Library, 42nd Street, New York City, NY

At the end of November 1974, a friend from Paris called and told me that Lotte Eisner was seriously ill and would probably die. I said that this must not be, not at this time, German cinema could not do without her now, we would not permit her death. I took a jacket, a compass, and a duffel bag with the necessities. My boots were so solid and new that I had confidence in them. I set off on the most direct route [from Munich] to Paris, in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot.


- from Werner Herzog's Of Walking in Ice, Free Association, 1978

68th Street Hunter College subway station, New York City, New York

I can't accurately describe the sound of three guitars hitting the door of a subway train, but guitars are cheap so you can bang one with a spoon three times and there you have it.

Three short Mexicans with short-necked guitars hustled themselves into the train and held the doors for a taller Mexican with a double bass. The tall man wore a moustache; all wore straw cowboy hats with brims folded up for manouevrability in the throng. They could turn their heads without pecking.

Before the doors had closed the four-piece had struck up: a folk song in Spanish, almost ludicrously quick, the beat annoyingly close to twice as fast as the rhythmic motions of the train. Two guitarists sang with dry, beautiful untrained voices as the bass player chewed his moustache and plucked.

The bass strings were painted with red, white and blue stripes which didn't line up string to string but probably once had, and the paint was coming off where the strings hit the black wooden neck of the bass.

I put down Francis Parkman, Jr's The Oregon Trail and looked at the third guitarist. He was taking off his hat to use it as a cup and then he slung the guitar behind him, dropped a few quarters into it to make a rattle and walked down the train, rattling his hat in time to the music. I pulled out a $10 and a single and gave him the single rolled up into a ball. The man sitting to my right gave him $5 which was all he pulled out of his pocket.

The train pulled in to 59th Street station just as the band were finishing a verse. Without slowing they grew louder over a couple of seconds and then finished up with a yell! 'Gracias, amigos', the oldest Mexican said as he finger-flourished his guitar, and the four were gone, out of the train and back in, into the next carriage.

I heard the three guitars bump into each other as they made way again for the bass. Why did the third guitarist bother to tune his guitar?

a few miles south of Big Sur, California

I am being driven down the West Coast by Jeff Eberle, a friend from nine years back when I was dropping out of Oxford University. Jeff will reappear in these entries in black, looming over my carefree enthusiasm like his favourite character, the Commendatore in Mozart's Don Giovanni. For now you need to know that he is ten years my senior, skinny enough to wear his girlfriend's clothes and possesses burning eyes that don't always aim themselves at you.

Jeff turned the engine off as we still rolled and opened his door to the strangest noise I have ever heard: a hacking, booming screech that sounds like nothing other than ten thousand balloons being emptied through ten thousand harmonicas into a mammoth bucket of keys. Jeff gets out of the car and walks to where the noise is getting louder.

This part of the coast is a low, pastoral area where Highway 1 cuts in a few yards from the Pacific. The sand is grey and rocky and the grey immobile shapes that aren't rocks are making the noise: elephant seals, hundreds and hundreds of them. I light a cigarette, jump the barrier and crouch down to watch and listen.

One male elephant seal (who shall remain nameless though a name-tage pin would sink into his flesh in a satisfying way) has made a friend in the mating season. He is really ugly, in a way that defeats description of the whole, so I have to assemble him from parts:

- his rear flipper came off a huge Mr. Potato Head, bleached and raddled by the sea, where it used to be a moustache;

- his body resembles, when still, a slug, and when moving forward in a soppy wave a crinkle-cut fry in its amateurish fat ruffles;

- his face has an opened and entire can of meat dangling off it.

This male elephant seal approaches the nearest female in his slow, blubber-shaking fashion like a toddler in a sleeping-bag and cosies up to her from the side and unfurls his dusky pink erection which he tries to force into her. For a few minutes he perseveres, to the disdain of the female who, if her eyes were not so glassy and abysmal, would surely be reading a magazine.

The male is a creature of pride, though, and with an absolutely life-threatening rear the male heaves himself onto the female. I've attempted to open ketchup packets with similar technique and feel for the female, whose eyes goggle more than usual. The male flaps his meat-can wattle like a frat boy waves a red cup of beer: he, like the frat boy, is trying to get to enthusiasm via machismo. It doesn't work. Neither party seems to be having much fun.

My cigarette is blown out. Jeff has been staring at the elephant seals with glee, but turns to me and sees over my shoulder a disapproving and inscrutable Mid-Western female face under a transparent plastic wind bonnet. He places a hand on my shoulder to move me aside.

Jeff cries into the wind 'What are you looking at? Can I ask what you are looking at?' We are over the boundary rope but no-one has ever looked less like a policeman. I turn sharply to look at her, then turn my eyes downwards once I see the bonnet.

The bonnet crinkles as its wearer puts a hand to her neck with great dignity. I feel Jeff is just about to ask again when there it comes, clear and strong through us into the Pacific:

'Seals. We're looking at seals.'

Jeff opens his mouth but puts his hands in his pockets.

77th Street and Park Avenue, New York, NYC

It's been sixteen days and four thousand miles since my last confession...

In Berkley, two weeks ago, under the influence of Mr. Pibb, I got carried away in panic about blogging in general and this blog in particular. I asked myself a series of questions that I couldn't answer at the time, and I'm going to try and answer them below. Quickly, as this blog shouldn't be about me, it should be about Bri, and Tess, and Britt, and Quinne, and Jeff, and Josh, and all the deliveries I haven't made yet.

And that's essentially the answer to all my previous raddled questions. I am having an amazing time, in a way that is hard to disentangle from the story: I travelled across the United States by Greyhound; I was driven around California by an old and troubled comrade, and slept in a car on the beach; I ate seventeen different kinds of junk food and sampled elk meat in St. Paul/Minneapolis airport. This is all fascinating to me. La Cubana, whose name is Bri, is fascinsating to me. The extent to which she is changing my story and my life is fascinating to me. But probably not to you.

So a change of plan: from here on in the blog will be vignettes and portraits rather than a narrative. I was reading another blog this week and it struck me that blogs are always in the present tense: the most recent post dominates everything and the architecture of the thing makes it hard to get a sense of things that have happened and might happen. And unless the blogger is clever enough to write a story that tells itself backwards, reading through archives is frustrating.

I have a story to tell, and have no idea where it's going, but I'll save that for the book. I'll keep writing logistics updates with where the hell I've been (and will try to get Google Maps into the blog somehow with flags for deliveries), but the blog will from the next entry be better at being ever-present, and will ignore all of the complications of narrative that have been tying me in knots for two weeks. So don't ask why I flew back to New York in the middle of the night; don't ask why I'm going to go to Georgia next week and not Chicago; I'll tell you later. For now let me tell you about what I'm finding on the way.

PS I still Think Capitalisation is a Good Idea in Small Doses and it might Return at some Point in the Future...

Smart Alec's Burgers, Telegraph St. Berkeley, California

An Open Letter To Myself in One Month's Time, Capitalised Under the Influence of My First Mr. Pibb....Part One


Now Look Here you blithering Idiot, Life being what it is you probably have undergone no huge Changes in your Outlook and are still the kind of Moron who hides intimacies beneath the Baroque. So Here is a Baroque Warning to the Jonny Lowndes who has returned back East, from a Confused Former Self who has been Struggling with a Blank Page for four hours.

For six days now you have been Travelling across the United States by Greyhound. You have met a number of interesting people and, you currently Believe, have tried honestly to capture the interest in people who might perhaps slip through an Adventurer's Fingers. You've been inspired by Studs Terkel and have Talked to anyone you could, including Potential Maniacs who wold have scared you in the Past.

But you are, nevertheless, at least as I write (and, again, who changes these days?), a Coward and a Fraud.

You have neglected the Chief Narrative of the last week. You have made two Deliveries and only mentioned them on your blog in passing. You have, in California at least, failed to Engage properly with new people and have been Guilty at all stops on your Journey of Staring back at Manhattan with a mixture of Desire and Terror. You are a Weak Blogger, and a poor Disciple of Studs Terkel.

Your central Failing, so far, has been a Hesitation in writing about a certain Cubana with a Glowing Soul. I shouldn't have to Remind you of this, but before you set off from New York City you spent some Glorious Days getting closer and closer to this Cubana - you are presumably still Shy to a Degree so I will only Mention your Talking into her Neck and Resting your Chin on her Head, actions which will not Revolt the Impartial Observer - until leaving her became Almost Impossible and thus Urgently Necessary for your Mental and Spiritual Health. I am sure you Remember your fear of Diving too Deeply into Hot Blood, which as I write is still Paralysing.

I have some Questions for you, my Future Self, to which I will offer tentative answers in the Second Half of this Open Letter:

1. How did you manage to write about the Deliveries you made in Colorado and Utah, without including the Cubana with the Glowing Soul who gave you the Items for delivery?

2. How did you describe the Glorious Days honestly, humbly and Interestingly without Derailing the Narritive with smugness? How did you manage to Remove yourself from the Story?

3. Did you Hurt Anyone? The Blog, as it runs, has the power to Change the Story that it Describes. For example, writing in Detail about the Cubana with the Glowing Soul might Scare her, and change the Tenor of your Reception back in New York. She will certainly read this Letter before you do again - how did you manage to write Honestly about your Fears and avoid Driving a Wedge between you and her? Did she find your Baroque Warning embarrassing or amusing?

Nostalgia coffee house, Salt Lake City, Utah

A girl is sitting on the narrow arm of a steel chair outside the coffee house, smoking a cigarette as am I (she: Newport Lights; I, Marlboro Lights).

'I guess - I just come from a - yeah, from that sort of background. I guess - I guess - yeah, I guess - I just sorta wanted you to know, that's all. Okay? Are you okay?'

I really want to get to know more about Mormonism.

Manitou Springs, Colorado

Pike's Peak is 14,115 feet high. It is visible from as far as 130 miles away and is not only the birthplace of America the Beautiful, but also site of the highest cog railway in the world.

Tess and I had just missed the cog railway. We hailed a cab.

'Pike's Peak, please.'

A long pause, then a guffaw, as if he thought we didn't know what we meant; our silence caused him silence then a meeker guffaw. He'd never been asked that before in thirty-seven years. Didn't we know how far it was up the mountain? Yes, but the train alone would be $60 for two and how much might the cab be? Over $150.

We split the difference and headed for Manitou Springs, at the foot of the mountain, a mere twenty-minute ride. On the way we passed through Old Colorado City, the site of a miniscule wooden contraption which once served as the state Capitol, and notable for a clever piece of town planning: one side of the street was reputable, the other slathered in whorehouses. Tunnels were dug to ferry the image-conscious below the thoroughfare.

(Colorado's history is steeped in prostitution: Tess is a freshman at Colorado College where sororities are banned, due to an ancient byelaw forbidding the establishment of houses with more than eight females.)

Amid our enthusiasm about the Capitol, the driver grows quiet. He reaches for the metre, pauses, reaches again.

'You know, I've half a mind to keep going anyway. Might be an adventure...'

For a moment the worst part of me respects him hugely; then he pulls his hand back mourning the loss of midday traffic which has earned him $80 in the past hour. Changing the subject he points out his childhood home, above a funeral parlor.

'Grew up in there: grandparents in the funeral trade. I don't watch CSI - too real for me. You know back in the day, there weren't that much to do, people paid to watch dissections? They kept all the pieces too - I seen a baby's arm, pickled in a jar, holding an eyeball by the...what's it called...the optic nerve.'

'Yup, I seen a lot of bloodshed. But time was, warriors used to kill each other man to man; now they extinguish whole cities and consider themselves civilized.'

We overpay him and escape - I narrowly avoid buying a swordstick and Tess gains control of a kazoo. We don't make it up the mountain.

Galivan Plaza, Salt Lake City

Amusing signs seen on the road:

CRUEL JACK'S TRAVEL PLAZA - Wyoming/Utah state line

DRIVE THRU
COME IN AND SQUIRT YOUR DIRT
- Evanston, Wyoming

UPRIGHT MRI OF CHERRY HILL - Cherry Hill, NJ

DAVID'S _RID__
(should be 'DAVID'S BRIDAL') - St.Louis, Missouri

Good Times Burger, 16th Street, Denver, Colorado

'Look at those little houses over there.'

'That's not houses, that's buffalo.'

'Buffalo? Really? I got to get off this bus.'

The first speaker is Davey Alexander and he is being corrected by Sue, a fellow traveller. Sue grew up in this part of Kansas, on the Colorado border, and has been pointing out all of the interesting things in what otherwise I would have considered an empty, desolate landscape. For example, the lines of trees are not natural – they were planted at Franklin Roosevelt's request in the 1940s, a municipal attempt to prevent another Dust Bowl. And in the fall, just before slaughtering season, cattle are fed salted grain to make them thirsty so they gain weight fast.

These frontier facts can't be verified on the road, nor did those squat immobile shapes a mile from the highway look anything other than rude shacks – why do buffalo stand in a straight line? - but I'm willing to take people's word these days, and I suppose so was Davey. I ask him how long he's been on the bus.

He's been travelling for six days on his way back from Massachusetts. It's really a four-day journey but his wallet was stolen in Pennysylvania and he has to make stops and work a few hours to make money so he can eat (my first regret: I couldn't get out of him how he makes this money at such short notice). As it is he hasn't eaten for two days, which might be the reason this man of fifty is so suggestible. He shows me his food bag with just a few crumbs: he gave his last sandwich to a man hungrier than him in Ohio.

Davey hands me a tightly folded and greying piece of paper. I unfold it gingerly for what looks like the thousandth time. It is a four-hundred word life story which I abbreviate below:

Davey lost his wife to cancer in 2007. He has been living in Galveston, Texas, with his two daughters, Amanda of seventeen and Eva of ten. The family moved to Newport, Oregon after a typhoon destroyed their home in Galveston. On December 19^th last year, Amanda killed herself in Newport.

The worn pamphlet ends with an invocation to all parents: talk to your children, as much as you can, and try to prevent the tragedy of Amanda's death. It is a tender and wise message, it is written for the reader and not the writer, and if he had more copies I would take some and pass them around. I fold it up and give it back to him; it takes five minutes for him to get it back in his pocket just right, though this might just be because he is missing the middle finger of his right hand.

'Why were you in Massachusetts?'

'Looking for my sister. Used to have ten brothers and sisters, now it's only Julie. I haven't seen her for twenty-seven years. There's only so much research you can do on the internet – sometimes you've got to go there.'

'Did you find her?'

'Closest I can get to is where she was five years ago. She could be married now, or dead.'

Davey doesn't smile at anything. That's not to say he's without humour: a Mexican child runs into his knee and freezes, staring at her mother in the seat behind Davey.

'Juanita! Behave, or I'll send you to boot camp!'

This looks like an old shtick between Juanita and her mom – Davey joins in with gusto.

'Do you like burgers, Juanita?'

No answer.

'They don't have burgers in boot camp. They have liver. Do you like milkshakes? They don't have milkshakes, they have beer. - [to me] I was looking for Julie in case anything happens to me, I want her to take care of Eva.'

We're about pulling into Denver and I offer to buy him a sandwich during our layover. It's been an hour since he mentioned he hasn't eaten and he mentioned it as a fact not an invitation. He is genuinely surprised and even a little wary. I say I'm getting one anyway and would like the company.

Davey ​sold his lighter to a kid at the back of a bus yesterday for a dollar. The only things he has left in his luggage are a Hawaiian rosary belonging to Eva and which he carries for good luck, and a small plastic wrapper. He pulls this out and gives it to me.

'You ever see one of these?'

It's a cold remedy called Zycam and it comes in a blunt syringe which you slide up the nose to apply clear gel directly to the sinuses. There are two in the wrapper and he won't let me give them back.

'You're travelling around, you get a cold, you think of me.'

We go to Good Times Burger on 16^th Street in Denver – it's a gorgeous pedestrian avenue peppered with free trolleybuses. Young tanned people greet each other with their backs to the Rocky Mountains which even in the distance are as high as the tallest buildings. No-one pays the mountains any attention, but they seem to be there in the greetings.

We each get a cheeseburger and a milkshake and watch a fun scene: a homeless lady steals a burger from some teens at the next table. They wear badges saying 'I'm Queer and Religious' and go inside for a replacement burger with smiles on their faces. I'm smiling too but not Davey. He won't thank me for the burger but says three times 'I really appreciate this' and says if I ever come through Oregon he'll show me around Newport.

Thus to my second regret: after peeling off to Starbucks to do some emailing, I head back to the Greyhound station where Davey is looking over my bags. My bags are still there – a security guard has been deputised – but Davey is gone. I know his bus leaves after mine: I regret not seeing him again and I hope he's found some sort of work to get him home.

Philadelphia Greyhound Station

Anthony gets on at Philly. To some degree I engineer him sitting next to me: over his shoulder I can see a fat family of three and Anthony is slender. I am also afraid of the Mexican man across the aisle who is sad and startled and whose hair has been cut by somebody who makes decisions for him. I move my bag in comradely fashion.

Anthony is very pale with large eyes and spiky tennis-ball hair. He reminds me of Charles Causley's Timothy Winters:

Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters

- except there's nothing blitzy about him. He is terrified.

He is on his way to Mesa, Arizona, not coming back, and will not tell me why except to say he's bored of Philly (on the phone to his friend he says 'Dude, I'm eighteen - can't waste my life in the suburbs of Philly.' He also says he's met a 'cool dude who's writing a book' which is me and at which I pretend to be asleep.)

He opens up slightly when I tell him I'm writing as he too is writing: he has a drugstore notebooks full of large handwritten words, of which all I can read is the opening of one entry: 'FUCK. It's happening again' which I think is a pretty good opening. What kind of writing is it? 'Gonzo journalism, kind of like H.S. Thompson. You know him?' I do: drugs and incredible wit. 'That's him - you ever mess with any of that shit?' Drugs? I say 'no' and don't know why I lie but I think now I pickedup on something in his voice that I wanted to stop.

He pulls out On the Road and I feel incredibly proud of him. I read On the Road in one sitting, in a grassy knoll in Wiltshire while playing truant (hard to do from a boarding school): for him to be reading it actually on the road, at age eighteen, must be glorious, and I tell him so. 'Dude it's awesome - he's so alive, you know? You know he wrote it on the windshield of his car as he was driving?'

The bus empties a bit at Pittsburgh and a spare seat comes up behind us. I direct Anthony to it for his good as much as mine and look forward to frequent cigarette breaks with the fellow.

Four hours later I am fast asleep when my bag is put on me. Then my coat, at which I wake up properly - why is a robber giving me my things? It is Anthony, eyes wider than ever, mumbling and pointing slyly to the back of the bus. He dumps my articles in my lap and clutches himself into the seat next to me. I try to whisper to him but he draws a finger across his throat, staring straight ahead.

Another hour: I have actually dreamed about him in a non-visual way so I wake up again when he rises. He leaves his bag with me and runs to the front of the bus, climbing in right behind the driver. I stand up and look at the blank sleeping faces at the back of the bus.

Sun rises over Columbus- St. Louis Missouri - the Gateway to the West doesn't look like a keyring attachment for the globe, as I had thought it would. We stop to refuel. Anthony scurries off the bus with a shaking hand reaching for cigarettes (he smokes Marlboro Reds, I smoke Marlboro Lights).

'Anthony, are you okay? What happened last night?'

'Oh, dude, I'm sorry, just a panic attack or something.' Nothing more while he's outside - he keeps a garbage can between him and everyone else including me.

Ten minutes later I am buying peanut M&Ms and Anthony sidles up to me. 'Don't know what happened back there, man...I thought I saw them pointing at me and I heard a gun cocking. I got to get more Adderall, dude...scarpered without my stash, all I've got is Zoloft and it's weak as shit.' 'Anthony, why are you running away from Philly?' 'Long story, man...'

What horrible suffering the boy went through last night. And how great it should have been. America is a medicated nation and I'm not sure it's good for it: another guy I spoke to has been on prophylactic antibiotics for years to 'keep myself clean'. Expect more on American hygiene, which is becomingly increasingly interesting the more I see of the States.

The irony is, it's 'dirty' drug experimenters like Kerouac that changed America's view of drugs from the 1950s on, and without their help Anthony might not be on antidrepressants. Whether this would help him on this journey is impossible to say; I have his number and will call when I get to Arizona to see how he's getting on. I'll be surprised and delighted if he answers.

LOGISTICS UPDATE 2nd February 2009

I sit in the City Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, catching my breath in the clean air. I have travelled 1,978 miles since leaving New York last Thursday - of the last four nights I have spent three on a Greyhound bus - I have made one delivery and am about to make one here in Utah before three more in the neighbourhood of San Francisco, including a rubber glove and an inadvertently stolen umbrella.

There is no wi-fi or power on the Greyhounds so posting is going to be patchy. This is quite frustrating but more so is my continuing inability to avoid interesting people. I have been talking to fellow travellers far more than I expected and this has had two consequences: the number of things I have to tell you is enormous, and I don't have time to write them up fully. I think I will spend a whole day in San Francisco writing up.

Since the aim of the project is to write about people rather than geography, I think this patchy delivery is less of a problem. Events will pop up out of chronological order to attempt to create some thematic continuity. So a detailed treatment of the journey itself will wait until it's finished and I've got to San Francisco.

In the meantime a couple of portraits of fellow travellers: Anthony and Davey.

Starbucks, 8th and H Street, Washington, DC

I was contemplating two bags of Earl Gray in my small paper cup, trying to botch the situation into something profound, when I noticed a man of my age to my left. He had latte-foam on a subsidised moustache and was firing stares around the room. Whatever the opposite of a gimlet stare is, he possessed it: he stared at noses rather than eyeballs.

I stared at his moustache but my view was interrupted by a rosy-cheeked, very clean man who sat down at his table and asked 'Are you Bruce?'. A hangover makes for a good eaves-dropper: I turned to face their table semi-discreetly, ready to watch two Americans making friends.

'Sure I am. How long did it take you to get here?'

'I drove for an hour, and took the subway for an hour.'

Intriguing. What circumstances result in such a long commute? Probably a date.

'Have you got the twenty-seven dollars?'

Stirring my tea my left hand froze - with my right I reached for my notebook.

'Sure - here you go.'

'Thanks - so, do you do this a lot? Hang out in bars, go ask people out?'

'Not really - in fact, my first time in a bar was last year, and I'm twenty-eight.'

Five lines in, a labyrinth: I had no idea where this conversation had just gone, much less where it might lead. I turned away from the table and settled in for the long haul.

Bruce told the newcomer, whose name is Joe, that they awaited another man in five minutes and then they could begin. He reached for a sheaf of papers in Times New Roman and handed one packet to Joe. I couldn't read the title of the packet.

This is not a mystery story so I will tease you no longer: Bruce is a dating guru, the kind of dating guru who charges $27 for a session and operates in a downtown Starbucks. He teaches people to make friends - in his words, 'five to fifteen percent of all girls want to give you their number and I'm going to help you get it' - and to sit next to him for an hour was incredibly lucky for me.
For the sake of the Hand Delivery project I am going to share below the highlights of his course - $27 worth of value for absolutely nothing. The below are verbatim, and I would invite you to imagine them as delivered by David Schwimmer:

'Do you guys ever hang out in coffee shops in the daytime? No? You should - if you just go and get coffee you're not helping yourself. I've sat in bookstores for six hours - you have to dedicate a day to hanging out.'

'Your debut number is harder than all subsequent numbers - don't be tempted to lower your standards at the start.'

'If you watch chick movies, it's never they meet in a bar. It's always they crash into each other, they spill juice, they get stuck in an elevator, something romantic like that. Girls watch these movies and they have high expectations, which is why bar numbers are so low.'

'It used to be, a guy talking to a girl had balls. Now everybody does it. And it's all changed within a five to ten year timeframe.'

'Keep your openers way under the radar - the purpose of an opening is to break the ice and start a conversation, not to make you look good.'

'Queues are reliable approach spots.'

'There's no way I can talk to so many women if my opinion of women is low.'

'Do you guys have a cat? What's the best way to get a cat to come to you? You show no interest, you go sit on another couch, the cat comes to you. During the day girls are like cats - you're too direct, they'll jump away.

At night girls are like dogs: give them affection, give them attention, pretend she's a cat and she'll be scared away. And you do this right and she'll be licking your face - literally.'

'Worst rejection I've ever seen? Well, it was kind of the guy's fault, he did everything wrong, but she had headphones on and acted like he wasn't there.'

'Do you guys want to ask me about any confidence issues?'

'Jar them, shock them. Does a barman wait for a pause in conversation before he asks if they want more? Wait for the moment and it'll never arrive.'

'Speak loudly and slowly - loudly and slowly. Speaking loud and slow hides nervousness. Whatever you say, you're going to have to really believe. Bear that in mind, as you're repeating the same lines.'

'Make sure your facial expressions match your words - one student smiled all the time, even while saying 'excuse me?' and it was weird.'

'Where I'm at is after trying hundreds of things that don't work. Now I'm doing things that do work. Others' loss is my gain.'

'It's a huge deal if a girl looks at you for half a second - she will talk to you. If you don't talk to her you're an idiot. Not necessarily sex, but she's interested - if she's with someone else, she's bored.'

'If you can't think of anything to say, ramble. If you hit a dead end than ask her a question. If she has to ask you a question you're doing shit.'

-----

Internet Fame Update

In the Bowery Poetry cafe last week I got talking to an interesting man with a more impressive beard than mine. He is called Ben Sisto and while I was walking to him he was having a plan: he is going to organise pot-luck dinners for which everyone pays around $10 and brings an idea: the proceeds of the evening go to fund the best idea.

His blog is below (and I'm on it):

http://51570blog.tumblr.com/post/73161961/mail-escort

Mail Escort is a considerably better title than Hand Delivery. Curses. I hope, incidentally, that more cross-pollination of this type will take place: if you have a project and/or blog please let me know and I'll mention it.

Independence Avenue, Washington DC

Monica and I left the Mall but we didn't find a bar. Instead, one block from the Mall we found Curtis and his SUV.

Curtis must have parked up at least two days before the inauguration: the streets were completely cleared and the only vehicles this close to the action were a cop car and a TV truck. He was sitting in his SUV with the windows open and he has LCD televisions in front and back. He turned up the volume and began watching the show.

Monica and I were out of the crush and looking for a party. We looked at each other as we saw the small crowd gathering around the SUV.I lit a cigarette, she took off her hat, and we pressed in. After ten minutes a larger crowd was collecting around the vehicle:















We squeezed in on the nearside and watched the screen between the sun visors.











































The TV truck roared into life at eleven. The news team saw the crowd and came to get a better look:















By half past eleven a hundred people had gathered round - most were refugees from the crush, probably the hundred most shy citizens in Washington, united by a mutual fear of too much humanity. Most shy of all was Curtis: one person in three tapped on the window to thank him and not once did he respond. He silently, grimly watched his television.

Delivery No. 2

Address: Park Slope, Brooklyn

Addressee: Dinah Foer

Sender: Charlotte Salasky

Package: bouquet of carnations, roses, and sprays

[I've impounded this entry for a short while until I find a way to make it accessible by invitation. If you'd like to read it please email me and I'll send it to you - deliverybyhand@gmail.com]

Bar of L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington DC

All I have to offer is proximity. A few sketches of what I got close to on inauguration day:

A man treading on his wife's face. He was trying to climb a tree two feet to my right and slipped as he climbed. His wife, who had been shoving him up by his belt, laughed with pride and his boot slipped and hit her in the grin. He almost fell on me but she recovered well and caught him up, still grinning, with grass on her lip.

Beware the human chain: six or seven people travelling through a crowd holding hands. We lost Ned and Charlotte due to one of these monstrosities. By this point - ten-thirty perhaps, with the oath due at noon - the crowd was so fat that it moved in tides. If you didn't have a tree to anchor yourself to, you would move five yards here, five yards there, just in keeping still.

Some brave fellows climbed Portapotties to escape the deluge, looking like cows on a farm shed when the levees broke. (We subsequently found out that Ned and Charlotte managed this feat, and spent some time directing the flow of human traffic from their exalted position. There is something both right-wing and left-wing about this activity.) We were more or less freaking out, Monica and I, so we left the Mall and contemplated in our naivety finding a bar (note to the uninitiated: finding a bar by the National Mall is like finding a bear by the National Mall).

Some travel writing: nobody I spoke to was from Washington. Georgia, the Carolinas, Minnesota; Kentucky, Alabama, Idaho. People travelled to get here, often a long way, and how the landscape changed as they travelled...It's exactly the journey I want to make, in reverse.

At one point in my breathlessness I whispered 'What a day!' I don't normally do this - five years at a boarding school teaches you even to orgasm silently, so it was a surprise. Bigger though the surprise when Sister Perkins, the spherical lady in front of me, who had already yelled her name at Aretha Franklin, cried out 'What a day! What a day!' Another man joined her: 'What a day! What a day!'
What a day.

National Mall, Washington DC

'And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity...' - from Barack Obama's Inaugural Address, January 20th 2009

It's been a week since the inauguration and I've been struggling to find a theme for an entry. The day was so big, so American, so terribly important that it's almost impossible not to be trite. Many hundreds of articles have been written from better vantage points and with more information, if not enthusiasm,about the significance of the day.

I had hoped the inauguration to be the starting point for the project, thematically speaking: I'm travelling through a newly optimistic America that wants to be explored, and I start with taking its pulse from the heart beat. Europe is beginning to forgive America, a process that started on election day and which continues through the sentence quoted above.

But last Tuesday was not a friendly day. Ned described it later as 'subdued, almost like the people weren't celebrating but bearing witness'. It's taken me a week to agree with him. What I expected, what I hoped to write about, was a huge and raving throng, all human life on the National Mall with their separate stories coming together for one amazing day - there was a throng, but it was quiet. It rustled, rather than roared. The noise was like the sea hitting a barrier reef as heard from inside the lagoon. And when it was finished, when everyone had borne witness, everyone left. The streets were desolate by six.

It's a question of attention - everyone had their whole minds fixed on one specific moment, the taking of the most sacred oath. The focus of the whole day was compressed into a couple of minutes. We walked for almost three hours to get from NW K Street down past the Capitol and onto the Mall; we passed within ten feet of perhaps a hundred thousand people; person blurred into person and I'm sure we were other people's blurs. Nobody was there, everybody was looking forward to the Mall and the oath. The speech, partly, but the oath mainly: one hand raised and a nation delivered. Though I'm probably biased given the title of this blog.

Delaware House rest stop, Interstate 95

Bill walks with a stick. I walk with a stick, but not as slowly as Bill. Bill took the whole ten minute relief stop to walk slowly to the bathroom and back again, struggling with every step. It was below freezing outside and beneath his portliness he looked a brittle man and smoking a cigarette I worried about him.

He returned to the bus last of all the passengers. Sheila, the driver, blonde, African-American and with a bad cough that she excused herself for, saw him contemplate with exhaustion the step down into the parking lot. She hollered out 'Don't move! I'm coming to get you!'

Hiss of escaping air as the door closed. One frail voice - it must have been Bill's wife - wafted up the coach: 'wait!' I can only imagine her anguish, as I didn't turn round. I was looking at Bill, who stood motionless on the sidewalk.

It takes a few seconds to ease a Greyhound into Drive. The expectant hush was mottled: only half the passengers were paying any attention. Sheila made the engine judder and the bus moved forward four feet and stopped. Its door was now over the sidewalk.

One more hiss: Bill had a broad smile on his yellowing face. He grabbed the banister and began, oh so slowly, to haul himself up. I made no move to help him and don't know whether I would have had I been strong. He hid his exertion as he asked Sheila her name - enormous dignity flowed up the stairs; I knew without turning round that his wife was out of her seat. It is the shortest trip I've ever made.

Hand Delivery No. 1

Delivery Address: 2--- Ellicott Street, District of Columbia

Addressee: Josh Foer

Package: Human - Ed Cooke

[I've impounded this entry for a short while until I find a way to make it accessible by invitation. If you'd like to read it please email me and I'll send it to you - deliverybyhand@gmail.com]

Holland Tunnel under the mighty Hudson River

The road trip began with a kidnapping. Text messages ran as follows:

Charlotte:
hey Monica we're going to DC and you're coming. Pick you up at 2?

Monica:
no

Charlotte:
okay have hire car on our way to brooklyn there in twenty

Monica:
no I'm not coming. Really I'm fine you don't have to worry about me

Charlotte:
crossing brooklyn bridge now get your coat

Monica:
wait absolutely not I'm not coming. Please leave me alone

[a short while later]

Monica:
Give me twenty minutes


Many things happened during the short while.

Ned, myself and Charlotte had rented a Dodge Caliber in powder blue to get us through the blizzards and three states to Washington DC. In place of a detailed cast description (one will come, as both Ned and Charlotte are special people and fun and together they are unstoppable), a brief summary, full enough only to inform their criminal activities:

Ned - 27 years old, London-based motivational speaker and memory guru, blocky and not handsome though ludicrously and generously charismatic. Notably able to play human sensibility as though it is a musical instrument and thus a very persuasive man

Charlotte - 24 years old, Virginia belle moved to New York where she delivers great wisdom beyond her years with a sardonic drawl. Ned's cousin but one imagines they would be great friends anyway. Seems to act as a rallying point for the lives of a number of fascinating and to-be-mentioned Americans. Unwilling to be set up with firemen when passing a crime scene

We three decided to include Monica on our trip as she had recently lost her job on a sandiwch blog. On hearing the news she got drunk and tried to cut her wrists with a gummi bear: from that moment we were all on suicide watch. We approached Brooklyn Heights with some optimism that she might relent and the certainty that a jaunt would be good for her.

Springsteen, loud, melted the snowflakes before they could land on the car. We slid rather than rolled onto Hicks Street, a sleepy boulevard populated mainly by the retired. Charlotte honked the Dodge's horn and we all yelled 'Monica!' to leave in no doubt whom we were embarrassing.

No instant reply. Ned braved the slush and went inside. He was buzzed in, to excited whoops from Charlotte and I. Some minutes later a glum face above a red coat came out into the snow. 'I'm not coming, you guys! I'm fine here! I've made ravioli!'

'Monica, we've come all this way out here to get you. Everything's set, all you have to do is get in the car and go.' Charlotte, in her no-nonsense tones reserved in my experience for the sexually predatory

'I hate crowds! There'll be like two million people and no bathrooms. I'm fine, you go.'

'Mon, we won't go without you.'

'Not my problem.'

Ned - 'just get in the car, out of the cold, and we'll talk about it.'

'You think I'm stupid? I'm not getting in that car.'

Charlotte - 'You really sure you won't come?'

'Really sure.'

'Okay then, let's go to Farley's house, we'll take him instead. Hop in, it's just a block away.'

As Monica bent backwards into the front seat we three criminals exchanged glances. We couldn't really believe our luck.

The Dodge sped off through the snow with rising wails from Monica as she acknowledged her tactical error. Charlotte sped through a red light, one hand only on the wheel, taking right turns to avoid intersections and to keep the speed above twenty as Monica threatened to hurl herself out of the car.

Then we hit a stop sign on Orange Street. Nothing to be done, not in this snow, so we ground to a wary halt. Moments before the car stopped Monica bravely hopped out – and the Dodge, continuing, ran over her foot.

We all caught our breath – Monica yelled 'Reverse!' and we didn't quite believe her – Monica yelled 'Fucking Reverse!' and we did believe her – as the Dodge slid back she pulled out her foot and slammed the side of the car. The foot was an inch from being completely flattened. No more words: Monica limp-ran for home, a block away.

The complexity of look I got from Charlotte won't go away fast: she grew up with Monica and so both the near-tragedy and the comedy of the situation were much richer for her. Mirth and mercy fought, under her blonde curls. 'Ed, you'd better go after her,' she whispered, and as he got out she slide the Dodge into drive and edged forwards. 'Where are we going?', I asked stupidly. 'Back to her apartment! We're not done yet...'

It's hard to hide behind a car when you can't bend your leg properly, so we caught up with Monica quite fast. She would not speak to us as we inched along Hicks right behind her, a support vehicle giving support she did not want. A humourous old man with a wizened dog looked on. With what purchase she could muster, Monica slammed the door behind her. Ned got back in and we slowly turned to face each other: triplets in mischief we grinned as Charlotte reached for the horn.

What happened next is unspectacular: we drove back over Brooklyn bridge bombarding Monica with messages and calls (including a thirty-second pep talk from Ned given through a dialling error to Charlotte's mother, who asked 'Ed? Are you trying to tell me you're too drunk to go to the inauguration?'). Within a half hour we had sealed the deal.

Who can say at what point we broke Monica's spirit? Whose rhetorical brilliance or sheer volume jolted her into action? It is said that the physician Franz Mesmer would end his healings with a session on the glass armonica. Human impulses are unclear. With a solemn oath not to talk to anyone, and a half-full bag of Pirate's Booty, Monica climbed in and we drove into the sunset over Brooklyn Bridge.

More to come...

Taxicab on FDR Expressway under UN Plaza

America seems to inspire generalisations, perhaps because the sense of American identity is so strong and vivid. A number of American stereotypes has crossed the Atlantic. I know of very few Luxembourgeois stereotypes despite the shorter distance that separates Luxembourg from the UK.

It strikes me that any attempt to write about the 'national character' assumes there is one, and that this might not be helpful to an explorer. Every American I have met so far has been massively warm and open, but can their relative warmths be compared? Can I compare the inspirations for a free cocktail hastily slipped by, for a party invitation on two minutes' notice, for an embrace that was bittersweet because our tongues touching prevented our talking?

On reflection, I am off the hook. Interpretation is your job: all I have to do is the legwork.

---
From John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, Viking Penguin, 1962:

A trip, a safari, an explanation, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself: no two are alike....In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better for having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.

Uptown Local platform, Spring Street subway (4,5,6)

From Michel de Montaigne's On Friendship, 1580, trans. Screech, Penguin, 1991:

There seems to be nothing for which Nature has better prepared us than for fellowship

There have been philosophers who held [bonds of friendship between father and son] in contempt - witness Aristippus: when he was being pressed about the affection which he owed to his children since they had sprung from him, he began to spit, saying that too sprung from him, and that we also engender lice and worms.

Flames of passion...are fickle, fluctuating and variable; it is a feverish fire, subject to attacks and relapses, whidch only gets a hold of a corner of us. The love of friends is a general universal warmth, temperate moreover and smooth, a warmth which is constant and at rest, all gentleness and evenness, having nothing sharp nor keen. What is more, sexual love is but a mad craving for something that escapes us. compare with Unger's phrase 'their sense that something is missing from their national and personal lives' for an interesting insight into American sexuality

Skits and Tits, Bowery Poetry Club and Cafe

This entry is about sex and a Southern Gentleman.

Pinkie Special was playing air guitar - at first, literally, then she found a prop: from between her legs slowly she pulled her tampon string and plucked it with all five fingers.

The crowd was forty strong. Most of the punters knew a member of the cast and there was an easy air - new friends were being made amongst old. It seemed Ned and I were the only newcomers to 'Skits and Tits', a night of standup comedy and burlesque on Bowery.

The picking of the string pulled the tampon out inch by inch until out it fell and quivered. Then she jerked it aloft, a cat with a mouse as a trophy. The crowd as one hushed for a split second, the squeezing of a pod which then exploded into yells of delight at the descent of the tampon into Pinkie Special's mouth. (I have this detail only from Ned). Then a red slingshot into the fourth row: a bespectacled man, the younger brother of young parents, caught it and crowed as if he'd snaffled a home run.

She turned; she bowed; she got a smack on the ass from the female compere as she ran off the stage. It was generally found difficult to calm down.

America is a sexy place: the internal is externalised over here, private parts become public. Porn is bigger than non-sexual cinema (if such a thing exists). Senators take a cocktail at the Playboy Mansion. The symbol of this city is a woman standing with a flaming torch representing Liberty. America is Pinkie Special holding up her femininity to be admired, devoured and used as a weapon.

As I try to make friends in America this sexiness isn't often far from my mind. Farley, a cartoonist with a magnificent moustache, bursts into the apartment where we are finishing a Chinese and yells 'Juniors! Juniors upstairs!' Juniors at NYU have just moved into the apartment above us and are having a house party (in Soho? Many bars around, then I realise they are not yet 21). Farley explains that the sound of Coolio dragged him and his friends up beyond us to ggtecrash. He has been testing out a new temporary public persona: gay film critic ('so I said 'want to see Milk? save yourself a ticket, it's a disaster movie.') He has a southern drawl and extraordinary charm, either as a gay film critic or a professor of dinosaurs or a friend of a friend.


Fasrley made a lot of friends in this guise. Watching him talk to the juniors' female cohort - they wore exquisite dresses, one of them held a beer funnel, and their names allegedly all began with R - I was struck by the freedom he had to approach without the threat of sexual conquest. All he spoke to were enthralled without fear.

Does such a threat always exist between those, hetero or homo, for whom sex might be a possibility? Does acquaintance have a narrative to it - either sex or deeper friendship - to be pursued or frustrated? Or can you make an acquaintance with no tense except the present? I don't yet know. I do know that the American tendency to embrace the future tense, strong these days, makes the present a wider space more thrilling to explore.

Pinkie Special

'I write this with my feet in the kitchen sink' - Charlotte's flat, Sullivan Street

Roberto Mangabeira Unger,political philosopher, in What Should the Left Propose?, Verso, 2005:

The characteristic qualities of the American people are their energy, their ingenuity, their generosity, their practical good faith, their readiness to cooperate, and their sense that something is missing from their national and personal lives. This sense inspires their restless striving and their heart-sick longing.

LOGISTICS UPDATE 18th January 2009

Logistics update - thus far I have potential deliveries in the following cities (in no particular order):

Cincinnati Ohio
New York New York
Montreal Quebec
Fort Lauderdale Florida
Austin Texas
San Antonio Texas
Washington DC
Richmond Virginia
Atlanta Georgia
Los Angeles California
Kalamazoo Michigan
Chicago Illinois
Indianapolis Indiana
Birmingham Alabama
Flagstaff Arizona
Tucson Arizona
New Orleans Louisiana
Boston Massachusetts
Lexington Kentucky

Twenty-three initial connections in nineteen cities. Possibly half a dozen of these connections were gathered before I arrived in the States so since Tuesday I have got to know seventeen people who have a delivery to make. The response to this project has been beyond my wildest expectations, and this is because I have, like many foreigners, resenting the unholy rampages of Bush Republicanism, blamed a ship for the errors of its captain and underestimated the warmth, the generosity and above all the prospector spirit of the American people. The Republican administration has taken off its muzzle abroad for eight years, and for the same time has muzzled its own citizens. It has scoffed at public discourse, it has brutalized its own citizens. Worst of all for the travel writer, it seemed to have created through cultural gerrymandering a divided geography of red and blue typified by the bullying rhetoric of 'real America'. Too many internal borders: it would be no fun to explore a country that will not explore itself.

Tomorrow I go to Washington to deliver my first package (one good friend delivered to another good friend) and to take part in a hullabaloo of five million optimists. I am hoping to meet the vanguard of the new society, not the politicians and diplomats but the young, the enthusiastic, unpaid ambassadors for a mending America that wants to be explored.

I accept that, even accounting for every potential deliveree being available, there will be a certain degree of shedding: I don't expect actually to deliver to all of the connections above. The Persians have a rule of agreeing to things drunk and again sober: I have been drunk, gorgeously drunk, the drunk of an immigrant, for a good percentage of the last few days. I have made many pacts. These have been made in earnest on my part. On the part of my fellow drinkers a change of heart once the snow has licked the hangover away from the eyeballs is perfectly understandable. But the deliveries that have been confirmed by the sober have been confirmed with indiscriminate gusto and this bodes so well for the future of the project.

Plans for the days after my return from Washington are varied and sketchy. I have a few deliveries to make in New York and there is a number of connections in neighbouring cities. From there the options are a slow creep westwards, or a giant stride to the Pacific coast then a return through the heartland.

A girl who seems after two meetings to be a genius (and who will remain nameless so that she can change her mind) would like to be delivered to Los Angeles. So far she is willing to drive herself and me and all I have to do is buy a car. This would be a magnificent second delivery: she has charisma in buckets and we could deliver packages together on the way to California; I also met the deliveree who is a kind, stunningly talented and potentially kleptomaniac Hollywood screenwriter.

If the above falls through, no matter: I am self-sufficient, I am young and in a new world and just the opportunity to write the paragraph above makes me smile.

Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway

Every American is an autobiographer. The American character has no constant qualities except for its vividness: American cops are more coppish than British cops (as illustration I once saw a street cop in Brooklyn chewing Bazooka chewing gum and blowing a huge bubble at an intersection); the retired, a huge meek forgotten family in the UK, refuse to stand aside for the young in the US and are prouder, noisier, more publicly steeped in their own story. Street interviews with sports fans over here tend to be full sentences.

Every character in America is open to the elements and thus to public perusal. In Britain it rains and we can't leave our characters exposed to get wet. Umbrellas that say 'awkward citizen' are freely distributed.

An example and a consequence of this:

I see a man across a book table and the Strand Bookstore. (The autobiography section here is, by the way, one of the smallest in the store). The man is maybe seventy and extremely doughy. He wears a naval cap, worn shiny, which I can tell by the piping is a submariner's cap. Specifically it recognises USS #%$&@ as the vessel name has been scratched away, leaving violent scars.

This man of massive dignity has already greeted five people by name as I watch him. He knows everyone, not just the staff but at least a good one in six of the customers traipsing by. This is remarkable, but what's better is the way in which he greets his friends: volume, gesticulation, almost always rooted to the spot.

Rather than take his friends aside to greet them he sends out his tendrils so that they weave through and past the people he doesn't yet know. What he is doing is sharing his friends, and with great courage: greetings are uniformly interesting, they have a backstory, properly handled they're a good crib for the screenwriter. Other shoppers might back away and listen surreptitiously but the submariner won't let them back away: he looks round at everyone as he whoops at his friends, his eyes wide in wonder at the luck of meeting someone he knows (a wideness of the eye that doesn't diminish as he meets his fourteenth friend of the evening).

He took my arm, as he noticed a spindly nonagenarian, saying 'Only in a bookstore, eh?' Only in America.

A consequence of this, for the vaguely neurotic international boulevardier, is a keen sense of the noisiness of social opportunity. Since Americans are so comfortable in the public sphere they are more likely to respond to strangers without awkwardness. In America the vicous circle of mass transit discourse so poisonous in the UK -

only crazy people talk to strangers so people don't talk to strangers lest they be considered crazy, so only crazy people talk to strangers

- doesn't exist but what does is a noise, a sort of social hubbub in which possible conversations come into your brain and might drown you, like Mel Gibson in What Women Want.

Everyone is approachable and so one goes through the options in approaching everyone. Specific consequences? Ever been on a sweet factory tour? The two main sentiments are glee and guilt, glee at all the candy and guilt at all the candy left uneaten. Here in the Strand Bookstore, Studs Terkel in my arms, I am Augustus Gloop.

Cab from 43rd and 3rd to Bleecker and Bowery

Honouring the tradition of immigration to New York, and honouring Studs Terkel again:

Hector of Troy somehow survived the wreck of his city and moved to New York City to drive a cab. Now his name is Hakan but he has Hector's little nimbleness from within a huge frame and also the air of having done Things.

Between his 1970s supply teacher sideburns and his Viennese goatee an inch of cheek is sparsely unshaved and looks as if it still has the sand of Troy sprinkled in it. He came originally from a small fishing village in Turkey, and what he told us about his childhood came out in the following order: there was no TV, there was no electricity, he went to bed at six pm, he never needed an alarm clock for this reason, and his father had a fishing boat.

Hakan as a young man spent some years on cargo ships, earning his bosses' trust and becoming in his words a 'Company man', a phrase he illustrated by flipping his middle finger at the cab radio. His work on board ship consisted of working from bow to stern scraping off rust: as so often happens, by the time he reached the poop the bow was rusty again.

In 1989 his ship docked just south of Hoboken, New Jersey, and from his position on deck he looked up to see the underside of a great bridge (I didn't ask which bridge but will let you know). That night he slipped away up across the bridge and into New York City. 'What did you tell the captain?' I asked, at which he bounced a hard stare off the rear-view mirror. 'I told nobody - I just left.'

Desertion from these vessels was apparently common. One ship lost its entire crew one night and a replacement team had to be flown out from Turkey to crew the ship back to Istanbul. Somewhere between JFK airport and the docks the replacement team itself disappeared.

Hakan crossed the bridge with no English and no real Turkish community in New York. (I haven't done research but find this hard to believe in such a many-pocketed city as New York. Whether there genuinely isn't a Turkish pocket, or he hasn't found it yet, or has a reason not to tell me about it, is interesting however you look at it.) He bribed a man in a bar to offer him a job as a 'farmer' in the cold upstate for the sake of Social Security, a practice also common among immigrants at the time. For some reason farmers were seen as beyond investigation.

He married in time - 'How did you meet your wife?' 'In a gas station.' - and stayed married eleven years - 'she used to yell at me that I only married her for the Green Card. I told her that if I'd married her for the Green Card I'd only have stayed with her for six months.' He implied the disapproval of his wife's family was part of the attraction for him.

He drives a minivan cab now rather than the classic sedan, a fact which disappointed the aestheticists in the back, but his conversation keeps us entertained beyond our stop. We hesitatingly leave him a block too far downtown.

Bowery Poetry Club, corner of Bowery and Bleecker

A short post this, just to acknowledge as soon as possible my debt to Louis 'Studs' Terkel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studs_terkel). What little I know about him so far - and I'm diving into his books as rapidly as I can - is incredibly inspiring, and will be the subject of many future posts. For now just a couple of gems from his autobiography, Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (Pantheon, 1973):

I am, despite what appears to be a passion for life, attached to a mechanical device. Perhaps, as Jacques Ellul maintains, the machine has a life of its own. That isn't the point. I am the point.

I find in the silent film comedian Raymond Griffith my alter ego. As a jewel thief, he fled to Mexico with his accomplice. When she felt the need to return to the United States and become respectable, he solicitously drove her back. When his two fiancees insisted on marrying him, he agreed and drove to Salt Lake City. Of course.

Air France Flight 3666 London-New York, 35,000 feet above Nova Scotia

Eleven people got me on this flight: one amateur and ten professionals helped me limp to Heathrow Airport and up into the sky. Five of them, namely the taxi driver and airline employees, are directly paid to be friendly; five are paid to be stern. One, though I whisper this as he's in the seat next to me, is possibly my closest friend.

My bags are packed for a research project: I have a magnetic and a digital dictaphone; empty notebooks I've rendered less intimidating by wrapping them in duct tape; the best of Martha Gellhorn (to be given to a friend - more on Gellhorn later) and initials written on my hand that stand for nothing other than Studs Terkel, first and only name on my travelling book list.

I am travelling to America to interview friends, probably friends of friends and hopefully friends of friends of friends and what I am researching is simply them: one by one I'm going to ask them why, how and when they are friends of their friends and also ask them what they think friendship means, now and in America.

I'm interested in the economics of things that look like friendship and might or might not be, and in the mechanics, digital, vegetable and animal, with which Americans make and stay friends.

Economics: when the taxi driver told us his daughter works in the Empire State building he gave us something for free, something such as the security screener took from me when, as an exasperated father to petulant child, he barked 'You just can't leave that tray where it is! You just can't!'

Mechanics: read this blog and send me an email. I'll reply to it, I'll advertise your blog or your website here and if, as I hope, you know of someone who might like to be interviewed for this book, I will visit them and deliver to them something by hand. I'm going to be travelling from one coast to another, on the great highways of the twentieth century, and at the same time along what promise to be the great highways of the twenty-first: the social networks of the Internet that have at once collided the American coasts and made every corner of the States part of the heartland.

In more precise terms - and if these entries reek too strongly of Hemingway, I hope it is merely in avoiding the abstract when the precise will do - this means I will be knocking on doors, usually announced but always unsure of what the welcome will be. I will be handing over parcels and asking, in return, questions that I myself would struggle to answer (my sleeping schoolfriend kicks out as I write). The project relies on the openness and hospitality of strangers, and it's my faith in American warmth and enthusiasm that makes me worry less about the chances of success. All I have to offer is my own enthusiasm and a present or a message from a loved one.

In two hours the project begins: two weeks in and around New York, two weeks back in the UK to

1. deliver items by hand picked up in the USA
2. learn to drive
3. shake off the aftereffects of a broken leg

then back to the USA to continue the travels for as long as the networks of friends or the US Government allow. This first post has focussed on me, more than I would like, but I hope now just to pull aside the curtain and introduce the players themselves: the interesting people I'm lucky enough to know already and those I'm looking forward to meeting. This is a travel blog and a mass biography, the story from one particular viewpoint of America in 2009.

Recirculating blood in the aisle, on descent into New York JFK

A word or two of context to this expedition:

I was until recently engaged to be married - a destination of sorts and also the start of what I think felt too daunting a journey. I travelled asleep for almost six years and recently woke up not recognising where I was. The house I own is not a home any more and for a month I have been making little journeys between friends, some of the hardest and sweetest trips of my life.

I can't and wouldn't want to be able to describe my wanderings to this point. I would, though, like to get those who read these entries to a position from which they can see me clearly at this initial point of my journey, and for this I'll have to get them - you - to travel from a position of ignorance to...somewhere else.

It's important that you know what I'm running away from, a broken heart, and what I'm aiming for: only what the Christians get to call 'communion' and what atheists have to name for themselves - further definitions to come from the people I talk to in America.

Whatever I'm looking for I think it is vital to me and hitherto missing and it begins to confirm a suspicion I have that all writing is travel writing - a phrase which, for now at least or until I come down on exactly what it means, you can consider a second tagline to this blog.

This post is a one-off: the entries from this point will have adventure at their heart. I am going on a course of adventure therapy and will try to keep constitutional updates to a minimum. If, though, some entries are shot through with either lunatic empathy or a selfish malaise it's a broken heart leaking through the cracks and to be ignored. You are forewarned.

Welcome to Hand Delivery.