Rucksack

I was going to say something last night but I got carried away telling stories. I’m getting to that age. A couple of things, really, I was going to say.

The first is to give props to a couple of people, Colby Buzzell for one his style and presence burning through the written word make talking through a keyboard attractive. And he makes irony a spiritual value, an astonishing feat. If I can capture any of that lightening in my own little bottle I shall be well served. My kid for another, who goes travelling simply as a matter of course and finds the entire planet accessible. And he tells about it in such a matter of fact voice, not to point out the freakiness of it but the absolute normality of every place he goes without cheapening it or objectifying the otherness of the world’s minor cultures.

But enough about other people. Lets talk about me!

I didn’t used to plan shit, I just did it, and I couldn’t tell spontaneity from impulsiveness, and I held, we all held, back in the hippie days, that spontaneity was godliness. It ain’t like that now. I plan the shit out of everything I do , especially shit like this bus ride business. It pays to know what day it is, because they changed my main bus route here where I live and she don’t run on Sundays anymore. That’s fundamental. Which is too bad, because this 17 bus goes a lot of very convenient places, like out to the Wal-mart, and the fabric store, and Alaska Copper and Brass, and to the Good Sam Hospital, and Central Drugs downtown where I get my meds. Which works out, because they aren’t open on Sundays anyway.

The Corollary is that it pays to know the schedule, and the route, and the transfers. They’ve got an effective website, Trimet.org. You can plan it out.

The other thing is bring a book. I spend most of my free time reading, when I’m not on the boat, and a lot of time even then, and I don’t hardly know where I am anyway when I’m reading a book, so I might as well be on the bus going someplace interesting.

So I have been on greyhound.com and on Google Earth and I had the printer going and I printed out the detail itinerary for all 6 legs of this trip and I looked them all up on Google earth and put the little pins in the map and I know where I’m going and when I’m going to be there and where all that is in relation to, say, the Rocky Mountains or the Great Plains or Buffalo Bayou and the Mojave Desert.

And I went crazy on eBay and haunted the pawnshops and I go thirty DVDs most of which are movies I been wanting to see anyway. Phillips noise-cancelling hifi headphones and a nice little netbook and there I am, 60 hours of mindlessness. And a couple books. And a little banana shaped pillow filled with millet seeds for the back of my neck.

I remind me of Kerouac when he was living that one month in Denver all full of plans for the good life and going hiking with Gary Snider and Jack bought a rucksack, he was just so excited about a vision of the grand American Buddha west and he put it on and walked for miles into Denver to try it out nearly beside himself with imagining. And how sour it got and how little that rucksack finally meant besides that grand rushing dream crushed by alcoholism and paranoia and inner demons.

I did get a new rucksack, though. And that scares me a little. It's not a rucksack, really , its an REI daypack, really light, and big enough, but it still represents the hopes. I'm sober, though, and I know what dreams are worth, and I have faced most of the demons and made friends, and I understand that spontaneity isn't impulsiveness it is the way you encounter the moment and the way you open your eyes and your mind at the same time. So I look at that backpack and all my stuff and I'm almost  ready.