Remembering

I have been intending to post for the past two days. I have been locked up, and would sit down to type, and all I'd have to say is "I got nothing". My sleep schedule has gotten continually more sporadic. Part of it is that my thoughts are all over. Having run out of legitimate songs for the Musically-Inspired Geographic Location of The Day exacerbates my procrastination.

I have been pondering the fields of Ireland sloping downwards to the sea, or the rolling plains of Jerusalem, of the sort I have been daydreaming of since early childhood. I know that once I live in Utah for a few years, spending every possible weekend (or any other period of freedom) on the road, driving to California multiple times, exhausting all those lonely, buzzing towns, squeezing every last drop of life from God's country, I will undoubtedly lean towards Europe and the rest of the world. I know that many college-aged youth aspire to Europe, assuming its entire essence to be portrayed in a few large cities wrapped around a vague line of continental demarcation, but I wish to be a rover, a more ancient and self-sufficient kind of tramp.

To return to a relatively less-romantic plane, I want to talk about bluegrass. I got an excellent bluegrass compilation for Christmas. Ever since I read On The Road (yep, its going to keep coming up. It is the traveler's bible, after all), I've equated bop to bluegrass -- the same rapidity, the same intensity, the same  overpowering level of skill and integrity the musicians possess. High-tempo bluegrass (mostly newer recordings, though some old, piercing breakdowns do it for me too) captures the bliss of velocity and youthful valor for me. I feel privileged to be able to appreciate it (because many cannot, probably for no better reason than why I don't like most heavy metal: preference) and really get into it.

I want to share some of my favorite passages from the traveler's bible

. How that truck disposed of the Nebraska nub! --- the nub that sticks out over Colorado. And soon I realized I was actually at last over Colorado, though not officially in it, but actually looking southwest towards Denver itself a few hundred miles away. I yelled for joy. We passed the bottle. The great blazing stars came out, the far receding sand hills got dim. I felt like an arrow that could shoot out all the way . . . I wondered where the hell they would go and what they could do. They had no cigarettes. I squandered my pack on them I loved them so. They were grateful and gracious. They never asked; I kept offering. Montana Slim had his own but never passed the pack. We zoomed through another crossroads town . . . and returned to the tremendous darkness... and the stars over head were as pure and bright, because of the increasingly thin air as wel mounted the high hill of the western plateau about a foot a mile . . . pure clean air, and no tress obstructing any low-leveled stars anywhere. . . I bought a pack for each of them; they thanked me. The truck was ready to go. It was getting on midnight now and cold. Gene who'd been around the country more times than he could count on his fingers and toes said the best thing to do was for all of us to bundle up under the big tarpaulin or we'd freeze. In this manner, and with the rest of the bottle, we kept warm as the air grew ice cold and pinged our ears. The stars seemed to get brighter and brighter the more we climbed the High Plains. We were in Wyoming now. Flat on my back I stared straight up at the magnificent firmament, glorying in the time I was making, in how far I had come from sad Bear Mtn. after all, how everything worked out in the end, and tingling with kicks at the thought of what lay ahead of me in Denver---what-ever, whatever it would be and good enough for me.

. 'And here I am in Colorado!' I kept thinking gleefully 'Damn! damn! damn! I'm making it!' And after a refreshing sleep filled with cobwebby dreams of my past life in the East I got up, washed in the station men's room, and strode off fit and slick as a fiddle to get me a rich thick milkshake at the roadhouse to put some freeze in my hot tormented stomach. Incidentally a very beautiful Colorado gal shook me that cream, she was all smiles too; I was grateful, it made up for last night. I said to myself, 'Wow! What'll Denver be like!' I got on that hot road and off I went to Denver in a brand new car driven by a Denver businessman of about thirty five. He went seventy. I tingled all over; I counted minutes and subtracted miles. In a minute just ahead over the rolling wheatfields all golden beneath the distant snows of Estes I'd be seeing old Denver at last. I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet that has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was Wow.

. Ed White, Frank, Bev and I spent an entire week of afternoons in lovely Denver bars where the waitresses wear slacks and cut around with bashful loving eyes, not hardened waitresses but waitresses that fall in love with the clientele and have explosive affairs and huff and sweat and suffer from one par to another; and we spent the same week in nights at Five Points listening to jazz, drinking booze in crazy colored saloons and gabbing till five o'clock in the morn in my basement.

That is one of the greatest joys of the road: the legend of it in one's own mind. Just look at the buildup and all-or-nothing hope for Denver, and then the paradise of it and fondness of remembering being there, how "the whole world opened up".

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As the title of this post suggests, I have been doing a lot of remembering. On my way back home from downtown on the 24th, biking up meeting street all the way to where it ends, I thought of nothing but the imperial towers amidst the river, unseen in the day time, hidden by the factories and buildings. I did not recognize the field the night -- the night I finished On The Road -- where they grabbed my attention when all other lights fell away. Downtown Charleston could not have been more desolate that day. It was the perfect morning. I felt like only person on the peninsula. I've been remembering that dingy night on top of the mountain overlooking the valley towns, the rain and prophesying wind, the gray, the Clemson clouds, all of the faces. That dead-quiet dusk on Mt. Mitchell. The still monday morning at Lake Eden, where frost covered everything and froze time. The contra dancing at the farmer's ball in the magical city of Asheville, followed by a long walk under the moon and haze. I remember the utter excitement and gratefulness with which I approached interaction with a friend. Things have been different, even empty, since I arrived back in Charleston with thirty-seven cents in my debit and pennies in my pocket. I cannot even write with the ardor and consistency that I once maintained. I must go back, and I know I will soon.

Musically-Inspired Geographic Location of the Day
I'm continuing with my wordless selections. This one is especially relevant in my remembrances. This location marks the beginning of the end of this period of wandering. After I ascended to this place, and biked off the ridge of the mountain, below the cloud, and into the road of troubles and hiking and hitchhiking, my mood followed. My demeanor went from soaring high above the clouds to a low indifference, being pushed on by intertia. I kept moving even in the pouring rain. Night comes, and there is nothing to do but stop and camp for the night. In the morning, there is nothing to do but break down camp and get moving. I really got excited about seeing four states at once though, on top of the Devil's Courthouse. Jim Vancleve tears it apart on this rickety ride of a bluegrass tune. (Remember, for the song, right click the Location title and select 'open in new tab' and for a picture of the geographic feature, click the greened and underlined name a few lines above)