Internet Crimes
Think about those families that invite you over for dinner and random slide show flashes of their trip to Disneyland or Hawaii. Picture that. They say things like, 'And here we are with Mickey.' Or 'Now this is us in Maui.' Your memories are no different. A slide show in your head. Here I am in sixth grade. Click. Now I'm older. Click. Now this is me sitting at a computer for the first time in months. Tugging on the hair hanging in my eyes and trying to read my messages, a pop up intrudes with a flashing 'notice me' banner ad along the top. Now normally it would have said, 'Punch Bin Laden in the face ' Win a new laptop!' Or 'Shoot the Monkey ' Get your free Xbox 360!'
Catch the Tasmanian Devil ' Win an Australian Vacation.
Drop kick George W. Bush and win a PSP.
Get Santa down the chimney ' earn a free Wal-Mart Gift Card.
Fa, la, la, la' Blah. Blah. Blah.
Anyway, this is what I would have seen on a normal day. But. Today is not a normal day. Today there is a flashing neon marijuana leaf and a message in bold glaring font that reads, 'Should marijuana be legalized? Vote here: click Yes or No to win a free trip to Cancun.'
Now for me this is a little surprising. This backsliding current into idiocy is officially closer to completion. All the cyber cronies have put a massive political debate on a par with punch out games and free scam artist door prizes.
It is only a matter of time before our internet ad games say, 'Is abortion okay? Click 'Yes' and win your free Mercedes Benz.'
Should we legalize prostitution? Click 'Yes' and claim your free porn kit with a side of whips and chains.
Maybe I am just deranged. Maybe this is not a big deal at all. Or maybe someone out there agrees with me. Vote here: click Yes or No.
Now back to the slideshow. Click. Here I am on a long awaited road trip this last, great summer. This is us on a highway from Texas to New York City and beyond. I have my brother with me, the one that everyone thinks is my twin. My look-alike, Tom Bluff, rides shotgun as I drive. We're both tall, both have long, shaggy hair and a month-old beard. In the backseat is my best friend, we call him The Troubadour. Details here are important. We call him The Troubadour because he's a struggling folk musician. It's also important to note here that he is a very chic looking guy. I only use cheesy words like 'chic' when they are completely necessary, and when it comes to The Troubadour any other word would be inaccurate. He's dressed up in a tattered sport coat and a silk shirt, designer jeans and leather shoes. The Troubadour has a little bit of facial hair growing out on his chin but that is blended out by a few day's worth of growth, his hair is dirty blonde and his eyes pull you right in as if to say, 'We're already friends.'
Click forward. It's in Central Park when the dirty bastard approaches us, scraping his feet as he wobbles over. Tom, The Troubadour and I are across the street from the park. Behind us, steam rolls out of the subway exit and we watch lawyers and all manner of suits crawling out of their holes. Troubadour says, 'Do you suppose the factory is down there, guys? Do you think the big machine is under the city cranking out businessmen like packaged sodas, beer bottles or condoms?'
Tom laughs and says, 'I don't know, but I say we get off of this sidewalk before they pull us in and make us crank out their upwardly mobile future.'
Running into the green leaf safety net of the park we hear footsteps behind us. Turning in a panic we see the stranger, he says, 'I'm having a great night, boys.'
'Oh yeah?' Tom asks, 'why is that?'
'The wife is out of town for a week and I've been wining and dining and timing young women for days on end. Gotta love it, man. Any time she looks away I'm getting that pure, untapped little beaver every chance I get.'
'How long have you been married?' I ask.
'Going on twenty-three years now. But fidelity went out the window before we even took our vows. Poor bitch has no idea, too.'
He laughs. The drunk street bumbler actually laughs.
'Hoo boy,' he continues, 'next phase is to go to the Yanks game and try to catch a foul ball and trade it for a BJ. Where you boys from, anyhow?'
I think about ignoring him, but finally mutter, 'Texas.'
'Texas? Southerners, eh? What the hell brings you all the way up to Yank-Ville?'
'Well, sir,' I began, 'the three of us caught wind of vicious Al Qaeda rumors having to do with the mass-destruction of this and other major U.S. cities on an almost Biblical scale ' and by Biblical we mean Sodom and Gomorra, fire and brimstone, true Armageddon Proportions. I'll have you know that the three of us are stark-raving crazies broken out of the Cass County Sanitarium for suicidals, manic-depressives and blood drinkers. The facilities were fine ' good service, too ' until we discovered the rigid steps taken by the white coats to prevent self-annihilation.'
'Trouble is,' Tom says, 'we're men of our word, and the hospital made us promise not to kill ourselves.'
The Troubadour jumps in, 'But that don't mean we can't let the Taliban do it for us.'
'So we sprung out,' I say, 'stole a van from a pack of Kumbaya driven Mormons and headed up here to New York to get iced by exploding terrorist lit airliners. We hear they're smuggling napalm on board in water bottles and coffee thermoses.'
Drunk stutters, 'You boys are too late, I saw on the news that the Brits prevented those attacks.'
'Oh, that?' Tom adds, 'That was just the first wave. The second one will be coming right at the peak of the Yankees game tonight.'
The man sobs, 'The Yankees! Those towel heads are hitting America's favorite pastime now? Is nothing sacred to these camel fuckers?'
'Apparently not,' I say, 'but listen, we have an extra ticket ' third row, left center. Do you want to sit and watch an A-Rod homerun trigger the bomb and drag you cheering into Oblivion? Viva Oil!'
Troubadour shouts, 'Viva Chaos! Viva Destruction! Viva America!'
The man calls us psychotics and immediately tries scalping his ticket to a twelve-year-old for ten bucks. The boy promptly pukes on the man's boots and I can't say I'm disappointed. The Troubadour laughs and says, 'Well, Jack, do you think we rained enough on his parade?'
'That was quick thinking,' Tom laughed, 'I'm glad you found a way to put the screws to that dirt bag. I hate to think of him running around on his wife and feeling proud of it.'
'Well, at least for tonight,' I reply, 'I can see him holed up and shaking in his hotel bed.'
Click the slide show to right now, this moment. Sitting back at the computer on a low grade dial-up signal I'm waiting for my email to load up. I feel lonely as hell, my old demons are on me again. Right now I'm worn out. Sleeping all wrong again. Tired and a mad form of lonely. Blanking out as I stare into the monitor an ocean tide screen saver washes over the display. I stare into the static until I'm blue in the face. Then I move the mouse. Bang! A pop-up in front of my eyes and an ad game says, 'Out swim the Piranha!'
There's a raven haired half-nude child swimming helpless in the Amazon at high speed with a pack of hungry carnivorous fish on his heels. All I have to do is click a button and I can save him. But for how long? It will just give me a pop-up saying, 'Fill out this survey and win a new Plasma TV.'
I'll close out the page and the piranhas will be on the boy again. I can't save him. I keep sitting here watching him die and resurface to start the Big Swim all over again. Now I'm feeling like I wish someone were here with me. The piranhas are closing in and no one will push my buttons. Now I'm remembering. Flashing back. Click the slideshow back to my friend Nyna's house. We sat around in dim lighting talking about all of the topics young independent sophisticates in training might discuss. Politics, literature, music, and then she shared from her notebook saying, 'This is something I used to do when I babysat. I wanted to have something to share with the kids.'
And she reads random facts she has discovered about the rules, culture, laws and physics of this weird planet. She reads, 'If you throw a football west it will fly farther than if you throw it east because it moves with the rotation of the Earth.'
Now I'm here. Right now, it's a New York subway clanking to a stop in some pseudo fall-out shelter two stories below the city. It's Penn Station. Walking around this place looks as if it were designed to outlast a nuclear holocaust. Tom says something about a good place to hide out from invading zombies. The Troubadour notices an underground K-Mart in between two bagel shops. The tile floor clicks with heels and toes like a million caterpillar tap dance. A tall, obese man with a beard and dreadlocks crosses my path reeking of booze. He has a cardboard sign across his chest that says, 'The End is long gone.' Passing by he is muttering profanities under his breath ' shit eating son of fuck, goddamn swine, bitch ass, bastard, Lord, Jesus Christ almighty, Fuckin' Amen.
In a gold lit corner is an old black man in a robe and a fez singing Amazing Grace through a karaoke machine. Turrets Syndrome pushes his way through the crowd grumbling his obscenities while the old man sings.
'Amazing grace'''Fuck'''the sound that'''shaved ass bitch'''like me'' we laugh together as the sounds blend into one underground voice. Now he's singing, 'Gimme that Ol' Time Religion, uh-huh.'
Turrets sings, 'God is dead, we sold his carcass for high-speed internet access.'
This is the Main Event.
Back to the slideshow, click forward to me at the computer. Back to the ad game.
The current is speeding up. How badly do I not want that TV? Whatever it is, it's not enough for me to spare this boy one of his nine lives. Make that ten. Eleven. He keeps dying and just keeps coming back for more. Sometimes you want to stay in the river, you hazard the teeth just for a good swim, and right now that sounds good. Show me the current, white and hungry, show me the teeth that look about the same. I'll dive in.
Where's the River?
Nyna tells us that if you take a close look at a Canadian two dollar bill the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
The kid just died again. His face is frozen into a cartoon mask of panic. Twelve. Thirteen. He'll die again just to get that good cardiovascular and work off his baby fat. William S. Burroughs said that without libido we would have no shame. Without that girl you're trying to impress you wouldn't have to run from the piranhas, kid.
'Dreamt' is the only word in the English language that ends in the letters 'mt.'
Nothing seems right. I need to get my book finished ' it's my only real hope. Nothing else has happened the way I dreamt. That might ward off those meat-eating bastards cutting through the water at my back. Where's a mirror? Is my face a cartoon mask of panic?
Click the slideshow back to the road trip.
Now it's Washington Square Park. Greenwich Village, New York, NY.
This was the once proud stomping ground of Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac ' among many others. The breeding corner of Beat Poetry and independence. The launching pad of young folk musicians, dreamers, artists and all the true crippled angels fighting the bad fight.
Each one a troubadour in their own right. Each of them a brother or a driver on the long, sad counter-culture search for beauty. Trying to reach the Kingdom of God without a wing to float on. Too weak to get high enough, but strong enough to keep striving to get back to heaven.
So it came as no surprise to the guys when I insisted we stop off there early on in the trip. I say, 'Guys, call me sentimental, but I feel like those Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca. This, for me, is my Holy Land.'
Around the park fountain I can hallucinate the ghosts of acoustic guitar cranked night children and now I see three buses parked in a horse shoe around a mad party. Dancing hipsters circling hand-in-hand to celebrate their future.
The middle bus is an antique painted like a psychedelic banner waving Peace and Love. I approach in the surefire belief that this is some artifact on display from an older world. Side door slides open and a man with a great black beard says, 'Hey, man, you wanna get on the hippie bus?'
'Sure,' I say, 'I'll get on the hippie bus.'
Then it's a gray beard saying, 'It's a hot day, you look parched.'
Black Beard says, 'You want a cookie?'
I have a brief thought regarding 'special' brownies and marijuana cookies, I shrug it off and have one. But these were not drug hippies as I soon found out. 'So, what are you guys all about? Where's this bus headed?'
'Well,' says Gray Beard, 'we've actually modeled our lives after the twelve disciples. Later they became apostles and went on to lay the foundations of the early church. We follow their example. The Book of Acts describes how everyone shared their possessions to create a safe haven for Christians.'
Black Beard says, 'Now, we don't exactly like the word 'Christian' due to its recent commercial conversion, but we sort of lack a better term.'
'Yeah,' I say, 'that's understandable. In America today the word 'Christian' comes with a social stigma that brings up thoughts of Jesus Fish for the back of your SUV and all the merchandise propaganda for God. Tee shirts, hats, necklaces, bracelets, bumper stickers, it's gone all the way up to billboards now.'
'Exactly,' says Gray Beard, 'so we've rejected all that, we've been together since the early seventies just bringing in new members to start a newer world. Or maybe resurrect an older one, depending on how you look at it. The point is, this is how we believe people are supposed to live. No pursuit of personal affluence, any personal gain is picked up by helping one another.'
Black Beard says, 'We believe that by helping each other we help ourselves more than we ever could on our own.'
Troubadour and Tom have found their way in by now and Tom asks, 'Can you give us some kind of example, maybe?'
'Sure,' says Gray Beard, 'I was a banker before I found these people. I owned a small lot and worked desperately to get more money to take care of my family. Then I met the disciples and heard the scripture that says, 'Whatever you give unto me I shall return to you one hundred fold.' I donated my land to the community, just as they did in the early church, now I am part owner of over a hundred farms and businesses around the world. Everywhere we go in this bus there is a community nearby for us to rest in. We have no need for hotels or grocery stores or even restaurants. All of our needs are met by our brothers and sisters.'
They go on to describe that the Law of God is different than the laws of America. The American Dream whispers in our ears telling us to dream and take and gather, build elaborate churches as if you can impress God. But the only thing that impresses God is loving one another. Gray Beard says we complicate things so that we can pretend we don't understand. If we don't understand then we don't have to obey.
Let's fast-forward here. Move ahead through our live coverage. There we were in the heart of New York City and I found myself having an hour long Bible Study with a bunch of hippies that were basically strangers to me. More was discussed than just dogma and church rafters. Books were an issue, Black Beard brought up Ken Kesey. I mention his background briefly, telling them that Kesey was a wrestler in college and due to his large size and empty bank accounts was a perfect candidate to volunteer for scientific research. The chemists tested something on him that inspired weird hallucinogenic visions. Later they found that the chemical they were testing, LSD, was a psychotropic drug. Kesey took right to it. He started brewing the stuff himself, organizing orgiastic parties where whole vats of the stuff were handed out in plastic cups. They called it the Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test. Bands would play background at these gatherings and one of Kesey's favorites even went on to become The Grateful Dead. Kesey became an outlaw and a pillar of the acid culture almost as sturdy and necessary as Timothy Leary himself. He commandeered a bus and branded its sides with the name of his new gang, 'The Merry Pranksters.' He fled the country to Mexico, returned to see his dying father, was incarcerated and eventually worked as a security guard at an insane asylum which inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Gray Beard says, 'What people don't tell you is that many young people were left stunned and confused by those parties, not knowing their names or how to get home. The party would go elsewhere and they were lost. One of our first missions was to follow the Kool-Aid Testers and play crowd control, so to speak. We picked kids up in these same buses here and found out how to get them home. Often they were runaways or on some missing persons list. It's no coincidence that we dubbed our group 'The Merry Caravan.''
He gestures to a banner outside that I hadn't noticed and says, 'We're sort of the doppelganger to all of the mayhem of those days. Leary sold god in a bottle, we gave Him away in a free ride home.'
The Troubadour explains what we were doing on the road and they gave us the locations of several communities if we should run into trouble. They gave us food and water and showed us their organic groceries like all-natural salt shipped in from the Mediterranean. We stayed longer than we had time for, but we were happy there and after we left the bus the sunlight felt different.
Now it's later that night. We're walking north back through Central Park in the spirit of fallen generations and a once, proud culture that held the attention and hope of a youth culture along with the fear and panic of Nixon and his armies. We stop at Strawberry Fields and stand around a stone mosaic circled in candles. The light is fading and you can feel this strange electricity in the air. Nearby a group of hipsters are discussing the life and death of John Lennon. Conspiracy theorists whisper their beliefs, not wanting to raise their voices to any disrespectful degree. In the center of the circle is the word, 'Imagine.'
This is my second Mecca, a weird shrine to someone that stood up for peace and was met with violence, someone that preached unity and was torn down. A young girl plays 'Revolution' quietly on her guitar and we sing along. The air is dense with a sad yet hopeful energy. We sit quietly and wonder why the good ones die young. John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, standing here I can't help thinking that if you stand up too tall you're just an easier target when the guillotine drops. I can't help wondering if my generation hangs its head low because they know, as I do, that trying to change things puts a target on your chest. These days so many of the young ones have copped into the 'Get what you can, while you can' philosophy and I think it might be for the same reasons that have me standing at a memorial to John Lennon rather than watching him in concert.
Click forward to the computer monitor and the internet crimes of pop-up advertisements.
Jump to Nyna telling me that cat urine glows under a black light.
I need some answers. My hopes of making a name for myself with neon lights and erotic dancers on my hundred acre mansion lawn have melted down into utter collapse. We used to dream. We'd talk about the day when every word I put to paper was the touch of Midas lining our pockets, talk about wine rolling out of every corner and living barefoot because our world was red carpeted from the car to the driveway and home. But those were the sick fantasies of a younger galvanized American. Never real. The only thing I really want is a place to sit quiet and hold someone close. My bed is cold right now and I don't have enough to heat it alone. God, the piranhas are close. I can hear their jaws snapping in my ears.
Finish the book, old boy, then you can go anywhere. And take anyone with you.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category. The symbol on the 'pound' key is called an octothorpe. The term 'the whole 9 yards' came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got 'the whole 9 yards.' The name of Dudley Do Right's Horse was 'Horse.'
Piranha teeth are razor sharp ' known to bite through a steel cable.
Jack Bluff has a nasty hollow in the pit of his stomach and wants someone's arms around him. Nothing feels right. I need a change. Everyone needs a change. If you ask me, this whole country needs a change. Representing our largest debates with internet advertisements and the promise of free merchandise seems about the right metaphor here. This is the value system we've settled into.
Here we are back in New York. Click.
It's a couple days after meeting the hippies. Time flies, as they say and we've seen it all. Now we're walking to Battery Park in seething rain with faces upturned to New York City opening her ballast to the street. Steam circles white out of manholes and open-wide sewer mouths. Entire city billows blue.
After the first drops fall whole rain sheets immediately follow and Tom says, 'Should we take the Subway?'
No, I say, this is the greatest New York moment and we will not hide underground.
Troubadour shouts, 'This is New York rain, boys, there's nothing sweeter. Rain like this demands running.'
Now we're running through drop water streets, dodging Yellow Cabs and umbrellas. We can see the timid business men in tailored suits ' pinstripe three-piece double-breasted vest-coat corporate armor. They're hiding beneath restaurant meeting awnings and blue paint scaffolding afraid the Wicked Witch water will melt them down or multiply them into back-popping mini beasts.
We run, shouting ourselves to the rafters.
We run, soaking into America.
Others hide from their city's cleansing smile, but the Troubadour, Tom Bluff and I run to the bay. Behind us a pair of joggers in tight-sweat running clothes shout and take up the call. Their words come out sounding like Greek or something Mediterranean. Running together we laugh a wordless communion and they speak rapidly in their foreign language. But. Our joy is in the same tongue and we sound it over the city like Armageddon's trumpet call.
Troubadour shouts through streetness thunder, 'The white collars keep themselves dry and we sprint in defiance of language barriers and wet skin, unified by the Big Apple Storm.'
Tom chimes in, 'That, my friends, is America.'
Ducking through post-rain street swarms and city park detour construction reveals our first glimpse of the bay. We climb over railings and dangle our feet above the swell. Now it's mist in our faces as waves break the dock, clouds part, light falls and we see the Lady silhouetted against gray vapors of her city, land and country.
I feel odd. Some strange knot in my guts grips my spine. Visions of Liberty flat on her back churning out sad drone workers of number-crunching fates haunt my thoughts. Here she is standing tall, scorching the sky with a gold Prometheus flame. We failed her, knocking her down to make her birth a mutant idea of freedom. Freedom to steal, slice, deal, trick or lie to get the uppercut hand over competitors. Freedom in this America looks too much like the freedom to kill thy neighbor as long as it looks good on your tax audit. Freedom means the freedom to rape Lady Liberty and crank out the Fallopian pack line children of the dream.
I want her to stay standing.
'Guys,' I say, 'we have to make sure no one gets her on her back again because right now, this moment, things actually are beautiful.'
Here I am back with Nyna. Click. She reads, 'Guess the organization that the statistics describe. Of its less than five hundred members 29 have been accused of spousal abuse, 7 have been arrested for fraud, 19 have been accused of writing bad checks, 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses, 3 have done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year.'
Give up?
hey're your guardians and authors of the law ' your U.S. Congressmen.
Here we are back in the city ' back on the road. Click.
We banged around New York for a few more hours before we finally hit the highway. One short stretch brought us to Philadelphia where we watched strange city children rolling in bar stoops and neon lights. The road brought us to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell ' the nesting place of young America. This is a time capsule left behind by a simpler world from before the age of mixed war messages, career politicians, and the Patriot Act. Before citizens were just educated enough to be confused.
Sighting the bell brings no peace. It's just a cracked bit of metal and the Hall is nothing more than a squatty building smaller than most high schools. We cannot get inside. After a minute we go back to the car, back to the road. Troubadour laughs, 'This is hilarious. The entire trip we have done nothing but see things, stare for a second and move on, 'Well, there's the Bell. Let's go.' Ha!'
'We're on a quest for beauty ' it doesn't take long to know where beauty isn't.'
Your life can click by like a slide show. Flashes and memories clicking by on the God Head Projector. Here we are loading up in the car. Click. Here we are on the highway watching street signs fly past like gun fire. Click.
Now it's Washington D.C. Click. The whole country has gone code orange and our nation's capital is under lock down in light of recent terrorist threats ' weird napalm smuggling militants trying to explode jetliners over major cities in a feeble attempt at bombing civilians with falling shrapnel meteors from on high.
It's late at night when we arrive. We're watching local police setting up concrete road blocks and red-purple night flares. We can't see the White House. Only certain streets are accessible and we are watched closely by armed guards as we view the Washington Monument. They see my dark beard and supervise me with suspicious eyes like I might be some kind of terrorist sympathizer.
The monument scales a starless sky and vanishes into dense gray night fog. The point is hidden behind the mist making the tower seem to go on forever, bridging the gap between us and heaven ' a thorn in God's ass paining him to remember that we're still down here. Not to be forgotten.
Tom suggests we go see Mr. Lincoln and we cross the grass toward the Reflecting Pool. My face is suddenly dripping with gnats and mosquitoes. A thick cloud of insect fills my mouth and I inhale their tiny bodies with a muddy cough.
The pool is stagnant.
A thick layer of algae covers the water and the bugs are heavy in the air like the Amazon Jungle. Here I am sad. Click. Here we are wading through metaphors even a child could spot with ease. Click. This is the heart of America, built to represent the waters of life and the spirit of freedom ' all that and the Reflecting Pool is stagnant.
Tom's face sags with disappointment and the Troubadour sighs, 'I hate to say it, but I have to. That, my friends, is America.'
I say, we have to stir the waters.
Tom asks, 'How?'
'I suppose everyone's answer is different,' I reply, 'but mine is Art. Romance, poetry, thought and all of the etc. etc. etc. Colleges call these things 'the Humanities' for a reason. Without them we are just a job that the next man can fill.'
'Or the next machine,' says Tom.
The Troubadour adds, 'We're just another cookie cutter party member hot off the pack line.'
A look washes over his face and the Troubadour asks, 'Is it possible, guys? Have we found the factory of the whole mad drama?'
Here we are on the move again. Click. Now we're climbing the Olympus stairs toward Lincoln on his throne. Click. There's a sign that says, 'Quiet Please.'
Another reads, 'No Food or Drinks.'
One says, 'Thank You for Not Smoking.'
On the Holy Ground of Mount Sinai God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Here we only have three. A hush fills the marble room, footsteps scrape the ground like street chalk, and you can hear silence echo.
The Troubadour has a hole in his leather shoes and he slips them off at Lincoln's size fifty feet. A dark-skinned guard emerges from a little booth and, as if they were bombs or laced with Anthrax, he reacts like he's saving his country from a pair of worn out loafers.
The guard shouts, 'You can't leave those there. Pick 'em up.'
We decide to leave. Heading back to the car along the back of a pond drifting under Memorial Bridge there are dozens, hundreds of sleeping birds. Ducks, geese, cranes, pick one and it is here with its head under its wing. Here I am acting like a kid again as I charge full sprint into the fray. Click. Here are the birds waking up, shocked and flapping into the moon cloud DC night. Click. For a minute it is all feathers and beaks and noise and I almost run straight off the shore and into the water. Falling to my knees there are still a few of them unfazed by the uproar and I put my arm around the neck of a black-faced Canada goose. She looks at me, appears to shrug and goes back to sleep.
Click forward, next slide please. Now it's back to the road and the Troubadour's turn to drive. We ride silently until coffee and deep Maryland. Now it's a cigarette break and I take us into mist rolling hills and Virginia pre-dawn blue face skies. The other two are asleep. The whole country feels asleep.
Click the slideshow forward. Here I am at the computer trying to check my mail. My mind wanders and it occurs to me that nothing is ever as pure or perfect as we portray it on television. Not cars or supermodels or cheeseburgers, and not even the Reflecting Pool, what should have been holy ground. That same bit of rotten water was the launching pad for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Dream speech, John Lennon walked there, thousands travel here from around the world like it's Mecca and there I was swatting away flies. The piranhas are closing in. It's time to clear the water or get the hell out of the river once and for all.
My email finally loads up and I have a message from the Troubadour, it simply reads, 'Remember art and beauty. Don't forget, you're still on the road even if the New York trip is over. We have to remind ourselves how to keep the Lady off her back.'
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