A Thousand Channels, 24/7

On bright mornings, the traveler was caught off-guard by ghosts. Memories of the past washing ashore on the beach of his mind. It was the driving, really, that did it. The road stretched out before him full of promise. He would smile and choke down a few tears. The piquancy of his brother's ghost, the never-heard cries of his first born children, all gone except for that irreducible block of memory. Searing pain and ecstasy make a curious couple intertwined in the mind and heart. It was the road. The one that started a thousand miles away and led him into a sea of grass and remembrance.

"Did you see that?" (laughter)

"See what?" (Momentary befuddlement)

"That sign back there."

"Just now? No. What did it say?"

"Get this: MICHAELANGELO'S LIQUORS."

"Say whaaat?" (Giggling fit)

" I know, man! Who knew that he liked to get his drink on here?" (More laughter)

"Seriously, man, look how far he fell from the Sistine Chapel."

(Pensive silence)

Once more on the road, I have to do it, it's part of the job. I'm used to it now. Except for the run-down parts of town. Or towns, I should clarify. No, towns and cities. There is a lot of them out here and there are quite a few where it seems like the inhabitants have been ground down by life. Or the landlords were ground down. Or maybe everyone just stopped caring. Too many buildings possessed of gray dinginess, decrepitude and crappy signage. There is still cause for amusement, though. Passing through one such area, driving past Legs Party Bar ("Open 'til 2 AM!") I saw that the Knobtown Strip Center has added a new tenant. It's a "spa" offering"massage". I had to laugh. What, "Cheap Smokes and Liquor" from the joint next door aren't good enough?

A RECORD OF COMESTIBLES PURCHASED FOR THE MIDDAY REPAST

Dine In  9/23/2015  12:33:28 PM

Order # 132156  Cashier: Destiny M.

1 LG Steamer $8.49

 Mayo NO

1 Reg Combo  $2.59

 Medium Drink*

 Chip For Combo

Sub. Total:    $11.08

Tax:                 $1.04

Total:             $12.12

   Visa:            $12.12

   Change:       $0.00

The Kansas City Royals baseball team won their division this year. They will have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Their first opponent is the scrappy Houston Astros, who made the playoffs for the first time since 2005. The inhabitants are looking forward to a great series, hopefully the Boys in Blue will get to go to the World Series again like they did last year. Everyone is talking about them and tuning in. One thing is for certain: the Royals seem easy to like, even if one is a fan of another team.

No matter how many times I have seen it in the course of my job, I still find it annoying that most people seem to think that tissue boxes with shiny colors or "art" on them are true interior decoration. They aren't, and never will be. The amount of time I waste in the course of a typical day hiding those boxes, so I can shoot a better picture, may not be huge on an individual basis, but it adds up. Every time I move one I think of French author Honoré de Balzac, who after a night of sex, allegedly lamented "There goes another novel!"

Did You Know? Collared lizards can run on their hind legs with a stride that reaches more than 3 times the length of their bodies.

Excerpt from the National Park Service's Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve webpage:

     Tallgrass prairie once covered 170 million acres of North America. Within a generation
     the vast majority was developed and plowed under. Today less than 4% remains, mostly
     here in the Kansas Flint Hills. The preserve protects a nationally significant remnant of           

     the once vast tallgrass prairie and its cultural resources. Here the tallgrass prairie takes     

     its last stand.

A Typical Day of Carnage -

 Raccoons: 5

 Opossums: 1

 Birds (species unknown): 3

 Squirrels: 8?

 Deer: 1

 Mouse: 1

It was the mouse that really threw me. To date I had never seen one in all my rounds. I nearly trampled it on my way back to  the car.

I-70 gets it start back east, and not very auspiciously. It begins in a Park-And-Ride in Baltimore, Maryland. It runs 2,151 miles to the west, passing though St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver until it peters out in an interchange with I-15 just outside Cove Fort, Utah. The distance from Cove Fort to Kansas City is 1,106 miles. The distance from Kansas City to Baltimore is 1,060 miles. It is a new life in the center.

I am home now. It was a busy day, lots of photos to be shot, lots of pavement to be traversed. I was able to drive with the windows down all day. No A/C. The rush of air through the cabin of my small SUV provides a white noise that allows me to follow my Zen. I think a lot while driving. Sometimes I talk to myself. Other times, especially on long drives away from the urban clutter, I stop and listen to the insects in the grass.

---

If anyone is perplexed by the passages above, you should know they are a tribute of sorts, my offering to a literary form previously unknown to me. The form is called biji, and it is of Chinese origin dating back to 220 AD, surviving up until about 1912 AD. I came across it in a fascinating book published by McSweeney's, titled "Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: Old Forms, Unearthed"*. I bought the book at a book store specializing in overstocks, trade-ins and other forms of second-hand volumes. Great buy, wonderful stuff. According to McSweeny's, biji can be translated as "notebook" and is characterized by "Musings, anecdotes, quotations, 'believe-it-or-not' fiction and social anthropology". They go on further to say that biji also can contain legends, scientific notes, and bits of local wisdom. Lists of interesting objects and travel narratives are also quite common. After reading the examples in the book (and being somewhat disturbed by the 'modern' take on it by Douglas Coupland) I was immediately smitten by the form and the idea. Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time can probably see why this is so. I think it is because biji finally, after all these years, puts a name to the things in my head.

*Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: Old Forms, Unearthed, as curated by Darren Franich and Graham Weatherly, 2009 by McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.

The Garden of Regret and Promise (Sunday Meditation #31)

The plane leaps skyward, metallic Pegasus galloping into the midnight blue. The mind's eye rolls movies of trees uprooted, ripped from the sod with the sound of torn silk. The earth gives ground grudgingly. Woody fibers snap and ping as the strings of my heart break one by one. My old roots ran not as deep as I thought, my new roots scarce have entered the earth. 

The plane vibrates while I weep silently into my fist. Granular tears do not reach my eyes. I'll not give my fellow travelers a show, or reasons to conjecture on my state of mind. 

Viscid heartbeat in my ears above the hiss of air in the cabin. My hydroponic soul feels elation and regret in equal measure. I am weightless in the nutrient broth of the present, dreaming of love like rich loam, dark and fertile. Loam I leave behind and loam I race toward. What will spring from these fields I have cleared? This is unknown to me. My heart has hopes and fears for them both, and mastery over neither. 

The sky is black outside the windows. The ground below I cannot discern. It is the heavens in reverse, stellar velvet strewn with tiny yellow diamonds. My roots slip further from the humus embrace of fields I tend. I pray, as the poet Virgil implored farmers to do, that my summers will be wet and my winters clear. I till the soil patiently, waiting for roots to grow and with them, love.

---
From field notes written in transit, April 7th, 2013.

Traveller's Blues

...Blue, blue, electric blue...that's the colour of my room...

...Off we go into the wild blue yonder...

...Remember watching while your lightning blue eyes reflected sunrise...

Blues. Blues. I got the blues. Not a 'down-in-the-dumps' sort of blues. No, no, this is more a hankering, yearning kind of blues. Traveling blues, you might say. And it is not my fault. The precipitation of this state of mind I can lay squarely on the (digital) shoulders of the illustrious Braja...and for good reason. Because of something she did, I find I want to travel the world.

Travel the world and take pictures, that is. All because of a picture she posted, that shows the color blue. Not just any blue. A vibrant blue that made me ache to want to lay eyes on it in person. I don't have a link to it here, because the picture was taken by another person and posted on Facebook, and for some reason I did not feel right to copy paste it from another person's media feed. Silly, perhaps, but there you have it.

Anyway, the picture shows a blue she christened India blue, and I can believe it. Blue is my favorite color, hands down, so it is no surprise I found the image attractive. Yet, this picture transcended something in my mind, some threshold I knew was there but had not often noticed. This blue made me want to hop on a plane or a ship and go where I could see the color in morning light and sunset light and maybe that twilight shade as the sun slips below the horizon with the moon on the way up. I want to touch it.

I sat entranced by that color and wanted to touch all colors. I want to see the orange in a Siberian tiger's fur lit by the morning light. I want to see the the blue morpho butterfly in its natural habitat. I want to see the moon shine on the Grand Canyon, the color of old freighter's hull as it passes through the Bosporus, and the green sod of Ireland. It has become imperative that I see the opalescence of Lake Louise in Canada, and the saffron colored robes of monks in Tibet. I need to know the color of the Pacific while watching a sunset in Tierra Del Fuego.

I want to know the color of moss in the garden of a Buddhist shrine, somewhere in Japan. And I cannot clearly tell you why. I just know I need to know. I feel this need to travel the world and take pictures of these colors that inhabit my mind, fill my heart, exalt my soul.

I want to know blue. All the blues in the world, and the people who know those shades the best. Someday, if I am fortunate, I'll do just that. Until then, I'll continue to plot and dream of the day my rainbow heart can scatter itself into the world, and return home with some stories to tell of the colors I have seen. Join me, perhaps?

(And many thanks to Braja, and her opening of the window for me...)

Viewfinders

I am embarking on a trip today, a 'there-and-back' jaunt, same day service to back east. I was puttering around earlier trying to wrap up the last minute loose ends. I had to remind myself that I wasn't packing any clothes or travel gear...

...except I made sure I had a notebook and a camera.

I feel like I can't go on any travel anymore without one or both of those things. I feel something is missing if I don't have either with me. Will I use them? I don't know. But I'd rather have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. You know that is, don't you? Don't you?

Love, Between Stations

3:58 PM, BWI airport, at the gate and longing...

Heavens above, my daughter's presence leaves me stunned. Charm, beauty and smarts: a killer combination on a hapless man such as I am.

I am traveling again. I hold station in the Mid-Atlantic, awaiting passage back to what is my new home. The tension I feel is that of a wayward moon caught between suns. Longing for orbit but riding the invisible waves of gravity, seeking rest. 

I am between stations. This body of mine caught in a temporary Lagrange point where the stasis tightens the mind. It cannot and will not last, I tell myself. Yet the heart...the heart feels different. It holds its own baffling and anxious counsel, confounding the logic and reason on which the mind lays its foundations. It is the heart, after all. 

I hugged her, the radiant vein of my heart,  not two hours ago. It was my own attempt to bend space and time, extend the moment, or perhaps knock us both into an alternate reality where it was a hug of welcome, not one of goodbye. Her composure was impressive. Mine, less so. The dam held long enough for me to buckle her into her seat, kiss her on the cheek, and tell her I love her one more time. The closing of the car door had the steely finality of a guillotine. I stood in the heat of a sweltering Baltimore summer, waving my hand and watching the car recede down the parking deck. The sun was a blinding pinwheel diffracted by liquid prisms cascading down my vision.

I returned to a station abruptly transformed into alien country. A filter sliding into place over the minds' lenses, shifting to blurred edges and strange colors. The effect was not unlike stepping from shaded bar into a bright sidewalk. Like that, only missing the rounded edges provided by the dubious graces of alcohol. That is not an escape I will allow myself. Not here. Not between stations.

What shall we call this strange sensation, this unsettled rootlessness of the heart? I'm sure the Greeks had a word for it. It troubles me that I cannot recall what that word might be. Me, a man who prides himself on knowing the best word to use to describe anything. I am at a loss. Appropriate, perhaps, for a temporary stranding here amongst seething shoals of humanity.

There are no howling wolves here, no banshee winds blowing apart the lost and anxious heart. There is only the susurrus of a thousand muted conversations cut by the wailing of infants and machine noises. It is a landscape of the modern condition in this country of abundance. I cannot claim to be on the run from anything. 

Still, this limbo between loves is desolation. 

The sky darkens, a pewter the color of thunderstorms. I hear over the loudspeakers that my flight will be delayed nearly an hour. It is to my credit that I do not shed a tear, only utter a small curse. The petty frustrations of the wayfaring life, I grant you. 

It is difficult avoiding the urge to lay down and sleep. Saying goodbye to love, however temporary, is an exhausting business. Exhaustion of a sort that can only be allayed by finding one's way home. Between stations is crowded, but home is not to be found there.

As I recall her laughter and her voice, the sting of my earlier goodbye begins to fade. It is a small ember succeeding a red-hot coal. The image of ashes and fire makes me grin. Stop being melodramatic, I berate myself, it is pain of my own creation.  I know that to be true. I temper myself to remember that, while I left love, I am returning to it.

The journey back makes me smile. I am traveling between stations, knowing I find love at each end of gravity's tether. For this I shall be grateful. It is a rare traveller indeed who knows his heart resides on both sides of the universe. Our partings are temporary. Our love is permanent.

Dreams of Empire

Thoughts from a recent trip to New York City, transcribed in a daze:

June 10th, 2012. Late morning in Newark Airport.

I bit of the Big Apple; I can't be sure it was not biting me.

New York is more than a city of landmarks and visitor's notions. It is everything like you thought it would be, and more than you could imagine. It is a city of heartbreaking brutality and breathtaking beauty. New York City will exhaust you, break you, lift you up and make you grateful to be alive.

You must be careful with this city. It will not be careful with you. This is not from inherent insensitivity. It is that the city has bigger things to think of, in its dreams of consumption and commerce. New York City exists as an ideal, within space-time and outside of it. If we are shrimp, the city is a whale. When it thrashes or dives, we can be swept aside by the power and awed by the majesty. As I said, you must be careful.

Ha. I laugh at myself for feeling this way. Fatigue and anxiety, ecstasy and exhilaration, I felt after experiencing only a fraction of the whole. I walked as much as possible, covering miles and territory mostly and heretofore unknown to me except primarily through media and the filters of others' experiences. I ate myself silly, chewing my way through the cuisine of the city and nowhere.

I had a long solitary walk, taking pictures. I became dizzy and disoriented by the noise and hustle of the city. I think my camera became my filter and shield, allowing me to keep New York at bay so I could breathe and make sense of it all. The austerity of the plaza in front of the Seagram Building was a tonic after a long day. Fountains burbled at each end, and the luxury of the open area before Park Avenue was surprisingly effective at pushing back the street. I was able to gather my thoughts and my breath, getting a second wind to go see more. Because the city always wants you to see more. It demands it, it coerces and flatters, it offers temptations to satisfy any curiosity.

Me, I simply wanted to understand the bones and the flesh of the place, and why anyone would choose to live inside the leviathan.

I did not do this entirely alone. Good company makes for good travel, and my companion excelled at assisting me in sanding down the rough edges of Gotham. We walked, the best way to understand a place, and we walked as much as we could take. The serenity of Central Park and the buzz of the street scene by the Flatiron Building were truly energizing. The Empire State Building was all that I thought it would be; an experience that lived up to the myths. The High Line Park is a world-class urban amenity, and a great example of turning what could have been dross into a ribbon of gold. If an oasis is needed, look no further than the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art.

The unceasing activity and the churn of the city continued to wear me out. So I turned to that which endlessly fascinates me: food.

New York is a city of astonishing food. It is the cuisine of everywhere and nowhere (to borrow a phrase from Gary Nabhan's "Coming Home to Eat"). It may not always, and usually isn't, cheap to eat in New York, but with consideration one can eat exceedingly well. You can eat America, and the world. And we tried.

From hot dogs to haute cuisine we ate some of the best food we have ever had. Gumbo. Fried oysters. Sublime pizza. Salumi, formaggia and a delicious glass of white wine in a frenetic Italian marketplace. Southeast Asian-French fusion cuisine, a medley of seafood that had me reeling and almost begging for more. Kati rolls from a biryani cart, the taste of which left me wanting eat twice again. And of course, the hot dogs. One of the most delightful eating experiences for me was chowing down on a hot dog from Papaya King, on East 86th Street not too far away from Central Park. Standing at the counter, looking out the window at the seethe and hiss of life out on the street, something came together for me. The food we ate was a reflection of what makes the city itself. We tasted the food of money and muscle, of thought and labor. We ate of the food that the city wants to be and of the food from the homes of those who make up the city. I had an inkling of what gives New York City its gravity.

The is brutality there, and ugliness, this is true. But there is beauty, there is sustenance, there is life. One has to choose carefully as to what sees as the true heart of the city. As for myself, I cannot say for sure that I could live there (at least, not yet); the noise and the closeness of so many other souls still drains me in ways I find unsettling. But I do know that I want to go back someday. I only touched the surface of its heart, and I need to know truly what lies at its core. I suspect it has something to do with a pleasant summer day, a hot dog at the counter and someone lovely to help me rule this empire of the heart.