San Francisco

I found Kerouac's The Subterraneans at a used bookstore on a side street I couldn't find again somewhere between a rise and fall of a San Francisco side street. I bought it for $4, the worn cover with it's original price of $1.50 laughing at me. The pages crumbled when I carelessly tossed it in my bag, I became more careful and noticed the scotch tape holding together the spine. I found my way back into the stream of Jack, Mardou and Leo, bop, tea, mania, existentialism, careless love, selfishness, destructive drunk nights, lovers, hipsters, machismo...

I was halfway done on the plane back East. I was going to mail it to a friend at the end of the summer, before I forgot it in the seat back pocket of row 20.

Patriotic

While driving from Vegas to the Oregon border and back we passed several gas stations, many with fluctuating price tags, but it was the Patriot station we stumbled upon on our way through the roller-coaster hills of San Francisco that became the most symbolic of the trip. All through the state of California where the gas prices for regular unleaded peaked at 5.29 a gallon, Patriot gas stations beckoned drivers. Back home there aren't many uniquely named gas stations, just your general Exxons and BPs and Mobiles, but out here the chains are more creative. Patriot. Be a Patriot and spend 5+ dollars on gas. It's patriotic to consume fossil fuels. All hail the red, white, and blue. As we sped through a ghost town in the heart and heat of Central California where the Sierra Nevada meets Death Valley, low and behold our trusty Patriot. Run down, with a sign at eye level from my passenger seat, no customers, no snack store, just the word PATRIOT on the side of a white placard dangling from a white wash two by four. 

Back in Vegas the gas stations have names like Terribles, Grumpys, and Rebel. I can't help but think they got it right here, as I walk through the parking lot grumbling about the terrible heat and refusing to drive the car as much for it's lack of a.c. as my frustration with driving a standard in stop and go traffic. In Vegas desperation hangs out of landscaping trucks at red lights and in the shade on metal bus stop benches that burn exposed thighs, the win big jackpot crap shoot failure exists in every wrinkled brow and leathered skin, the american dream rests on penny slots and $50 black jack tables on a line of pavement constantly clogged with drunks and foreigners and vacationers and the oddly placed child holding hands with a parent or guardian who clutches a football shaped goblet of 151 and strawberry in the other. To live here, outside of the strip of synthetic dreams and bright lights and gluttony, is to live in the fringe of desperation, to call the gas station Patriot with a graphic of stars and stripes would be absurd.

Midwest Express

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=92633264

Frank, it's a Perfect Day for Bananafish

Dear Frank,

I wonder if you are still alive. I wonder if your wife is still alive. I really liked her.When I showed up at your house at 9am she told me bluntly she was a bitch and not a morning person.  She also wouldn't let me take her picture. But when it was time for her bath with Ellie from Hospice you didn't seem to mind me. I liked hearing about your adventures in the Navy, I could imagine you classically handsome on the boardwalk of the New Jersey shore. I think you liked telling me and liked remembering for a stranger, until you had to get up from the table with both hands after two attempts, that's when you looked down and shook your head and your voice trembled as you said, "It's really tough, it's really tough getting old." I wanted to tell you, I see your face often. I question my mortality, and that of those around me. I can't quite grasp the point, a faith without religion, a purpose in a future that fades to black. When we are dead and gone, when you are gone and your face stares back at me, this picture I took of you/from you, means what?

If today were a perfect day for banana fish there would be no need to mull over the "only" existential question, Salinger answered it swiftly in a hotel by the seaside and a revolver in a suitcase, and yet I can't get over a person ceasing to exist. Like the news report about a woman being hit by a car at a bus stop down the street, or the Amber alert on the way to California, "Child abduction Purple/Gold RV CA Lic.5GEW58" these senseless acts of ending the existence of a human being. Ceasing to exist. Dear Frank, thank you for letting me take a bit of you with me.

Sincerely,

Where the Sidewalk Meets the Trees and other Adventures

"Hey, why don't you get a job!"

I've been missing Syracuse a lot lately. Mostly in my dreams where familiar streets turn into ethereal collegiate byways of destiny in a lens of tweed and internal three-speeds and boys host dinner parties on second floor balconies of spaghetti and beer and Zeppelin is on the record player while Ali's making eggs.