what i just sent out to list:

okay, i’m not actually going to write much now, but just to say:

sunday, june 12th, DC Sita & i arrived in nyc. my filmmaking screenwriting friend Tom was kind enough to meet us to unload the car around 2.30pm, and after many a trip from the car to the third floor, carrying many a heavy box and/or bag, we treated ourselves to drinks & food at The Heights on broadway and 112th/111th.

other things happened; the next day, DC Sita & i had dim sum with my sister & co. at the unfortunately named but delicious restaurant Oriental Garden, on Elizabeth Street, and then had a walk over the peerless Brooklyn Bridge. later, we headed over to our friend & amazing-intimidating human Derek’s place in Williamsburg for Laundry Party #13 (yay). which went over quite well.

all in all, a fine first 24-hours in new york. The Journey is concluded, but not the discussion of The Journey, since i feel i’ve a bit more to ramble about. in any case, that is all for now. the weather here is perfect, and i’m quite content in my little bedroom surrounded by boxes, but feeling i’ve got a sense for the configuration of things.

(also written july 11th, posted july 15/16th)

there are hundreds of blueberries to be picked at my grandmother’s house; this task is a daunting one, because DC Sita & i will, ultimately, fail; there are simply far too many. still, at a later point in the day today (this post is also being written saturday, july 11th, but there is no internets on Ye Olde Farme House, so tomorrow will have to do), we finally throw ourselves at the blueberry bushes, pails in hand.

okay, we didn’t actually have pails; DC Sita had an old plastic container from something long forgotten, and i had a glass bowl, but the word “pails” feels so much more lyrical & befitting of the situation.

we ate many a blueberry, and are now hella antioxidated. that means i can flood my body with toxins again, because i’m practically immortal now.

earlier this morning, i ran down a few miles of Lancaster County road to my mother’s old high school, and spotted some raspberries. berries are everywhere, i tell you; everywhere.

i also spotted tons of poison ivy, which means that Evil abounds. i know i already used that joke in a recent post, except guess what, it’s not a joke. poison ivy is not a joke. it is a terrible, terrible crime against humanity. it deserves to be taken out back and shot, and buried in a mass grave (yeah i know mass graves aren’t funny, fuck you). urushiol oil, that which endows poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac with their Evil-incarnate Powers, should never have been invented by God. it serves absolutely no purpose, except possibly that whole CO2 into 02 conversion thing; and we could always just have more clover or grass or something to handle that.

tomorrow: NYC: The Journey Concludes.

[there was no internet-access june 10 - 12, and june 12 DC Sita and i arrived in nyc, to a whirlwind of car-unloading activity. so, finally, uploading old posts written a few days ago. there will be a couple of these...]

(written saturday, june 11th.)

(writing in an internet-less world; outside it’s thunderstorming heavily, the first thunderstorm of The Journey. DC Sita doesn’t remember her last thunderstorm, and suspects that whenever it was, it was out of the country; mine was last summer, when i was in nyc.)

(as i wrote the first parenthetical, the thunderstorm, as if to openly mock me, abated noticeably. what the fuck, thunderstorm? you’re making me lose face and shit.)

(also, as i’m writing this, DC Sita is flipping through a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook, which she purchased today at Horning’s Market, an Amish-run store. we are now in Pennsylvania Dutch country, which happens to also be Amish Country, and i suggested she get the cookbook so she could make shit like Scrappel and Jelly Veal Loaf for her friends. look out for Sita’s next dinner invitation, food lovers!)

(if you’re wondering why we are here, in the village of Reistville, which is near the town of Myerstown, which is near another town called Bethel, which is also the name and destination of an exit off the I-78 and about thirty miles or so from Harrisburg, we are here because my grandmother, who is Pennsylvania Dutch, lives here, as she has for over eight decades.)

quite miraculously (if you’re easily impressed, as i am), DC & i actually left Chicago yesterday three hours earlier than our usual departure time of 11am-ish. yes, we were out the door and on our way at 8am, navigating the nearly nonexistent rush hour traffic (no offense, Chicago – i’m sure you’ve got it in you. i mean, it’s great that you don’t have a real rush hour traffic. even if it’s because you’ve lost so many jobs that a number of people no longer have a reason to leave their homes between 6 and 8.30 in the morning, thereby fucking up the roadways with their profit-yielding lifestyles. yay, economic hard times: clearing the freeways & turnpikes for ne’er-do-wells with nothing to do but pack their shit into a car and drive decadently across the country – fucking assholes [the ne'er-do-wells, not the people-who-lost-their-jobs, and not the weird Chicago Entity i've been addressing])

(no, i don’t think people losing their jobs is something to laugh off; this was more of a “hey, the world’s totally fucked sometimes, isn’t it? yes, it is. glad we share that understanding and can laugh about it. so please get over your righteous anger, yes? i mean, i know your heart’s in the right place, but perhaps not your sense of irony? or perhaps you are assuming i’m retarded? not that you would ever use that particular word, because that would be fucked up, but you know what i mean? or, because i’ve now gone on for so long about this, i’ve lost you? good. you sure? okay. let’s move on then.)

whoa. where the fuck was i?

oh yeah. okay, we drove for thirteen hours, pretty much without incident. although at one point i noticed we were burning through gas a lot more quickly than we should have been – starting getting more like 15 mpg than 30ish, and that was alarming. but when we filled up next, the problem resolved itself so, i dunno – crappy gasoline station added water to their gasoline? really, really poor performance fuel?

oh, and we also saw a truck flipped over on its side, after a tunnel in pennsylvania. we hope the driver was okay.

we arrived at my grandmother’s farm at 9pm, just in time to catch some fireflies.

and now i’ve so exhausted myself with parentheticals that i feel it’s time to start a new post.

the thunderstorms have picked up again, along with the occasional torrential downpour, leading DC & i to conclude that we should just stay in for the night. so, this particular post shan’t get posted ’till tomorrow; not that it makes any difference to the Gentle Reader.

saw this on tv just now, local station – this cemetary scam’s been unfolding (for lack of a better word) since we arrived in chicago, and i hadn’t been paying enough attention; this morning news broke about Emmett Till’s body.

from an article in today’s Chicago Sun-Times by Mary Mitchell:

Broken. Rusted. Battered. The image of a glass-covered casket with the body of Emmett Till was shown around the world in the 1950s. But on Thursday, as hundreds of African Americans searched frantically for the graves of love ones, the battered casket of Till was rusting in the back of a shack at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.

The casket was surrounded by garbage and discarded headstones strewn about like litter.

Full article here:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/1660395,CST-NWS-mitch10.article

Alsip’s about half an hour south of Chicago.

fucked up.

getting on road now.

(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.

this morning, while running a few miles on a lovely & quiet country road (i don’t know if it’s technically “country”, and there was a road crew, at one point, doing some road-crew work, but “country road” still feels right), i spotted, amid the lush green foliage, some poison ivy, and was reminded that there is Evil, still, in this world.

and now, after backtracking a bit to visit our host’s business, we head to Chicago.

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.

okay, so apparently i am the only person of my acquaintance and beyond who didn’t already know this, but Kansas City has fucking amazing barbecue. we went to Oklahoma Joe’s, a place on Anthony Bourdain’s places-before-i-die-list or something. Oklahoma Joe’s is actually in KCK (the Kansas Kansas City, not the Missouri one), and is housed in a gas station convenience store, which itself is adjacent to what used to be a liquor store, but is now part of the expanded corporate offices of Oklahoma Joe’s, which is, understandably, doing pretty well. based on the number of people waiting in line (it’s order at the counter), the considerable length of which barely fluctuated the hour or so we were there (and we waited on line twice, so we could order something to go afterward), this particular business seems to be weathering the recession quite fantastically.

our host (& new friend? time will tell… but i’m trying to convince her to send me ribs in vacuum-sealed packaging) Tina, a good friend’s sister (thank you, friend, for directing us this-a-way) and DC Sita are far better versed in the Ways Of Barbeque than am i, so i learned a number of things, all of which i’m sure you already knew, but i’ll enumerate, anyway:

1. there is a competitive BBQ circuit (and Okalahoma Joe’s, of course, has figured prominently into said circuit);

2. the ribs had this awesome crust, and the meat fell off the bone, and were wet, as opposed to dry, and the sauce was tomato-based, as opposed to vinegar-based (the new thing learned being a few new ways to talk about & describe bbq items, which i’ve never really done before. okay, i told you you’d already know this stuff; you can stop feeling so superior, as i’ve already confessed my inferiority in this and other matters);

3. Kansas City is known for its barbecue (see the parenthetical for (2));

4. KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce is for tourists, even though it’s the best-selling bbq sauce; you want something more authentic & impressive, go with the Gates or the Oklahoma Joe’s or anything else;

5. we don’t know why an awesome Kansas City BBQ joint from Kansas City, Kansas, is named after Oklahoma.

um. okay. so ribs were fucking awesome. brisket was okay, but it didn’t come close to the ribs.

the fries, also awesome.

other things of note today:

- Tina drove DC Sita & me around a bit, and i think KSMO is a very cool-looking city with a bunch of old & new architecture i really liked. unfortunately, i am not learn-ed enough to describe to you the types of architecture, so you’ll have to take my word for it or google images it or something.

- there’s a place called the Plaza, several city blocks of buildings designed in a way that is supposed to be in the style of Seville, Spain; it’s actually a really beautiful district in that way, but, sadly, it’s now all corporate stores – used to be a shopping district of independently-owned places, and now it’s cheesecake factory, apple store, barnes & noble, starbucks, etcetc.

- BUT of the corporate places there, i did enjoy (1) Scooter’s Coffeehouse, a chain out of Omaha, where i persuaded a kind woman at the counter there to give me a used travel mug from scooter’s (yay free shit! and it’s totally more authentic because it’s used &  banged up); (2) Panache chocolates, which is a kansas city company, and where we had popcorn covered in dark chocolate; and (3) Better Cheddar, a cheese & more store, an establishment we visited, it seems, for the sole purpose of making DC Sita’s friend envious (as good a reason as any, and they had wonderful samples of cheese; and i can’t say no to cheese).

- i wish i had more time in Kansas City.

okay. that is all for now, as DC Sita & i must hit the road again to take off for our friend’s parents’ house thirty-four miles away; apparently, there are live chickens there, and strawberries. yay.

(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.