I will awake at 3:52 in the morning, on that morning, which will turn to 3:53 as my eyes open and focus on the neon green digits of my alarm clock. I will know immediately that something is wrong, as I've always known when something was wrong, because even the texture of the air changes when her mania turns depressive. Awareness aside, I will not grasp the extent of her imbalance until the bullet is millimeters from my forehead, when a massive, cavernous, and ultimately understated compression wave hits my ears. The sound, ejected from the barrel of the .357 Magnum I will not have seen before, will register its all-engulfing glory across my irate axons at exactly 3:57 ante meridiem, Eastern Standard Time. Before another second has passed, it will shatter the front of my skull, hitting my forehead with enough force to cause a stress fracture not unlike a fault line in the back of my head. It will continue to my cerebral cortex, almost immediately whereupon it will bore through my frontal lobe, taking with it my ability to experience emotions and interpret the last few sensory inputs I will ever be sent. As the bullet leaves my frontal lobe and enters the parietal, it will take with it the receiving centers for those inputs, and even as the nerve endings near the surface of my skull race to inform my brain that I have been hurt, the destination of their electrical impulses will be ripped in half and partially vaporized by the heat of the passing bullet. With virtually no remaining means of interpreting or integrating experiences, my vision will be the last sense to go before the bullet exits the weakened plate at the back of my skull and hits the wall behind me, though by then, all I will be seeing is a meaningless jumble of sensory information, a word for word translation of the physical interactions of ambient photons with my eyes. All electrical activity in my brain will cease by 3:57 and thirty two seconds.
But it is only 3:53 - and I still have four minutes and thirty two seconds to live.
I turn over in bed, the clock still reading in the early phases of 3:53, and see my wife curled in the black papazan chair by the window. She is staring out, her dimly lit face sliced at even intervals by shafts of darkness, shadows cast by the angled slats of the window blinds. Her lips are moving, almost imperceptibly, in the dangerous dance of thoughts too important to keep inside but too private to air in public. She is deliberating with her demons. I watch her. She doesn't know I'm awake, I catch myself thinking, but immediately remember that she has always known -- always knows -- where I am, even when I find myself lost. But it's 3:54 and 15 seconds and she's still staring out the window, still mouthing soliloquies to intangible saviors and holding congress with creations of her own twisted cognitive pathways. She has the window open all the way, and I hear a car go by, two stories below, and this...minor intrusion takes form, becomes like a nucleus for other bullshit to attach itself to, and grows ever so cancerously into an element of fear; this foreign world, these streets and these sounds and these...outside elements, they become like an obstacle between my own mind state and hers. I think, if only these things would go away, cease existence, i could be where she is, and she could come to where i am. But again, I find my thoughts digressing from my knowledge; she has a sickness. It causes her thoughts to work differently -- very differently -- from mine. I have to be resigned to this.
She turns her head towards me, and meets my gaze with eyes as vacant as a dry well. Her emotions at this point don't complement my own, don't have descriptions in my own vocabulary, but my interpretation is of a sorrow so deep it shares a cell with horror. My neck stiffens, my eyebrows are flexed and tense. It is 3:55 and 30 seconds. Her lips are still quivering, gracing inaudible words like a winter wind over an ocean's waves. She is not looking at me, but through me, and nor is she talking to me -- her words are placeholders for thoughts, mental notes from her subconscious to her waking mind to come back to this or that stream of consciousness later and fill in the blanks with meaning; but meaning will never come, because the holes are constructs of a faulty system; explore them and you only fall deeper.
A counter in the digital alarm clock resets, sending a signal to the display and a digit changes. It now reads 3:56.
My wife will turn her head back toward the window, her liquid gaze sliding easily from my face. I will rise from the bed slowly, weighted by the air but at peace with the heavy handed grip of foreboding that will have already begun to sink in. Within, I will feel rise the full body of my emotions for this creature, this companion...and the feeling of peace will complete when I place my hand on her shoulder. "Baby?" She'll reply, more words spilling from her lips in waves of volume, but I will still not comprehend -- could never have been asked to, really -- the true nature of her disease, the finest nuances of her disposition. I will tighten my hand on her shoulder, to reassure, but stop my grip short when I feel the tautness of her muscles, the sinewy texture of the deep tissues , rigid and rough, and I will pause, disconcerted, uncomfortable. "Hey, you alright?" I will intone, my last words, and she will stand up suddenly, violently, a tortured, gnarled scream escaping her lungs as the distressingly long barreled Smith and Wesson Model 686 .357 Magnum -- all 8 and 3/8ths inches -- is raised to the level of my eyes, the bed and the chair and the light through the blinds reflected along its chromed length and it will inhale -- and hold its breath.
At 3:56 and fifty nine seconds time will stop short, the earth's rotation frozen, and this moment out of a trillion in the grand scheme will stretch into the horizon. Over the next 100 milliseconds, millions of people will chew food or sip drink, five hundred thousand will flip light switches sending their bedrooms into darkness, a hundred thousand will have to close their eyes because some light has become too intense, fifty thousand will turn ignition keys and choke the skyline with the offal of the modern march of progress, ten thousand will receive lacerations to their skin that cause bleeding, five thousand in the state of Texas will find themselves ecstatic in the throes of orgasm, a thousand telemarketers will be hung up on, five hundred people will be diagnosed with an immuno-deficiency syndrome, one hundred will finish wiping tears of joy from good news, ten people will begin to utter the longest word in their respective languages, and two unfortunate fools will step on cracks in the sidewalk at the exact moment that their mother's backs are broken.
But before one more second has passed, time will again find her footing, and as the last counter in the digital clock flips and electrons begin to move, the force of ten thousand years of evolution will rip through the barrel of the Magnum as it releases its breath squarely between my eyes. And I will know, always knew, will forever be united with the notion that my love for this creature is complete. And that thought will extend itself into my horizon, a sun forever setting, as my love lays me down to rest.
To: <snip>
From: Oliver Nicholas <bigo@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Oliver's Travelogue, Part 4
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 21:19:35 -0400
Alibis and allies,
I must apologize for the long delay since my last travelogue entry. The truth is, I got lazy, and have written appropriately little since returning from my travels. But there's a story to tell, and I'd hate to leave it half-told. Plus I've got nothing to do this moment.
I believe we left off with the trailing end of The Savannah Story. We'll pick up along the road to New Orleans, aka The Path into the Dark Wood.
-----bloop. Bloop. Time warp. Again.-------------
Against a friend's suggestions, I paid off a parking ticket I owed to the city of Savannah on my way out of town. I didn't really want to do it, cause like when am I going to be driving through Savannah, GA again, but I decided it was wisest to just pay my $25 and leave it be. My contribution to the city, if you will.
I drove my way down through Georgia, in a kind of dipping diagonal across the state towards the western tip of Florida. Somewhere past Tallahassee I picked up highway 90, which runs parallel with I-10, basically hugging the Gulf Coast-line all the way to my destination. I made it to maybe half way across Alabama before I took a left towards "Gulf Shores and Orange Beach" and ended up in one of the weirdest, most expectation-defying places of my journey. It was Alabama still (I checked the GPS just to make sure), but there were palm trees and crazy high-rise condos and beaches and stuff. I understand now it's kind of just an extension of Florida's delightful Redneck Riviera, but coming up on it out of nowhere was...surprising. I ate at a Waffle House (bad idea) and crashed out at a campground (good idea).
Speaking of car-sleeping, I'm not sure I've described my in-car living space yet. I took out my passenger seat to free up lots of cabin space for the trip, figuring I wouldn't have many passengers and those I did take on could just chill chauffeured-style. It frees up that whole area so I can put my oversize map book, some food, CD cases, and maybe camera bag and tripod within arm's reach. Also it means when I just want to sit down and relax for a second, I can hop in the back seat and by sitting on the passenger side, enjoy an amazing amount of leg space to stretch out in. Generally I do this with the car parked like in a parking lot or something, but it's those other times when you realize how much of a friend your cruise control is.
Additionally, for sleeping purposes, I can simply fold down the back seat and prepare my bedding, rather than also having to slide the passenger seat forward and crank the seat back to a more upright or forward position. Now, I'm about 5'8". Unfortunately, with all the seats folded down, the space from the end of the trunk (where my feet go) to the top of the folded down seat (where my head and arms go) is like, 5'6". This makes for some creative sleeping positions, as well as patterns - I tend to sleep in a pose that causes one or more limbs to fall asleep quite regularly, and in order to avoid deep tissue damage from lack of oxygen, I must wake up at regular intervals and shift my weight. I have nonetheless found the in-car living quite comforting. It is, gloriously and undeniably, my own space. You'll understand why this is important on the road when I tell you about Florida hotels, next installment.
So from Alabama I drove the rest of the way to New Orleans, through Biloxi, Mississippi (I have the spelling of that state memorized in a sort of sing-song tone. In 3rd grade I had a terrible crush on a girl in my class who I had heard didn't like anyone who couldn't spell "Mississippi". That was a hopeless crush.). I overshot the city because I couldn't figure out where to get off the highway, and ended up on the raised (above a bayou) highway towards Baton Rouge, where there are no turn-offs and the bridge/highway/waterway extends into the horizon. Beautiful stuff. Eventually I was able to turn around, and in traffic on the way back I finally realized I should call Steve Quick, my contact in New Orleans.
I never really knew Steve Quick. He was a student at my high school, but is like four or five years older than I am and we were never friends. But we had mutual friends about equidistant between our ages, and they gave me his phone number and told me to hit him up. So hit him I did:
*ring*ring*
Me: Steve?
Steve: Yeah?
Me: Steve Quick?
Steve: Yeah?
Me: This is Oliver Nicholas. That mean anything to you?
Steve: Uh...no. Should it?
Stay tuned for installment Five.
From: "Oliver Phillip Nicholas" <bigo@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Oliver's Travelogue, Part 3
To: bigo@ucsc.edu
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 17:42:49 -0800
Sinners and Saints-
Well, I'm here at some family friends' house in southern Miami, FL, getting ready to leave in a matter of minutes for the airport. I'll be in Costa Rica in about six hours, god willing. My friend told me to watch out, not to get kidnapped cause all the retired drug lords go to Costa Rica. I said they're all retired, so hopefully they're not still doing any kidnapping. heh. heh. sorry mom. So...I'm going to attempt to relate some more travel experiences quickly so you get the US picture.
Let's see...we left off with racism in Charleston, SC and then maybe Valentine's night in Columbia. It was off to Savannah from there....
----bloop*bloop*bloop---- [obligatory time warp]
So I got into Savannah and made my way down to River Street, which is Savannah's premiere tourist strip. It's right along the river there (forget which one that is), and is a rather quaint, cobblestone thoroughfare. I saw a bunch of cars parked along the side so I parked in front of one of them and got out. A homeless man immediately asked me where in California I was from (I have CA plates on my car). I told him Santa Cruz and he was all like, "No shit I'm from Monterey." Small world, I suppose. I wandered around, watched the Sun set, and made some phone calls. I was talking to my mother (HI MOM) when I looked over and saw a cop walking up to my car. I ran over and was like, "is this not a legal parking space?" He goes, "You see that sign over there?" and points down the block. I had to squint to make out a red P with a circle around and a line through it, and was like "That applies all the way down here? All these cars are parked illegally?" Such was the case. They have quite a racket going on down there, in what if you ask me basically amounts to theft. Such is the way. At any rate, don't park on River St. if you're ever in Savannah. To be safe, maybe don't park on any street called River St. anywhere.
I found my way to the hostel I had located in my hostel book. The proprietor was weird as hell, and wouldn't let me bring in my sleeping bag -- told me the room heater would be enough. I ended up freezing my ass off all night in a room with a rather congenial middle aged man who had some extremely complex breathing apparatus hooked up for his sleeping hours -- looked and sounded like Darth Vader. I decided I couldn't be asked to spend another night there. I don't actually remember where I stayed the next night, which probably means I slept in my car oh wait no I remember. I ended up driving way outside of Savannah and finding an EconoLodge or something for like $45, which I decided was good enough. I'm looking over at this woman's TV in the office and there's a televangelist guy doing his thing who looked strangely similar to me, in the ethnic sense. They showed his name on the TV -- Joel Osenstein or something like that. I was like, "That's funny, dude's a Jew." The office lady was confused. I was, too.
That second day I was in a rather posh internet cafe/coffe shop, seated on a nice big blue leather couch reading Euripides' "Electra", when I heard something that almost made me burst out laughing. The shop's proprietor, a pretty late 20-something, was talking to an elderly couple in the cafe. She goes, "I tell you, Sherman never would have won if it was this cold." I did a straight up double take and looked around to see if anyone was as amused as I was. Nope, just me. They were all agreeing. Actually, to his credit, the one mild anti-semite (I figured from a later conversation) was like, "naw, they would've beat us worse." Ahh, the South. At least these people make good eye contact, though.
That night I had wandered over to a bar I had seen during the day with a sign about some live music going on. By the time I got there the place was closed, so I lit up a cigar and wandered down the street in a roundabout return path to my car. I happened by a bank security guard who asked me how I was doing. I was bored so his simple question started a whole long conversation. So we're standing there, him smoking cigarettes and me my cigar, and a rather distinguished looking gentleman walks by on his way to his car. Sam, my security guard friend, is all like "Good evening, mister mayor." After the guy left I was all, "Umm...the mayor?" To which Sam replied affirmatively. I started chuckling, which Sam misinterpreted. "Why you laughing" he asks. "Cause he's black?" I was like "hell no we've never had mayors who where anything but black where I come from." I was just amused that I had just met Savannah's mayor in such an informal setting. Last time I saw Anthony Williams he was standing outside some marble columns in Georgetown on a Friday night and there was a large black limo and a set of search lights. That's how it goes. Sam and I chilled for a good two hours before I decided I desperately needed food and went my way.
So the rest of the Savannah story is two things. The one was finding my friend KD, and the other was finding my friend Mary Ellen. KD went to a different high school than me and we didn't really ever hang out that much, except for a few intense periods. We were sort of peripheral friends, but I knew she was at school in Savannah and I hadn't seen her for years so I decided to look her up. Turns out that's not as easy as I had hoped it would be. The school wouldn't give out a shred of information -- not even an email address, nor would they post a message for me, so that route was out. She wasn't listed in the Savannah phonebook. I couldn't figure out her home number in DC cause her mom has a different last name. It was absurd. Finally, my friend Sarah who's in Spain emailed me her own mother's phone number. I called Sarah's mom, who looked up KD's dad's number in an old Burke directory. I called them, and got KD's new cell phone number, in the process probably greatly offending KD's step-sister: KD used to go out with a boy named Oliver, so when I called and said I was Oliver, a friend of KD's, her step-sister was like, "oh I remember you" and I was like "heh, sorry I can't quite place you," having absolutely no idea who the girl was. At any rate I finally got in touch with her and ended up staying at the place she lives in with 3 other friends in suburban Savannah. The house has two dogs, a cat and some fish, and KD's boyfriend was over a bit, so it was quite a madhouse. I treated it to a bottle of Petron Silver the second night sending the whole situation further into chaos. good times.
And then there's Mary Ellen. I met Mellen, as I call her affectionately, on a trip I took to Washington state the summer after my sophomore year in high school. We climbed Mt. Ranier together and did some other things. Truly an amazing person -- she was attending Stanford, studying marine biology, and had gotten a grant from the school to study the fan community around Widespread Panic, a jam band from Savannah. She was at a Panic show in New Orleans when she got out of a cab and was hit by a drunk valet parker from her hotel. She was in a coma for months, had to have some reconstructive surgery, and now lives at home under the care of her parents and a full time caretaker. She can't talk (her tongue, in particular, won't quite do what she wants it to), she can't eat (she is fed through a tube), though she has a tablet PC which allows her to type out, slowly, words she wants to communicate. It was a painful experience, seeing a woman who was easily one of the most dedicated, competent and really, promising, people I had ever met, relegated to such a state. It was good to see her but not a situation I would will on anyone, myself included. I'd rather the plug pulled while I still had my old memories, without the terrible weight of such new ones.
And that, more or less, was Savannah, GA. Decent people, good weather, beautiful city. Last time I was there, Mellen took me out on the bay in her family's Boston Whaler and we swam with the dolphins (literally - they were like 15 feet away).
From Savannah I made my way to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras festivities. But it's 8:30 and I've got to leave for the airport, so that story will have to wait for another day. A note: I have previously reported to some of you a particular interpretation of the words "adios" and "adieux". Turns out my explanation was only sort of correct, at least from a strict etymological standpoint. The literal roots mean "to God" in the sense of "I (will) commend you to God". So I had said it meant "before God", like "I'll see you again since everyone will stand together before God on judgement day". I guess the latter meaning is implied, but strictly speaking it means I'll speak well of you when I get a chance to weigh in on the worthiness of your soul. And with that...
adios,
oliver
down into the southwest,
somewhere beyond the towns of
twin arrows
and
two guns,
there lies a hole in the ground.
it's pretty big.
Return-Path: bigo@cruzmail.ucsc.edu
From: "Oliver Phillip Nicholas" <bigo@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Oliver's Travelogue, Part 1
To: snip
Friends, Americans, Countrymen, expatriots + foreigners,
I hope that all is well with you. You are a diverse group of individuals, spanning great geographic distances, comprising many of the ethnic groups of the world and all idealogically unique. I bid you all hello. May it be that the Sun shines wherever you are just now as brightly as it does where I am.
And where am I, you might ask? Currently, it's Boba's Cafe in the City Market area of downtown Savannah, GA. Day four here is providing me with some of the first sunshine I've seen since leaving...well, let's see. It wasn't sunny in DC. It was rainy in Santa Cruz. Hell, I'm not sure how long it's been. All the more reason to celebrate. At any rate, I've been keeping some record of my travels, so in installment one of my travelogue I will convey some of my choice stories. Oh, and by the way, although this email is probably going out to every single person I know or have ever met, feel free to distribute it further if I've forgotten anyone. To that end...
----bloop*bloop*bloop---- [time warp]
The first day of my trip brought me successfully and intact through the quagmire that is DC's beltway. It took me three hours to move 60 miles. You get the feeling that we really do live in a black hole once you realize just how difficult it is to get in and out of. I mean, I drove the entire country, 3,000 miles, and didn't hit a lick of traffic till the beltway. Go figure.
I spent the night sleeping in my car in a campsite on North Carolina's Outer Banks, parked directly on the shore of the Sound. Warming a can of soup by the heat of my precious little Primus camping stove, I savored the familiar but long-absent delight of being away from the city, more in the midst of Nature. I wrote cathartic poetry by the light of the appropriately full moon. Well, that and the sickly orange high pressure sodium street light in the middle of the campground. Ah, America!
Heh, anyway I explored the upper Outer Banks and then made my way to Cape Hatteras at the bottom, where I was to take a ferry to the island of Ocracoke. I noticed as I got further south that I was seeing more and more damage left over from Hurricane Isabel -- houses with roofs gone, siding torn off (how the hell does *siding* get torn off?!), etc, and then unfortunately discovered that the highway I was taking to the ferry simply ended in a roadblock and a "road closed" sign. Looking ahead, I could see that one fo the bridges I needed to cross was still gone, having been carried away in the storm (we're talking 10 or 15 feet long here, not like a Golden Gate or anything). I rerouted and stopped at a dockside convienance store, where I asked, "Ocracoke didn't get blown away, did it," immediately realizing that that was perhaps a sensitive subject. The clerk assured me it hadn't, gave me detour directions to the ferry, and I was on my way. Weird place, that Cape Hatteras. Waiting in line for the ferry, at what to the casual observer very much appears to be the ends of the earth, I saw power lines that appeared to ground out into the ocean. The things buzzed loudly, rythmically, in a sort of rising and falling tide of electrons. It was strange, that intensely modern, machine-associated noise here with this weird, almost war-torn landscape under an overcast sky. To those of you who know that track on Tool's AEnima CD (-ions, maybe?), it was just like that.
So I travelled NC-12 south along an island where the sky turns lavendar when the Sun sets -- and we're not talking some watered down pastel, either, but a full-bodied, deep, rich hue which fades towards a midnight, almost ultra-violet purple as the last rays leave your sight. It's an amazing place, and on the road into town if you stand in the right place you can see both sides -- the ocean *and* the sound, since the island's dunes are still being reconstructed and there are spots (a lot of them) where the sand is still flat.
The people around there are proud of their lifestyle -- they know it's atypical and wear that fact like a badge, often literally. Sitting in Howard's Pub, the only bar on the island (and one of a very few restaurants -- and again, the only one really open during the off-season), I'm surrounded by walls decorated with old license plates: OCRACOK, BEACHN, ZEDSDEAD, O-COKE, NC-HWY12, RTO-FISH, ILNDPATH and FREE2BE, to describe a few. My bartended told me that 750 people live their year-round, but I don't believe her. That place is *SMALL*.
My second night on Ocracoke was amusing. I took a nap in the afternoon, woke up and enjoyed a Cohiba (thanks Spencer) on my the deck as the sun set. Then a shower and off down the road. So I'm down at Howard's Pub, enjoying a Guinness and some crab cakes and waiting for the live music to start, and these three guys come in and sit down at the bar. The one sitting next to me is like the perfect image of a biker-type around here. He's got the gruff beard/mustache thing going on, a closely cropped Marine-esque haircut, a Harley shirt with rolled up sleeves exposing a few skulls and spiders inked on his arms -- classic. After a while my first question is, you know..."So, where you guys coming from?" His response began like a 4 hour journey of discovery through some random guy's life. The first thing he tells me is that he's from, or actually it was that he has a physical address, outside of Reston (that's Virginia, for those of you that don't know), but "moves around" or something, like I have some idea of what that means. I have not. So we talk intermittenly throughout the evening, and it goes something like this, in groups of two beers: After two beers, my acquantance has a job doing home stereo installations. This doesn't entirely fit with the image but whatever, I'll roll with it. After four beers, he used to build bikes, beautiful ones, though he doesn't seem to know a terrible lot about engines. After six beers, we're talking about my trip further down the coast and he tells me to avoid this one area or other, cause there's a marine base there and the whole marine thing -- he doesn't seem to think too highly of the majority of those particular foot soldiers, romping around town being young and stupid all the time. Doesn't sound too enticing to me, either. So then, still somewhere around six beers, I find out he "used to be" a marine. A few more Budweisers (or "fancy imports", as he joking refers to them with the bartender, since i'm drinking Red Stripe) and he lets on that he's actually not retired at all -- he is an active marine. And after like 10 beers, I kid you not, it comes that he's a marine sniper, one of a very small number trained in the country, who could get killed for what he's telling me, etc. That's after we're talking about his wife and daughter and him being away from home a lot. A very interesting conversation, after all. My mother, I think it is, has tended to describe bikers as adult-aged little boys, and come to think about it you could see a lot of that in this guy. At any rate, the night ended with someone pulling an oyster shucking knife on some other guy outside the pub, leading to him being pinned on the ground with the Sheriff's and Sheriff's deputy's guns pointed at his head (random people, not my marine sniper friend). I decided it was time to go to bed then.
So I'm seeing that I've been a bit longwinded, and as I'd like to get outside and enjoy the sun a bit while it lasts, I'm going to leave you all here, as I was driving back up Ocracoke to catch the ferry. Next installment, we'll pick up as a make my way into Charleston, SC, where I spent about five days. Do let me know how you all are. Peace.
Return-Path: <bigo@cruzmail.ucsc.edu>
From: "Oliver Phillip Nicholas" <bigo@ucsc.edu>
Subject: Oliver's Travelogue, Part 2
To: bigo@ucsc.edu
Compatriots, cohorts and collaborators-
I hail from the sunny region of Ft. Lauderdale/Miami, Florida. I hope none of you ever have the misfortune of having to do the same.
Heh, it's not really that bad, but I suggest strongly that you never try driving down the West coast of Florida on US19/27 unless you want to get really, really depressed. A line I once wrote about another place applies even more strongly to the region I mention: "This coast is a supply line of desolation" or somesuch. The entire thing is a six lane highway lined with gas stations, car lots, motels, pawn shops, check cashing / paycheck advance companies and the occasional strip club. Gavin Wallis offered, astutely: "kind of like a white trash suburb slash ghetto." But more about that in a future installment.
I last left you as I was driving off of Ocracoke, after an evening of Marine snipers and oyster-shucking-knife fights. We'll pick it up from there:
----bloop*bloop*bloop---- [obligatory time warp]
I made my way down from Kitty Hawk along US17. I couldn't make it all the way to Charleston in a day (I left Ocracoke a little late), so I ended up turning off the highway and searching for a campsite. The act of searching for a campsite is always a weird one for me, especially since by "camp" I mean "park my car somewhere and sleep in it". Most of the campgrounds you encounter, unless lucky enough to find your way onto a state or national park, are RV parks; at this time of year, they are mostly filled with permanent/semi-permanent residents in their trailers. These places are people's homes, and the proprietors usually live in a house on the campground, so it's a little weird driving up at midnight and trying to find a place to sleep. Plus half of them look really intimidating and I frequently find myself, starving and bone-tired, passing up yet another campground and saying "next one, next one". At some point you gotta give in, though, so I found myself a campground in southern North Carolina, somewhere around a place that I think was called Seaside. There was nobody in the office, and the CLOSED sign had a few phone numbers on it with the words "Nov. - March, Call:". I tried one of them but got no answer, so I figured: what the hell. It's just a parking space and enough water to brush my teeth with. I found a spot to park a little ways off from some trailers, killed the engine, and sat in silence with a paranoid alertness, waiting for someone to appear with a shotgun and ask what the hell I was doing on their property. No one came, and I was hungry, so instead of risk attracting attention with my camping stove I cracked a tin of Tuna and enjoyed it on an English Muffin (which are incidentally neither muffins nor of English origin). Every time I saw a flashlight I sat stock still, waiting for it to go away. Of course all this paranoia was completely absurd, since it's a fucking campground for crying out loud and people camp there. I hadn't paid, but that was because I didn't know how much it was or how to go about paying. The CLOSED sign had said the office was open at 9am, so I figured I'd take care of it then. Whatever, I folded down my seat and went to sleep.
Now morning rolls around, I have some cereal and brush my teeth, and the office still isn't open. I figure it's not opening, so I take off, all the time looking overhead for the police helicopter coming to force me to remit. At any rate, thanks for the parking spot, anonymous-campground-I'll-never-find-again.
So I rolled into Charleston and through a deft series of completely random lane changes and turns, I came to the famed waterfront area of the city. It is here that all the most regal, decorated and expensive houses of the town are, replete with wonderful ironwork and a whole lot of ivy. I took a walk along the waterfront and got attacked by some seagulls (picture me going up to a seagull and being all like "what" as a stick my chin out at it, and the seagull kind of flaps its wings like it's gonna do something and I buck like I'm legal tender. Heh, that means flinch to all you rectangles out there). Then I made my way to The Battery, a corner park that looks out into the bay and has all kind of Civil War memorabilia (this is where the first shot of the Civil War was fired - Ft. Sumter). I also got attacked by a swarm of pigeons there. As I was walking around, I had this weird sense about the people around me - like they were weary of me, avoiding me. This developed into a real theme while I was in Charleston, but I don't think it was because of me, specifically. I'll finish that thought in a moment, but first, after The Battery I found the main drag in town and walked around, people watching and such. Then it was off to find Charleston's NotSo Hostel, my chosen place of rest. I walked from King and Calhoun, the main intersection, about 8 blocks up King, and then another six blocks down Spring St. till I found the place. I was damn near out of breath. I walked in and found two girls I had seen roaming the same drag I was on earlier in the day ("friendlies!", I thought). I registered for a room and then trudged back to recover my car.
The people at the hostel were cool enough. The two girls were Brits, from the township of Bristol, so there was no end to the conversations about differences between our countries (since I already seem to know most of them). They were on their gap year, traveling for several months in the states, and were perfect story prompters - I swear, every five minutes something they said reminded me of a great tale of adventure I've had in the past. They made for very good companions over the next five days. My bunk mate (that is, the only other guy staying in the main part of the hostel) was an extremely odd early-40-something bible-thumper named Glenn. Bible thumper is actually not the right word. He was of the "saved" variety (born again?), and I sensed from the highlighted bible passages regarding forgiveness on the cover of his book that he had lived a life of considerable sin in the past. Or at least, perceived it to be such. Could've been an alcoholic, could've just had some neurological problems, probably a little from column A and a little from column B. He was a well-meaning soul, I think, but god (no pun intended) was he weird. When I first came to the hostel he was watching a televangelist on a TV station in the main room that got basically no reception - audio was decent, picture was a terrible mess of warped black and white faces and gray static. After it came up that I was a Jew the first thing he said was something like, "so you'd be 'completed', right? Isn't that what they call jews when they accept jesus?". Sure Glenn, whatever you say.
Glenn did indeed turn out to be a weirdo. Again like I said, harmless, but he creeped people out. I woke up the first morning to the sound of him flogging the dolphin (read: masturbating) across the room. I decided next time that happened I was going to remind him that god kills a kitten every time you masturbate so please, think of the kittens. It didn't happen again. But enough about Glenn.
Okay, so it's getting a bit late and I gotta do some stuff (like find a place to sleep tonight), so I'm going to get back to the thought I was expressing earlier about feeling like people were weary of me. The concrete observational companion to that feeling was the fact that no one would make eye contact with me in the street. This is abnormal. Most places (in the world, I would think), you can walk around and actually encounter other people. You walk by them and make some eye contact, maybe even crack a very slight smile or a nod - I mean, sure, you glance away when the interaction starts to actually seem personal, but it still happens. You still get the sense that you're all doing the same thing - walking around, being normal people. Not so in Charleston. I mean, people would look at you when you were really talking to them, but they pointedly avoid random eye contact. I've the feeling they'd look every single other garment of clothing or apparel before they'd make eye contact for a moment, even a fleeting glimpse. it's funny, too, because you can't tell anything about a man from his clothing - but you can tell everything from his eyes. i mean, what do my clothes tell you? do they say that I'm black, white, straight, gay, homophobic, anti-semitic, calm, irrational, kindly, simple-minded? They don't tell any of that. Just because I wear a head wrap, does that make me Muslim? or a keepah, am I a Jew? And what of it, if they do? Do they speak to the compassion with which I hold my values, or if I even hold values at all? My clothes are nothing -- they represent an aesthetic, my attempts to harmonize with the physical world around me. How that speaks to the content of my soul, the essentially important facts about me, I will never understand.
THe eyes, on the other hand...you can't conceal what's in the eyes, or rather it is an extremely complicated task, requiring one to probably take on foreign characteristics to complete the charade. A look doesn't lie -- it carries its own weight, its own means, it has depth and breadth and can be deconstructed and reassembled in all of its meaningful glory. But "The signs are there, we just choose the ones we see". Keep this in mind while I brief you on race relations in Charleston.
The first thing is The Citadel. As you may know, The Citadel is a highly lauded military college, and it's in Charleston. You see meaty kids with clean shaven heads in plain Citadel shirts jogging in groups around town. You see Citadel license plates. Fair enough. But I was at that central square, at King and Calhoun, and found a big plaque describing some city history. Turns out The Citadel was erected in the mid-1800's following a slave rebellion, as a fort to subdue further insurrections. And now it's a military college, training kids to subdue the world over. That's the thing about the South. They're so proud of their Southern heritage, but so vague about what that actually means. I saw a great bumper sticker today, actually: A rebel flag with a red circle around it and a line through it, and in big bold letters: YOU DIDN'T WIN. GET OVER IT.
Charleston's pretty segregated. I was talking to this kid Ishmael who was staying in a back house at the Hostel with his fiancŽe - they're both young, she's 19 and he's 26 or so, and both black. I mentioned the whole Citadel thing and asked what their experiences had been. They both said that they hadn't had any problems in the South with racism, despite warnings from friends back home about it. The one thing they noted was key, though. Ishmael's fiancŽe said that when her parents came to visit, they attracted a lot of negative attention. The reason? Her mother is white, while her father is black (or the other way around, I can't remember). And with that, it clicked.
People in Charleston won't really look you in the eye, I think they're afraid of how truthful eye contact is. It's much easier to lie and live a lie if you're not constantly confronted with a contradictory truth, or perhaps - with truth in any form. So they say that there's no more racism, that everyone is happy, but really, they're just content living on different sides of a line. Cross that line - as this girl's parents did - and people start to get really uncomfortable. I said that Charleston's "pretty segregated". I realize that Charleston's really segregated. In fact, they have an entire town - North Charleston - for poor black people. So my only recourse is to assume that this situation has evolved into such a pathos - a guilt, perhaps - that it has bled into everyday life in Charleston, with the result that people won't even look strangers in the eye.
I confirmed the eye contact thing upon leaving Charleston. Next stop was Savannah, and the environment was immediately more friendly. Actaully the next stop was Columbia, SC, and even hanging out with amateur body building (5'9", 180lbs) flag waiving church-going republican frat boys, the environment was immediately more friendly. Go figure.
More about all that later, though, in my next installment. Tomorrow I'm attending a large (350+ vehicle) Volkswagen enthusiast car show, and then I kill a few days until 2:05am on Tuesday the 2nd, when I fly from Miami International to San Jose, Costa Rica for a three week odyssey. Hopefully I'll get to fill you all in on the rest of the US portion of my trip before then.
So, my fair friends. Be well, stay safe. Stay well and be safe. Drive it like you stole it. And in the words of my companion Thoreau: "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world". It's not true, but gosh it's a nice, empowering thought. Here's to the dreamers.
Adios,
Big o
pray for the children of the rain, whose tears eclipse even the setting of the sun.
night falls, the pedals fold delicately back upon themselves,
swallowing the spark, incubating rebirth.
it is for us to hold the light aloft
and nothing else, but to watch, and to wait.
our memory serves us,
the rest is God's work.
some things return on time and others lag,
hesitant to bear fruit in a freezing climate.
there is no pain save the misconception of time.
resolution is a path, emotion is a point.
Time was, I once asked
One of my little demons
What it felt like to be
Trapped inside
He told me he wasn't sure,
That he didn't see it as a
Cage
He was a wise little demon
Demon, I said,
How, then, does it feel
To be
free?
Free? He asked
Without constraints, I replied
The constraints are inside, he said
The cage is within, he said
But I cannot be free, as long as I have a name
Then reject your name, I told him
But my name is the same as yours, he replied.
I could no sooner reject
My name than shed my skin
And then he told me that the flesh is the trap
So I stripped him of his
Skin
And set him free
A wise little demon, indeed.
Steel yourself 'gainst the onslaught of eloquence,
for they'll glad-hand you to death before they'll let
slip
a word of truth.
Don the accouterments of war on this red dawn,
here between the silence of night and the decimation of the day.
I'll protect my mind and my intentions at any cost necessary