allow me to try and turn around and look back
and tell you, the person reading this, what I see.
this process though, this looking back is akin
to driving down a dark and winding road to
attepmt to tell someone a story whose asleep in
lying across the backseat… nonetheless i will
risk our lives to acturately and
honestly recount the visions im having here
in the drivers seat. one hand resting on
the bottom of the steering wheel.
and you in andout of sleep
doing your best to listen but ultimately
dreaming your own dream. the way a child is
lulled to sleep by the automobile. to be held
suspended in motion.
I will ultimately tell you many lies about what
i am seeing when i turn to look back. some will
be to spare you having to see something i shouldnt
have and other lies to spare myself those moments
in my past that i have not seen myself.
a lie is a whole in the page that sun may shine
through.
i should tell you now that i do not know the
difference between a truth and a lie. i know
like phantoms one may become the other and vise
versa. especially in our wanders through
the wilderness of the memries and recollections
of your lives lived up until this very point
im not certain i could honestly tell you about the
breakfast i had this motning, let alone the
lost continent of my childhood. maybe it was
made fertile the way a schorced forest does
when its left alone. i do not know
the life i have lived up until this moment
is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.
i have been afraid to look back on it, i have
made a life entirely situated on gesture of
leaving it behind, but like standing and staring
into the setting sun.. there with you your
truest companion your silent confidant you
ghost … your shadow. your past. both
alive and dead and never stops following you
when you eat an ice cream cone or fallin love
or betray a friend .. its all remembered in that
deep dark cellar of your own living
darkness
(2)
Two hours have walked by between this page and the last
becease I am having trouble turning back.
but I will try to make out some shapes for both
our sake. im just going to start writing them out.
My grandfathers old white house. built in 1903
surrounded by apple trees, black walnuts, and pines
an island in a corn field sea. a dirt road. 3 red
barns. my grandmothers ghost.
I often tell people I grew up on a farm in
Michigan.. but yousee, this is one of those lies.
I dont tell people about the double wide trailer
at the end of a dead end street in a dead end town
that was given its frist street light when i was
a kid.. everyone came to that intersection to
bare witness.. people stood on each corner having
their thoughts about what that light meant for
them and their smalll town..
I made that up.. but im sure it happened.. a truth
or a lie? i dont know.
Im telling you things all the while we are on our
wayto a place neither of us have been.
Ill continue to tell everyone i grew up on the farm
because everything that took place in that vinyl
sided manufactured shell of a home is what led
me out into the world with a bookbag a blanket and
maybe a 100 dollars. i was 17, I am 34 now.
if the springtime of my life had only been
that farm, im certain i would not have hadto leave
home in search of world that no longer exists.
or ever did.
as a rule, i have not stayed anywhere longer than
3 months for the last 17 years. something happens
around that time… where I have to go. i become
very restless, unsettled, and ultimately very
cynical. so its in my best interest to gather what
belongings I have. into a backpack and hold Walt
Whitmans words in Song of the Open Road near to
my heart. at this point i have turned over every
stone (lie) and traveled every highway (true?) in
America. I have successfully made this
country a singluairty. so now and even for some
time all this going feels like a sort of staying.
if i want to experiemce the bea uty of the desert
imus t findmyseld at theocean
page 3333
…and so on.
Im sitting at old table In an old wooden house
in upstate New York. there are 5 dogs and Two
white Horses here. I rode frieght trains
from Montana. a few days before that I had gotten on one
in Miinneapolis bound for Washingtons Orcas Island
a small island in the San Jauns. Home to an eclect
ic population. so I had the thought that I could show
up and build a small shack out of driftwood and be graci
ously accepted into this community of ecclectic whit
e haired old people.. all of which i completely
fabricated.. because this is how i survive. and often
i am compeletly wrong in where i am going and what i
will do when i get there. I often feel like a pen in th
e hand of god and america the land beneath myfeet is
the page.. and a story completely beyond me is being
written in a language Toliving and large to comprhend
but still i feel it when im in my best state. i see
threads or patterns too delicate or to living to spe
ak of. or atleast i had never tried. it was enough
to see myself woven into the fabric of it all. ive
sought ways to try and capitalize off of the beauty
i see out on the road.. our in the middle of it all
i let everything disolve.. all names all ideasof
AMERICA. and I a man standing about six feet
off the surface of it all. earth is not her
name. I imagine or i feel the sky like a giant
satin sheet drapped over everything. enveloped
asleep on the coldhard but not uncomfortablewell
of a freight train. dreaming vividly. bounding
toward nowhere toward nothing towards AMERICA
and still i have not arrived i have not found it
aside from old photographs or books. and still…
its reminds me of a poem i wrote a couple
years ago “All of your sons
Have Broken Your heart
your are the road all
lost children travel
to find their way home
and though we may never
find it
we may rest
beneath her Banner“
(4)
two beers have walked by, between this page
and the last
if youve been reading this, i hope its been
coherent at the very least. its difficult and
fun to talk about nothing. like dancing like
anything, its about nothing. the highest form
of expression. i am not sure thats true its just
one those things you write, it may be true.. but
we dont know.
we draw a circle around something and we leave
out the rest of creation.
i sit here with my dog asleep at my feet. her name
is Tula . without Im not sure id be alive. she
goes everywhere with me. im her shadow. shes loved
by everyone everywhere we go.
I will update you on my current dilemma which is
often, the Dilema? not sure on the spelling.
Today is second day of autumn and summer wasted
no time going south. i dont blame it. but if i dont
shake up some work in this sleepy valley then im
going to have to get on a train with summer and go
I may be able to put some cedar shingles up on
cabin the neighbor is building, or work in a older
womans weed garden.. but these are speculations.
as it alwyas is. im exhausted but i have a lot of
life in me.
im going to take a moment and finsih
my beer and come back and fill the page and say
my goodbyes…
I found this old olivettie typewriter in a busted
old trailer behind the cabin.. and toomy suprise
the ribbon had some ink in er.
its about 5 oclock the dogs are asleep. drew sits
behind me knitting. taylor is upstairs cutting up
quilts and making jackets. nick drake plays on the
bluetooth speaker.
if i write you again
i dont know where ill be
and if you hear from me
ill be sure to
to let ya know
w i t h l o v e
- fin