so two brief things that i hope to have time to elaborate on later – but right now i just need to get this up before i forget, as i promised a friend i would add a new post to The Rambles AKA My Crappy Blog section of my website by last night, which didn’t happen. so i made an executive decision to retroactively modify my use of the word  ”tonight” and give it a more figurative, less literal, meaning; so that when i said “i’ll make a new post tonight” what i really meant was “i’ll make a new post whenever, but probably sometime this weekend, or before monday, or something.”

i can do shit like that; it was my pledge/promise. i feel totally Justified.

but two things!

so there are some bars to which i am deeply indebted, for a number of reasons. for instance, some bars have five-dollar maker’s mark; some bars let you smoke (hardly any now, though, and i suppose that’s why they’re precious, since i wouldn’t want all bars to allow people to smoke, anyway); some bars are reliably not packed & annoying even on fridays & saturdays, but still somehow manage to stay in business; some bars have outdoor patios which are lovely.

and some bars let humans do cool events there for free.

so i had two experiences this weekend with Bars To Which I Am Indebted & Of Which I Am Enamored for that particular reason:

1. Ding Dong Lounge hosted a brilliant event yesterday/saturday called May Day, an all-day-into-night small press/zine expo that also had a line up of readers/performers. i was fortunate enough to be included in that line up. but the day overall was wonderful, and i thoroughly enjoyed hearing people’s work, handling people’s very exciting publications (that sounded dirty &/or creepy, although i didn’t mean it that way), and meeting good peoples. the organizers run their own presses, including Fractious Press and Kaboom! Press.

and here’s a link about the event: http://maydaydingdong.blogspot.com/

the folks who work at Ding Dong are also some of my favorite peoples. i’m just saying.

2. Botanica Bar hosted an event of my friends’ & my devising, laboriously entitled “3people + Laundry Party Public = People Doing Stuff at Botanica Bar.”

okay, so the formula/equation part of it was added pretty much at the event itself, but i think it still counts. i think we were billing it as “people doing stuff at botanica bar” and then explaining that it was 3people & LP public. but these are just details…i don’t think anyone cares but me, about the actual math. but i care. and my caring will somehow, somewhere, have an impact. or something.

3people consisted of theater artist Julia May Jonas, poet & editor Jocelyn Burrell, and me. we all did new stuffs, so it was totally Fresh and Raw and Dynamic and Innovative and Groundbreaking and all those adjectives that make art sound fundable. the bar was blissfully empty except for people there for the event and the bartender (not because the bar’s unpopular, but because people generally don’t start arriving until 9pm, when karaoke starts at botanica. the karaoke DJ at botanica, by the way, is in my opinion top notch). Botanica let us use their elegant & sumptuous backroom (uh, sumptuous by cool dive bar standards, natch), so we all felt very cozy & cared for & authentically nyc-dive-barry. okay, no one said that, or expressed anything like that at all, but i feel like putting words & thoughts in other people’s mouths, without any justification or basis at all. because i’m in a rush, which causes me to make sloppy summations of events (like, you know, capturing a mood for the evening,which should never be done in a sloppy fashion, but i’m doing it anyway. i Fail.).

and then we moved into Laundry Party Public portion of night, after an invigorating intermission, and poet & fiction writer Bushra Rehman read, and Derek Chung presented his Volunteer Crew presentation, and writer Nina Sharma read, followed by Warren Tong, and Torrey Townsend, and Quincy Scott Jones.

and it was a lovely night, although i sadly couldn’t stay for the karaoke starting up, but i think i can (this time) quite safely & accurately say that people overall were Inspired & shit.

cheers to all the cool bars.

If my calculations are correct (and my use of the word “calculations” is perhaps overreaching since I’m talking about basic arithmetic, here; but in the age of newfangled technological devices like “calculators”, I’m fairly impressed with myself when I can count to ten without assistance), there are nine days remaining of 2009. Which means there will never again in my lifetime be double-aughts following the first digit of the year.

(or in anyone else’s lifetime, lessen someone figures out that whole immortality thing in the next 900 years without humanity extinguishing itself first, which I suppose someone very well may; a thousand years isn’t all that long, after all.)

For some reason, my brief encounter with double-aughts after the first digit of the year, and the end of this brief encounter, mean something to me.

It occurred to me a little too late to really consider exactly what it is that the double-aughts means to me, or why I might miss it, but I’ll speculate here, briefly, and then move on to discuss exactly what it is that had me wide awake four hours after drifting off, when I could have actually slept in today and gotten a full night’s sleep (whatever that means), had my body only permitted me to indulge.

So, a brief speculation on the Significance of the Double Aughts.

Hrm, well, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, there is a lovely symmetry in the two zeros between the first and fourth/final digits of the year; not only a symmetry, but a space, a breath, between the chaos of the years…

(okay, I’m enjoying totally overanalyzing this: I live for this shit!)

So, the two zeros in a sense hold the center, provide an anchor of serenity and space in an otherwise tumultuous world of concrete value and cold calculations -

The Double Aughts represent a sort of breathing space, the eye of the storm, an opportunity to write a stabilizing force, a  counterbalancing neutrality, into each day.

Now, we will no longer have that reassuring serenity and breathing space written into the code of each day.

Now, I suppose, we are fucked.

(I don’t really think we’re fucked, not any more than we usually are, at any rate, but it seemed like a nice, snappy way to end my Speculation on the Significance of the Double Aughts.)

And now I believe I had told myself I was going to arrive at the thoughts that had me awake earlier than I intended this morning (nothing particularly exciting or revelatory, so please don’t get your hopes up) -

Well, since I spent so long on an unanticipated bloggery detour (the speculation on the significance of the Double Aughts), I will make this next bit very brief:

I have been thinking of late of two themes, possibly titles, for a series of work — could be two series of work, or they could combine into a single series. And by “series” I mean a series of scenes, or short pieces, or maybe just a single play. I really don’t know, only that I’ve been mulling over it for quite a while now, and found myself thinking about it of late.

The two themes are: 1. catalog of Failure; and, 2. the excavation series.

I use “failure” not in a pessimistic way, but I find instances of failure so much more interesting than instances of success; I find I generally learn more from failing than from succeeding (using the words “failure” and “success” in the fairly traditional, obvious sense; not the “oh I thought this thing was a failure, but in reality it was a success because x,y and z happened as a result”), and failure also makes for some funny shit. Also, Failure tends to make a Human that much more relatable. Not that I’m anti-success: go success, it’s awesome. But I’m talking, here, about ideas for something I’m working on. This is nothing new, I’m just thinking about it – perhaps I’m drawn a bit too much to silver linings, here, I don’t know. We’ll see.

The Excavation Series is something that could be entirely different or could be, as I said, part of the same thing. In any case, these are two ideas I’m tossing around, as the final days of 2009 continue apace.

And I suppose, before the year is out, I will do some end-of-year accounting, & take stock, & express bewilderment, and gratitude, and pissed-offedness, and all sorts of things, to properly review the last year from my own, Totally Self Absorbed Perspective (TSAP).

i just posted this (below) to facebook; i think it is the longest update i have ever posted, and now, having done so, i feel a bit ashamed & overexposed, and wonder why i felt compelled to share trivial bullshit over the interwebs. so i thought i’d make the most out of said feelings of shame & overexposure by sharing the post here, as well. more on that below, but first, the back-to-back update (which will be seen here as a single post, which isn’t really accurate):

en route to sf, 35,000 feet in the air or so, enjoying (enjoying?) free wifi. i have already received an email informing me that this free session is valued at up to $12.95. a few more months, i suppose, and this whole living-in-the-future thing won’t seem nearly as impressive; i might as well indulge the totally unmerited awe while it lasts.

(i am also impressed by being able to order coffee from the touch screen in front of me, although i feel rude taking advantage of this feature; i do it, anyway, though, since coffee is important to me right now.)

ah, it’s fun to quote myself, unnecessarily.

what did i say i’d say more of, now? ah, yes, i was going to elaborate on my decision to make the most out of my feelings of shame & overexposure by further shaming & overexposing myself in the rambles here. but now that i’ve reached this point in the rambles, i no longer feel like elaborating.

instead, i will mention that the passenger seated next to me, who was stoking the nearly-nonexistent flames of my Kindle envy earlier, is now involved in what appears to be a very intense anagramming session with the plane’s in-flight entertainment system. i am quite fond of my fellow passenger; earlier she ordered a reuben sandwich on marble rye, which came with a mini-toblerone bar. overall, she seems to be enjoying the shit out of Flight 11.

I am now on the verge of being a fully matriculated graduate student – mere hours away from registering for my fall semeseter  – so I thought I would take a moment now to summarize, for myself, the last seven weeks since The Journey concluded.

So, in a half-hearted effort to take stock before the next thing, I am going to bullet-point certain Events that have transpired, in no particular order (please to note: the term “event” is used here quite loosely; anything, even me purchasing a toothbrush, for instance, could be classified as an “event”).

NYC: July 12 – August 14, 2009:

• toothbrush purchased (I wouldn’t have written that, but for my parenthetical above. And now, the bar has been set, super low! anything will seem significant, from here on out.).
• IKEA bed purchased & constructed in new apartment.
• first NYC LP takes place.
• 2nd & 3rd NYC LP take place (at this point, I suppose, not such a big deal).
• Very Secret Project Of Which We Cannot Yet Speak develops, excitingly. Many videos related to said project are uploaded to youtube, which the gentle reader is not privy to, as the videos are set to private.
• french press is purchased; many morning coffees are made.
• a sibling is married, quietly, but quite movingly, in Kent, Connecticut. Blurry photos are taken by witnessing sister; but some infocus ones, as well.
• pictures are framed and hung.
• a flash fiction reading takes place.
• a new guitar song is composed.
• sunlight is appreciated, as are warm summer nights.
• the highline is visited, and raved over.
• the brooklyn bridge is walked, a few times; it doesn’t disappoint, as per usual.
• patacones are consumed in Inwood. fucking delicious.
• Fun Summer Activities in NYC, like free concerts in Prospect Park and Summer Stage, are attended & enjoyed. Also, sleeping in. Also, taking pictures of car, to be sold, sadly, in the coming weeks.
• rehearsals for Lydia’s Funeral Video take place, as does a runthrough with a mini-audience in my friend’s living room.
• Passengers board, and plane takes off without crashing.

SF: 8/14 – 8/27, 2009:

• Plane lands without crashing, and passengers disembark.
• Karaoke is sung for a friend’s going away party; Great Joy ensues.
• LP private & public take place.
• Pho is consumed, and enjoyed: O, Savory Exquisite Broth Most Wondrous.
• Lydia rehearsals take place, solitarily.
• Bold Formatting is used, at random.
• Very Secret Project Of Which We Cannot Yet Speak proceeds, with mounting excitement. Still, nothing yet can be specified or described.
• Kalbi is consumed, with friends, followed by a living room concert featuring the lead singer of a Great Band of the Pacific Northwest.
• bold formatting falls out of regular use, due to distaste of writer.
• Rounds of self-promotional emails/facebook messages/status updates/twitter posts are dutifully sent out, to sender’s distaste, resulting in feelings of overexposure and self-loathing. Still, words of support & encouragement received all around.
• Lydia’s Funeral Video is presented & performed as workshop production as part of Marsh Rising series; turnout is great, and writer/performer feels gratified & grateful for supportive peoples in her life. Also, show is fun to perform.
• More karaoke takes place; thoughts about the future loom.
• Segments for Local Comcast Show are filmed; many an awkward moment ensues.
• Boxes fail to be shipped.
• Plane takes off and lands without crashing.

NY: 8/27 – 9/1, 2009:

• Another going away party happens; wtf with all the people going away? many Doctors & Other Professionals are met.
• A grandmother is visited.
• A nephew whose arrival is imminent allows one of his aunts to feel his kick/stretch for the first time; aunt is duly impressed.
• Laundry is done.
• Class registration is planned.
• Flu-like symptoms are reclassified as allergy symptoms.
• A job is applied to.
• Preparations for the next LP in Williamsburg are considered.
• A vaguely meaningless, yet infinitely profound, blog post is composed.

(yesterday/day 6 deserves more than a parenthetical, as DC & i encountered our first heavy Rain While Driving, and arrived in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago around 9pm, when we met our gracious hosts. we were treated to dinner in chinatown, followed by a brief tour of the city highlighting the most egregious examples/displays of gentrification (including a brand new third Hugest Wholefoods Ever, seriously), and the now ubiquitous presence of condos… but, sadly, a parenthetical will have to do. perhaps more another time.)

day 7 was heavy on chicago doings – a bit more urban adventuring than DC & i had done up to this point.

started out with some exploration of Humboldt Park, which is a really beautiful green space just a block from our Gracious Hosts’ home, and has a lake/lagoon, bird/flower conservatory (or something of this nature), rose garden, fishing sites, and, uh, a lot more. including its very own active national guard post. i loved this park (not because of the national guard post, by the way); wish i could have spent more time with it.

after a leisurely coffee/breakfast experience (fried eggs & homemade banana bread – i’ve eaten way too well on the Journey, and am now ruined for the rest of the year, when i will have to fend for myself), DC & i headed over to the Michigan Avenue bridge, & Wacker Ave, where we signed ourselves up for a boating architecture tour run by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  i finally learned what art deco meant/looks like (and, look, aside from remembering that it stresses verticality and incorporates some kind of horizontal something or other, i’ve forgotten what it means/looks like already! uh, also something about the armchair versus wedding cake style. but i took notes, which aren’t with me as i’m typing this, so i’m sure once i re-glance at them i’ll retain more than i think. i hope). it was a beautiful day, sun shining, breeze blowing, water sparkling, so it’s kind of hard to complain – wonderful tour of the city, even if the tour guide  left out a lot of the more reality-based information received on our tour from the night before, but it’s CAF’s job to make Chicago look good, so i understand if they’re not really gonna go into detail about the surge in/consequences of condos-construction/development… i took some pretty pictures, which you can see here (okay, not yet). you can google image chicago, and you’ll get the basic idea; my photos have nothing to offer but blurriness & the associated suggestion of border-crossings & such.

after our decadent ninety minutes on the river, we headed over to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had what i found to be a life-enriching (no irony! no irony! i left the museum feeling like a Better Human) Olafur Eliasson exhibit, Take Your Time. there were a number of installations and sculpture and photographs from the early ’90s to more recent years, including my favorites: beauty (1993 – an installation of a fine mist with a spotlight on it, it’s the exhibit’s cover image) and a room for one color or a room for all colors (again, notes not with me. so, live with the ambiguity, a theme that was actually discussed in a video interview, more discussion of discussion coming up shortly). i also watched an edited video interview with eliasson, in the educational center of MCA, conveniently located near the restrooms. i’m hoping i can find this interview online, somewhere (the museum folks weren’t sure if it or a transcript were available somewhere), but he talked a lot about some themes that resonate – how it’s good that there are places where doubt exists, and where you can experience “the friction of uncertainty” (maybe i shouldn’t direct quote that; i’m not certain those are the exact words), and some other concepts along these lines – damn, need those notes.

i also appreciated, during the interview, the following totally paraphrased exchange:

interviewer (probably the/a curator?): A lot of people are talking about the definition of contemporary art – what is contemporary art, what isn’t, what it means – what is contemporary art?

eliasson: (sighing heavily, removing his glasses a bit to rub his eyes, as if weary of the question [look at me totally unfairly characterizing his gestures], and finally, after a pause) luckily, i’m an artist, so i’m not focused on categorizing art; i’m more occupied with de-categorizing art. i’m not a curator or a collector, so i’m in the business of de-categorizing art…

(terrible paraphrase! he was way cooler & more eloquent when he said whatever it was he said. i will be looking for a transcript of this interview somewhere…imagine what i paraphrased, but much sharper, and more incisive (& less redundant), and with awesome shiny metallic glasses frames.)

okay – more on that later, perhaps – on to the third part of Cultural Edification in Chicago -

DC Sita & i were considering checking out Second City’s mainstage production, America All Better. it was sold out, but we arrived right in time to sign up for the first two spots on the wait list, and managed to make it in. basic premise of the show, which is sketch, is that everyone’s hopes and spirits are up because Obama was elected, but the world still sucks in many ways (i.e. healthcare, the economy, the war, etc). while somehow that premise already feels old, they did a great job of it, even with (what i think was) an all-white cast save the one black dude.  the first half included much belly-laugh hilarity (with lines like “we should have exposed him to the molesters; toughen him up a bit” [said by one parent to another, after their thirty-five year old son moved back in after losing his job and his condo]). also, a lot of smart takes on race in america – i mean Race in America – even if many of said takes feel overdone. except i don’t think they’re overdone in mainstream stuffs, so maybe i’m just impressed that this kind of relatively sophisticated humor took place at Second City. or maybe i’m just being a patronizing asshole.  yeah, that, probably; i am, sometimes.

second half was different; it seemed the writers were relying on the audience being deeply intoxicated by the second half, and shitty jokes/half-baked concept sketches would pass for comic genius. which, amazingly, they kind of did, for much of the 300+ house. sadly, however, DC Sita & i were not drinking, so there was much staring to be had. still, some bright moments here and there, and i appreciated (if i go into detail, it will be a later post; i’m just doing this now so i can feel Accomplished, and because i don’t think i’ll have much internet access in Reistville, PA, our next stop).

third set was all improv, and was a bit painful, in spite of the obvious skill & talents of the performers.

lesson being: sometimes improv sucks.

but overall: a very fine time in chicago. afterwards we spent some hours with our hosts, who have many stories to tell. none of which i will divulge at present time; you’ll just have to deal with the unbearable suspense.

sleep now, as DC & i have a twelve-hour or more drive tomorrow. if all goes according to plan, we should be among the Amish & the cows by nightfall.

okay, we’re officially in day 6 now (and halfway through The Great Journey East), but i must mention a few things about day 5, post-ribs.

day 5, part II: DC Sita & i, after spending forty-five minutes searching in vain for a touristy Kansas City postcard to send to my parents & for a touristy Kansas City magnet that DC can give to a friend’s mom, Mrs. Soh (DC gave me the greenlight to Name her on this blog, which helps lend an air of authenticity to the thing, i think), we finally arrive in Oak Grove, about thirty or forty miles east of KSMO. our friend’s folks live in Oak Grove, and there we were treated to an abundance of fresh vegetables grown in the garden, including but not limited to the following:

1. watercress (it actually grows in water! like in a river/stream-like channel that leads to a lake! it looks like this:

- oh, right. i don’t have photos on this blog. don’t worry, DC Sita is a photographer-extraordinaire, and one of these days, once her hard drive is rescued/restored, she will add photos somehow.)

2. turnips

3. something which looks like turnips, but with a slightly greener hue – we think they’re called kholrabi

4. snow peas

5. broccoli (okay, the broccoli wasn’t from Chau’s garden, because apparently broccoli invites worms, and Chau doesn’t use any pesticides. but they were from her friend’s garden, so they still count)

6. potatoes

7. zucchini blossom (i’d never had this before – two enthusiastic thumbs up, unless you’re a vegetable-hater, which you very well may be)

8. tomatoes, cucumber, jabaneros, onions, thai basil (the last few were all raw, on the same plate, so they are lumped together on (8).)

we also had tofu & chicken. and mango. and watermelon. um, we were well cared for.

so, apparently, Missouri is good for vegetables as well as for ribs.

we had a lovely time with our hosts, who grow their own vegetables, raise their own chickens (about 100, although three dozen were killed, recently), and run marathons. okay, so our hosts are a little intimidating. but they gave us wine and told us stories (including one about a python who ate a two-year-old in florida) and made us feel very much at home, and promised us mango-banana smoothies & coffee in the morning*, so we went to sleep feeling more comfortable than intimidated.

also, we had a toast to transitions: one of our hosts, after a few decades in IT work, is returning to the field of social work. big career change, about which he is very excited (he just got the new job that day), and with DC Sita & i both embarking on the strange new world that is graduate school, a toast to transitions did seem appropriate.

oh, and full moon last night.

*promises fulfilled, as of 9.54am local time.

(note: i wrote this last night, but there was no working internet last night (mon, 7/6), so i’m posting it now)

in Kansas City – KCMO, not KCK, a distinction i just learned today, because i’m ignorant. KCMO = Kansas City, Missouri, as opposed to Kansas City, Kansas, which according to our very kind hosts is not the real Kansas City; KSMO is (okay, i’m paraphrasing, but that’s the jist. it’s a decades long rivalry).

left Denver this morning – around 11am, which seems to be DC Sita & my preferred departure time-ish. spent the bulk of the day driving through the long & flat of Kansas, which gets a bad rap. okay, the first time i drove through Kansas, in 1998, it felt excruciatingly long & boring & painful; this time, however (although DC may disagree), i found the landscape quite lovely, even if each hour did seem to pass quite slowly, and i was further intrigued by the proliferation of jesus & anti-abortion billboardage. whoa, Kansas – totally upped the highway billboard ante. before Kansas, i don’t recall noticing a single anti-abortion sign (i’m sure i just missed a few) – not in California, or Nevada, or Utah, or Wyoming, or Colorado – not a one did i notice. i may have noticed a few jesus signs, but nothing extraordinary. but Kansas: shit. suddenly they were everywhere. Kansans – at least the Kansans who can afford to purchase advertising off the I-70 – are really into blaring their messaging across the state. so suddenly, there were many, many large rectangular endorsements for birth and against pregnancy-termination.

there were the standards: “thanks, mom, for choosing life”; “adoption, not abortion”; etc.

but the most captivating by far was a handmade sign, fairly large, which i read as: “Abortion Stops A Beating” – a message which i found both arresting & baffling, and sparked a whole new train of thought in my admittedly highway-benumbed brain: abortion stops a beating? is this message pro-life or pro-choice, politically speaking? i am unsure. hm…mebbe, abortion can stop a beating, because if you have some fucked up lover/husband/parent/someoneinyourlife who doesn’t want you knocked up, an abortion, without said person’s knowledge, will prevent a beating from happening. because you never have to tell them you’re pregnant, you can simply terminate the pregnancy, and hey, beating averted! that’s fucked up, but i’m interested. keep talking.

so i’m pondering the message of this sign, and actually beginning to think it’s quite subversive in its messaging & spin, when DC Sita points out the graphic of the heart to the right of the word “beating.” ohhh. abortion stops a beating heart. okay, i get it, i’m retarded. still, up until that point, i was pretty fucking interested.

there were a fair number of jesus signs, as well – one punnishly successful one, scrawled in huge letters across what i think was a barn, that said in the first line:

“no god, no peace.”

and in the second line of text:

“know god, know peace.”

holy shit; agnostic or no, that’s pretty profound. well done, maximizing on the eccentricities of the english language.  i’m sold. that’s pretty good.

other than that: so far, so good; we passed through Kansas safely into the Missouri side of Kansas City, enjoyed some delicious homemade brisket courtesy of our friend’s sister’s husband & sister, and are now settling into the night. no internet, at present time, but we will upload this later, like tomorrow sometime. “we” being a totally unnecessary use of the royal we. or maybe i just like to feel i have friends with whom i am acting in concert.

okay. i’m beat; driving through Kansas can really wear you out.

(we’re actually in day 2 of The Journey, but since i didn’t get to a few things last night, i’m going to quickly mention them here; day 2 will be the next post; i’m sure you are all eager anticipation.)

okay, in no particular order, Day 1 of The Journey included various Glimpses of America & other sundry items:

1. Lovelock, CA.

at Lovelock, CA, which is apparently only three and a half hours outside of Oakland, but which felt like a day’s travel outside of Oakland given that we had been sitting in traffic for an unreasonable number of hours between Oakland & Sacramento (so we felt hella accomplished & journeyed by the time we arrived in Lovelock, where we settled for an uninspiring meal at Cowpoke’s Cafe), i overheard a snippet of conversation at a neighboring picnic table:

Woman-1: (pointing at a toddler seated at the head of the table) That kid is like ninety-eight percent white.

Woman-2: No. He’s fifty percent white, twenty-five percent Indian, and twenty-five percent Japanese. Get it right.

(Toddler, in typical blissful toddler ignorance, makes a toddler-like sound & gesture; probably crumples up a napkin & throws it on the floor or something. you know, the kind of useless yet endearing shit that toddlers do.)

Woman-1: Well what kind of Indian? Your’e what, a quarter breed? Look at Wesley’s dumb ass.

(Who is Wesley? Is Wesley the Toddler? We just don’t know.)

point being: there is a strong & vibrant multiracial community out in Lovelock, California, a day’s travel outside of Oakland (if your’e dumb as shit & leave Oakland on the 4th of July weekend).

2. nighttime rainbow.

while driving in Nevada, somewhere after Winnemucca (and shortly after DC Sita & I received a reality check as to how close to Salt Lake City we were [i.e. not close at all]), we started seeing a fairly awesome display of lightning in the sky at what seemed like reasonably far distances – but it went on for quite a while, and was the cause of many “ooh”s and “ah”s and “holy shit”s in our (asofyet) trustworthy jetta. there was also some light drizzle; and the moon was out, so there was some steady illumination going on. at a certain point, i looked to the left (which was, i think, if i can trust my really shitty navigational skills, north) and saw a rainbow. mentioning a rainbow spotting seems a bit unnecessary, and hamfisted, except that this rainbow spotting occurred well after the sun had set, around 11pm, and the sky was dark, except for those aforementioned cracks of lightning & the not-quite-full moon. it was a night-visiony low-contrasty sort of rainbow, and even though it was grayish-colors, set on a grayish sky, it definitely had a luminous quality about it, which was quite haunting and lovely given the context. so: nighttime rainbows, two enthusiastic thumbs up. DC Sita told her person/dude about the nighttime rainbow, and he asked if we were high at the time. fuck that: it was an awesome nighttime rainbow. we couldn’t photograph it, though, so you’ll just have to trust us. or not. i wouldn’t, necessarily.

3. the silver lining of enduring traffic.

sitting in traffic on a holiday makes you feel like you’re part of a mass movement of people all celebrating a holiday together, even if painfully so, and even if you didn’t intend to be part of the holiday.

4. a note on Nevada.

Nevada is a longer state than i realized. also, there are casinos at gas stations.

5. diversity corridor.

on the drive, Sita tells me about how, years ago, shortly after being admitted into her college, she was one of three incoming freshmen who indicated an interest in living in the “Diversity Corridor” at her school, which ended up being a tiny room housing those particular three people. so the Diversity Corridor became more of a Diversity Chamber.

6. lukewarm coffee that is probably ten hours old from a gas station in Elko is still useful when you have several more hours to drive and it’s already fairly late.

enough said.

7. pulled over in Salt Lake.

okay, it was just outside of salt lake city. we were probably ten, fifteen minutes from the hotel. it was 1.50am Mountain Time. we’d been on the road since 11am-ish. the speed limit’s 75 (and here we switch to a present tense narrative voice, to make the story that much more gripping), so i’ve been pretty good about sticking to a respectable yet lawful-enough 80mph throughout Nevada & Utah. so, we’re nearing our destination, at my respectable-yet-lawful-enough 80mph, when we pass a cop car i hadn’t spotted until we’re actually passing it. even though i’m going just 5mph over the speed limit, some buried fearofcops kicks in and i feel like i’ve just blown by him at 100mph or something, so i hit the breaks suddenly upon seeing the car, making the asofyet trusty jetta jolt a bit, which just makes us look like guilty sin-committers. at first we seem to be in the clear, Sita and i convince ourselves we’re fine, we haven’t done anything to merit being pulled over, and we continue on our way. but then, of course, the flashing lights appear in the rear view mirror; we pull over. we’re both a bit nervous, given that we are in an Alien Land, it’s late, and our heads are filled with horror stories of polygamous nondrinking Mormons & their ilk. probably, my palms are sweating. or perspiring. or something of this nature. the cop approaches, ducks his head so he’s level with the passenger side window. he looks like he just walked out of a Disney movie, the, you know, stereotypically wholesome=white kind, pre-diversity initiatives. he’s very upbeat, and friendly, and politely informs us that Utah law prohibits people from driving if the view out the rear window is blocked. (note to the concerned reader, should you actually be out there: rest assured, we made sure before setting off that we had visibility through rear window. but the jolty-suddenbreaking and the fact that we still had a lot of shit piled up in the car – and possibly the fact that the cop was bored out of his mind – provided him with a modified lens through which he viewed our car as being not-in-compliance.) anyway, we were released shortly thereafter, without a fine or anything worse, and arrived at our destination shortly thereafter. the challenge after that was getting a toothbrush & realizing that wifi wasn’t free. curses.

8. yay, glimpses of America.

okay. that’s enough for Day 1 of The Journey. maybe it should be The Great Journey East. yes. let’s make this The Great Journey East. that sounds exotic and shit.

this morning—technically yesterday morning—my friend & artist-person whom i somehow managed to persuade to be my Driving Companion (DC), Sita, set off on our Journey Across America (JAA [i will not be using this particular shorthand again, as it seems to imply some sort of Japanese-ness, and there's nothing of the sort involved in this Journey, although there is some Japanese ethnicity in the mix, i suppose. but still]).

we got a later start than anticipated, and started our Journey (but i will retain the unnecessary capitalization of the word “journey”) slowishly, amid much festive, holiday traffic. so it took us about fourteen hours to reach Salt Lake City.

so all i will say at this point, before crashing, is that i intend to post some remarks here and there about the Journey Across America. i will even create a category in this poorly-updated blog called Journey Across America. and then all two readers of this thing can check in from time to time to see how the Journey is progressing.

so far, though, in addition to enjoying the celebratory traffic, we have stopped at a number of colorful gas stations, viewed some of the many proud casinos of America, overheard a conversation in which a toddler was referred to as 98% white by his grandmother, and survived being pulled over by a cop ten miles outside of our destination (almost made it).

[it wasn't for speeding, okay. i know what you're thinking. or i think i know what you're thinking, even though i'm probably wrong. anyway. glad we had this little chat.]

also, we have snacked on salami, peanuts, and beef jerky. so the road trip is now officially underway.

more later. now, sleep.

I have run out of coffee. In running out of coffee, I realize again that I drink too much of it, probably more than even a typical caffeine-addict, and that I’ve come to think of coffee as a sort of brewed magical elixir that fortifies my spirit. This can’t be true; especially not of the cheap tasteless sludge I’ve been drinking of late – but I still imagine it’s true, and somehow that fiction makes my day better. If that’s the case, then I suppose the lies I’ve been telling myself actually assume a truth of their own, wielding incredible powers in the world of Me. At certain times, these are the only truths that matter.