Arch St Louis. Cardinal Stadium. Blazingsk8r was a kid with a 4g wireless hotspot, skinny hoody wearing young guy on second glance just the 4chan reddti savvy anonymous type. Finding under the mask more of real peoples.
Old buses all the dam way across, never no WiFi. Two young Russian college girls slouched across the back o bus.
Strange chick driver Bernie an odd cross between peewee Herman and Oscar Wilde Did a strange duckface thing with her lips when she wanted to appear pensive, and stilted exaggerated body language gestures like Peter Sellers or S Martin.
Birth of a community as we crossed the big flat deserts rolling past the sage brush. As always I found myself making eye contact with the weird kids is it just my denial of mortality?? Old person thinks she’s cool.
The layered hors d’oevres salami and cheese in little alternate layers in a fake Tupperware smells bad after three warm days but a very little of it took away the hungries, and the Ensure did the rest have spent very little on rest stop food. The pemmican is so-so, like the jerky part but the raisins, ok aren’t the real answer, and I’m parsing out the pineapple chunks maybe more of them. Cashews not the nuts either, dunno, think about it more.
Tuesday morning my phone froze when I tried to turn it on after battery saving night in my pocket phone glass smeared with carmex maybe did it I have no idea, really, but it freaked me out and I thought it was dead for good what am I going to do no phone how call Jane because by this time the sched was newly dead and I was very lost and confused the lockbar wouldn’t budge and no unlock no turn off by holding the little button I was truly hating and regretting the touchscreen wanting buttons comforting mechanical buttons. It scared me so bad I actually took a poop, which is what panic and fear do to me organically, we were in Denver so that was good, or someplace on the road in a rest stop, which are all alike, gas out front, a fast food thing and a grocery truckstop type affair more about that later felt good getting the bm over with very inhibited in teis situation can’t hardly even go pee maybe twice yesterday 2 pees in 24 hrs, anyway mentioned the frozen phone to this scrawny looking twenty something who, of course knew the fix, take out the battery, which he did for me, then reboot from scratch, presto back in business, once again the community looking out for the least of these…
Are these truck stop franchise things a meme? Is that the whole franchise phenomenon? Looks very like the same sort of evolution and morphing spread and there in this community the different styles of travel, me, hyper-prepared, the guy from Alaska, same clothes, two hoodies sleeves pushed up never changed a molecule, looking straight ahead the whole time, never no reading, activities, didn’t talk not a word unless spoken too a big lump, then there were the2 young Russian chicks in Jammie bottoms and bed jackets hair in birds-nests no brushing, little Cyrillic laptops at the ready, the boys in their dickies or Carhardts and the hiphop white kids bandanna under a baseball cap not the one size adjustable but real sized caps with nice design and quality material, whether you have a blanket and a real bed type pillow, or whether you make phone calls or not on your cell, older guys, serious workingmen with no carryons sitting silent and still, watching and waiting to go to work. The seediest looking characters turn out to be inside themselves sparkly people, with attractive personalities people you would never think that of, thrown together you force yourself or are forced through the cultural stereotypes, now back east serious Negroes, serious black people of a type we do not see out west, and now also we have unidentifiable languages and women in headscarves.
Amish guy last night giving me the stink eye over his seatback hiding his little beatle bangs he heard me say the f word to Josh as he was leaving the bus in Ohio.
This western Pennsylvania is gorgeous now there’s some vertical texture on a familiar scale and verdure, full all full maples and oaks and those locust fast growers just past height of the greenery barely now there’s some sunburn you can tell its going to soon turn to autumn but not quite yet. Early barely light through that little key-handle of W Virginia, the tree-clad mountainsides turning in the mist into civil war colors, blue-gray and lonesome looking and sad for the slaughter that still reeks here in the human heart of memory.
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