On Books (1)

I also read books. And, really, I do. Not as much or as many as I'd like, but still, I do. Books are wonderful. I like words. The sounds words make. The way certain orderings of certain words can evoke emotions like hate and anger and desperation. But, mostly, the thing I like about books is when you feel as though the author has come over for a private visit with you to let you in on a little secret. Shhhhhh, says the author, don't let anyone know but man oh man do I have a story to tell you!

It's my goal this year to go on a reading rampage. I'm still relatively new to the whole reading game, so I don't feel so bad about not having read some of the "classics" or "gems" or "quiet masterpieces" of our time. But it's high time I get with it and start digesting some books. I'll try to post some stuff on here about my forays into reading. I feel as though I really shouldn't attempt it with much gusto, however, because Nick Hornby already does this whole schtick over at The Believer. Still, I've wanted to chart my reading history for quite some time and this place seems as good as any, no? Yes, it does.

So here are some books I purchased recently with links to purchase them yourself, should you feel so inclined. Oh, the links will be to Powell's Books (Oregon) when possible, or Labyrinth (New York), places where you should try to buy your books. Independent bookstores are the only bookstores for me! Usually. Anyway, the list of books purchased:

1. Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
2. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov (translated by Dimitri Nabokov)
3. Zoetrope All-Story Vol 10 No 3
4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
5. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
6. Dear Mr. Capote by Gordon Lish
7. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
8. I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch
   
9. Lost Positives by John Cotrona
10. The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme
11. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
12. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
13. Walker Evans (a monograph)

Of those books, I've already gotten around to reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Lost Positives by John Cotrona, and The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme. I've been, admittedly, very late getting aboard the Vonnegut bus. I'm not exactly sure why I never picked up a book by him. I think a lot of it has to do with the notions of science-fiction that I associated with the man, and also with the fact that I felt since I had already read Ray Bradbury there wasn't a point to dealing with Vonnegut. I know, now, how dumb that is and that there isn't much of a relation between the two other than the fact that they lived during the same century and were both good writers, but, well... It's interesting to see how the mind works. I connected the title Ferenheit 451 with Slaughterhouse-Five in my head and, thus, felt like I had read both by reading one. So dumb of me. Especially because Vonnegut is so absolutely brilliant. The real start of my newfound fascination was a girl named Stephanie. She had a tattoo of the infinity symbol on her back (no, not in that dumb lower back area that acts as an ejaculation target) and when I told her it seemed sort of silly she explained that it was from Breakfast of Champions. Oh, said I, feeling dumb, because any tattoo that is related to a book is a good tattoo in my opinion. So then I read Breakfast of Champions and was awed by how fast I read through, about how captivated I was, about how there was something about his direct address of the reader that was unique and not affected or cheap. It was great, and made me think. So then, Slaughterhouse-Five didn't dissappoint me in the slightest. The story of Dresden's destruction through the time-travelling eyes of Billy Pilgrim. Bravo. So it goes.

John Cotrona was once the manager at the bookstore I frequent here (Labyrinth). Apparently he tired of selling books and decided to write his own. Lost Positives takes off where Aaron Cometbus leaves off (the book is, indeed, dedicated to Mr. Cometbus). But the stories inside this little book are decidedly Cotrona's. They exist on endless stretches of road, in mobile home parks in Alaska, in beds with women who leave, in bottles of alcohol. There's a lot of texture in these stories and they charmed me. A quick read, but one where you'll be wondering if you've just read fiction or non-fiction, and the blurring of that line always gets me, a la Bukowski, Fante, Hamsun, et al.

As you can see by the secondary name of this "blog," I'm quite a Donald Barthelme fan. Mandatory reading would be the two Penguin collections of his short stories: Sixty Stories and Forty Stories. It's quite a thrill to be able to say that I've never read anyone that writes like Barthelme. How rare is it to say that? And to say it with 100 percent honest conviction? His writing is because of this world, but not of this world. It exists in a strange grey area where giant half-dead, half-mechanized fathers can be dragged across the wilderness. And where, in the same story, four friends eat prawns. There is a preciseness in all of his eccentricity. An earnestness. A way in which you can feel him frustrated with the world, perhaps so frustrated that all he can do is laugh. And, when you read his books, you laugh in this special way where you realize you are laughing at yourself, at what you believe, at just how ludicrous life and living is. Bravo. A master.

So, then, while I'm on subject of Donald Barthelme, I figure I should explain where some of the books on that recently purchased list up there are from. I was roaming around the interweb the other day and found an article from the archives on The Believer's site written by Kevin Moffett. See if you can follow this: Kevin Moffett was instructed in the ways of writing by Padgett Powell. Padgett Powell, in turn, was instructed in the ways of writing by Donald Barthelme. Passed down from generation to generation was Barthelme's "syllabus," the 91 books that he finds to be mandatory reading. Read the article, but, more importantly, look at the lists:



The Believer, incidentally, is a great non-fiction magazine with articles about many things literary, a lot of things musical, certain things comedic, but all of which are very interesting. The subscription is pretty cheap, so try it on for size.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a video I watched the other day on the interweb. Charles Bukowski is another favorite writer of mine. I feel as though I'm not really allowed to say that. I feel as though, if you plan on being any sort of "writer" with any sort of "credibility" you can't say that you "like" good 'ole Buk. Hogwash. The dude was a dude of the highest caliber and his books read like stale milk that, somehow, tastes good. Michelle watched this documentary on Buk called Born Into This the other day and it got me thinking that there might be some footage of the man online. And, boy oh boy, was I correct! Make sure you watch the whole thing:



You fuckin' shit.
Al

Last of the Milka Maus

So, I have finally ate the last of the Milka Maus. The Milka Maus chocolate candies became a favorite of mine last year when my former flatmate, Matthias, introduced them to me. Matthias is a German man from Dresden, the grandson of Nazi officers, the victim of evil Eastern Germany tyranny and fascism, a witness to the tearing down of The Wall, a law professor, a kind man, a good man, a good-sized man, and a connoisseur of exotic womenfolk. Anyway, Matthias, who I'll now refer to as Matthias the Great, was also a connoisseur of chocolates (and cheese, wine, tabacco, etc) and brought back many fine specimens to our little Apartment 45. Anyway, Matthias the Great took off for Germany earlier this summer so the last time I saw him was way back in May. Boo. Thumbs down. But, the sweetheart that he is, Matthias the Great left a box of Milka Maus chocolate candies sitting on my desk, awaiting my return.

The candies are little bear-like mice creatures that melt well in the mouth and coat the tongue with a rich, milk chocolate goodness. I think they are supposed to be healthier than normal chocolate because there is some carob or something in there, but, well, I eat them because they are great tasting. I was limiting myself to one or two a day and savoring both thier goodness and Matthias' kind gesture. But now: they are gone!

It was a sad last bite, but one that had been coming for quite some time. It got me thinking about the Milka family of chocolate products and I figured I'd give the interweb some scouring so as to find out a bit more about the goodies brought forth under the Milka name. My findings were, ahem, horrific. First, I traced Milka back the Kraft family of foods. I had a bad feeling about that from the get-go, but went ahead and delved deeper, and here is what I found out about the Kraft family of foods:

The house the Marlboro Man built, Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris Companies), is the world's largest tobacco firm. Altria operates its cigarette business through subsidiaries Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International, which sell Marlboro -- the world's best-selling cigarette brand since 1972. The company controls about half of the US tobacco market. However, tobacco is only part of its portfolio. It owns some 87% of Kraft Foods, the world's #2 food company (after Nestlé), which makes Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Maxwell House, Oscar Mayer, and Post. The tobacco giant bought Nabisco in late 2000, folding it into Kraft. Altria owns about 29% of SABMiller plc. (info from Hoovers)

Boo! Boo, boo, boo!!! I hate when shit like this happens. You go about your life happily, consuming products that make you feel good and happy and a little more comfortable, and you search out products made by companies that you think are conscious and responsible and friendly. You eat Chipotle with a clear mind because they do the whole free-range animals thing. Or, perhaps, you eat some Milka Maus chocolate candies because they are made in Germany and, therefore, must be better and more socially conscious than any American counterparts. But no. OH NO. You eat the damn chocolate and then realize only after the fact that your support of the Milka company means you are really supporting Philip Morris and shitty cigarettes and then you go poop, poop, poop.

I guess what I'm saying is that everything really is owned by two or three companies in the end. Eat local, drink local, blah blah blah. The money trickles upwards to the bigwigs eventually.

Anyway, enough grumbling. Here's a picture of Matthias:



Al

The Most Beautiful Girl In The Entire World

This is the most beautiful girl in the world:



Her name is Sydney and I love her in a way I've never known possible. She gives the term "homesick" real meaning.

UncAL

The Biggest of Apples

This is where I live:


Sometimes it can look beautiful, like it does there. It can be systematic and functional and gleaming. Sort of like magic. A real-life snowglobe. I can enjoy myself here. I can walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with:


(Adam)


(Tim Tim Cheroo)


(their friend, Sheila)


(and my friend, Zed.)

It can be a great night where I eat Mamoun's falafel in Greenwhich Village and party hardy all night and argue with Adam about the merits of the word "faggot." Needless to say, I took the side of that word having few merits. Adam took the grumpy, hard-headed, drunk baby side. Either way, it can be a night that goes by so fast that I forget that the city is full of trash and rain and cockroaches that scuttle out from the elevator's ventelation shaft. I forget that the construction in the apartment next door to mine will get going at about 7:30am. That the construction workers will whistle happly while they work. That I'll start 18 dreams that will all mush together each time the sledgehammer smacks the wall. Forget that I have no rug on my floor. That I miss my German roommate. That the chocolate Milka bears are running out.

And then, to come home like I did last night, and have Michelle tell me that she and her friend Scott had been held up at gunpoint, that the two dudes who pointed the guns at them ran off witih her purse and his bag, that she was scared and upset and pissed off.

Anyway, having visitors like Adam and Tim and Sheila make New York and the rest of the world a little more bearable. They make the gun pointers and the gleaming boxes seem less scary.

But the rain hasn't stopped for days...

Al

Michellabama

I was going to write a whole bunch of things but then thought better of it because this picture says about all I really want to say. Anyway, Michelle is wonderful, etceteras, etceteras. A lady from home but now in San Francisco. Far too hip for me x 100. Alas.

crushed,
Al

Four Men and a Baby

Cast of Characters:

MAN 1 (ROLLIE/GUITAR)

MAN 2 (AL/VOCALS)

MAN 3 (TIM/BASS)

MAN 4 (TIM TIM CHEROO/ROADIE)

BABY (ADAM/DRUMS)


***

ACT 1 (VENTURA)

Rollie leaves late, like always, and the van shows up at my house about two hours after I expected it to. The drive was to Ventura and through all that wonderful traffic, and the being-late factor of our journey really helped things get off to a superb start. Only not. But the van was nicer than we thought:



We borrowed it from a band called Radiation 4 and, seeing as how I’ve only toured in a van one other time, I felt like we were in the lap of luxury. Air conditioning, iPod, automatic windows, and a loft! We got all our equipment in there and then or merch and even had room for our puny little bodies and away we went. We showed up to The Alpine, a venue at Skatestreet in Ventura, and there were about eight other kids there. I think four of them were in the opening band. Needless to say, we weren’t entirely enthused by the turnout. Still, it was the start of tour and we had played the awesome show at Sink With Cali IV the day before so spirits were riding high. Greg MacPherson met us there in his little rental car and got things going with a set of music that was magical. He played four or five songs and each was moving because of the way Greg sang his head off and jammed his fingers down over the strings. He played a song called “The Company Store” that was about his grandfather, a man who had worked in a coal mining town wherein the mines owned all the stores and all the everything so that they would pay their workers shitty wages and then make them pay that money right back to them at said stores. The song was chilling when he played it, with force and anger, like Greg had been one of the men charging to burn down the town. Watching him made a lot of the things I’ve learned from punk rock come into focus and make a lot of sense to me. We got up and played to ten or twelve people, but it was as good as playing to a sold out crowd for me. By the time we got to “We Have More Sense Than Lies,” I was able to get everyone looking into my eyes and had them all saying, “Nothing changes if we don’t change ourselves.” It was wonderful. After the show, we all (most of the kids at the show as well) went to Chili’s and ate with Greg and made plans to travel all over Canada with him (Newfoundland sounds awesome) and then said goodbyes and got on our way. Up the 101. And then (ahem) the 1. Yup. Big Sur!

ACT 2 (SANTA ROSA)

We slept on the side of the road, after Adam got tired of driving up the windy roads of Highway 1, and when we awoke the Pacific lay out in front of our pissing bodies, blue and forever. I took over the reigns and went too fast here and there and made Tim feel like vomiting because he was lounging in the loft and getting dizzy. Getting to the Henry Miller Library felt familiar and comfortable, and I really like that. Fourth time to Big Sur and I felt like it was mine, if only in part, like I could be a local one day. We purchased breakfast burritos at the great general store (Big Sur food establishments are excellent) and at in the sun and washed faces in the bathroom and dipped feet in the creek behind the bed and breakfasts and then headed off to Garrapata State Beach. We roamed about and the boys got lost in the cracks of the rocks and Adam, the baby, made sounds like a baby and tried to jump over the estuary area:



There were far too many tourists this time of year and the beach didn’t feel like it was ours at all, which was rather disappointing. We managed to work our way into a cave towards the south end of the beach and Tim went womping in the waves:



The rest of the drive was up the 101, past Santa Cruz and through SF and over the Golden Gate Bridge and I thought a lot about Michelle at this point and that bummed me out a bit.



But we were up in Santa Rosa in no time and, after we drove around and got our bearings, found Epiphany Music by following the sounds of the drum circle. The venue was a used instrument shop that had a stage at one end where local bands came and played now and then. We hurried off to the mall before the show and made Tim Tim Cheroo ask punk-rock-looking folk to come out to the show. One such man was James, the poor Hot Dog On A Stick vendor that Tim Tim and I haggled and pestered. James showed up to the show later that night just after we had done this:



But, for his diehard efforts, we gave poor James the poor Hot Dog On A Stick guy our record for free. Later, we received this email transmission from him. Probably the best email I’ve ever received:

Hey, I just got home and popped your CD into my computer. Your CD rocks. Hard. It's like someone broke into my house and beat me in the head with a crowbar and I just sat there thinking "Oh my lord, this feels so good." Yeah. That kind of hard rock. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you guys made my day. I wasn't actually supposed to work today, and then you guys were really funny and nice, so I decided to check the show out and you gave me your CD for free. Which was awesome. Awesome that you gave me a CD for free and the CD itself was awesome. Just clarifying.

Thanks again, James aka. the Kid Who Works At Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick in Santa Rosa
And if you're ever in town again, just send me an email. I'd love to see you live.

Yup. Beat that!

ACT III (DAY OFF)

So this day was interesting. It was nice to be on a tour where we took our time and had a day off and enjoyed where we were. We drove on Highway 101 and I saw beaches and redwood forests and wine country up north that I had never seen. We stopped off at the Drive-Through Tree, but our van was too large, so we had to walk through:



Then we stopped at the Eel River and the boys went in and jumped off a rope swing:



The algae turned me away and I just threw rocks at the water like a grump and then threw one too far and hit Rollie just below his eye and he freaked out and maybe he should have but I wasn’t TRYING to hit him, but I did, and that sucks, and, well, we got back in the van and continued up north. We were in Humboldt County and everything lived up to the stereotype. We at organic Mexican food at Nacho Mama in Garberville. As we guzzled down in the back, flies buzzed around our head, and an 18-year-old girl named Simone came in and chatted with us, smiled, showed us the hair under her arms, and eventually gave Rollie and Adam a boll to share. Hooray. I ate a sweet malt from Treats and grabbed a handful of condoms out of the free jar on the way out and it was another small town loaded with hippiefolk so it felt okay to leave quickly, without pictures. A bit later, however, we did stop and see elk in a field near the Oregonian border:



And sometime after this we got gas in Crescent City and we wondered if The Goonies was filmed up there because it looked like it was. And then I fell asleep.


ACT IV (BREMERTON)

When I awoke, we were in old familiar Portland, Oregon and I was excited to eat Honkin’ Huge Burritos, which was our very first stop of the day:





These burritos are all organic and the guacamole is guacamole I actually enjoy eating. The man that makes them offers a plethora of hot sauces and BBQ sauces to splash on top, as well as a special super secret salsa that Tim managed to snaggle. It was fully fulfilling and almost made tour worth it on its own. While Adam and Tim Tim went to break their bones over at Burnside Skatepark, Tim and Rollie and I went to Powell’s Books:



I picked up Double Duce by Aaron Cometbus for Michelle, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night by John Barth, and The Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski: Volume 1 and also saw the new copy of the Columbia Journal and glanced inside and saw my name in a bookstore for the first time. I liked the feeling. I like bookstores. More and more, I feel like bookstores encourage me to write more than any other place. I want my name up on the shelves. If only one little skinny book, I want to be tucked away in the BR area. I’ll go to bookstores when we tour and sign the books secretly and put hidden artifacts of my life, like receipts and scraps of paper with phone numbers on them, in the spines. Anyway, we got back on the road and kept driving, which is what tour is, driving eight hours a day for twenty minutes of music playing, and, that being the case, this picture is a good representation of What Tour Is:



But then we got to Bremerton and I’ve already talked a bit about these kids elsewhere, I think, but, Jesus Christ, what a fucking inspiring group of 16 year olds. They all live together in a house without parents, like Lost Boys, and they are all in bands that are (honestly) good, and they cover Minor Threat and SSD, and they know every word to all of our songs. We didn’t get to play in The Tiki House this time because there’s a new neighbor that hassles the boys, but The Sons Of Norway show was awesome as well. Everyone crowded around us and we started with “The Tiki House” and it was like someone lit a firecracker in the tiny room and, even though Rollie and Tim kept getting electrocuted, and even though Adam’s drums were stepped on by foot after foot (mine included), it was easily the best show we’ve played. This is what it is, in part: you know nothing about the daily lives of these kids, but those twenty minutes we share makes it obvious that the daily life stuff is just details. The real important stuff can be communicated over thousands of miles, through plastic discs and computer wires. So, even though I don't know the name of their firsts girlfriends or what their favorite meal is, I feel like I know each one of those kids to the bone. All it takes is them looking straight into my eye.









Three of them (Sean, Allison, Dustin) have our words tattooed on the back of their necks:


("Broken hearts beat just fine")


("Sit back and sing along")

(Dustin has: "Flex your head")

I’m not sure what that makes me feel, but it’s humbling and it’s a place I never thought my words would be. Anyway, the show was everything we could have wanted. We met up with Annie and headed off to her apartment and slept the night away. Oh, but first we fed baby Adam blueberry buckle and he threw a fit. Then sleep.

ACT V (TACOMA)

We awoke and I had a plan that I made us stick to: Snoqualmie Falls. I had been there with The Miracle Mile, but this was after Tim had quit, so I really wanted him to see it. The falls are just outside of Seattle and are in the town where they filmed Twin Peaks. The falls are something like three-hundred feet tall, and roar and thunder:



Tim Tim swam out to the far side of the falls and got a peak behind the falls where there is a suspicious looking bridge, but he reported back that it was all just warning signs and rusted nails. Sad. No gold. The falls were more impressive before, for some reason, and I think it’s because there were less tourists and more nature, and it was later in the day, sunset, or, well, I don’t know. So we left and headed off into traffic and, soon, found our way to The Manium in Tacoma. Supposedly, there’s this Satan-worshiping dentist that listens to black metal and has slowly but surely purchased venue after venue in Tacoma. When he does, he paints the venue black and lets the kids run the shows. Hooray for Satan, I say! The show had a lot of Bremerton kids and The Flex played and we lost our minds and it felt wonderful and I realized somewhere during our set that there had been no fights, no threats, no violence, and our band had gotten along the entire tour and it made everything feel successful and worthwhile and, really, I was having “the time of my life.”

ACT VI (OAKLAND)

My camera ran out of space by this day, which is frustrating because Tim Tim jumped off a 70-foot bridge at Whiskeytown Lake in Redding with a few other drunk boys from Santa Cruz. He also didn’t die doing it, which was a plus. Also, we played in Oakland at the Acts of Sedition house and there were fifteen people in a small living room and I stood very still for most of this set until it had all built up and it was our last show for three months and there were kids that had never and will never see us again and I lost my head and we played perfect for that moment and it was cold outside so that all of the sweat froze to me, even in August, and then tour was done and it was time for it to be done, and so we left Oakland and headed out.

Only, I went to my cousin Jennea’s apartment in San Francisco while the boys went back to LA. First, though, I picked up Michelle. Which means I guess it’s probably time to talk about her.

Hip Calcium Deposits

We played this show at the beggining of summer. Meaning May 2006. It's a place called the SOS Project out in Riverside, CA. They had gymnastics there during the day I think. I do a bit of my own gymnastics, as you'll see:



I did this little freefall-jump-thing every night of our tour when we went up the coast. Every night I'd land on my left hip. A jump from a two foot stage. A jump from the P.A. speaker, four feet up. A six foot stage. It got higher and higher every night. Eventually Tim got really annoyed so I tried to do it more, but he ended up boxing me in for the last two shows and I couldn't complete my crazy rockstar manuever. Serves me right, though: I think I bruised my hip and now have a calcium deposit that hurts like the dickens when I try to lie on my left side. I was sleeping up on Tim's hardwood floor in Berkeley and woke Michelle (explanation forthcoming) with a yelp.

Also, I went to CBGB's for the last time in my life tonight.
I hate that place, but rest in piece.

Al

Sink With California Festival IV

When I was a sophomore in college, I applied for and received a grant from Princeton to start a music festival. I convinced them it was to bring kids/young adults together in a productive, progressive scene to share ideas through music. While this is generally true, the idea was also to get kids to come to southern California. To enjoy the beach. To rock out and eat burritos and get away from whatever boring suburb they were living in for a few days. I named it after one of my favorite songs (“Sink With Kalifornija”) by one of my favorite bands (Youth Brigade).

Four years later, the festival has become a yearly mecca for some awesome punk bands and some crazy punk kids and some not so awesome punk bands and some pretty run-of-the-mill kids. A good time nonetheless. An endeavor I run with the help of bandmates and friends, mostly Tim, who is also the general manager of my life, generally speaking. This year was exceptionally difficult. A few other menfolk who are not-so-supportive of any/all things Al Brown decided to get a different festival going. In doing so, they snaked a lot of the headlining bands that would’ve drawn a lot of kids to our festival. So then, with the air snatched from our sails, Tim and I delved deeper into our sack of bands and pulled out a roster that we were most proud of: Acts of Sedition, Burial Year, Sabertooth Zombie, Another Breath, Broken Needle, 108, Greg MacPherson, Parallax, and all the Bremerton, WA bands (Sunset Riders, The Flexxx, Valley of the Dinosaurs, H.I.V.). There were more, too, and we hoped that kids would come out and rock out and be crazy.

The kids did not come.

I lost a great deal of money and was really frustrated and, by Sunday, when DANGERS (our band) was scheduled to play, I had a lot of emotion running through me. We set up to play and just sort of let loose. We hadn’t played a show in three months, hadn’t played half of the songs on our set live, ever, and just sort of rammed them out like a battering ram:



Cathartic and exciting. The reason that losing money is no real loss at all. Not affecting a lot of kids, but affecting a few kids a great deal. Feeling alive. Forever moments. That sort of thing.

Al

Thunderstorm, Part Deux

After I graduated from college, Tim and I drove back to California in his rickshaw Kia Sephia. When we got to Oklahoma, nature or Nature or NATURE decided to throw a code-red style thunder storm at us until I hyperventilated and thought I was going to die.

After the Painted Desert, nature or Nature or NATURE decided to do it again:

The Painted Desert

Tis been a while. I've come from everywhere to this little island in New York and in the interim I was going mad and I haven’t really said one word about all that here. I feel as though my mother might lose complete track of me should I not record the goings-on of my life on this website, to be stored in some far-away cavern of the Interweb forever and ever, ad infinitum. Thusly, I’ll get on with the tale telling. Hopefully this will end up being chronological. Order! Organization! Tidiness! We start with the wilds of the Arizonian desert. Hizzah!

***

So after a decent, belly-full-of-Carl’s-Jr. sleep, I got out of the EconoLodge and back into the Ford Ranger and sped out of Albuquerque as fast as my four cylinders would allow. Interstate 40 is long and hearty, good gravel for most of the way, well-striped and fairly free of hazards (potholes, carrion, abandoned vehicles). All in all, a solid eight out of ten on the scale of Interstate Amazingness and Driveability. But it is also sad. Old Route 66 peters along right next to I-40, cracked and patchy, grass tufts popping out between withered asphalt, road signs dangling from rusty poles with rusty screws. At points, you can see old gas stations that must once have offered up iced glass bottles of Coke-a-Cola to travelers; motels with dead neon signs; dead-end signs where the road has given up its conquest of The Great American West altogether. Meanwhile, you speed along the hurky-jerky interstate at intense speeds, passing bigrigs on the left, the “endless broken white line,” missing out on the bluest sky, the mesas, the cattle, the fields, the smell of the earth. The Robert Franks, the Jack Kerouacs, the Rat Packs, the Hunter S.’s – they had it right. Convertibles, transistor radios, wind in the face, cowboys, Route 66. None of the Interstate bullshit. No Triple A. Traveling as an activity, as a pastime, not an inconvenience, a frustration. So there you are, going fast and getting somewhere, but knowing that you must be missing out on so much, seeing remnants of a better time out the passenger-side window. Maybe not even a better time. Just a better time to travel.



Just after crossing over into Arizona, I headed off the road to this Navajo trading center:



Invariably, these outposts are tourist traps that manage to play up and upon the naïve traveler’s grand Native American fantasy: red men and women still living off the land, sewing blankets and moccasins, poor guys, drunk on firewater and tied to revenue of the almighty roulette wheel. Mostly I think the goods were all imported from Mexico, including the two blankets I purchased for $5 each and the baby moccasins I picked up for Sydney. Regardless, it felt like a memory was being made. Like it will be a place I’ll stop again and again, however many times I happen to be traveling through Arizona on I-40. Places like that can belong to me secretly. Not really mine, but a place that no one else I know knows about, so sorta mine in a sense that’s pointless and who really cares anyway except that it makes traveling more interesting and more personal. Look for the plastic animal scene up in the rocks (buffalo, eagle, deer, bear, roar!) and turn off. Navajoland!

Rain clouds had spurted up here and there, but the sky was bright and blue and – thankfully – cool. The rains had brought mild temperatures. None of the Tucson 117 degree bullshit, and Arizona became more attractive and amiable in my eyes. And then the Painted Desert.

A young femme back home had mentioned that I just had to visit the old Painted Desert if I was planning on driving through Arizona. And, really, who am I to disagree with a young femme about anything? Besides, she’s arty and hip and as much as I despise this type of young human, I’m pretty much one of them and so that’s that. There’s a little exit off the interstate and, much like White Sands National Monument, after paying your park fee, you drive around a 25 mile loop and pull off where you see fit. My first stop was here, at Kachina Point, for obvious reasons:



If there is any chance of me getting out on my feet and out into "The Wilderness Area" on my own, I take it. The sign warned of rattlers and wild animals and reminded that there are no trails, no humans, no rangers, no nothing but me and nature for many hundreds of square miles. The trail head was simply that: a starting point for endlessness. I scurried down the dirt incline and past a small German family who realized the vastness was too much for them, ha!, heartless bastards, and my feet soon sunk into the clay of the mesas and soft white rock of the badlands floor. Endless is, I guess, the best word. I got about three or four hundred yards from the trail head and realized that I was, generally speaking, fucked. Basically, as I’m sure the Germans quickly found, the Arizona badlands and mesas and desert sound like this:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Snakes galore. I wandered a bit here and there and saw snake hole after snake hole, heard rattler after rattler, and figured that even with a full day’s worth of water and a change of clothes, this was, for all intents and purposes, a bad idea. I imagined rattler teeth and venom and a slow, sunburnt death on the cracked floor of the Painted Desert and National Petrified Forest. As before at White Sands, nature was quick in defeating me, my suburban sensibilities, my desire to explore, and after a few pictures like this:



I headed back.

The park is huge and striking. Artifacts from ancient natives. Dried riverbeds and active washes. Thunder clouds. Rains. Petrified forests. Unseen cougars and lynxes and coyotes, but just knowing they are there is fun. And, again, endless:



There’s something magnetic about not knowing where the land goes. Something like Lewis and Clarke must have felt, been propelled by. Curiosity to know, to pin down, to become a regular, a local, to have nicknames for rock formations and giant petrified wood clumps. The overwhelming sense that there is far too much to see. The unknowability of this vast plane of land that’s right there in front of you, but that you know will never be of you, in your head. Always a mystery.

There was, of course, some disappointment. Too many people. Trailers and campers and pictures. Not enough foot-accessible trails. Repetition. A mesa is a mesa is a mesa. Stuff like that. But it was six hours of my life that, while perhaps not changing me forever, definitely intrigued me and defeated me and humbled me.

I’ll be back to conquer soon. I just need a companion who’ll suck out the poison before it sets in to paralyze.