So Much Silence, So Much Space

I

Thirty miles west of San Antonio the mesas begin to rise out of the ground. They are massive trapezoids with green trees along their sides and too-big houses sometimes christening their tops. My black two-door snakes between them trying, perhaps vainly and naively, to get out of Texas.

I’ve been on the road for seven days now. This is a trip that I’ve been promising myself since mid-terms of my last semester in college. The idea of packing up the car and driving to the West Coast carried me through the papers and the grey mid-western winter all the way through graduation. On my computer was a map of the U.S. with a blue line running across it and a promise that one day I would be on that line, riding it to the Pacific.

I’m alone for the first time on the road. My roommate came with me from St. Louis to Dallas but after a few days there he went home and I got back in the car, lonely for the first time with no one in the passenger seat. A day and a half of following my feet in Austin and now I find myself here in West Texas, looking for the next dot on my blue line—the next something to fill the void. College has come and gone and now I’m on the road, unsure of what comes next.

In Texas the road never changes. Eighty, eighty-five, ninety miles per hour, it makes no difference; outside of the white lines the scene is constant. A gold wash of land flecked with the green of shoulder-high scrub slides past my windows. The landscape is mute, soundless save for the noise of the tires on the asphalt. Road signs silently call out to me, attempting to convince me that there is life out there. Names of towns like Sterling City and Sonora, Ozona and Pandale appear on the green signs. I blow by them.

I get the sense that Texas is testing me. It answers my scoffs at yellow signs that read STRONG CROSS WINDS by blowing my little car a foot and half over the dotted yellow line and challenging my thought that I’ve seen hard country before. Testing me by reducing my cell phone to a silent, plastic rectangle. Testing me with its blown out tires rotting on the highway like dug up corpses. In Fort Stockton there are only two radio stations and they are both in Spanish. In Pecos there is an unmarked fast food restaurant that advertises “small pig” for eighty-five cents. As I so often find that I am the only one on the highway, my mind wrestles with the question of how long it would take for someone to find my body if something happened.

I pull off the highway and follow tilted signs to a filling station. There’s a quarter tank left but I don’t know where or when the next outpost of civilization will be. Gas is 50 cents more.

“Ohio?” asks the man standing next to his truck opposite of me at the filling station, after catching a glimpse of my license plate. Both our hands are on the triggers of our pumps, leaning on our cars. He’s wearing a cowboy hat. I’m wearing Ray-Bans. There is a line-up of cars behind us; seemingly everyone in town has come out to this oasis on a dusty, hot day.

“You’re a long way from home, partner.”

I don’t tell him “you have no idea,” or “bingo,” or “yessir.” I don’t tell him that I’ve been thinking about getting a pair of cowboy boots, ones a lot like his. I don’t ask him to tell me how this town hasn’t been blown away in the night by a decent gust of wind. I don’t tell him how good his twang sounds.

“Yeah,” I say and hang up the pump, his words carrying more weight than he knows, “Yeah, I am.”

II

I’m on my aunt’s couch in Northern California and it has been two years since I’ve seen her. The last time we were together I was about to start my semester abroad in Spain. She sits next to me and we talk about my trip. I’m closing in on my third week on the road. Texas is behind me now, along with a blown out tire, Carlsbad, Durango, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Big Sur, and a day and half on California’s Highway 1, where I had little regard for the guard rail or the cliffs beyond it. My foot was on the gas, I tell her, one hand tight on the wheel, the other moving the shifter from second to third, touching briefly into fourth, and then back into second again. It was like I was dancing, whipping my car around corners and ripping through the gears as I curled around the edges of the continent.

Then we are talking about a family reunion or a birthday party for my great-grandmother, though I was too young for both to be able to distinguish one from the other.

“No, the party for Darcy, that was in Calistoga,” she says. Her tongue slides on her “s,” her distinct Spanish accent undiluted even after half her lifetime in California. I ask her if she misses Barcelona and if she wants to go back.

“Yes.”

“Do you think you will?”

“Maybe,” she says with a giggle. “Once your Uncle Chris retires. It is something we’ve talked about, ya? Chris loves it and Barcelona will always be home,” she says and laughs again.

“I want to show you a picture of you and your mom and dad. From Calistoga. It’s so funny. You will laugh.”

Together we flip though heavy photo albums. On one page my uncle Chris grins at us from behind the wheel of a green Austin Healey. On the next, my parents laugh during their wedding, which was held in my grandparents’ backyard. There is a bath tub full of ice and drinks in the background. My mom tips an empty wine bottle to her lips, hamming for the camera, my dad’s mouth agape in faux bewilderment.

“Here,” she says and points at the picture she’s been looking for. It’s of my parents and me. My dad is on the right, my mom standing beside him. She is holding me in her arms, cradling my head on her shoulder, showing the back of my head to my aunt’s camera.

“You didn’t want your picture taken. But I was going to get you. See?” and her finger falls on the next picture. This time my dad is on the left and my mom on the right. My face is peeking over my mom’s shoulder. I don’t look happy in the picture but now, in her living room, the two of us laugh.

That night I think about Barcelona and the photo album. I wonder if my aunt will ever go home. Then I wonder if I am facing the camera yet. I will sleep here tonight with my family but I will be alone on the road tomorrow.

III

I can hear the river from the tent, a constant gurgle living on the other side of the nylon as my ex-girlfriend sleeps next to me. I want to know what time it is, but my phone is out of reach and I accidentally left my watch in Portland a week ago.

“I just want it to be OK. Just pleasant. Civil, you know?” I would tell my friends when they asked me what I thought of staying with her. My mom’s cousin lives in Seattle too, I thought, a phone call that I could make in case of emergency.

This is our second night camping together in the foothills of Mt. Rainier. I had been staying in her apartment on the floor for the week before as neither one of us was ready to share her single bed. Before breezing through Portland to get to her, it had been a year since I had seen her and two since we had split up.

The day before, after we make camp, we go down to the river with my camera and our beers. The water is cold and the evergreens cut jaggedly through the silver of the water and the grey of the sky. She takes pictures of me washing my hands in the stream and skipping rocks. I take pictures of her making dinner on a fold out stove. As night falls we sit together and watch our fire, occasionally pulling on our drinks. I feel like we could get swept up with the stream on the other side of the darkness, that we could float down, carried off by forces we can’t see. Already doubts form in my mind about keeping my promise of being in Boulder for Independence Day.

In the tent in the morning I try not to move too much. She forgot to bring a pillow so we share mine, forcing closeness and, in any other circumstance, intimacy. Since I arrived we had been stumbling through what to make of my being in Seattle—both of us aware of my impermanence, both of us aware of the comfort that has come from the days that we had shared.

A few days after we leave the mountains, we are at an art show downtown. There are rows of vendors hawking oil paintings and wind chimes. She stops at a booth with handmade jewelry and I watch her examine the necklaces.

“I know which one you want,” I say.

“Oh yeah?”

I point to the one she had been eying and she looks at me. “How did you know?”

Right then we are on the edge of it, as I leave the question hanging and we walk past the booths toward a musical group. If we hold our stares for a heartbeat longer we will be gone, swept downstream like driftwood in the whitewater. We both feel the undertow pulling on our fingers but we keep our hands in our pockets.

I stay for a few days after that and we move closer, feeling our way through how each of us has changed over the last two years. We move closer, awkward and tender. I can’t stay though and I’ve run out of continent in the West. I point my car east and start the trip back.

IV

My friend Austin is now living in a condominium in downtown Boulder. It took me two full days of driving to get from Seattle to his luxurious spread and now that I’m here I appreciate the extra space. He has a gas range and dark counter tops. From his balcony the Flatiron Mountains look like brown irregular teeth growing up from the earth, though the view is mostly wasted on me—I’ve been on the road for forty days.

Colorado was home, a realization I came to only after moving away. Coming to the Midwest after fourteen years in the mountains was a difficult transition. During the Winter Olympics I would see skiers plummet down white mountains and instead of being amazed by their speed or grace, I would remember the excitement of a snow day and the comfort of a wood-burning stove. Every time I come back to Colorado I think about what my life would have been if we hadn’t had to move—my mind’s mountains shrouded in clouds of “what if?”

Things are different this time.

He and I had been friends in high school, then I moved away. We were roommates in college in St. Louis, then he transferred to Colorado. I’m on his couch in the morning when he wakes up and we sip coffee and watch sports highlights. He’s waiting for law school to start in the fall and I am trying to relate.

During the day we watch the World Cup and play video games and wait for our friends to get off work. At night we sit on high stools with tall glasses in front of us, but we keep our eyes on televisions. There are rumors concerning old friends I used to know and I shake my head and think about what a long six years it’s been since this was my life. When I tell them about my trip and they call me Kerouac and I wince. We make jokes and laugh but something is off and I think everyone can tell.

I have trouble sleeping on his couch; the trip weighs heavy on my heart. My mind is unable to shake this one thought: In each new city I build a fantasy life for myself. As I walk down a strange street I see a coffee shop and watch a scene play out in my mind of a much older me who would spend day after day sitting at a particular table. My hair would be greyer and I would wear glasses. Then, after years at this coffee shop, management would change hands and I would never come back again. The older version of me wouldn’t have to tell myself that this is how these things go. In Boulder, I toy with this thought as the hours slip by in the dark.

V

I did so much driving at night, the stars above me as clear as they were when I was a boy. My hands on the wheel as my headlights burned a hole through the dark space between where I had been and where I was headed. I was looking for something—looking for something in the space between stops; exploring the gaps that had opened up between myself and the people I had loved. To think about it now, I don’t know how I did it. How I kept it between the dotted and solid lines. All that silence, all that space.

Day 23: June 22 (Portland, Oregon)

Las Vegas

This town had a lot of things going against it for me. To begin with, I don’t particularly like gambling. I never have enough money to do it properly and when I do gamble with a limited bankroll I usually do so poorly. Also at a time when the numbers of my bank account are only a fraction less important than the fitness of my car, needless to say, I didn’t have enough money (or wasn’t ready to risk enough money, it’s really all the same though) to sit at these tables properly.

Secondly, tourism rubs me the wrong way. The disingenuous nature of it, the “hey, hey look over here at all the neat things we have for you to do!” and fake smiles and feigned interest. Tourism, by and large, is greed coated in bullshit that’s sold with a big grin. This is a city built on tourism and greed. It is a city designed to dazzle and overwhelm and amaze. But for me, all the flashing lights did was bathe the gluttony of the city in a warm yellow glow.

Thirdly, I was alone.

But. I had to see it. Skipping it for any of those reasons never really registered with me. I had to see it. Had to see the spectacle. Had to see what everyone was so damned excited about. And so I did.

Initially I parked my car at the north end of the strip in front of a cheap casino/gift shop/restaurant/whatever. I had no intentions of paying to park my car and this particular parking lot was well lit and its location on the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard meant that I could walk down the strip, see the sights, gamble, lose, and walk back to my car all in one neat linear jaunt. I left my car in the row nearest to the entrance of the gift shop portion of the building and as I was locking the door I looked in. The woman working one of the registers was watching me, worse than that, it looked like she had been watching me for a while. Was I allowed to park in the lot if I wasn’t going to gamble/eat/shop/sacrifice a lamb (hey, why not?) here? I turned my key to the right, locking the doors, and tried to forget about it.

I couldn’t forget about it for long. The number of drunks and bums and drunk bums on the north end of the strip was a little unnerving. I thought about my car with its way-out-of-town plates and cooler visible in the backseat. I thought about my computer in the trunk. I thought about my not so cleverly hidden iPod and camera. I thought about a drunk or a bum or a drunk bum or the woman at the register who had been giving me stink eye getting a laugh at the expense of this foreigner, this tourist. Who the hell is from Ohio anyway? they would think. Why didn’t that son of bitch fly out like all the rest of these bloated tourists with their cameras hanging around their necks?

The greater the distance between myself and the car the more I worried. Maybe their alcoholic father was a Buckeye fan. Maybe the landlord who evicted them hung portraits of Warren G Harding in his office. Maybe the woman working the register was from Michigan. I had walked 10 blocks and was just getting to the edge of the major casinos when I turned around. I was going to find somewhere else to park my car with it’s out of town license plates and cooler to boot.

By the time I had walked from my new parking space (a dark, slightly populated so that my car wasn’t alone but not too well populated as to attract vandals and thieves lot behind a Denny’s) back to the main casinos I was starting to feel better. The bums had been replaced by balding white men who wore tennis shoes and socks up to their shins. There were women faulting their sunburned cleavage. There were people selling bottled water on the sides of street for reasonable prices. The world was back in order again. Hell, maybe I would even win some money I thought. Who knows, a couple of breaks this way or that, a bit of good luck with the roulette table and I might actually have a little extra cash to burn once I got to California. I would spend my evening at the Venetian Casino. I’ve been to Venice, hot shit I was even wearing a shirt I got when I was in Venice! Luck by lady tonight, right Mr. Sinatra?

No. No, of course not. I lost, gracefully and in very modest increments, and walked over the bridge. Below me were men wearing black and white striped shirts and broad hats, standing in their faux gondolas. The bastards probably couldn’t even find Venice on a map I thought to myself as I walked back north. I was out of cash, my feet hurt and I was tired from a day of driving, Hoover damming, and fretting over the prospect of hoodlums. My car was still in the lot behind Denny’s, mercifully unmolested, and I got behind the wheel to look for a quiet place off the strip where I could sleep in my car.

My first choice was a semi-lit one way street that had lower-income apartments on both sides of it but the yelling and crying of babies drove me from there promptly. Next I pulled into a neighborhood, one with not too shabby homes and an occasional Beamer in the driveway. I parked next to house with a truck in front of it, leaned my seat back and closed my eyes. Not five minutes after I had settled in did the ignition turn in the truck. The engine roared as the truck pulled out of the driveway only to return in a matter of minutes. Voices from the truck called into house, voices from the house called back to the truck. It was 1 AM on a Sunday, but Las Vegas wouldn’t let me sleep.

Tired and cranky I started my car and made for I-15 towards Los Angeles. I was broke, I was tired, and I needed to get somewhere that made sense. Nick Cage may have left Las Vegas, but Joel Bahr got the fuck out.

Day 14: June 13 (Las Vegas, Nevada)

Outside of Kayenta, Arizona there is a billboard advertising for the World War II Navajo Code-Talkers museum. Kayenta is Navajo territory, you see. To be completely honest, it was more of an issue of bladder than of curiosity that brought my car to a stop in Kayenta. After pulling out of the gas station I pulled back onto the highway until I saw a big electronic sign advertising the museum. Above the sign was a familiar logo, a circle with the capital letters B and K in the middle. The World War II Navajo Code-Talkers museum was in a Burger King. I parked my car in the lot and walked inside. The museum was a 12 foot glass display case which housed period era fatigues, rifles and helmets. There were newspaper clippings and a computer screen. Next to the display was a family of four munching on their whoppers and chicken sandwiches. They were not Navajo. I didn’t stay in the Burger King much longer after that. As I was walking to the parking lot a man with black hair and red skin asked me if I wanted to buy an arrowhead that he was holding in his hand. I declined, started my car, and left Kayenta and the World War II Navajo Code-Talkers museum and Burger King behind me.

June 13: Day 14 (Las Vegas, Nevada)

It took me a long time to realize that Colorado was home. I had to move away, go to college, visit several times, study abroad (twice) and then graduate for it to really sink in—Colorado is my heart. Growing up my mailing address was Colorado Springs but my real hometown was Monument. Over the years I got to know the Springs and Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins and Pueblo. Those were the cities I visited and came to know. I lived on Colorado’s Front Range for 14 years before moving away. I knew it, I liked it, and I would eventually miss it.

So here I am back in Colorado, only it’s not the Colorado I knew. And not only is it not the Colorado I knew, it was different in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. I had visited Monument after moving and it had exploded with growth since I left. Untamed open spaces had been paved and Home Depots and coffee shops had sprung up. A second middle school was built, then a second high school. Monument was a rapidly growing city in a rapidly growing county in a rapidly growing state, but this was not the Colorado I found when I came back this time.

After I plowed through northern New Mexico during the night I woke the next morning to a Colorado I’ve never known. I had fallen in love with Colorado’s Front Range when I was growing up there, but in Durango I was introduced to the Front Range’s beautiful little sister, the Western Slope. She was smaller, quieter, prettier, and the kind of girl who didn’t shave her legs.

Durango is tucked away in the southwest corner of the state in the Animas River valley. A quick glance at its Wikipedia page would tell you that the word “Durango” is a derivative of “urango”, a Basque word for “water town” but it would be impossible to understand what the Animas River means to Durango in the summer without being there.

The first day I was in Durango one of my oldest friends took me to Baker’s Bridge to jump into the river. The summer runoffs had swollen the river and its muddy waters ran cold and swift. I watched a new friend contemplate the distance from the bridge to the rushing water 30 feet below him. After hearing that a few people had already died in the river this summer I was comfortable to watch him from the safety of the rocks 15 feet below him (but still 15 feet above the river).The considerable spring run-off meant that here at the bridge the water would be deep enough so he wouldn’t touch the river bottom. He took his time, 10 minutes or so, until he stood. Painstakingly he first removed his sunglasses, then his hat, then his shirt. Then he jumped.

The river carried him 10 or 15 feet before his head broke the muddy surface. Even with the quick current he was able to get out of the river with some strong strokes. How was it Johnny? we asked him. Cold, and pretty fast he said. I watched another new friend jump from the rocks. Then my old friend jumped. Then it was my turn. As I stood at the edge of the rock I thought about what everyone had said when we told them that we were going to Baker’s Bridge. “Swim hard it’s really fast right now.” Was I a strong swimmer? Swimming in my parents pool that bottoms out at 6 feet doesn’t really count does it? The Animas was churning brown below me and I tried to gauge how fast it was by watching sticks floating along the surface as they made their way downstream.

Two steps backwards, one big step forwards, airborne.

It’s hard to say what sensation hit me first (or harder for that matter) the cold or the current. No matter what the sensation was that drove me, before my head broke the surface I knew that I did not want to be in the river anymore. As it turns out, I am a strong enough swimmer and made it to the bank with nine or ten strokes and hauled myself out of the river and onto the red rocks to dry out. I did not jump in again.

The rest of the week that I was in Durango followed the tempo that had been set that first day. Rope swinging into the Vallecito reservoir, day tripping to Telluride, bar hopping , days flowed into each other as naturally as the Animas. Yet, by the end of the week I knew I had stayed long enough. Durango is a town that I should love. It is progressive (people who practice what the preach when it comes to organic living and sustainability—right down to solar powered trash compactors), liberal (4 marijuana dispensaries for a town of 15,000 in 2005), and in an absolutely stunning location nestled in the La Plata mountains, but I didn’t love it.

This realization unnerved me then and still does now. I didn’t think that living in St. Louis and Ohio had changed me as much as it did. On more than one occasion I found myself joking with people that I was a city slicker knowing full well that there was at least a little bit of truth in the joke. On the drive to Telluride at about 10,000 feet I got my first ever case of altitude sickness. It wasn’t serious, a minor headache and a bit of nausea, but it was enough for me to understand the message: I don’t live here anymore. It’s an easy message for me to reconcile—it’s been 6 years after all since I officially lived in Colorado and 10,000 feet in the air is no joke. But I can’t shake off one lingering thought: if my love affair with the Western Slope wasn’t meant to be; what of my first love and the only place I feel that I can call home? What of the Front Range and I?

I left Durango with Colorado dirt under my fingernails and, with all the hope that earth can hold, it is still there. I haven’t cleaned it out yet.

Day 7: June 6 (Durango, Colorado)

30 miles west of San Antonio mesas began to rise out of the ground. Massive trapezoids dotted the landscape with green trees along their sides and too-big houses sometimes christened their tops. My black 2-door snaked between them trying, perhaps vainly and naively, to get out of Texas.

West Texas was the kind of place where the road never changes. 80, 85, 90 miles per hour, it made no difference; outside of the white lines the scene was constant. Gold flecked with the green of shoulder-high scrub slid past my windows, soundless save for the noise of the tires and the asphalt. Road signs attempted to convince me that there is life out there. Towns like Sterling City and Sonora, Ozona and Pandale appeared on the green signs on the side of the road and I blew by them.

West Texas was the kind of place where I not only considered stopping to fill up when I had a quarter of a tank left, I actually did it. It was the kind of place that after exiting the highway I drove 4 miles into a town, more like a neighborhood really, to the filling station. There was no explanation for the town or the people who live there, they just were. At the filling station gas was 50 cents more than it was the last time I stopped but I paid it.

In West Texas cell phones were reduced to shiny plastic rectangles and blown out tires rotted on the highway like corpses. There were road signs that read “STRONG CROSS WINDS” and after having my car lurch 2 feet to the left I took them seriously. In Fort Stockton there were two FM radio stations, they were both in Spanish. Billboards in Pecos boasted being the home of the first rodeo. There were unmarked fast food restaurants that offered “small pig” for 85 cents. Buildings were rusted and permanently leaning to the side after a lifetime of being bullied by the wind. It was Cormac McCarthy’s wet dream. My 2-door Acura with Ohio plates would only be more out of place if it were painted rainbow and had a re-animated Freddy Mercury riding shotgun. I wondered to myself after leaving Pecos behind me traveling north on the 285, if something were to happen to me, how long would it take for someone to find my body? Because in West Texas you have kick off 3 inches of dirt and dust to unearth words like “remote” and “desolate.”

Maybe it was the powers that be rather than time and stress that made my right front tire rupture. Perhaps I was supposed to have the “oh shit” moment. It was fate, it was destiny, it was irony. No matter what the motivation was once I felt the steering wheel shake and heard the grinding from the right side of my hood, I had my oh shit moment. I knew I had blown a tire even before I brought the car to a stop on the side of the road. But no one would have to find my body; there would be no need for a search party this time. 45 minutes later the shredded tire was in my trunk under my clothes and camping equipment and the spare had been tightened on. I drove slowly, 50, until reaching Carlsbad, New Mexico under a big starry sky. I drove around looking for a place where I could park and sleep in my car for the night. The next day, I would have to buy a new tire.

Day 5: June 4 (Austin, Texas)

Dallas is roads. Highways, tollways, expressways, freeways, parkways. I've seldom seen traffic like the traffic in Dallas. It's not such much a reflection of congestion or accidents but more the sheer volume of cars and the people in them. Everyone racing around, jerking the wheel and veering in and out of lanes, right foot hardly ever straying from the accelerator. Building after building adorn these thoroughfares. The ones downtown glow neon green and blue in the night, while the others shimmer with gold and silver windows. So many buildings reaching up into the sky, so many people zooming around their bases. After 4 days in Dallas I feel like I know less about the city layout than I did before I came--my head awash with byways and buildings. Though I can say that Dallas is the following: it's big, it's noisy, it's rich, it's fast, and it's a lot of fun.

For the last 2 nights I slept in arguably the nicest apartment I've ever been in. Floor to ceiling windows with a view of a highway and the chaos that takes place on it. But tonight, 200 miles south of Dallas and 2o miles west of Austin I am sleeping not in a plush luxury apartment overlooking the SMU football stadium, but in my car. Tonight I am without the two old friends and a half dozen new ones the 220 miles to the north. I am alone in my car in an empty parking lot attached to an empty campground save for Roger, the owner and operator of the park. There is only one road, there are no buildings, and it is very, very quiet.

A female deer walked past the hood of my car while I reclined in my seat and tried to sleep. As she walked in front of me I wanted to ask her what she thought. What did she have to say of this--of Austin and Dallas and empty parking lots? And what of me leaving St. Louis? And of my car, loaded up with most of my life and me behind the wheel? What did she think of it? What did she think of me and my return to the West?

I fingered the window button to pull the glass between she and I down, removing the barrier between my car and her woods. Before the glass began to slide the sound of Roger's Winnebago door slamming startled her and she ran off into the woods and into the quiet.

Windy Point Park on Lake Travis, Austin, Texas

May 31, 2010: St. Louis (Night before the trip)

So what does a guy who majored in Political Science, minored in History, and got a Foreign Service Certificate at Saint Louis University do with his degree? How does a 1-2 month long road trip across the Southwest, up the West Coast, and across the Rockies to return to the place that has felt most like home sound to you? That's the plan all right. I remember when I told my Dad sophomore year that I was going to declare poli sci-- he told me that all the political science factories back East had all closed. 2 years, a degree, and a number of rejections from jobs I didn't really want all that badly anyway I'm choosing to shelve the "go out and get a real job" mantra for just one more, one last, summer.

The (rough) Itinerary

from St. Louis, MO

• Dallas, TX
• Austin, TX
• Albuquerque, NM
• Santa Fe, NM
• Taos, NM
• Durango, CO
• Telluride, CO
• Flagstaff, AZ
• Los Angeles, CA
• San Francisco, CA (via HWY 1)
• Eugene, OR
• Portland, OR
• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, BC
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Boulder, CO

What to wear?

• 9 boxers/boxer briefs
• 1 Levi Strauss Jeans
• 1 corduroy pant
• 4 non-athletic shorts
• 2 athletic shorts
• 1 swimming trunks
• 8 t-shirts
• 2 long sleeved shirts
• 3 collared shirts
• 6 socks
• 3 shoes (Sperry, sandal, Nike)
• 1 Northface jacket
• 1 Light jacket

The Things He Carried

• Poetry by Pablo Neruda, Stories by TC Boyle and Raymond Carver
• Checks
• Passport
• Digital Camera
• Journal
• Computer
• Ipod
• Cell Phone (doubles as GPS)
• Toiletries, Meds, etc.
• Towel
• Sunglasses
• Cooler
• Food
• Tent
• Small propane stove
• Flashlight
• Pillow
• Sleeping bag
• Collapsible chair

How I'm Getting There

• 1997 Acura CL 2.3, black with Ohio plates, new brakes, a potentially slipping clutch, freshly changed oil, and enough miles on it to make me too nervous to put the exact number down (think north of 150k). Tom Joad listened nervously to the sounds coming from the family truck as they went West from Oklahoma, hopefully things fare better for me than what became of the Joads.
• Graduation money (thank you! to everyone who gave me a check, seriously you guys rock)
• My wonderful and supportive parents that will get a call from their son daily to let them know that he is still alive and having a kick ass time.

I've been wanting to take this trip for several months now, a blue line wiggling across the American West was (and is) the background image on my computer and got me through some tough times during my final semester. I wanted to graduate and be free of everything, free of school, free from work, no ties to anyone or anything; and now I have. There's a lot going into this trip for me. Going home. Finding home. Figuring out where I want to live next. Seeing people I thought I probably wouldn't see again. Scoping out graduate programs. And learning how much I loved St. Louis and my life here by leaving it for a while.

I know how cliche it is to take time off after school and travel, but if it's a cliche at least I can make it my own. I don't really know what to expect from this trip, but I do know that I want to get out there, to see it, to feel it. This blog will be a place for my head on this trip, and I invite you stop in periodically and see what's going on between ears and in front of my face. If I'm in your city then show me some love. If I'm not in your city, let me know you miss me (blog, twitter, facebook, email, cell). Much love guys, I'll be seeing you.

Joel

Life in my Pockets: A Story of Senior Year

I always keep them separate. One in the left, the other in the right and they are not allowed to swap. They have their homes and if they are anywhere other than the right or the left pocket then they are lost.

In my left is my past. California, Colorado, Ohio, New Orleans, Ireland, and St. Louis are all there. Family is in there—people I should call more often than I do. Lovers are in there, not many of them and those are numbers seldom punched now, but they sit there and stir me when I scroll past them. There are a handful of names that have meaning to them in my left pocket. The people who would be on the “favorites” list if I ever used it. Old bosses and references are in there too because, you know, I might need them later. Something my right pocket could interested in.

Then there are names and numbers that probably shouldn’t be there and they’re given away by not having a last name. The one namers are ghosts. You were a pretty face that night and I had to, had to, have your number. Or maybe you insisted on giving it to me. Maybe if I look at your one name long enough I can remember that party or that kiss or that joke and remember the urgency that brought you into my left pocket. I don’t know though. I can’t ever really remember.

Megan, Megan, Megan. Who are you? How did you come to be here? Above and below you are people. People that matter. People that make me laugh and smile, but you—who are you? And Aren too. What made you special? How many of you ghosts are in here? And why are you still here? I should know these things, I suppose. I put you there after all. And I can take you out just as easily, easier even. But I haven’t yet, you’re still here. I can’t delete you. You’ve made it this far, why should today be your day to disappear into the void, falling out of my left pocket and gone forever? You didn’t do anything to deserve it today. You haven’t done anything so I guess you can stay. I must like having ghosts in the phone, a comforting haunting in my left pocket.

While the left pocket carries the weight of the past the right is harder and colder. There is no nostalgia among the grooves and ridges and points in the right pocket. The metallic song that sings from my keys doesn’t remind me anyone or anywhere. There are no foggy memories of a party or washed out remembrances of job that really wasn’t that bad. Even the little Spanish bull that dangles among the starters and openers is metal and cold and sings the same song—its attempts to remind me drowned out and indistinguishable. There are no ghosts in the right pocket. It is firm and finite and functional. Key/keyhole. Door open/door closed. Home/not home. There are no mysteries in the right pocket.

Recently though, while the ghosts mingle with lovers and new friends in the left pocket, the right pocket has gotten lighter. Keys circle around the ring and are gone. While I can choose to keep my ghosts of the left pocket, there is no comfort once a key is gone. The song of the remaining keys is the same as it was before, metallic and cold. But I’m starting to notice it now. First one key, then another have circled the ring and more will soon make the trip. With each ending I lose a key. First work, then school, and next the apartment. Soon the only key left will the one with the gnarled plastic head that makes my car come to life. As the key count dwindles in the right the ghost population rises in the left.

I always keep them separate but the occupants of my right and left pocket live together now. Swapping significance and meaning from one hip to the other. The distance between them is the same. The distance between them is different. They have their homes, but I can't say the same.

but you don't really care for music do you?

It was Wednesday. Wednesday meant “wellness meetings”, the once a week session of sunshine being shoved into our lives whether we could handle it or not. Worse yet there were visitors for this particular wellness meeting. Two young men and a young woman. They had been hanging around for the last couple of weeks and were soon to be leaving no doubt. People like them never stick around for too long.

I had seen them before. Smiling and glad-handing the others who were infected just like I was. They would insist on talking, always talking. Asking everyone how they were doing. We’re dying, that’s how we’re doing. Dying alone at that, so kindly take your crocodile tears and remarks about the heat and the rain back to wherever you came from. You aren’t going to get to me. I’m nobody’s fool and I’m certainly not your fool.

It’s not that I don’t think they can’t help. It’s that I know that they can’t help me. I see how Glori has taken a shine to them. They’ve even got to Mark. Yesterday I walked by them playing cards and laughing. “We got some card players here! Yes sa’, some card playin boys from Chicago!” Mark would exclaim. They would sheepishly grin and spot Glori and Mark 50 cents to keep playing after they cleaned them out. The girl was sitting off to the side of them, fingers pecking at her guitar strings and smiling.

I heard there was a secret chord / that David played and it pleased the Lord

“Hey there Mr. Michael,” Gloria said to me.

“Hi Glori,” is all I could muster as a response I walked into House #4. The House for the people who weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I needed to lie down. I slept the rest of the day until dinner. After dinner I went back to bed and didn’t wake up until Mr. Nathan woke me up for the wellness meeting the next day.

“Get up sleepy head,” he said, his thick lisp in full effect on the “s” of sleepy. From the first time I heard him speak it was no secret to me how he had ended up here.

The wellness meeting was to run for an hour. A lot of sharing and expressing and talking about our feelings. It was good for some of them I’m sure. Most of us just sat off to the side and didn’t participate and looked out the window. We didn’t have to participate in the activities if we didn’t want to. Doing things you didn’t want to do was contrary to the spirit of wellness meetings. I walked in a little late. Metal chairs shuffled across the floor as my fellow victims cleared a spot for me.

“Hi Mr. Michael, how are we feeling today?” Bonnie asked, her silver hair blending in with her white tunic at the shoulders.

“My back hurts, but other than that I’m grand,” I said with a wry smile.

Bonnie was a mouse of a woman. She was all bones and hard angles. Thin enough to be one of us. Bonnie’s background was in health services. She loved helping people. That’s why she came here once a week to lead us in arts and crafts and finger painting or group bongo sessions. She was soft spoken and inaccessibly polite.

“Well lets get you a pillow for that boney butt of yours,” she said with a smile. “Could someone get a pillow for Mr. Michael?”

Someone did and I wedged it between that boney butt of mine and the hard metal of the chair. “Much better, thanks a million,” I said.

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof / you saw her bathing on the roof / her beauty and her moonlight overthrew you

Bonnie introduced the three of them- the two young men and the one young woman. She said that they would be sitting in on the meeting if that was okay with everyone else and that if anyone had any problems with them being there that they would understand and leave.

“Oh no they can stay,” said Mr. Nathan, shoveling popcorn into his mouth. Grease and butter caked his fingers.

“Shoot, I like them more than I like most of y’all,” said Charles. Charles thought of himself as the elder statesman of all the patients. He certainly had been here a long time, but he didn’t command a lot respect. Even so, with Charles’ blessing, they were allowed to stay.

She really was quite stunning, I have to admit. She walked in behind the two boys, her guitar slung over her soft shoulders. Everything about her seemed soft. Her hair was dyed wonderfully so I would never know its true color. She kept her hair short and tussled; there was white band that rested amongst the soft curls. She had piercing blue eyes, eyes that could save a man if she would let them. She wore a ring in her nose and beads of every color around her neck. A low cut blouse hinted at her breasts. Everywhere she went it was lighter.

The wellness meeting went as they always did. Bonnie spoke softly about different things we do when we feel sad, who we turn to for support, things like that. I propped my head up on my hand and looked at the floor. There were stock answers from the room. Talk to friends, go for a walk, listen to music. Who cares? I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep.

Baby I’ve been here before / I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor / I used to live alone before I knew you

Bonnie, keenly sensing that she was loosing the room to apathy, decided to incorporate our guests into the discussion.

“So what have you guys gotten out of this experience? Being down here and meeting these people?” Bonnie asked.

More stock answers. “The people are amazing. I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s been really rewarding. Really cool to meet all of you.”

“Yeah, I mean, this has really been eye-opening you know? I’m definitely going to remember this for the rest of my life.”

“Definitely, you guys are all awesome and I feel so blessed that I got to spend some time with all of you.”

I couldn’t help myself. That was too much for me. I lifted my head from my hand. “Look, we’ve done this before. We’ve all been here and groups and people like you come down and we meet you and we like you.”

They smiled at this.

“But,” I continued, “it’s hard for us. We get attached and get to really like you and then you leave us and we’re left here alone. It’s really lonely,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

“I…” I started but gave up and shook my head. They had been looking at me but now they turned their eyes to the floor. They may have been earnest and well intentioned but that didn’t make it right and I wanted them to know it.

“You just come into our lives and leave,” I said. Shit, I thought. I’m in my 60s, I have AIDS, my friends and family are all gone and the best these kids can come up with is, really cool to meet all of you?

“But we really love having you,” Glori said. Saving them and probably saving me from being the villain. “Mr. Michael is right. But I’ve really enjoyed you guys. Julie, will you sing a song for us?”

“Yes,” Bonnie practically came out of her chair at the prospect of a song. Surely music would clear out the tension that was seeping from my chair into the rest of the room. “Would you mind terribly dear?”

“Sure. I would love to,” she said, strangely unaffected by the storm I had caused. She smiled and the room exhaled. She slung her guitar around her pretty shoulders and rested her guitar on her pretty thighs.

Well there was a time when you let me know / what was really going on below / but now you never show that to me do you

I couldn’t tell you what the first two songs she sung were. She took requests from the room and when the angel sung the room opened up. Slowly people started nodding and bobbing their heads. More and more they tapped their toes and whispered the words they knew. Mr. Nathan, never one to be bashful started singing along with her. People smiled and joined in on the verses they knew. When she finished the room around me clapped and fawned over her.

“See I told you!” Gloria said, slapping Mark on his bicep. “I told you she could sing!”

“That was beautiful,” said Mr. Nathan, popcorn still stuck in his teeth.

“Thanks for singing along with me,” she said as light came pouring from her eyes. “You guys want another one?”

People kicked around ideas for the next song. She sheepishly downplayed Charles’ praise that she was better than anyone on the radio.

“Remember the name,” said Mark. “You’re going to be a star. With those eyes and that voice. You’re going to make it baby girl.”

She smiled and her white wings started to spread.

“Do you guys know Hallelujah?” she asked.

But remember when I moved in you / and the holy dove was moving too / and every breath we drew was hallelujah

She started in on the song, slowly at first, gently toeing the water of her voice. Hinting at more and the room begged for it.

Well maybe there’s a god above

Her voice grew stronger and people closed their eyes and leaned back in their chairs, tossing their heads with the melody.

But all I ever learned from love

She was alone in the room now. The two young men and Bonnie and Charles and Mr. Nathan and Mark and Gloria and everyone else, they were all somewhere else. Their eyes were glassy with memories of the past.

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

Her voice, my God her voice. The veins in her neck strained but she kept going. Impossibly, she kept going. Her voice was all there was.

It’s not a cry that you hear at night

The room was filled with white as her pale wings wrapped around us.

It’s not somebody who has seen the light

She was taking them with her. Her white wings drying their wet eyes and lifting them up with her. She was going to take them all with her great pale wings and pretty hair and soft shoulders. They were all leaving me on the sound of her voice.

It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

And I watched them go. Flying overhead, shrouded in angel wings and light. And I, I just put my head down on the table and started to cry.

Hallelujah

Working Title: NOLA

We were coming up from the bayou, but it felt more like we were coming back from the edge of the world. Three weeks earlier we had followed the twists and turns of Mississippi from St. Louis downstream to New Orleans. The closer we got to the Gulf the deeper the road beneath our Lexus sunk. It was a slow and exhilarating decline as water encroached on the shoulders of the road and funneled us down to the sea. Now we were resurfacing and I was having a hard time finding my breath.

I told people that I was going to down to volunteer, to re-paint houses, put roofs on wind blasted shacks, and see what was still there. I was a chivalrous product of Jesuit education. I was a man for others. Or that’s what I told people at least. Secretly, I had intended to make New Orleans the salvation of my summer. A cure-all for not finding work, the failing health of my grandfather, and the deep rut I had worked myself into. I would give back to New Orleans, New Orleans would give back to me.

And to my surprise, it worked. My roommate and I would arrive on work sites early in day when the heat was a slightly less oppressive. I would sweat out my troubles under the low hanging Louisiana sun and smile with my fellow volunteers during the day. We would come back to the bunk house in the evenings a jockey for the first shower. There would be big pots of jambalaya for dinner at the house or we could go out and inhale shrimp po’ boys or gumbo. During the weekends we would bar hop on Frenchman Street; beckoned into the next bar by a wailing trumpet or the raspy wail of heartbroken singer. Groups of volunteers would come and go. A group of fifteen would be replaced by a group seven by the end of the week. Days turned into weeks and we went from the wide-eyed newcomers to the elder statesmen of bunkhouse.

During that time I got to know New Orleans. I would stumble through the French Quarter, my drunken feet catching on the cobblestones. At the waterfront I would admire the same river that ran through my city some seven hundred miles to the north. I worked in the Ninth Ward and tried on a daily basis to decode what had been hit by a catastrophe of Mother Nature and what had just been ravaged by poverty.

One afternoon after work we went to the lower Ninth. Shielded behind a new levee were a dozen ultra modern, eco-friendly houses on stilts courtesy of Brad Pitt. Beat up Chevys and Cadillacs were parked underneath the six figure homes. The same poor people who lived in the lower Ninth before Katrina won a lottery and got to move back to where their houses once stood.

The Brad Pitt Houses overlooked both the river that crippled their city and the graveyard that Katrina left behind in the lower Ninth. While one side of the street gleamed with the generosity of a celebrity the other side told another story. Occasionally I could see brick and mortar of a foundation to a home that was no longer there. More often the scene was that of a broken sidewalk leading up to nothing but tall grass. Katrina had struck down the homes and now Mother Nature was growing up, over, and through the rubble she had left behind.

We drove slowly, squaring block after block of tall grass and loose brick. No one spoke. I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture. We all said we were going to come back another time, but none of us did. This too, was New Orleans, and this too I learned to love.

And so I smiled. I met new people. I did good work, explored, drank, and ate. I was happy again. New Orleans saved my summer and maybe more, it was exactly what I needed it to be. So it was no surprise that as we sped northward towards St. Louis my stomach churned. I was leaving an answer, a solution to a problem I didn’t really understand.

As we plunged back towards real life I felt like I had to bear the same carry-on luggage of melancholy that came with me on my flight back from my semester in Spain and my move from my home in Colorado to Ohio as a high school student. I was leaving something real and good, to place that only had questions. Senior year, graduation, real life, worry all built up like dangerous clouds in the north. The horizon sucked me back towards my life, and from the passenger seat there was no brake pedal in reach.

The Hour of the Seasons

I was sitting on the arm of my couch looking out my window watching the sun bleed out across the horizon when it happened. It was overpowering and swift when it came and it hit me in a way that I had no choice but to sit still at my window. Fall, without warning or explanation or apology had just arrived, and it was my duty to bear witness to it.

That morning it had been summer, with green grass and dreams that had no choice but coming true. Sunlight had wrapped us all up for so long that we had forgotten its golden blanket was there. It was a part of us now; we wore it like a cloak over our shoulders and it tanned our backs and chests. Bare bodies paid homage to this gift of warmth and promise and there were smiles smeared across our red faces. There were eternal days at the pool and epic evenings around a fire pit. It was summer and we were young and invincible and beautiful.

But now, right in front of my face, it was fall. Yellow had crept into the trees and it shimmered and multiplied like gray hairs. The air was heavy with hopes and dreams gone unfulfilled and the wind bit with their bitterness. I was suddenly conscious of the stillness of everything, and of the quiet. The earth’s heartbeat had begun to slow and I could feel it with a firmer ground underfoot. Shots of life and color would come less abundantly but more profoundly in the coming days. The red of the sun dying on the horizon yielded faint promise of an Indian Summer.

The twinkling of city lights flashed me the message that the moment was over. My time on the arm of my couch watching the sun set on summer, like the summer itself, had slipped away, and I felt connected to the weight of the moment. Catherine’s younger brother Stevie had died yesterday. I thought about this as I watched the sun bleed out and heard the earth slow down. I thought about Stevie and Catherine and all the fleeting promises of summer that were setting with the sun. A gust of wind blew in through my window and cold air flooded my apartment and with that fall took root in me.

Grounding Out

The day was an early one or an early one for me at least. I met a friend of mine outside a building I used to live in and he drove us to a friend of his where we were going to work. It was 11:30 and it was hot, probably just below 90 when we got there. Our task was to move and reassemble 13 filing cabinets from a garage to an office building. It was soupy humid and the sun promised more heat in the afternoon. I was sweating before we loaded a single cabinet. I wouldn’t be dry until I rubbed my tennis ball green towel over my body at 7 that night.

The work itself wasn’t too bad. Manual labor isn’t too bad in general, I think. The only time I’ve felt God was in manual labor. I didn’t see God on this day. It was the hottest day of the summer. When my friend dropped me off in front of the building I now live in I had 100 dollars in my previously lonesome wallet, a soaked through t-shirt, tired arms and back, and that sense of accomplishment that you can only get after working on days like this. I also had a ticket to see the Cardinals that night. I had planned on going back to Ohio instead of the baseball game.

I wanted to be home for father’s day and to be with my mom. She had just gotten back from a trip to see her dying father. My grandfather, the man I’m named after. I needed to be home. But not tonight. I wouldn’t get back there until 2 or 3 in the morning and I was utterly worn out. Baseball would be my treat. Baseball would be my cure. Dying grandfathers, grieving mothers, father’s day obligations, joblessness, homelessness, and an unshakable feeling of being out of place- they would all wait for tomorrow. Baseball tonight.

We got there late. The Tigers hung 4 on the birds in the first inning that we missed. We were delayed at the bar before hand waiting on the fourth person of our party to turn up. Eventually she showed up and she, my roommate, his cousin, I went downtown to the ballpark. She was a cute student from a neighboring state school. We each had a beer that cut through the heat of what was becoming the hottest night of the year, laid a foundation of small talk, and then I turned it on.

It didn’t really matter that there wasn’t any real future for us past the end of the game. I wasn’t interested in hooking up with her, or dating her, or even seeing her the next time she came out. She was a pretty face sitting next to me at a baseball game and that was all I really needed her to be.

I would tell a story and she would smile. I would make a joke and she would laugh. I would pull on my beer and grin as it coolly snaked through my body. The Cards cut into the Detroit lead. The sun set, I ate a bratwurst and watched how her cheeks pulled up her lips to put her teeth on display.

Two home runs in the Detroit half of the eighth and the ball park thermometer reading in the high eighties prompted my roommate and his cousin to pitch the idea of leaving. It wasn’t so much that I thought the Cardinals were going to come back, or that I wanted more time to seal the deal with her, or any other specific reason, I just didn’t want to go. I convinced them to stay.

Two scoreless half innings later I turned to her in the bottom of the ninth, “If this guy reaches base, we’re winning this game.” I grinned and raised my eyebrows at her after ball four. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. The aura of the bottom of the ninth stirred deep inside of me and for the first time in a long, long time I was happy. More than being happy, I was excited. Something was happening, there were signs of life here in the bottom of the ninth and in her pretty face and in me.

It was 6-3 with a runner on first base when Albert Pujols, the best baseball player on the planet, a man who I had earlier described to her twinkling eyes as “better at his job than I ever will be at any job I ever do,” flied out to left field. But whatever air left the stadium when the left fielder squeezed Pujols’ fly ball not only came back but multiplied after a wild pitch and two walks loaded the bases for Rick Ankiel.

I’ve been a Rick Ankiel fan for as long as he’s been in the majors. He came up as a pitcher with a ton of promise. When he got called up to the show I already had four or five of his rookie cards and had been personally hyping his arrival for a year. Then Rick Ankiel had one of the biggest meltdowns of anyone I’ve ever heard of. He couldn’t find the plate with both hands, a map, and a compass and would routinely fire balls at the backstop. He lost all sense of command. It got so bad that he couldn’t play catch. Throwing the ball to a target was now the hardest thing in the world to someone who was on the verge of making millions for doing just that. Somewhere between his ears pitching stopped making sense and he was sent down. A few years ago he resurfaced with the Cardinals, not as a pitcher but an outfielder with a canon for an arm and a bat that had decent pop in it. My favorite player came back and hit a homerun in his debut.

And so my hero dug in with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. I was on my feet encouraging him, occasionally throwing my head over my shoulder to smile at her and let her chide me for being so into the moment. At least half of the 41,000 and change that were on hand for the beginning of the game had left but the rest of us were standing. Ankiel took strike one and then looked at a ball. On the third pitch he put his bat on the ball. He took a change-up and hit it to Detroit’s shortstop who stepped on second and then threw out Ankiel at first.

After we dropped her off at her car I told her it was lovely to meet her. I tried to rally support for night swimming until I was informed that there was no was to access any of the three pools around us. I was dropped off at my building, my back and arms more sore now than they were hours ago. It was still hot outside. It was going to be hot in my apartment. I wouldn’t need a blanket to cover me when I went to sleep on the same couch I had been on for the last month. The next morning I was to drive for six hours to see my family. To celebrate father’s day. To be there for my mom. To explain my troubles in landing work. To keep being oddly unhappy and strangely stuck. To lie awake in my bed at night and think about Rick Ankiel grounding into a double play.