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.
Friday, 27 February 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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?
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.
Monday, 23 February 2009
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
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
- 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
- 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
- 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?
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?
Friday, 20 February 2009
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.
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...
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...
Thursday, 5 February 2009
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?
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?
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
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.
'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.
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
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 19th 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 16th 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.
Monday, 2 February 2009
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.
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.
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.'
-----
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.
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.
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