It's been over two weeks since my last post, and for this I apologize. I have been doing a lot of writing, I just haven't been posting. A good friend of mine wrote to me, telling me, "When we don't hear from you, we assume you're in jail." So, I post. And no, I haven't been incarcerated ... yet.
Skip and I have been in Gainesville, Florida, since early Thursday morning. After a Wednesday of walking in the wrong direction in Alabama, Skip decided that we would just leave that night and drive down here for Thanksgiving with his good friend, A. We're still here. It looks like Skip is going to set up camp for a little while here in Florida. He plans to make headway on his book before getting back on the road in a few weeks. By that time, I will be somewhere in Europe.
A few weeks ago, hearts fell on Alabama when I told Skip that I would not be rejoining him after my return from Europe. There are a number of reasons why I won't be rejoining him, both practical and sentimental. While it's true that I do have to start paying back my student loans, this time away from my love has been difficult.
My original plan was to drive back on Wednesday, December 3rd, but I might leave before then, as soon as I can finish up some work for Skip. There are still some things we need to shoot. After that, though, the work will not be over. I plan to do whatever I can from wherever I am for the organization, even if Skip can only give me an arbitrary title for my imaginary seat on his Board of Directors. (Too much IRS paperwork, I'm told.)
Where does that leave me and my writing? I will conitnue to write, updating here and there throughout Europe, if I'm given the chance. When I return to the U.S., I will try to be more consistent with my posts.
Thank you all for your patience and your desire to read more of my life. I write for you.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Quantus Solari
It's amazing what a good night's sleep and a country breakfast will do for the soul. Skip and I are staying here in Newnan, Georgia, one more evening, with relatives of a friend we made in Chapel Hill. I'm looking forward to my day of helping B. and E. plant tulip bulbs, which makes me ask: What is better than having roses on your piano? ... Having tulips on your organ.
Sadly, that won't be the case for another couple of weeks.
Sadly, that won't be the case for another couple of weeks.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Ooh Georgia, No Peace I Find
It took all the funk The New Mastersounds could muster to propel Skip and me out of Atlanta. We’ve been circling the drain for the last week. We’ve met some awesome people and had some really great times, but it is not a power place for either of us, and we needed some borrowed soul in order for us to leave.
Skip has this theory on “Power Places.” For him, Power Places are areas of the world where things come together for an individual, making that person feel empowered. The possibilities are endless, but it’s a place where a person may be successful in business as easily as in romantic endeavors. There may be one or several of these around the world for a person. For Skip, Prague was a place of power for him. When I think about it, northeast Connecticut and that fraction of New England feels like a power place for me.
This has not been the case for either of us in Georgia, especially in Atlanta.
Skip has this theory on “Power Places.” For him, Power Places are areas of the world where things come together for an individual, making that person feel empowered. The possibilities are endless, but it’s a place where a person may be successful in business as easily as in romantic endeavors. There may be one or several of these around the world for a person. For Skip, Prague was a place of power for him. When I think about it, northeast Connecticut and that fraction of New England feels like a power place for me.
This has not been the case for either of us in Georgia, especially in Atlanta.
Monday, November 10, 2008
1/2 a Bird
Skip and I are trying something different to our traveling, and after a few days of this test-run it feels like I am caught in a vortex between Atlanta and Skip's starting points for the day. Each day though we keep getting closer and closer to Atlanta, like a pair of mariners who are circling a whirlpool with the flotsam and jetsam our travels have created.
We made it to our host's flat yesterday evening, and after dropping off some of our things we ventured back out into Midtown for a late meal. Our host had directed us to a Tex-Mex place with cheap food, but on the way there we saw a place we could not pass: Fat Matt's BBQ. Skip and I walked in and the smell of smoked and grilled meat made both of our stomachs grumble and our mouths water. The menu was on the wall right in front of us and looked something like this:
1/4 slab
1/2 slab
1/4 bird
1/2 bird
"rum" beans
sweet potato pie
sweet tea
coke
There wasn't much else to the menu. We smiled at each other. Skip ordered the 1/2 slab of ribs and I ordered a 1/2 bird for dinner. We sat down at a table and looked around the place. There were some tables, and a stage was at the end opposite of where we were sitting. Pictures of blues musicians lined the walls. Behind the stage, there was a rendition of Mt. Rushmore, only with the blues greats instead of the Presidents.
When the food came we didn't need silverware--I don't think we even bothered to unwrap it from the napkins. The bone pulled right out of his slab and my bird. I haven't had meat that tender since [There are so many ways I want to end this sentence. Less for taste and decency and more for the fact that I want to retain my summer job, I will leave your imaginations to finish the sentence for me].
We made it to our host's flat yesterday evening, and after dropping off some of our things we ventured back out into Midtown for a late meal. Our host had directed us to a Tex-Mex place with cheap food, but on the way there we saw a place we could not pass: Fat Matt's BBQ. Skip and I walked in and the smell of smoked and grilled meat made both of our stomachs grumble and our mouths water. The menu was on the wall right in front of us and looked something like this:
1/4 slab
1/2 slab
1/4 bird
1/2 bird
"rum" beans
sweet potato pie
sweet tea
coke
There wasn't much else to the menu. We smiled at each other. Skip ordered the 1/2 slab of ribs and I ordered a 1/2 bird for dinner. We sat down at a table and looked around the place. There were some tables, and a stage was at the end opposite of where we were sitting. Pictures of blues musicians lined the walls. Behind the stage, there was a rendition of Mt. Rushmore, only with the blues greats instead of the Presidents.
When the food came we didn't need silverware--I don't think we even bothered to unwrap it from the napkins. The bone pulled right out of his slab and my bird. I haven't had meat that tender since [There are so many ways I want to end this sentence. Less for taste and decency and more for the fact that I want to retain my summer job, I will leave your imaginations to finish the sentence for me].
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Georgia Biathlon
Ask Brad Spence if he remembers a scene similar to this:
It’s in the evening when you come home. You see wet clothes, covered in mud, at the doorstep. There is also a shovel. The canoe isn’t lying where it normally does. You think about the creek nearby.
It was a warm afternoon in Athens when I emerged from our host’s house and stood out on the back porch. The Oconee River is about 200 meters down the steep slope of the back yard, and as I approached the railing of the deck I noticed a canoe laying in the grass below. I told Skip I fancied some canoeing, he told me he was going to take a nap. So, I humped the canoe onto my shoulders and walked down the steep slope of the backyard to the water’s edge. I didn’t notice a paddle lying around. I walked back up the hill and circled the house, but there was no paddle. I went back inside and looked around in the garage, but there wasn’t a paddle or an oar in there either. There was however a spade shovel. Good enough.
To set the canoe in the water, I had to balance myself on a log and walk down the trunk about 7 feet. I balanced myself, picked up the canoe and counterbalanced, then walked out and set the canoe in the water. I went back and grabbed the shovel, got in the canoe and pushed off without incident.
The water was a little too shallow for me to navigate the canoe successfully without having to get out in certain places and lift the canoe off of mossy rocks. One of the time I did this I heard a rustling by the bank and saw a fawn struggling to stand. As I watched it became apparent that something was wrong with this fawn. None of its limb appeared to be broken, but its legs shook whenever it tried to stand, and it would make it a few feet before tumbling headlong, landing on either its head or side, depending on its positioning. I concluded there must have been some neurological disorder affecting it, which is typical of animals with Lyme’s Disease, as so many white-tailed deer are. As it became ever aware of my presence, it began to panic, and doing so caused it to make desperate lunges towards the forest, but between the muddy embankment and its malady it only succeeded in getting closer and closer to the water. I didn’t know what to do to help it. For a minute I considered killing it with my shovel to put it out of its misery. I then reasoned that it wasn’t my place to make such a decision. I knew that it would be dead soon anyhow, most likely from a predator, and it wasn’t my role to be part of that cycle, but if I stayed any longer the deer would surely wind up in the river, where it had a good chance of drowning, and I didn’t want to be the cause of that either. It is in my nature to help things that can’t help themselves, and I felt that by not doing anything, by letting nature take its course, I failed both the fawn and my true nature. Even whispering the Serenity Prayer to myself didn’t help to rectify the powerlessness I felt in that instant.
I turned around and paddled back upstream to the house. I got out on the log and steadied myself. Still thinking about the fawn, I lifted the canoe out of the water but in so doing lost my balance. Before I even realized what I had stepped back into, I was sinking. It took me maybe half a second to realize I was in quicksand, and by that time it was up to my mid-thigh. There were a few thoughts I had in that moment, the speed of the quicksand grudgingly slow in comparison to the firings of the synaptic centers of the brain. Reflecting back on it later, these were the thoughts I had:
1. DO NOT PANIC. Skip told me that in survival school he learned about the 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours rule; most people who panic die within the first three seconds of a situation, depending on their response to it.
2. DO NOT PANIC. Reiterated from Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
3. My good friends Nick and Andrea Pentz bought me a book years ago that chronicled what to do if caught in quicksand, and I utilized that knowledge next.
With the silt almost up to my waist, I pushed down on the log next to me and slowly, slowly, and calmly, emerged from the muck. I laid on the log and panted, exhausted but with the adrenaline still coursing through my system. I only had one thought then and in the fraction of a nano-second my thoughts left that bank in Athens, Georgia, crossing the state, the Atlantic, to rest in London, on the image of my love.
We’ve all read, seen, and heard about this phenomenon, and I wonder that, had I not been drunk in my previous life-threatening encounters, would I have experienced this before?
The prevalent theme in all journey stories and quest narratives surrounds the change the traveler makes during that journey, during that quest. Questions I’ve been asking myself for weeks, decisions I’ve been on the fence about, have been answered, as I hoped they would have been somewhere along this trip. I never expected I would have been hugging a log along the banks of a river when I had made them. Then again, it was along the banks of a river when Siddhartha Guatama discovered his Golden Path.
It’s in the evening when you come home. You see wet clothes, covered in mud, at the doorstep. There is also a shovel. The canoe isn’t lying where it normally does. You think about the creek nearby.
It was a warm afternoon in Athens when I emerged from our host’s house and stood out on the back porch. The Oconee River is about 200 meters down the steep slope of the back yard, and as I approached the railing of the deck I noticed a canoe laying in the grass below. I told Skip I fancied some canoeing, he told me he was going to take a nap. So, I humped the canoe onto my shoulders and walked down the steep slope of the backyard to the water’s edge. I didn’t notice a paddle lying around. I walked back up the hill and circled the house, but there was no paddle. I went back inside and looked around in the garage, but there wasn’t a paddle or an oar in there either. There was however a spade shovel. Good enough.
To set the canoe in the water, I had to balance myself on a log and walk down the trunk about 7 feet. I balanced myself, picked up the canoe and counterbalanced, then walked out and set the canoe in the water. I went back and grabbed the shovel, got in the canoe and pushed off without incident.
The water was a little too shallow for me to navigate the canoe successfully without having to get out in certain places and lift the canoe off of mossy rocks. One of the time I did this I heard a rustling by the bank and saw a fawn struggling to stand. As I watched it became apparent that something was wrong with this fawn. None of its limb appeared to be broken, but its legs shook whenever it tried to stand, and it would make it a few feet before tumbling headlong, landing on either its head or side, depending on its positioning. I concluded there must have been some neurological disorder affecting it, which is typical of animals with Lyme’s Disease, as so many white-tailed deer are. As it became ever aware of my presence, it began to panic, and doing so caused it to make desperate lunges towards the forest, but between the muddy embankment and its malady it only succeeded in getting closer and closer to the water. I didn’t know what to do to help it. For a minute I considered killing it with my shovel to put it out of its misery. I then reasoned that it wasn’t my place to make such a decision. I knew that it would be dead soon anyhow, most likely from a predator, and it wasn’t my role to be part of that cycle, but if I stayed any longer the deer would surely wind up in the river, where it had a good chance of drowning, and I didn’t want to be the cause of that either. It is in my nature to help things that can’t help themselves, and I felt that by not doing anything, by letting nature take its course, I failed both the fawn and my true nature. Even whispering the Serenity Prayer to myself didn’t help to rectify the powerlessness I felt in that instant.
I turned around and paddled back upstream to the house. I got out on the log and steadied myself. Still thinking about the fawn, I lifted the canoe out of the water but in so doing lost my balance. Before I even realized what I had stepped back into, I was sinking. It took me maybe half a second to realize I was in quicksand, and by that time it was up to my mid-thigh. There were a few thoughts I had in that moment, the speed of the quicksand grudgingly slow in comparison to the firings of the synaptic centers of the brain. Reflecting back on it later, these were the thoughts I had:
1. DO NOT PANIC. Skip told me that in survival school he learned about the 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours rule; most people who panic die within the first three seconds of a situation, depending on their response to it.
2. DO NOT PANIC. Reiterated from Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
3. My good friends Nick and Andrea Pentz bought me a book years ago that chronicled what to do if caught in quicksand, and I utilized that knowledge next.
With the silt almost up to my waist, I pushed down on the log next to me and slowly, slowly, and calmly, emerged from the muck. I laid on the log and panted, exhausted but with the adrenaline still coursing through my system. I only had one thought then and in the fraction of a nano-second my thoughts left that bank in Athens, Georgia, crossing the state, the Atlantic, to rest in London, on the image of my love.
We’ve all read, seen, and heard about this phenomenon, and I wonder that, had I not been drunk in my previous life-threatening encounters, would I have experienced this before?
The prevalent theme in all journey stories and quest narratives surrounds the change the traveler makes during that journey, during that quest. Questions I’ve been asking myself for weeks, decisions I’ve been on the fence about, have been answered, as I hoped they would have been somewhere along this trip. I never expected I would have been hugging a log along the banks of a river when I had made them. Then again, it was along the banks of a river when Siddhartha Guatama discovered his Golden Path.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Lesser-Known Olympic Games
Only a few short hours after entering Athens, Georgia, I was tossing beanbags of corn through the air behind a hipster bar called Little Kings Shuffle Club. It had been at least six years since I had played Cornhole, and I hadn’t expected to play again in Athens, of all places. I don’t think of Georgia as much of a corn state, but then again my favorite clear corn whiskey is named “Georgia Moon”—it’s sold in mason jars. The last time I had played Cornhole was in a bar called Tuba’s in Batesville, Indiana; I think my picture still hangs behind the bar.
My host, Cristal, and I registered our team name, “The Capricious Couchsurfers,” and after losing the first game but winning the second, we were thinking we had a shot at the trophies—a giant Styrofoam ear of corn spray-painted gold, and two smaller ears of corn, one painted silver, the other bronze. We had our asses handed to us the third game. The team we played, “The Christ-punchers,” shut us down in a matter of minutes. That was pretty much the end of our evening.
My host, Cristal, and I registered our team name, “The Capricious Couchsurfers,” and after losing the first game but winning the second, we were thinking we had a shot at the trophies—a giant Styrofoam ear of corn spray-painted gold, and two smaller ears of corn, one painted silver, the other bronze. We had our asses handed to us the third game. The team we played, “The Christ-punchers,” shut us down in a matter of minutes. That was pretty much the end of our evening.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Two Devils Went Down to Georgia
We are always looking for souls to steal, and it seems we might have found one. A girl contacted skip via Couchsurfing and asked him if she could join him on his walk across the country. We don’t know much about her other than her name, C. (for now), and that she is 20 years old and from Westport, Connecticut. I’m not going to lie, I have more than a few reservations about the possibility of this addition, and they all stem from me being an elitist. However, for the sake of a good story, I’m willing to stay at the table while the dice roll a little longer.
I realize it has been a week or more since my last entry. The world has changed considerably since then, not just for me, for everyone. I woke up yesterday feeling inspired again. My vote—okay, I never got my absentee ballot in, but my state was way blue. If I had been in a swing state, I would have worked harder to get that paperwork in; nonetheless, my candidate one. But my vote, like so many others, was based on wanting a change. I’ve been keeping in my pocket the paper tab of a Celestial Seasons teabag for some time now; on it reads one of Gandhi’s most famous quotes, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of the United States now. I don’t believe that now that we have elected a black President for the first time in … forever, it necessarily follows that butterflies with erupt from lotuses and puppies will dance on rainbows all across the U.S., as I’ve heard in the rhetoric of so many people these past two days. Am I happy that Barack Obama is our president-elect? I am elated. That does not absolve the fact that the U.S. is still in a world of shit.
In my immediate family there are no clear politicians. We have some interesting dynamics—what family doesn’t? —but in mine politics and religion were never firmly discussed or practiced. (Side note: I, nor my sisters, never got “The Talk” from my parents either. The consequences of that decision could fill, if there had been such a public medium, another daily blog dating back to the mid-90’s or before.) My dad took us to the church with the better softball team, and when it came to politics, my father is a registered Republican, my mother a registered Democrat, and that’s all we knew of that. I was so grossly misinformed when I turned 18 that I originally registered as a Republican also, because it held a better aural ring. (I am now registered as an Independent. Shocker, I’m sure.) And, while I love discussing religion and my religious views, I am still not as informed as I probably should be about politics. Thanks to adamant and passionate professors in college, I feel I am more informed than the average voter, but I still don’t know how the Electoral College works.
* * * *
I was only a few miles into Georgia yesterday when I saw a cow with two tails. I drove another tenth of a mile before I realized, Holy shit! Did that cow just give birth? I hopped out of the car and sure enough, not 30 feet from me, a newborn calf lay, black and steaming, in the tall grass. It looked in my direction, sensing something, but its eyes were still too new to open under the sun. Still, it kept its face to me. I would like to believe that when it breathed, vapor rising from a wet nose, it breathed hope.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
