Gateway

I have no internet access and am not overwhelmed with things to say. I have had some good ideas to video people reciting the MLK "I have a dream" speech in all regions of the country and then editing it into a montage with different accents and races and creeds and such but I ended up getting no footage. Every good idea either ends with a success or never starts. IT seems there's no in between. Either I take steps toward completing the project or else it withers and dies on the vine...or the seed never germinates...or some other metaphor that adequately describes an unfulfilled idea.

I've pondered the decisions that have me crisscrossing the continent. There has been the mentality that if I keep going then around the corner might be something that will illuminate and enrich my life that I would never have experienced had I not kept going around the corner. And that has been mostly true...which leads me to expect illumination. And there has been the challenge of coming full circle, like the Pisces that I am, swimming in circles if only to see if I can make it happen. I have mixed feeling about it. The research for my Kerouac inspired book is complete. There's nothing left to accomplish. I don't even get excited by wilderness because there's no way to top the Labrador back country. I'm more engaged when I speak with flea market owners of muffler shop mechanics. I don't really care what their opinions are but I've become like a connoisseur of humanity. The differences appeal to me and the quirks (in small doses) interest me. People's funny hats and men in the library writing stock names down to track and kids in jackets asking questions. Blogging has helped keep me writing during a time when I don't have a notebook. Like most things, you won't know your limits unless you push as hard as you can. I'm not sure I've reached my ceiling with the guitar because I haven't really spent the 8 hours a day playing and practicing. There was a piano, a nice spinet, at the thrift store today and I might buy it along with some car ramps so I can work on my friend's muffler. I'm not sure how that fits into the blogging world. It could go on indefinitely, this wandering and blogging, and it would result in a crazy tapestry of experiences that not even I could interpret, but when I first read The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, I knew that I could interpret things, that I had a peculiar gift of perception and explanation that was fulfilling. Gathering the material to interpret has been engrossing but the bits of interpretation I have done in essays doesn't really get to the core of what I'm aiming for. It's all been tentative adventures on humanistic exploration...finger foods for the fast food junkie...but I want to write the main course that captures the savagery and delight I witness and challenges me to engage the reader for longer periods of time, to plot longer cons with slower burning wit. No more cheap jokes at the expense of my employers. It's been time to do this for a while but I was compelled to chase the Arctic wolf into the last region of North America that I'd never visited. Now there is no excuse. I don't want to be a stand up comic who gets away with one-liners anymore. If I want to push the boundaries of my own capabilities as a writer I will need to aim high. I don't know what this means except writing longer passages with slower developing morals. I had a whole essay about Whole Foods deli counter and how the abomination that is Flying J truck stop deli counter is fattening the calves for the slaughter that is the diabetic aisle at the supermarket. There is no plot to debilitate the truckers of America but that's what is happening with the chicken strips and potato wedges and 2 slices of pizza for $5 or 1 for $3.49. There is a magic number there, the number at which you will buy and eat an additional slice of pizza rather than simply buy the one slice you really want. I need a mathematics person to find the ration. The point at which getting the change back is more burdensome than merely eating another 700 calories of fat. These are not questions I want to pursue in the real world but they are definitely questions that characters I create will pursue long into the night. And in order for that to happen then I need to explore them a little...and tolerate the idiots who question my research because my coat is dirty from working IN A FUCKING PARKING LOT ON MY VAN IN THE WINTER WITH FREEZING HANDS. The snobbery of New England bothers me as New Hampshire grows 5% of the food eaten by people in NH. The rest comes from Tyson chicken lip factory in Indiana BUT YOU SHOULD RAISE AN EYEBROW BECAUSE MY FUCKING SHOES ARE DIRTY AND I LIVE IN A FUCKING VAN!! CALL THE FUCKING POLICE WHY DON'T YOU??? BUT KEEP EATING THOSE CHICKEN LIPS AND GOAT CUNTS WITH KETCHUP!! When priorities are prepackaged by Fox News and sold on Ebay then you run into some fucked up scenarios...that I want to further explore and interpret for the future pale poets of American's post apocalyptic destiny.

Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame

 This turned out to be a Patti Smith tribute tour as after reading her memoir I found her journals from 1968 in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And she is featured in a concert with U2 and Bruce Springsteen...and she rocks....which is important.
They sprung this picture on me before I could strike a proper pose but I managed to get my Van belt buckle on the cover of Rolling Stone. I don't think that's a coincidence. Was this worth $30 admission? You decide.

Main Street Tour

 My Tour of Main Street America (driving cross country only on secondary roads*) began with a long delayed and too short meeting of two Soldiers of The Free Spirit cut from the same cloth. David owns the 1970 E300 camper conversion and together we did some trips around the hood and were amazed that we had these dinosaurs running.

 We're both dealing with a lot of entropy with our respective 40 year old trucks and 40 year old bodies. There is no easy way to solve the galactic riddle except by interpreting our own dreams and ignoring the idle gossip that goes on in the background. We're crazy but we're our own crazy and not a prepackaged store bought version.








This is supposed to be my patriotic portrait but the lighting off Lake Erie was all sorts of messed up. That acrylic sweater is red white and blue, like the colors of the American Flag on David's van. My skin color is the same color as the sky. But I'll allow it for now.

Oggy's Main Street America Tour 2012 brought me to a flea market in a dusty town in New York. I asked the booth attendant: "Where am I?"
His shaggy gray eyebrows scanned my hippie attire.
"Do you know where East Bumfuck is?"
"Yes."
"Well, we're 5 miles east of there."
He let me have the Greek Fisherman's hat at a discount but absolutely refused to let me buy the '50s wool plaid ladies skirt I wanted for rug hooking. The sweater was pretty much a gift that I immediately stained with oil. The loot from another flea market in a snowy village was as follows:
1. Xanadu 78 rpm single "Magic" b/w "Cool Country"
2. 78 rpm "Sky Pilot" by Eric Burdon and The Animals

3. Fancy Parisian eyeglass frames.
4. Box of depression era sheet music including "Go Farther than your Father" and "Alcoholic Blues" One song says "Buy War Bonds"**
5. Beads for future crochet hemp belts



It was not a sad day to see this crappy tire fail. I hate this tire because it is the last reminder of the NTB experience and my wasted money putting new tires on a van with bad I-beams and having an $8/hr wrench monkey pull his pants up and drop my van off the lift and adjust his glasses better than he adjusted the alignment, fucking everything up completely and not fixing or even identifying the original problem, leading to lots of wasted time/money and an eventual front end job by an RV shop but left me with $200 worth of destroyed NTB tires that I decided I would use until they fell apart rather than replace immediately (The alignment issues wore 60,000 miles off of one side of the front tires in under 1000 miles of actual driving)

I didn't have my pitchfork but I had loosened the lug nuts a few days ago so this pit stop went smoothly.

The tire wear wasn't the cause of this fatal flat in rural Pennsylvania, there were 4 nails sticking in the tread at various places that I had picked up on Labrador dirt back roads and such. I'd been fighting the slow leak for a week. Now I find out if my 3 year old Mexican spare tire purchased in La Paz will last long enough to get me to Guatemala.

*Though this sounds insane, it has been a relief to drive the van at a safe speed (45) and see the countryside and the flea markets and hog pens of the country, camping wherever I want and shopping with locals at markets with people's names still on them. The interstates are faster speed wise but they don't take the most direct route so you still lose time on them. Only driving through cities does this method become a pain, unless you want to see the destitute of the city. In general taking a secondary road directly to your destination will not lose you much time compared to taking a high speed highway on some roundabout route.

** This gives me an idea. You know the movie "Julie & Julia" about the woman who cooked all Julia Childs' French recipes? It was also a book and here's my pitch: I will learn to play all the songs in this gigantic box of depression era songs. These are totally out of print songs ( I can't find a recording of "Go Farther than your Father") and I will basically write my experiences learning about the songs, annotating them, and playing them at rehabilitation homes for the infirm. Aging hippie makes good. That kind of story. It's the stuff publishers dream of. It all starts with my ability to sight read, which is improving but is not up to the task. OH, it's going to take serious sacrifices to learn to sight read these forgotten songs from 1937. Maybe I'll get that music software and write them all out and then simply sing along like karaoke from 1940.

I Send You Flowers

New Song to learn for the Central American Tour

Dryer Installation was Easy Compared to Dog

It took some real determination to get this 29'' washer through a 27'' wide cement door frame. Thanks to whoever invented the smartphone so we could access the exploded diagram and disassembly instructions in the freezing cold.

This dog looks and sounds like it has been beaten and abused its whole life but the contrary has been true. However; it may be that like spoiled children who narcissistically look back at their parents, Buster thinks he has been abused and neglected. And if that's the truth then it does not matter what the parents think they have done for the dog. They have abused and neglected the dog in the eyes of the dog. This might correspond to the selfish 40 year old child regressing to his childhood and blaming his well meaning parents for abuse and neglect. Was he neglected? Maybe not in the eyes of the parents but in his own mind he was and that develops the shame-filled eyes, fearful and untrusting, whining about the chocolate cakes he never had and the fame and fortune that was never realized. If Buster had a blog it would be called "Dog in A Van".
 I should point out that the longer he whines and bitches (hours on end), the more I want to abuse and neglect him, which fulfills his own prophecy. Interesting...