February 22, 2012 Wednesday

4AM The humming of the soda machines at the Staples Mills rail station could be an Angelo Badalamenti score. Laura Palmer's theme. The same hum as the frozen section in the Pleasure dome Giant Tiger, W. 117th. I forgot to wave bye to dad in his car when he drove away. It was a good hug though.

The canned black coffee is disgusting .. so awful. "Illy Cafe" no no. And what I did with it, I spilled the damn thing all over myself trying not to let moms bag fall over. Coffee strikes again, Teddy Roosevelt would be proud, guzzling a gallon a day ain't nothing I have that doesn't have a coffee stain. Coffee stain my life.

9:2 - Something AM. Filter Coffee shop on 20th St. NW in  Washington DC. It took a bit of turning around to get here and some aching shoulders and a 2.40 dollar Metro ticket. w Pandas on it. Mom pausing to say she doesn't think she can do this in front of the 1890 mansion church of Scientology. A breather on the steps. We have so much luggage it's almost obscene. We're packing moms vintage light bulbs and I'm wheeling that around in her laptop rolling case. So I've got my unnecessary 2 bags plus this roller. Mom has her mid-sized roller and giant canvas sack. We're ready for a middle-class safari you'd think. Mom also comments that she's seen several people look at our luggage with "disdain". What is wrong with me that I managed to travel San Fran for a week with only 1 bag, chrome full and now I'm carrying 2? I need to rethink some things looks like.

Cold brew is in my hand. It is an espresso blend of Panama and Brazilian. Filter is in Dupont circle. We took the red line. I took mom down the street in the wrong direction. F. I can smell the Eucalyptus heavy. The cute girl at the counter looks familiar and likes my necklace. The guy and her both answer when I ask if they serve a cold brew. "All year round" he says with a smile. Mom's friend 's office is at the metro stop on blue line. We can put our bags there after all!

10:44 - On the mall. Dirt paths The Washington monument to my left. Amidst the galleries of the Smithsonian. The metro also to my left. Mom ran into the Freer Gallery behind me to find a bathroom. It was a full 15 minute wait for the cargo train. An asian mom and 2 kids boy and girl snap a photo standing on a bench. The girl repeats several times "Greetings from Washington DC!" Now she takes pictures of the kids pointing at the Washington monument. "Nathan, I can't even see you. Nathan look at me. Fine, don't be in pictures" an they're off. I'll probably never see them again. Haven't heard from moms friend. 2 more pretty asian girls study the National mall map. One has a pretty handbag in the shape and design as a decorative Japanese fan. I hope mom is okay.

3:17 PM - A pigeon lands in front of me inside Union Station where mom and I sit. Mom dips her head into her scarves dozing off to sleep. Cute little guy. Little affirmation of life in all of this commuting chaos. Pecks at crumbs on the ground. If only it had been around an hour ago as I passed a small McDonalds french fry overboard between the Chipotle and Au Bon Pain. Birdy now sits in rafters above some upper deck. Spooked a woman and child that didn't see him. Chicago gate D15. We skipped out on a lot of Smithsonian on account of tired feet and wanting to be better safe than sorry with too much bad luck trains, customer service, etc. I mean what is this, bad customer service? Why are you being paid? To be an asshole to me for absolutely no reason? Give me a break. Mom and her friend and I check out the Freer Gallery, Asian art, featuring a fair amount of Hokusai screens and painted pottery, a few sketches, Dad was red jealous over the phone. Hokusai, painter of the Great wave. His favorite. I enjoyed a screen depicting animals in different seasons of the year in particular. Turtles, ones on the bottom of the sea looking up at a turtle on the surface. Really good with detail. Joints and bones and spot on with patterns in men and women's clothing. It's superb, and free to look at. Makes me want to try painting more. I have ideas I may have mentioned, then onto the natural history museum just mom and I through herds of parents and children. I wanted to see some kind of artifact, something with a historical significance in popular culture. I had written down exhibits I wanted to see but had not been aware of the permanent collections. What our draw ended up being was rocks, in particular, The Hope Diamond. What kid into paranormal history or who saw "Titanic" 7 times in theatres wouldn't be into that? So we came and we saw. It was pretty. Sparkling and wondrous with history and it will outlast us all. With all our fingerprints smudged away.

We walked on through a maze of colored rocks, precious and semi precious, cut, polished and not so much. Tiaras given as gifts by Napoleon with turquoise in replacement of the original emeralds with diamonds. An actual "Emerald Necklace".  It's amazing what old Earth can make with it's own hands given time and gas. I wish I could say that for all of us. Mom goes gaga over it all. I realize how man great synth band names are floating around this exhibit. "Mineral Friends" "Rhodocrosite?"

On train, getting on double decker in daylight hours, not common. Jerry, the coach attendant is a lively man, I inform him that there's more to see in Cleveland than the rock hall. "I never knew" says he. He has a great speech for everyone on the train. Spunky. Maybe it's the daylight. It's just, usually Amtrak attendants look like a bunch of dead horses or like they're going through withdrawals. Cracks joke about his chicken embroidered cap falling off the overhead compartment in front of this lone traveling Judge Reinhold type, balding. "You're stealing my hat already?" A righteous dude. I catch the guy laughing to himself. I like that. People laughing to themselves. It means they're remembering something. Then he cracks open a can. His hands move over the label slowly before I can tell what it is. A tall boy can of "Icehouse" beer. I can't not smile. Hands on a can. He has a crushed-ish box of Corn Chex in bis bag too.

First stop, Rockville, MD. I'm waiting for the lid on my "Pret" Orange juice to blow off again with a bang with all the shit that's mixed in it now. Was good OJ then I mixed Rooibos ... WOOF! Then later to put the kabash on the honk smoothie I poured what was left of my grape juice detox soda from Pret in there. So it's this funky semi-carbonated liquid that tastes the way my concoctions as a kid with kitchen oils and herbs would smell and then I poured them on the furniture and lied about them. I think maybe I'll dump it out. Let the train insides have it. Use the bottle for my coffee. Until it pops again and I stain something else.

Bathrooms - I like Amtrak bathrooms. They are in my experience minimalistic, color coordinated and for the most part, clean. I just used one with a changing room fit with a vanity and xtra sink! I feel like a star with a super flush-suck toilet. I even appreciate the font in which "trash" and "diapers & napkins" is etched in the steel compartment shoots. I would have one for my own. In a very 1960s - 70s hue of orange.

"Wild and Wonderful West Virginia everybody! You'll have to maintain your enthusiasm." says Jerry. Sounding like Tim Meadows. Judge Reinhold and I share a share and chuckle in that way that 2 people in eye shot of each other seats across can't help. I look over at mom heavily breathing in dreamland mouth-open. I can't escape Judge over there motioning at mom "----Out-----" he says. I wonder how that Icehouse is feeling. The conductor comes on and reminds us of the upcoming smoke breaks and that on the train it is illegal. We could be escorted off train by police. I dare see judge pointing at me "Smoking" earlier as I parked my head on the tray table for a nap Elementary school style. I hear Judge call over  "Do you want a pillow?" "There are some over here and more above".. "No thanks"... all is over. Reminds me how sad I was that no one was around for me to make reference to podcasts on band car trips passed. Comedy Death Ray or Bang Bang or something featuring a very self depreciating "Paul Giamati". At one point I can't remember what is going on but everything he says is echoing, all of his complaining and wining and he's getting lost in it and lets out a fierce "I'm in hell!" and well, no reference could have better described how I was feeling going up and down escalators rolling suit cases to the metro carrying two heavy bags of my own on my back. I had a Paul Giamati in me amongst crowds of students, moms, field trips, and young and old professionals in those tunnels yelling "I'm in hell!" about to explode/implode and nobody was around to laugh at that except me. And I did.

Judge ruffles through his Corn Chex. I hear plastic crinkle and chex crush in his hand then I hear little Chex hit the vents near the floor and bounce "CHING!"--- I bang my head on the tray table trying to look down at vent just now. I get his attention. -- I hear crunching and him laughing at something on his phone. Then attendant comes by saying he needs to cover up his tall boy that we're not supposed to have outside alcoholic beverages on the train. Judge acts surprised through his Corn Chex-mouth. But locked in mutual understanding, attendant (Not Jerry) lets it slide. "Just cover it up" and like a concerned father, takes one of the Amtrak pillows, made of dryer sheets and puts it on the beer. It was heartwarming.  I look at him, he shrugs in a Steve Urkle kind of way and I go "shhh" in jest. "I know!" He says in Chex-mouth. He thinks I write tiny. The sun goes down in West Virginia. I guess I won't get to see any of those little woodland trailer paradises. Judge Reinhold laughs "Too tall" banging his head on the overhead.

"You can't write now. You can't see that" Judge says. I realize I might should have sat in the observation car while it was still light out and I could see. Oh well. A car zips though the night with it's headlights. It could be traveling through space. Just like Maddy, Granger and I were on the Highway 1, California coast in the middle of the night, fog rushing in. "I don't need to see it" I say. Jerry walks down the aisle holding a dinning car menu looking confused. The food is also, like the trash cans, made from recycled material. Smoke break, Cumberland MD! Suck it Amtrak! I can't sleep... this must be the Cleveland car. Everybody's going out for a smoke. The golden land of inhibitions. A Sheetz glows in the Oasis of Little Caesar's & Burger King. I would destroy macaroni bites right now, just because I'm bored.

Why did I have so many crazy F-d up dreams this past week? Not so much last night. Not much sleep, though I was trying to get myself out of a very large tree shaped like an animal. It was very high up and I don't remember how I got up there, but Stephanie Ruggerio was there and Tall Adam was somewhere on the ground perhaps with friends. Darren Embry may have been there too. But the night before was just utter child-molesting chaos. Well.. more than children. they were these creepy males, one who might not exist alike anyone I actually know. But I had let him too much into my life after people warned me... kind of like this radio dude (not like I'm implicating him) and I the parts of the dream I can remember he is chasing Maddy and I around our house and we are hiding form him in a bedroom. It's more like a long one floor house like the ones in Alabama. He's a shorter skinny guy with thinning hair. It's a freaky dream. We know he's killed somebody we know, but who? Don't know. It's like we're early high school aged again. H e's kicking at the door psychotically, all of this pounding on doors in my dreams. Then we are spinning through a wet parking lot with other of our guy friends and I think my mom is driving. And we're almost crying. We don't want to let this guy, thin hair guy in the car. But he's one of us, our friends and mom doesn't understand. I think Carl and Marty and Leo are there. Maybe thin hair guy has killed some girl, and he's trying so desperately to get in the car. I'm reaching to keep the sliding door shut ad I'm crying. Then... this is awful but there's this guy James who I've booked for art shows at The Path who has also been doing something bad. He's heavier with thick blonde/white hair. I just see him walking in and out of doorways in the daylight. From what I can remember it doesn't seem like much, but it was so much. all in the dreams was uneasiness and terror in the face of people I thought I knew. I need to start filming this stuff! I miss Maddy and my boys.

Some guy just barely made it back onto the train from smoking.

You know sometimes I truly find myself in memory trying to figure out what were dreams and what were things that actually happened. I mean some things seem so ridiculous to me that now I think, of course they must have been dreams. But I remember times as a kid I would ask myself these same questions. and be totally convinced that yes, they were real. Like this confusing dream or memory I have of Sandy and Shelly, my cousins and I climbing up through a hole in their closet up into these mazes and mazes stacked on top of each other of rooms and we could hide and play in them. Some rooms were literally no bigger than a coffin that you had to squeeze through. Others with ramps and inclines bisecting the room that you had to scooch up to the next cubby hole. Utterly strange. But in my head for years anytime my head dredged it up for whatever reason, I would always think of it as a memory and not a fantastical dream. What does that mean? And if it wasn't real, why did I think it was?

February 19, 2013 Sunday

Sitting on the love seat newly set on a diagonal in Dad's main room listening to dad punch away on the computer talking of some photograph he wants to get of debbie harry that he saw in this gallery "Morrison Hotel" by the former CBGB, now John Varvatos. Don't even figure my feelings on that pile of irony are worth writing down. Obvious. I remember walking through those, now store fronts with dad in August 2009. Not a shadow of former glory in the Bowry. I want to go back to New York City.Want to see Leo, want to get rid of the 2 10-dollar MTA cards I have left. An air of multi-level spiritual release comes to mind when I think of it. You could walk those streets and not talk to anybody and still feel like you just stayed up all night talking to a stranger in a neon cafe. It's those sidewalks and the noise, forever echoing and you become all at once the past present and future.

Dad passes me a sealed envelops. Old mail of Jenny's from some ministry in  Chicago. On the back is written Steve Job's quote:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." "Don't be trapped by dogma---Which is living w/ the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

                                                                             - Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Really good idea. Doesn't surprise me dad would write it down. He loves any words had to say by somebody encouraging other to march to the beat of their own drum so to speak. It takes a smart one to appreciate that. To say those things. The ever-collector, and connoisseur of all things with a heart. Him and mom linger over an old table of ours, big white board on 2 TP white legs, watching youtube videos featuring sounds and faces they know from the 1970s - 1980s Los Angeles. Mom always on the lookout for old friends.

-- At Target appeasing mom to buy Benny odds and ends for the house. Funny some of my best entertainment on a trip like this I will find taping the poor target floor clerk moping over a broken bottle of Archer Farm wine. "It's such a shame" he says unbeknownst to him, I am listening and watching him. Cursing his job, and then he smiles at me. He probably thinks I did it the way I stalk the scene of the crime.

Mom pops out asking him where the salsa verde is. He explains the difference between this and SuperTarget and that the stock changes with the demographic of the area. I think I'll take that audio and put it out on a tape with the boys wrestling and trying to get in the tunnel.

Dad continues to thisd ay that Tom Cruise is gay. "I will put my life on it" bringing up Opera, all silly shit. Thinking Opera is losing her credit, book clubsm free stuff, lying book club authors. He wishes he still had his running journals. Lost in a storage unit years and years ago. Too behind on payments. I wonder what he thinks now. I'd hate to dig that up.

February 18, 2012 Saturday

Sherry's breakfast table. Dad and Tray's voices holler from the next room in the garage. We in here sharing likes and dislikes about coffee, stevia herbs, creamer, no creamer, tea drinker? Coffee mate? A breakfast of croissants and fruit slices, different butters. I've woken up with a bit of a dry cough. Some congestion. I dreamt of a winter wonderland, and Chubby lived inside of a carousel. It was supposed to be on the edge of Tremont, in a bad neighborhood, a trailer park, but this is a carousel partk, Enter in and it's the smallest compartment, down a hole is a bed, down another hole and was a smell living space. He lived with a sister or something. It was mesmerizing and all the carousels were lit innocent and festive.

On Southern Accents - Mom's comes back when she's around her relatives. She says she models hers after Aunt Eleanor. Sherry doesn't think hers is too bad. I can hear Barbara's loving voice in my head. Last I saw of her we were finding our way back out of the towns around Gant Lake. After that family reunion. Now comes the story of Barbara's old house on the square post-flood. The stink after the water receding. They discover a bunch of rotting fish on top of the kitchen cabinets.

I spend a little time outside saving bugs from out of Sherry's pool. All kids of beetles, ants, a little green bug with wings and long lets. I felt a responsibility for them. Who knows what they are thinking but the idea of being trapped or confused or unable to help yourself. It's kind of a terrorfying idea. I needed to do something about it. I worried for one, that I might not be able to save it because it was so far out of reach. I thought it was kind of funny how like so many things in life that is, but the water kept moving with the air and pool jets and I got them out of there. Even if they all end up back in there, because it's their nature, I still saved them this one time. Because I could.

February 17, 2012 Friday

School days at Thomas Dale High School down the street on W. Hundred Blvd. I see other schools everywhere and I fantasize abdout being a kid that attends, walks home from school, exits those double doors at 2:30 pm with my backback on shoulder, what will I do with my afternoon? And will I see any of my classmates? The future is ahead and I dream and I barely know who I am. I know what kind of music I like and what I'm keeping my eyes peeled for when I comb the racks at the thrift store and I think that's enough to determine myself. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I might not be and it's Friday. Will I spend the night with a friend or what will I do? Walk home in silence, or with my headphones on blasting moody music like Tears For Fears first album. ... Boy that doesn't make a whole ton of difference from how I m now. Only, I can really do anything and pretty much decisions are all mine to make. Unless say it involves moneys I do not have. And I can yell at strangers and officials and they might care. We really all are just backpack dragging kids getting out of school on a Friday afternoon.

Mom, Dad, and I starting our drive down to Fayetteville, North Carolina to see aunt Sherry . Not 15 minutes before mom hollers when a rock hits the windshield. Her reactions man. As bad as Maddy yelling at the moon or a cute animal. "I'm a bad passenger" she says. A white PT Cruiser drives by covered in red Hatchet Man stickers. Giant ones. Dad plays U2 on the stereo, says it reminds him of driving down to Alabama. Dad forgets the caramel cremes he bought. Popping those things at all hours across the country, though on a drive like that... time doesn't really exist like you might think.

The smell of grass. Welcome to Virginia rest stop.

6:11PM - Cocktail sauce. Frozen shrimps at Sherry's house in Fayetteville North Carolina. Talks of her jobs in the airforce at Ft. Hope. Mom remembers playing with barbies in the grass outside the window of Grandma Diana's hopsital bedroom. I guess 1959. A military base and perhaps she, being a kid wasn't aloud in the hospital. Grandma Diana one crazy lady with lots of class. They wish we could have met her. She recalls sneaking into Diana's room a little drunk with a cousin. Diana was in and out being treated for Polycethemia Vera a rare blood disease with kumiten. In the end it did her more harm than good. Deteriorating her veins and she hemorrhaged right through them. Sherry is suffering from PSV as well. They say Grandma was a Guinea pig for so much of that kind of treatment. Mom talks of a letter grandma wrote her after one Christmas saying she didn't think she would see another Christmas because she refused to be cut into again. They wanted to go into her jugular vein.

Sherry was "goth" even before goth existed. Black clothes, black hair, dark dark dark and pale. These southern women. I love them. I truly feel robbed of Diana, and am sad for it. People die, and I am sorry. I probably would have loved her. But the way they all describe her, I see a lot of her in all of them anyway. Crazy, elegant, I can imagine. Aunt Barbara. Man I wish I had more of her spunky-ness in my life. Mom often recalls the story of Grandma Diana, and Eleanor maybe it was Sherry, chasing after each other with fly swaters. Tray, Sherry's husband talks dad's ear off about fishing.

10:05 - Mom and Sherry at the dinner table. Mom has had a lot of wine. You can definitely hear it in her voice. I hope she doesn't have an insane headache in the morning. Her excuse is she doesn't have the opportunity to spend time with a Banning who is so much like her. Sherry, more alike to her than Julia. Mom and her look up on Sherry's ipad trying to figure out where Hank Williams Sr. Is from. Somewhere near Andalusia, the Alabama town where they both spent so much time growing up. I brought him up trying to describe the only type of country music I like. Older country. I guess Elba, Alabama, our first home in Alabama, claimed it was home to Hank Williams originally.

11:50 P - Just finished Patti Smith's book "Just Kids". It's one of the greatest non-fiction stories I've ever read. Maybe greatest stories period. It isn't hard to understand how she could resonate with so many people who found it in themselves to recommend it to me and to Maddy. I really know a lot of people who talk of reading it. But this copy is Maddy's and it was given to her by Caitlin wife of Albert, mother of Gem. Caitlin first brought it up to us at that Broken River Festival at Whiskey Island over the summer. As we broke down the Path Cafe tent for whatever reason she brought up Patti Smith. I probably said I didn't I didn't know of the book and wasn't familiar with her music. She said we would like the book how maybe we made her think of the book. In after reading it, that is a nice thought. That silly Maddy and I in our sweaty lost movements with heads in other places in shabby thrift store outfits on a Sunday afternoon would invoke a reminder of somebody with this story to tell. And with this brilliant way of telling it. She makes me dream. She makes me look at myself and my life, it's 22 years and be happy and thankful that I've found the means to do anything I've done, and to have dreams of creating more. People once told me after one of the bands shows maybe the one in Baltimore, I can't remember to the location, it was a girl though that I reminded her of Patti Smith, that really didn't mean much to me then, but in retrospect, now I'd say it's a pretty cool thing. Not that I want to in particular remind people of anyone but myself, to be anybody but myself. But in a world where any art is critiqued in reference to art of the past, I'm going to bask in a moment like that. Especially saying as how it couldn't have been my looks.. Because Miss Smith and I don't share any physical likeness. It's in her celebration of her past that I really enjoy and relate. I don't have the same story, or experience but I can still be moved by her words, and by her love and devotion to another human being, to "write their story" it is the greatest love story that could be written. The greatest love is understanding I think, and her and Robert Mappelthorpe seemed to have a great deal of it. My notebooks, my habit and practice of filling them up is to continue my love story to the world. If I could ever give a gift. It is this record of one life, of my life, the simple act of writing it down, even if I am the only eyes it's made for. My understanding, my love story to the world.

You see my favorite part of the story she tells is embodied in this necklace. This Persian violet bead necklace she first seees/watches over in a glass case in the Brentano's bookstore she works at. Then she recognizes the curly haired Mappelthorpe from a boy she spotted in a bed in an apartment where she sought out friends of hers weeks prior. He has a credit slip and points out the Persian Necklace bound on black and silver cloth. He buys it and she says "Don't give it to any girl but me." And there it is. It's spelled out. Maybe in the wells of her memory it's all so much more dramatic and layered but we have what she has written for us and that is the most spellbinding and consuming story. Involving a life shared and filled with symbols, art, love, confusion, hunger, lonliness, fear and wonder. But man, this moment. " I won't." He says . It's as if two people were ever meant to be together and they were those 2 people. In a glance, an exchange of a trinket wrapped in tissue, hand to hand in a couple of words and a smile, the love sparked and was fueled forever. The greatest love of all, understanding. For they did not end up together as in your traditional bedtime story happy ending. They were together, and that was it. Together in your mind, so like many things. Mappelthorpe dies, but their pursuit together, the things two people can share in the middle of the night, in creation they bonded themselves in an eternity of love and understanding, unforgiving, unbreakable. With a necklace that she ends her story on. This exotic Talisman wrapped in faded purple delicate tissue. A treasure, like love. Bold and mysterious, though attractive because it is foreign, a likeness shared by two, in a single moment. Love, understanding and memory as strong as ever. Like a little magical indian you can hold in your hand, tell all of your secrets to, cry with and dance to records in the middle night with. He will confuse you, inspire you and believe in you, and in the end, underlining all of his fragility and innocence suspended in time, and infinite space you can wrap him up in fading purple tissue and tuck him away in a box, like a hug. You can take him out anytime. Although it's existence is just mirrored as memories exist in your mind. Your head being the purple tissue. Objects can mean anything and everything and nothing. And so can people. But objects... a lock of hair, the scent someone leaves behind on a pillow, a necklace, a letter, a photograph. Moments in time. There in lies love in it's manifested form. A form for others to look at in wonder. And I have those things, and god I wouldn't trade them. Her song "Because The Night" echoes in my head. And she makes me feel so good inside. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, I'm 22-years old, I love to write, I love to sing, I love to dance, and I am forever in love, trying to understand.

February 16, 2012 Thursday

12:45 AM - Henry and Gillian just dropped mom and I off at the Amtrak station in Cleveland. Nice ride. Super cool of them to offer. Met them at the Happy Hound, drove home and went and picked up mom. Otis from Wet Paint Records was DJing at the Hound. For a couple of minutes there I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Karen Black who looks like Raquel Welch was on the screen being chased around her apartment by some crazy pigmy creature. No audio in the Happy Hound basement, but you didn't really need any. It was very captivating. I ask mom and she cringes, says it was apart of a series called " Trilogy of Terror" completely sick, says it along with "Night of The Living Dead" are the scariest movies she's ever seen. Said pigmy gave her nightmares. I watch some of it on her iphone. Damn technology. Amtrak station can't have been updated in more than 20 years. Henry recalls some family vacation he went on as a kid and some guy ran inside the waiting area with a portable TV screaming that a bomb had just gone off at the Olympics. Must have been 1996!

Some guy, older gentlemen comes in with a brown hat riffing on being at some bar for hours without much money but ended up spending 84 dollars. This guy says he's 73, he's very uproarously loud " Is anyone in here headed to Chicago?" Everybody's laughing "This is my first time doing this and maybe my last!" Going on about how he's asking so many people how to get to this place how "Amtrak" must not what people to find "this place". He's going to see his daughter and his # 1 Grandson. This guy, completely over the top. Telling the teller lady soon we're gonna be flying around in some tubes. Can't remember the adjective. "They say I can't have a glass of wine until 6am and I can't have breakfast until 6:30" He's asking himself why he's talking to any of us because we're all heading east instead of west like him. It's good he's got everybody laughing. All kinds of laughs "Hell, they have a vending machine." "But they don't have an atm" He's been traveling since 4:30 pm from western Pennsylvania by way of friend. His train doesn't leave until 2:50 am. His favorite Grandson is at University of Indianapolis/ He wants a glass of merlot, but he can't get one until 6am. What a shame to leave this guy behind.

The train plows out of Cleveland, over east of downtown, a sea of warehouse windows, streetlights, I don't recognize and then E.40 and then I see the uhaul stop at some Superior or St. Clair and E.55th st. Wsa just there the other day. Then over Euclid, past Woodland Cemetery in dark covered in trees. Then over rapid tracks by our old neighborhood, E. 63rd territory. It's hard to believe we used to live there sometimes. I biked westward from there a lot and now everything is a blur. We rock back and forth on the tracks past residential neighborhoods, lights and crossings, warehouses, melting snow. Probably passed by Garfield Heights by now. Mom plays games on her iphone. Most of what I can see outside of the window is black and orange light here and there. The last I sat in a seat like this was in Eugene, OR. I had dry heaves waiting in line to board looking at that wind turbine under Cleveland drizzle flashbacks of the two level train speeding away from me. Like an escaped kidnap victim seeing their captor once again. Primal things went off inside of me, and a flash of Dante's face calms me. This seat has a lot more foot room than my last seat did. I have the same bag with me. Same green jacket. Two items that without me, made their way to Seattle, Washington. Only, the jacket I washed recently. A years worth of dirt and grime down the W.45 drain. The Factory records themed Chrome bag however still touched with any dirt or traumatized spirits may have singed itself, themselves to the vinyl and Teflon  Maybe a blue, maybe a little gray strip of newsprint still lingering in between the removable lining. A transfer ticket from San Francisco transit. We're sitting next to the staircase. The ice water dispenser, the trash can, the "cafe" sign that teases you at 1 am. Mom thinks she'll be starving by the time it opens. Oh guardians of transit, do you have a soul on board for me to meet this time? Will I find them in the observation cart in hiking boots eating dry cereal out of a ziploc bag? I suppose that's getting lucky. Being courageous Mr. Mick Reynolds who liked Zagnut bars. This faceless guy in a good set of navy slacks with built in suspenders grabs a water cup. I feel like I might be getting motion sickness. I'm trying to ignore it.

In lounge car, took my hair out of my tight pony tail trying to ease the train sick. Lots of people sleep. More optimum stretch space I guess. Some younger kids with gauged ears and pajama pants laugh " I have to get this novocain shit injected into my crotch" says the girl. A sporty boy wearing no shoes and sweat pants watches a movie on some portable device. Something with Cameron Diaz and the guy from "Forgetting Sara Marshall". "Why can't I smoke a cigarette at every mother-fucking stop?" says girl. Why doesn't she get off for an Herbucha? These kids. Sporty boy is plugged with earbuds and behind the alternative crew sits some veteran beatnik guy, eavesdropping with eye glasses and a nappy beard. She has on a Hello Kitty robe. She would, wouldn't she? No Mick. No liquor-drenched breath boy to laugh and make assumptions about me, now if I was a drinker, there sits a mostly full bottle of Heineken, abandoned.

I am dipped in silence now. Some guy who looks like Allen Ginsberg stares at me and later asks me for the time. Says his watch is broken.

10:06 AM - Not a good gig trying to sleep. I'm groggy and sneezey. Mom has the prime spot. The window seat. We're passing through the West Virginia Mountains right now. By river, Through woods I really enjoy the little worlds people have built for themselves out here. I'm trying to understand do people live out here? Do they just come to stay a little while? Is there somebody there in that airstream sleeping? It's really neat. Id like to just pretend there are people in there right now. Little trailers scattered along the river in the woods like Christmas lights. I wouldn't mind trying  that. Either by myself of with somebody special. Maddy finally came clean in Chicago saying she doesn't think I'd like camping because I don't get into nature or something. And I came clean that anytime the idea is brought up to camp with her involved I'm freaked out because I already figured she thought those things. She was pretty annoyed and surprised but hey there's nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy or having pre-expectations of somebody to ruin that persons time. With myself I am completely free. No parents or Maddy in San Francisco. Alone, nobody could tell me anything. I knew myself then, for some of my potential to be a guardian of my own trail and I did well. I'm not one to let someone else's bad attitude ruin my chances especially when they don't even bother to understand. More trailers in huge clusters now. Large camping grounds, tent structures with cars, so I wonder how these people get in and out of forest trailer land. Some might say dreary, but it's drizzly out. And with the scenery of leafless trees, brown sticky objects, composting plant matter on the mountains and hills along the river, the gray overcast skies are some of my favorite weather. Like a Nicolas Roeg movie. Few roads in here. So travel to and fro must be tough. I want to walk with Alex Sapetelli down these tracks wearing no socks in my keds.

I'm sipping on my little mason jar of toddy and eating really old donut holes I bought at the snack bar for 3 whole dollars. Now I see beautiful thin, tall white trees! John Hurley is upset I did not call last night when I had the urge for one of his long conversations. No better place than an Amtrak lounge booth. In here right now is optimum light. Oh just the best light!

The dining car is officially closed for the rest of the trip. No tragedy there. Perfect luck. I got disconnected from the food stamps lady on the phone, there goes my interview. A miserable sounding woman.

Harper's Ferry is pretty. I'm looking forward to a bagel at the Union Station in Washington D.C. Not even train nostalgia can hide the fact that this food is F-ing bad. 20 minutes from DC mom's mad at me because we got into an arguement about whether or not I should try and get my money back for bad old donut holes. Well of course not. That's like returning a burrito to Taco Bell telling them it's unhealthy. She storms off with her microwave teriyaki bowl from the snack bar and she concerns herself with getting sick. She says I'm mean, I don't think so but maybe I am. A moving landscape, I chose 2 songs to listen to, Grauzone's "Trauma Mit Mir" and Carmody's "The Perfect Beat".

I can play with my turtle ring. I have one now like Maddy. We were at a clothing swap a couple of weeks ago. I was rummaging through a grocery sack of jewelry and there it was. It was too big and a little broken so I bent it smaller. Now we both have turtles on our fingers. Our wedding rings. Maddy Flannigan, turtle, love of my life. Always hurt, always excited, chasing after you and chasing with you. Maybe ... my blue is you.

Past 4PM - Possum Point Power Station, Northern Virginia. WE're board a commuter train DC to Richmond. And fast we fly down the tracks across a river.. I can hear the trains horn blow. The conductor yells "Quantico, Virginia". These little town stops. The guy startles me each and every time. I remember him, the same guy from last year, rude on the DC platform. This train even tried to close the gate on us. Bastards, can you believe that? Trying to take off before scheduled time. No excuses. The train gains speed again passing a primitive looking playground like some I remember down In Alabama. Lots of tires involved, but mostly I think it is the tall skinny pine trees, with the floor covered in beds of their needles. We pass a military academy of sorts in a mass like a pile of ants, men in uniform empty off a ramp coming down from a bridge over the train. Takes you by surprise, not something I would usually l see in real time. I don't know what river this is. The James? The Potomac?

At Washington DC Union Station I lick and seal the envelope hugging a fresh letter written to Mr. Dante. Mom and I sit at a two chair table at an "Au Bon Pain". I tell her I'm going to run and find a mail box, outside is chilly. I dno't have mnore than this man sweater. It is wet and ocvercast and the streets are crawling with people. I have only my letter, Jackie's letter in my hand. Not a mail box in site. A guard answers my wustion with too many bomb - related risks with stand alone mail boxes. Odd. I undestand I guess. He motions around the corner how there is an actual post ofic.ce So I start running, hopping puddles trying to spot it. Ladies see me with letter in hand and call out to me "The post office is around the corner!" And I understand. I see the row of blue boces and I approach in the drizzle. Even once across thest reet a girl motions at the post office for me from the little bus stop. I give a nod with my hands up. Little can describe the vigor that coursed trough my veins running up and down that wet sidewalk, filled with such excitement with unmerciful and unwavering love in my heart. I could have laughed. I keep writing I say, because you'll always have that. No matter what. With the little rectangle in your hand and sweater too thin, and a smile on your face.

These woods are still the color of an indian summer. Colors that belong on a Japanese art print. I move across to have my own window with a view. There is room on the commuter train.

The sky darkens with gray and pink and I like the decaying mint green bus in the distance. Cows. Open fields. The propper landscape to a Thomas Newman soundtrack. I'm hearing the character of LEster Berman from "American Beauty"'s voice in my head. Before station I'm thinking of seeing dad again. I can feel curious blisters popping up between the pen and my middle finger and ring finger. That's unusual. I'm thinking of Jackie. These woods remind me of the front and back covers of that first double tape he gave me, photographed by his ex girlfriend. The tape that will forever smell of old coffee that composted through the bottom of a Path Cafe togo cup. I'm thinking of Patti Smith in her book I'm almost done with and how her, Maddy, myself, women, boys, artists, we're all very much alike and how every one of us has a story worth telling. We're all out to find that thing we'll do that will make us feel worthy of the life we were given. Out to understand the atmospheres we create in.

The power comes on and off in here. I like it better off. Where with the darkening sky, I cannot see my reflectino in the window. I am excited for days with dad. I am excited for my tape, Kerry is dubbing which he claims is turning into a dance party. I'm excited for going home and that kombucha will be ready, and moms will prospering. I'm excited for the new Feng Shui of our living room and that Tino might become our room mate shortly. We'll see. I want to save money again and go to Italy in the fall with Valerie. She strikes me. I think we may have a dangerous spark in us together and I'm very curious. I'd like to sit down and start writing.... "Fyodor After" maybe from the point of some outside observer. I want to drive across the country with Granger next month. What is going to happen to us?

February 14, 2012 Tuesday

Sleeping in until noon, I still feel sleepy. Copying more mix tapes. Still need to mail one out to dude who likes my show. Man the guy keeps flooding me with videos and crap on the web. "Friending" him online might not have been a good idea.

Tonight we have "Cafe Boo" again. Last year around this time Maddy, Carl and I were scrambling I were scrambling about Parama and Strongsville looking for shitty decorations, fake flowers, etc. Man I need to find some streamers. Streamers have a real special place in my heart. Maybe I will fantasize about the voice behind "Private number". I pick up Maddy at Path. We'll go get groceries and such things. I hopefully will have 15 or 20 dollars in tip - a - roonies waiting for me from the shift I worked for Layla at Path on Sunday. Wasn't so bad. But it's a simple thing. To get back into that swing would be submitting and falling right back into those same old self - sustaining feelings. I might also be working a weekend at the end of the month, nights instead of going to New York City with Jack Jackson and Danny, Too bad, I must visit New York Film Academy. Visit Leo and Claire.

I've spent the last few days keeping myself busy sewing on things. I managed to sew the asses of several pairs of pants back together. The bongo jeans I remember I was wearing the night I met Jackie. So odd the things we remember. And I remember so much about that night. I was wearing those pants, an MGMT shirt and a purple knit minnie mouse sweater that was too small. We danced to "My Drawers" by The Time. I think Jackie asked if I had heard the track before. I think I'll write him a letter today. Rest in Peace Whitney Houston. I tore those jeans sliding across the floor dancing with Maddy and Aaron Dawn at James Waterman's warehouse space. Small price to pay. The other pants I tore simply bending over pouring coffee beans. Ridiculous. Then a cool pair of pants Grandma Michiko made. Tore those in a snowball fight about a year ago that occured in the street on Franklin and about 73rd outside Graham's house after his party. It was pure war. I think it was a costume party. I think Carl piled snow up Maddy's skirt. Carl Finkle, who spends saturday nights like a couple of nights ago watching me sing karaoke to Whitney Houston at Tinaaas and wrestling on floors, Marty's green carpet with Chubby, Jake, Marty, Andy Goldman to Rammstein's " Du Hast" played through youtube on the television set. Little firecracker. Nights like that I haven't had since high school. We talk about people we remember from high school and the rapid. Chubby slides laying backwards down the carpeted stairs and hits his head. I don't understand where in time before these events become good ideas to these folks. Sure damn hilarious to watch and of course the carpetted stairs become a solid source of entertainment. Carl gets in a clothes hamper and shoots down, Marty on the launch. The look on Carl's face as he picks up paranormal speed down the 2nd half is unforgetable. Like a bowling ball of flesh and plastic and Jake Dion special hair cut. I see the tears in his eyes in post. Hurt his back. Like the bruises of childhood. He'll live, and he'll do it again too.

3:02 AM - After a night of great fun with food, dirty poetry, with all walks of friends, a screening of "Badlands". Maddy and I place our friend Carl Finkle on our sectional couch because he is the product of mixing wine, mom's Bailey's, beer and who knows what else. Between moments of hurling over the side of our porch, he lays, fetal position on the cushions like the kids used to lay in kindergarden for nap-time. Ass-up in the air. At the end of the night I feel not at all burdened, but happy to have Carl in our care and in our warm home. I'm happy for my friends and to have them to share in a night like tonight. I see what is happening. The mess of dishes that linger in the kitchen, how the decorative candles have become puddles of wax in-grained to the make-shift table cloths we've made of our sheets & picnic blankets. The scene of chairs arranged, or more left in a state of chaos in the movie room. John sleeps under a mound of blankets we put over him under a canopy of pink and white streamers. I wish life could be so all of the time. I like taking the time to think of this now while I know it exists in real time in the adjoining room. It's special because it is going to be what I come to remember and what I come to miss, because I love Carl and Maddy, and Granger, and all of them so much, and as much as I hope we all stick together and around each other forever, i know things are constantly changing, and you can't help that. So you just have to observe it, and live it, and try to love it all you can before it moves again. It's really a fortunate thing I've found in all of them again, and in this rotting pile of bricks we call home that has put a roof over so many wonderful experiences, wonderful nights. I think I surge on inside about it. My love for all of this and them that burns an unforgettable fire. If somebody would remember us all the way we are now, I would be alright to do so. And I'm going to man I'm so happy, I bask and think as Carl lays on his stomach, nursing his drunkenness and dreams in an oven of body heat in covers, as Maddy dreams and pretty soon all of us will be asleep and dreaming under this roof. Now, ain't that something?!

The palm tree glows in the shape of my bedroom door, where it lets the light in.

February 10, 2012 Friday

6PM - Frank's Falafel at 65th and Franklin with Jack Jackson. We're supposed to meet up with Austin Hurley from Primal at some ritzy little place across the street from Happy Hound but both decided it was too expensive. He had just shown us this property he bought. The idea is for Jack to rent out one of the 2 apartments above the space at Starkley and Lorain. I went along to peek at them, I guess the previous owner had ran the spot as a jewel store. The guy had died though. There was a bit of a strange air about the place, not just being that it was practically gutted, or some of the left behind furniture, or the "gimp" room in the basement. Maybe the guy was a mystic. The place just seemed sad, and I kept spooking myself. Austin plans to put a Primal Coffee bar and sort of Co-op style market in the store front. Man it's got along way to go. Who knows, maybe it was the shaking fan, or the mysterious old key, or the valuable discarded stamps, or the bad blue carpet, I don't think John will be moving into the place.

We agreed after Ronnie Doyle came into conversation regarding the idea of making movies, namely "Clevelandia", hip modern kids trying to be apart of the "movement" to revive a dying city that we would all meet up. A trip to The Path and landing in during really awful guitar virtuoso at the helm we were going to drive out to Ronnie's native Parma as Jack said. It ended up being "Seven Hills", entirely different. Right around the corner from where mom works in Liberty. Ronnie's bleak neighborhood looked like a jet runway with houses on it, and his house looked like every other house in Settler's Reserve in Westlake, or like Mr. Dante's family home in Canterbury Estates. I told Jack that's where all the partying kids I heard about or met at Westlake High lived, Settler's Reserve. All of the kids whose parents would always be out of town or something of the like.

Ronnie seemed very energetic to have a new guest. As his scruffy looking older brother scurried around, most of which you could only hear, we were getting the small tour. The house was very much like Jackie's. Stairs up front, tv room, kitchen in the middle, extra family room on the right. What I remember about Jackie's is the pile of white tapes in boxes sitting in some nice chair he was working on. Everything reminds one of something, and things all too often remind me of Jackie or some little experience I had around him. He is never far from my mind. Even when he is very far indeed. So I tell Ronnie how it is so like the house I dreamed of living in growing up. The sunken tv room, full of windows, as Ronnie uproariously points out all of his mothers decorating choices he can't stand. The weird apple stickers and motifs on the walls under cabinets in kitchen. I tap on the fake-ass apple pie on the kitchen island that has a few cracks in it's otherwise perfectly preserved state. It's been dropped a few times. We sit at the table and he gestures to a center piece bowl of pine cones calling it "lazy". It's a very suburban home.

He shows off his little bedroom upstairs, blonde hardwood flooring, in socks you slide so easily. It's certainly a video making kid's dungeon. He points out his dvd racks he got from a closing Blockbuster. His Star Wars memorabilia, namely his two ended light saber signed by Darth Maul. He also has some Skywalker ray gun in a case. Looks real. A signed "Room" poster. He Elaborates on his emails to the director. While we visit Ronnie we are viewing several of his films. We watch his final 411 Steinman  project "The Robot Rapist". Self-explanatory. Little comments from cameo of J. Jackson, coat hood up scoping out a mutilated robot carcus in a dumpster. A bistandard. We notice there is this ghostly shit smell lingering around the couches and I make a cell phone video of Jack and Ronnie wrestling over "string thing", this little "candy raver" style toy that rotates a colorful string and shoots a black light at it.

Later watched "Blade Runner" at Kev Brennan's house with Kristen and Josh their roomate. I was disappointed, granted, a great looking movie, the characters were for the most part un-interesting and underdeveloped. I felt very un-invested.