Old Piece....
Posted: May 24th, 2005, 6:24 pm
....but I'm looking at it again and thinking it's time to carry on with it................
21
Doubt, had been September's obsession. Time spent in the studio, had been just that; time spent. Meager attempts, disappointing results, mud on my palette.
Fuck.
September is now a memory of cool evenings and warm afternoons. Blackened limbs and fallen leaves are now dominating the already shortened days. A time of year that is often good to me. The crisp air gives my mind room to grow. My days are filled with long walks in High Park, shuffling my feet through the leaves filling my ears with a child long gone. Weathered old men play checkers, and talk of then, and I glimpse the future.
My palette is renewed.
A new painting. Long nights in my studio are once again productive. This new work feels good. It has import. Autumn euphoria as it is to be named, not unlike a child, restored my palette and my self. Euphoria may be a strange suggestion, a temporary sense of well being. I hope this painting is more than temporary. I can't help but to think though that this piece projects an image of a warm colorful dance through autumn that is fleeting. Much the way that I experience painting it. The process is there, I once again dance, then it is over, and the music is silenced.
The air was misted with the pungent odors of oils and thinners. Not something everyone can appreciate. It put me in the mood to work. The scent possesses it's own physicality, it's something I can touch, something tangible, that means work.
I had been up all night working, and yet I wasn’t tired. The early morning light made my indulgence in Autumn Euphoria a gentle and satisfying experience. I don't know how long I had spent looking at it, wandering about my studio, even moving furniture and objects, getting as many views of it as possible. Sitting, standing, kneeling, even reclined on an old warn sofa, I had picked up at some second hand store, with hopes of one day bringing it back to life, but procrastination has once again got the better of me.
Apparently hours had slipped by unnoticed. A knock had come to my door and that too had almost gone unnoticed. The rhythm persisted, awakening me from my gaze. Normally I would have bellowed to the intruder to enter, but feeling a child like excitement about my latest accomplishment I couldn't resist but run and stumble across my far from vacuous and at times chaotic studio.
Deirdre.
She had entered my life a long time ago, so long ago that there are things forgotten. Deirdre, is physical. That is, she is statuesque, with hair that was to be the envy of every raven in our path. Everything about her is long, her arms , fingers and even her toes, talons.
Appearances aside, she shines an honesty that at once goes through one like Arthur's sword, yet can sooth even the hardest of souls. She held to me a presence that gave me validity, which endeared me to her in a life long friendship, and on more than many occasions got in the way of the strongest sexual attraction I have or will ever feel.
Sex is the strongest perfume known to the human soul. Sex dwells not in our genitals, but in our psyche, and Deirdre owned mine. If I where ever to pick up erotic art as my stock and trade she would be my muse.
Opening the door, we each looked into the other's eyes, it's our peck on the cheek, greeting embrace. Some say they are cold, her blue eyes that is. They too where of the raven, the trickster, they helped her to know that something was afoot and she needed to know, what.
No, not cold, something else, but not cold.
There over her shoulder another welcome kindred soul.
Merlin.
A short stalky Welshman. A nose that is no stranger to conflict, having met many angry fists. Merlin never turned down a cold beer or a good fight, or even a warm beer and a bad fight. Not that he ever rose victorious. I think he takes great pride in being the punching bag of slow thinking louts.
Merlin possesses another power that no sweaty thug can take from him, music, and more, the lyric. The story telling poetry of the balladeer.
His ever present guitar case, next to him like a faithful dog, obedient and trusted.
They entered, leaving the autumn chill behind.
Bumping things, art and non art, ( there are only these 2 categories of all things on earth. I'll explain myself later). I dragged them through chaos. They almost didn't see it for everything else, but there it was, as yet incomplete.
"Holy shit man, fuck. Can I put it on my first album cover?"
Merlin's enthusiasm always precedes him.
Deirdre, more ponderous.
Then looking around at the rest of my world.
She knows how to look.
"I'm not sure yet, there's more to come, leaving more to say.
It is a departure, a diving board".
-Splash-
"You're always exactly in time with what you are looking at. I mean this obviously is about now; autumn. It's not romantic though, not pretty, full of patriotic maple leaves, and rosy cheeked brats frolicking and BS, like that. It seems to want to check out how earth and sky are connected in a pagan kind of dance."
" Zooming through the season in some gas guzzling brutish 60's car, at 80 mph". That kind of pagan."
Sounds of Merlin's axe, plunking, picking. His nimble finger's turning the tuning pegs, his ear caressing the sounds changing each note to it's correct place.
Kinda like how I mix mud on a palette. Something I do instinctively as he does with his guitar; "plunk plink".
Something familiar in the air, a song. One he plays often, an original piece. Behind all of Merlin's music there is a foreboding sense of guilt, not his, but somehow removed.
This one about a working man's guilt. Guilty of not being equal to his predator, "the boss". Guilty of not lifting himself above his given lot on earth, and having to look that guilt in the mirror every morning as his razor moves across his face taking away yesterdays guilt, so that it may grow in again by days end.
I've put that part of guilt behind me now. Having left that world.
Now I wake up every morning in this place. Formerly full of industry, the rag trade to be exact. I look down at the floor and see the holes where the sewing machines where bolted to the floor, and out the huge windows, out over all the other buildings of similar history.
Thousands have toiled here, some feeling the oppression, but most where happy to go on every day at the chance of surviving.
I rant.
While the song played on, Deirdre at the window, watching the gray skies empty their acidic burden upon the city.
I stumbled across chaos to my fridge, knowing of the wine within.
Pulling the handle, the door ajar, the light from within.
Christ rose from his grave. Reaching in I take the bottle in my hand..."body of Christ....amen."
The wine of the last supper must of tasted as good as any made.
I like to think Christ was a drinking man. I think all people of vision are.
Now a corkscrew....new adventure.
After a futile effort routing through drawers filled with cutlery, paintbrushes and things I'd rather not mention.
I remember....it's in the fridge, cheese compartment....wine & cheese...corkscrew, my logic.
Don't ask where I found the glasses. Pouring, Merlin now playing something new, no lyrics yet. A great piece on it's own, with a classical bent.
His fingers slide along the neck as he sets the guitar down gently, with reverence, making a gentle sliding squeak. A Hendrix sound with out the amp.
Glasses in hand, "nice driveway", clinks all around. Yum.
Deirdre breaks the air. "I got a call today". Oh who? Think 20 years ago. I try not to, it reminds me that it's not 20 years ago, and that this body is 20 years older. I wish my mind could have grown old and wise and my body remained young. Merlin chuckled, swallowed down and poured himself another.
"Vancouver.....interesting walking stick".....No way! That over grown dick is still alive! "Ya". I guess he learned how to use a phone book. "He wants to see us all". No babe he wants to see you.
Merlin picks up his guitar and started to play a love song he wrote for them 20 years ago. Well, not really a love song, more of a sex song. I swear you two spent 2 months tied in a coital knot. So what brings Tarzan to the big smoke....Vancouver run out of smoke? Better hide my stash. Merlin plays on..." don't bogart that joint my friend.."
Laughter breaks out.
God I haven’t thought of those days in a long time. Was a time when I went to great lengths to block it out, but ya I remember, all too well. We were nuts. No thanks to Jack. Merlin lifts his glass, "to Kerouac". Cheers.
I think of doing a series of paintings about those guys, that writing, the jazz.
" How about tomorrow I could bring him here". No way! I don’t want to take a chance of him crashing on my couch, then becoming a fixture.
Ok then some where else, but are you up to it? Merlin and I....Ya ya I'll get high with him. Christ He must be pushing 60.
"Goodstuff, I'll give you a ding and set it up, but we gotta zip out for now. This new thing your working on, it's doing something, I'm happy to see it". Ya, Merlin agrees...putting his guitar back in it's case. His knees popping as he bends down to pick it up. I guess he's not a kid anymore either.
They leave, Merlin leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake. Deirdre leaving behind her own scent of life on the edge, or at least her own version of the edge. Walking on a razor kind of edge. Danger being much more intellectual than physical. If she ever were to sit down and write a book it would knock the world on it's ass.
I follow their ephemeral trail to the door. The corridor dark, dank as always. The elevator door slides open and closes with a hammering thud, swallowing my friends and dropping them to the wet polluted street. That acidic place where the city plays it's dirty game of commerce. Where angry frustrated people glide through their consumptive lives, seeking the holy grail of this centuries reason.
Pay to death, Mortgage.
The place where profit and poverty meet and mix in a toxic soup. Easily rolling over everything in it's path, the blue suits, taking their toll, and all so moral.
Spare some change?
No I am not prophesizing. I too am weak and prone to attacks of consumerist fantasies....Porsche 911 turbo carrera. Ha ha..
Deciding on a snooze, lying on my paisley patterned couch, the wine sliding of the edge of my brain....and remembering 20 years ago....
Chapter 2
It was Spring, late 70's. Backpack full and ready to hit the road.
The early morning sun played it's little game on my acid soaked mind.
Opening my eyes I took in the sun's rays giving soft shadows across Judes' full breasts, as she lay there in her quiet sleep. I want to remember this.
And I do.
After such a luxurious dawn, she wakes, and with out acknowledgement leaves the bed of our sojourn dreams, she knows what is to come, and does not take it easy.
Bye Jude.
Our relationship was short but not without fire. Sorry Jude but no strings, remember.
YA.
She drove us to the highway, not far. For Jude this was certain closure. Silence on the road. Too early for too much traffic. An edge in the air. Deirdre could feel it too. Not much was said. It was small comfort for Jude to know there was nothing between Deirdre and I. She eased the car over to the side of the road, just before the on ramp. A quiet moment, the sun still just rising. The trunk pops open, Jude not even getting out. I toss our packs out, barely snapping the trunk shut, the car jumping into gear Judes' foot slamming the accelerator to the floor sending her and car rocketing off into her future. Smoke, billowing from the rear tires, squealing loudly in the early spring morning, turning 180 degrees, car and Jude fish tailing down the road. Deirde shouldering her back pack..."Fuck is she pissed."
So, there it is...North, and then west.
Deirdre as though she had done this before carried her pack over to the
gaping mouth of the highway, the weight seeming effortless.
It really is quite simple I kept telling myself, the 400 to the 17 at Sudbury, then west, and we'll be in Vancouver in no time.
Canada's big and Ontario is huge. We were about to get a lesson in geography. Throw away those atlases kids and stick out your thumb, then you will know the scale of land air and sea.
Touch a rock on the side of the road, because the next one you touch will be entirely different.
Pull a piece of prairie grass, lay back and watch the sky, it's not like sky anywhere else.
The vastness of the world is not just in it's size, but also in all the creatures that move around on, in and above it. You think walking around a crowded shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon can overload your cranium, and short out your synapses? Check out the rest of the world.
Kaboom!!!
I digress.
So there it is, gray, hard on a cold day, soft when the sun is cookin'. Not a sight that gives my aesthetic spine the chills, but there it is, and we're goin' down it.
Look out.
I never took much notice to my thumb before. I know I can use it and an ape can't. Oh well. So now it has become instrumental in taking me wherever it decides I'm going. As the trip goes on I will wonder at times, if one with a more attractive thumb, or perhaps a thumb with a rambling spirit will have some advantage on this paved life.
A sexist thought; I have a woman with me, it's all the thumb I need, (oops).
Dierdre ambled over to the side of the road, threw her pack into the dust of the on/off ramp's shoulder, sat her butt on it and did as she would often do: opened "Looking For Mr. Goodbar". Her enthusiasm shone in the rides, rarely on the side of the road.
My approach was far different, attacking every passing vehicle with my projecting thumb, an in your face method of hitch hiking.
My decision to take on this trek had a history of 2 years of hearing an art college buddy ranting of his similar excursions. He would go on about it. Most puzzling is that it didn’t matter if he was straight, drunk or flying in the arms of LSD, the story never changed.
He always started with the physical journey...."There then there, him and her etc...", but then it would twist and morph into a journey far more internal, almost poetic, sometimes spiritual sometimes profane. How he could stand on the side of the road with no expectation of movement in some lost and forgotten place, and smell it, touch it and really see it in a way he could never see anything familiar. It was almost never in the moving along in some rubes' pick up truck that gave insight, but always in the empty places in between.
It is rarely ever in the written passages of a poem that clarity reveals itself but in the empty spaces between each stanza. When we take time to pause, to breathe, drawing in that blood changing oxygen so our minds can dissect and digest intellectual food.
Give your brain food and it burps.
My expectation on a physical level was to get to the Pacific coast, but on another level....?
Let it burn.
Let every image, smell, sensation and most of all any far-reaching experiences burn an indelible mark on my mind. I wasn't just taking a series of rides down the Trans-Canada, and further as I would find out...stay tuned, but we where throwing our selves at the mercy of whatever and whomever’s path we would cross.
So we wait, my thumb doing that fishing lure dance in front of unimaginable hulks of steel, rolling on rubber, propelled by burning dinosaurs.
We wait..., but not long. It lurches to the shoulder, red light flashing, signaling it’s intent, allowing these two young adventurers their first ride. The first of a scene that would repeat itself so often that it became anonymous.
A giant boat of a car, stable, safe, conservative, successful, a reflection of the American ideal. I wanted to remember this car above all others that would cross our path. It was bronze, lots of chrome trim, white walled tires, white vinyl roof. Inside, leather, comfort, air conditioning, ( it was the beginning of May and this guy has the air on full).
“Good morning”. Out of this obscene hunk of Americana, steps this tall round guy. I looked at his license plate: “Ontario yours to discover”, and then back at him. The image did’nt fit. This guy looked like an American tourist, right down to the white patent leather shoes.
While the word image is glaring at me on my computer screen let me tell you a little about us.
1978, two kinds of young people like Deirdre and I. The first is the disco type, not much different than the gent to pick us up at the naissance of our journey. Lots of polyester, afro hair do’s, bell bottoms, and especially for the guys who where too old for the disco scene, gold chains. The second type, that’s us, We wore clothes because it was illegal and too damn cold to do otherwise. So it was basic, T-shirt and jeans. Down the road I would take a liking to wearing a bandana. Image counts. One regret, the rawhide thong sandals I started out wearing, couldn’t keep the damn things on my feet.
Approaching, large, a big hulk of a guy. Casual attire from head to toe. A light dusting of gray hair on top of a large round head, carrying a well-traveled and very tanned face, luminous blue eyes, a remnant of perhaps a mischievous youth. Kind of a pear shaped guy, late fifties. If this ain’t no tourist then he’s the insurance agent from hell. What does he want from us? Maybe he wants to protect us from all the other freaks on the road.
Ha! I’ve got Deirde with me, protection is the last thing I need. Speaking of whom, it was poetic, should be made an Olympic event, the way she bagged “Looking For Mr. Goodbar”, shouldered her gear brushed her self off, and melted that gentleman with an ear to ear, that shone brighter than high beams at dusk.
Besides which I hope we meet as many freaks as we can,( and we will).
The beast opens up, trunk gaping. Approaching, greetings, intros all around. Gary, that was all that fit so far.
In.
Air conditioning blowing it’s furious wind, it’s the 1st of May. My skin responds, with a chicken’s texture. So, Gary where you heading? Not yet aware of the hiking ethic I beat him to the icebreaker. That got a chuckle. Orillia, I sell insurance. What did I say? You kids ? West coast.
Long way from home isn’t it? Gary, you live on the road, right? Right. I know what you mean, but you 2 are so young. 21 Gary, as old as some people get. Nice wheels. Dierdre pipes in. You, young lady, you not afraid of hiking across the country? No way dude this is as good as it gets. Hell we don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow. I wish every day was like this.
The big American monster hurtles north, carrying a cargo of polyester and adventure.
Easy listening on the radio. Never could figure out why anyone would want to listen easily, when there is so much hard listening to do. Ray Conniffs Singers doing a too palatable version of a Lennon McCartney composition. Gary very confident behind the wheel, eyes straight forward. Hands ladened with big gold rings lightly holding the wheel and finger tapping out of beat with the music, not that the music had a beat. You do a lot of miles Gary? Ya, crossed the country more than a few times and never left southern Ontario. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the old guy in a Willy Loman kind of way. I’ve got kids your age. Of course they’re both in college now. Ya we just finished 2 years of that. More of that to come. Dierdre sees her future in academics. I may check it out again some day too don’t know yet. My oldest is studying law.
So what makes you 2 want to do this? I tell him about Mike my old college buddy. He seems to really be interested, the salesman doing his work. Sizing us up for a deal. He never tries to sell us on turning around though. Too bad, we where both psyched to sell our position. Good salesman, he knew the chance of closing this deal was slim or none. He really just wanted to listen. Doing his home work.
A salesman, I guess has got to hear it all before he can he can close the big one.
The road flying beneath us.
When I was your age I wanted to go over seas to fight in Korea but…..flat feet. Closest I ever came to any adventure. Thought you said you had kids? Ya. No adventure there? Ya but we’re all suppose to have that one. I don’t even think of having that adventure . God no, Deirdre giving the perspective of a woman who might one day put her body through the ultimate torture. The thought of it makes me cringe and I’m only thinking of the first 9 months. Back to Korea, sorry Gary for sounding like a flower toting hippie, but you considered going out and killing other humans? Nobody ever thought of it that way. I suppose he was right. If anyone really thought of all the consequences of killing another brother, husband, father, mother, sister, daughter would they do it out of an affection for some misguided perception of patriotism? Apparently some do.
The both of you are card carrying hippies aren’t you? You mean we open our minds to every experience possible, and jump down the throat of injustice, war, pollution and famine you betcha. We once stood with 30,000 other students as the police threatened our lives because we believed. Remember that day Deirdre. I remember the fear on their,( the police), faces, and in my heart, but it was a good fear, it was the fear that brought us all to where we all needed to be. We where the “ Beautiful People”.
Good tune. I wish I understood you people. Gary you do, you just know a different fear than we do.
He drove on. Morning was announcing it’s self. Commuters filled the southbound lanes into the city. Man, we are gone.
The terrain started changing as we approached Barrie. Trees and rocks instead of subdivisions. Or not as many subdivisions.
Blue skies ahead.
Silence in the car.
First ride soon to end.
Dierdre jumps in.
She tells our distinguished chauffeur about being raised down east, being poor but happy. He seemed genuinely interested. Their conversation drifted off into the back of my mind, becoming barely audible. I just kept staring forward as though I could see the next 1500 miles of landscape in front of us. The entire trip was becoming visible in a single image.
Last nights’ LSD still lingering…….
Rock, lakes, prairie, mountains and ocean, all in a couple hundred yards.
Then my daydream is interrupted by Gary imploring, what about you? Oh not much to say really. Sort of a Leave it to Beaver existence. Dad worked, Mom didn’t. We went to church every Sunday. The only twist is, in this episode Ward & June get divorced. Not to be cliché but Dad ran off with his secretary. I’m sure Mom must of thought it was just another scene from her daytime soaps.
My life had become a test pattern.
Orillia exit 4km. The end of the beginning. Gary must think this was quite an event, or not. Being a salesman, reading humans must be no different than picking up the day’s newspaper. I hope that it was an event that he could think worthy of recounting to his wife, or a colleague, as I am telling it to you.
Well folks this is where I get out. You two take care. As though he does it every day.
In and out of peoples lives with or with out effect. I never kept count of the people we would meet and never meet again. Most of them I would never give a second thought.
But some of them……
Gary is a rather ordinary guy, on the grand scale of things, but none the less memorable. I could be cynical, and further criticize his attire, his car, and his bourgeois existence, but this whole adventure would be no adventure at all with out a small amount of blind acceptance.
So, Gary, car and the novice travelers amble to the dusty shoulder of the road. Blinkers once again indicating intention, and finally break lights, glowing bright red in the early morning light. Bright coloured steel vehicles zooming, flying, zipping by, ( what adjective to use?), leaving that familiar whirring sound in their shadow. That sound which will forever leave it’s footprint firmly stamped in my subconscious. Perhaps, why even today I have an affinity for zooming electronic music, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, et al.
Back on earth
Feet planted
Thumb dancing.
Cars of the world thundering by. White line, the guide, meandering the hard gray river. Cars of the world? Yeah, American hulks, Japanese compacts, European toys…whiiiiirrrrrrrr…..
Dierdre, stretching, her eyes up and around giving her a place to be.
“Cool”.
The dust from Gary’s departure lingering like a London fog, his shadow with us until it slowly returns to earth. The vista clear. Once again the Pacific is within sight. My thumb implores. Dierdres’ pack drops to the ground raising a little bit of Gary’s shadow.
She sits herself down opening her book once again leaving me to entice the next adventure.
Gazing back to where we came from I watch as the cars materialize from small metallic dots, they start to come into focus through the waves of heat rising from the pavement as it is toasted by the mid morning sun. They break through as through a barrier, glare from brightly coloured steel and tinted glass.
Getting larger
The form
The car.
( almost haiku)
Barely recognizable human silhouette within at speeds once unknown.
What a horse must think at the site of one of these man made horses….? W’eve gone from a roll in the hay to a tumble in the rumble seat. Until now I’ve never given much thought to how technology and it’s many changes have effected our sexual behaviour. If the type of car a man owns reflects his ego, or his attributes, ( big corvette little dick ), then what does that say about his computer. Is there a correlation between the speed of a mans’ modem and the speed of his conquest. What about women, sex and technology??? That question has got me baffled but then so do women period.
As I am writing this my mind wanders as it often did while standing on the side of the road.
The wait this time seemed longer than the first time. Some of the interludes between rides will often get seriously long, some extending into days.
An hour passed by. I never gave much thought to what I would do while we were in waiting mode. Deirdre had her book. I suppose it wouldn’t be quite so boring if we were in unfamiliar territory. Kicking around some unknown dust. I’ve been here before. Not standing right here, but up and down this highway several times before. We were only an hour plus away from home.
Then like a sudden gale, an old yellow pick up truck careened to the side of the road. Familiar dust every where.
Blinking lights, rust, gravel meeting ashpalt, meadow and sky this yellow beast, some 15 or 20 years old, farm vehicle plates, pock marked chrome, bits of straw whirl just above the open box and settling back down into it’s metal bed, the smell not unknown, manure the stuff that is factoried in the stomach of a cow from the earth to cud and back,tires as bald as I will some day be, glass spotted by the kamikaze insects of country roads the dirt of fields worked and fallow blotch the yellow body of this rumbling machine, blue gray smoke from it’s hemmoroidal asshole blub blub blub blub it idled, new untraveled back packs thud in the empty box raising more familiar dust and pungent straw door flies open agape Deirdre’s long arms swing 2 untraveled travellers mount it’s torn seats in gear and forward.
A rube, neither freak nor hick but a hybrid, handing a big well rolled doobie to Dierdre, spark it , Hi Bill names all around, yellow beast bouncing about the north highway as though driving itself, red well stoned eyes never gazing upon it’s white broken solid line stereo on not easy listening, but something far more grating with searing amplified guitar sounds some suthern dude wailing about the freedom of a bird as though it should some how be his own heavenly smoke wafts as the yellow beast finds it’s way, sucking sounds expanding lungs, and minds, long hair not unlike the straw now in tornadoes above the box now occupied by all we have, dust all of it unfamiliar on every surface his high smile revealing a gold filling and well smoked teeth pack of great Canadian cancerous yet cherished cigarettes peer from t-shirt pocket spark from the well travelled joint his hand barely caressing the wheel other hand clutching the passed joint, more bouncing.
Ambling north he just could’nt say enough how one day he’s gonna tell his old man what to do with the farm and head west . One eye on the road the other on us he was tired of his life, not knowing anything outside the land he was raised on, and the 6 o’clock news. Somewhere there was something else, he did’nt know what, but ya there was something else, and so went the spirit of the time, and so went our northbound trip. All local travelers with stories about how mundane their lives were and how one day, through means of mysterious fate all that would change. They looked at us with envious hope as though perhaps we represented part of the fate that was going to change their own lives, a spark, all we could do is nod and agree. We knew though that their lives would go on as they always had and that one day my life too would find a slot to rest in but now there’s too much burning to do, too much road to put behind, too much sky to look into, too much sea to talk to.
Sudbury was coming up faster than we thought bouncing and rolling through rock faced north, the truck stop diners. Cottage roads to lake country. Promises of catching the big one, muskie, pike, walleye, and bass. Miserable pines clinging to rock crevices for tenuous life. Hawks soaring in their circular hunt, and the raven witnessing the whole scene from hydro line perches at roadside. Graffitti sprayed on rock faces announcing true love and the names of travelers gone before us.
The morning surrenders gently to the afternoon and a lunch of good stuff we had prepared, fruit , granola some smoked sausage, bread and a wine skin of herbal iced tea. Better though was the prospect of now facing west, and everything unknown. The end of familiar dust. Chasing the unknown sun to its’ place of rest, the south behind us and lunch doing it’s good.
Our first westbound ride breaks hard to the gravel shoulder of the west going highway, stirring a massive rolling cloud of that glorious new dust. Grabbing our gear and running with child abandon to the great wheeled hulk some 15or 20 years old. Resting at the side of the trans Canada highway creaking doors fall open and in . The back seat welcomes us with more creaks of age. Two hard rock miners up front open case of beer at our feet. The warm brew is offered and gladly accepted. These 2 guys had some time off so off they zoomed in their tank to Toronto for some flashing lights and Yonge St. action. Haven’t sobered up in 4 days.
Deirdre socked back one and then another. Stories of their Viking conquests pillaging the big city nights recounted on the voyage back to the tunnel of ore and dark. The sun playing it’s reflective game through the windshield mottled with the corpses of untold bugs and stone chips. On more than one occasion we had skirted the edge of that westward highway churning up all that new dust, but the road caresses us knowing we mean it no harm. Owing it homage for taking us to our lives and perhaps some insight into what it means the raven cronks in humorous delight at the sight of it all.
Fast conversations of young party lifestyle, drugs sex and rock’n roll. The wide open experiences of immortality weaving on the well woven highway. Rock, bog thick brush home to the moose, bear and beaver sacred animals to the long past Ojibwa that once hunted and lived in this harsh unforgiving north . Great glaciers had once crept over this land only to retreat leaving behind the scene flying by my view. This ancient earth, and we are such infants crawling awkwardly upon it’s surface. A golden eagle hangs in the sky above seeming motionless as though a kite on the end of a child’s string. This wild ride careens to an end. The miners leave the highway and head north back to their day to day.
Unfamiliar dust rises and falls to let us view the stillness around us. Four corners guiding our compass. Absolute stillness, silence, except a distant chickadee chirping it’s vanity. Each diagonal a marsh, cat tails, a barrier to the dark brush beyond. All of it beautiful, but at the same time intimidating to my inexperience. If I were thrust into the need to survive in this north could I ? Probably not. A few cars fly by as we troll for their kindness. Our conversations at these in between places often were minimal as we explore a place individually, exposing all our senses. Thumbs up west. Enough time gone our feet find their place on the earth of these strange four corners to have a good smell of the air tinted by the ancient marsh the sun high and warming our flesh.
A car coming over the hill westbound this time approaching the side of the road with cautious ease. Finally to a stop without event or dust. The driver exits to open the trunk approaching and greeting, hers a large warm smile. A middle aged motherly looking native woman. One of those whose ancestors lived on the land. An Ojibwa to be exact. Thump the trunk closed containing our gear. Deirdre took the front seat and I the rear. Deirdre’s curiosity for this woman took on a dimension of familiarity, like talking to an Aunt she hadn’t seen in some time. Anne is her name she would go on about her kids and her husbands’ return to work at the sad hard mill after the north winter. Deirde with ears focused, dropping spare comments and acknowledgements she and her family lived on the reserve on Manitoulin Island . She’s on her way to Sault Ste. Marie, which is a longer ramble than I had bargained for that wandering May day. The two ladies of the front so connected as though never disconnected in their simple intellectual barter couldn’t wouldn’t break the rhythm of their music tuned into the gone road nature out the side rushing window, a video clip in perpetual repetition. It’s in the microcosm that all it’s chaos and abstraction jumps forward, occupies my eyes churns my psyche and I sigh just to hear myself breathe.
The road to the Sault was long rounding many bends, ascending and descending with frequency. The talk up front was constant, bumble berry pie recipe, but I allowed it to become distant and hollow. The little car traversed this path effortlessly, all the pine and brush spread and the ancient rock carved to allow our endearing passage.
The Sault at a junction of road water and nation.
Lake Superior with it’s deep mysteries opens to the north. The Ojibway gave it a spiritual respect calling it the Manitou, and we must round it’s great shoulders to keep our western way. The Manitou will test us to be sure we are worthy of it’s passage. Note that I do not offer the Manitou a gender as a true spirit has none. Not the paternal God forced upon my youth, amen.
Our gentle driver brings us to the junction of north and west, to the gate of the Manitou.
We will rest here tonight.
We bid our adieus and breathe in the misted air. A quick meal and a few enquiries lead us easily to a local youth hostel. With daylight still availed we walk looking at this steel town, a port to the great lakes feeding the lakers burdened with the ore of Algoma and grain of the west, off to points south.
Great boulders and cliffs, we sat on our nations shoulders from which we watched the ebb and flow of the great lakes, like oceans, only horizon no shore on the other side. Surrenders it’s meal to the diving birds, gulls and others. A ship, or a little boys imaginary stick boat floating slowly by. Gulls screeching in the evening northern blue. Tall grasses from the crevices and cracks between glacial rock. Survival on what, I can’t imagine. Trees too, pines from some old Buddha haiku, simply living, and again I don’t know how.
Deirdre quietly sits, perhaps recipes to ponder, or a northern simple thought, sigh and breathe in again taking that cool northern blue deep to churn into the butter of meditation.
It is May so black flies rule the evening blue. We are no fools a hasty retreat is made to the hostel.
We are traveling prepared for the cool out side night on grasses and rocks, in the shelter of great pines and the domes of great prairie skies, but hostels give us a source of knowledge. Other road goers share in their tales of here there and the empty spaces in between in which we with wide eyes like children around their first campfire stared in awe at the fuel of our dreams. These simple abodes also served our budget well.
The Sault is a town sprung out from the bush and rock it sits on. Wood clad modest bungalows sit precariously on rock out crops. The people of the Sault walk on the solid mantle of the northern earth.
Shelter for the night was indeed one of these bungalows; outfitted with army bunks, as though ready to bug out at a moments notice. It sleeps a dozen or so strays from the road at times bartering the labour of their bodies for simple shelter.
We, the wandering monks of our generation.
Our first experience at a hostel gave us pause, as we sat wide eyed listening to fervent stories of the road here and there and the empty spaces in between confirming truths I had suspected that there is a mantra and it is the road (dharma). My enthusiasm for what was to come grew with every story laid out before us like some all you can eat buffet, and I did.
I started to wonder what changes are given to the young woman of the Sault who manages this place as she sat listening with intent to all to all the roadgoing . She of a more sentient life bares witness to the winds of human travel and we, as the wind must blow through and beyond.
The creaking springs and waking hour, early sun through the bug spotted window. All are hushed in quietude of morning meditation: road ahead.
The stories live in the night before.
Shouldered packs and out to the day.
Noisy local coffee shop greasy too sweet doughnuts and knowing waitress, knowing her life before it’s half over and very content that tomorrow will not be much different than today or yesterday, a quality that now as I write this in my older complicated life I see as a quality pure and simply.
Deirdre with her calm smile knows too, that we have come, seen, enjoyed and now our traveling wind blows and needs us to fulfill it’s destiny. Doughnuts heavy in our bellies coffee sweet and black another memory. Exiting the diner she breathes in all in sight and smell and knows the stories of last night can carry us in that northern wind with the Manitou and the raven to watch us.
I can see the wind carries our first test, gray rolling clouds and cool damp mist in the wind. The rains of northern spring will come.
Not an hour later sitting at roadside, thumbs up high budding birch trees bending to northern will. The rains came slowly at first a warning for someone who couldn’t smell it coming an hour ago. We brought out our rain gear showing the Manitou and the raven our preparedness for their test. We will move on. We will pass the test. The rains fell from the sky in torrents with the Manitous’ wind to blow it in our faces, giving us caveat that only those of spirit will pass it’s shoulders.
Short hopping rides gave little respite from the deluge. The landscape disappears through wipers slapping. White lines dark sheen of the northern road were all we had to guide us. The Manitou was all but invisible. Our trickster raven would swoop occasionally and let out a loud cronk and still I don’t know if he is our guardian or in the service of the Manitou, testing us to be sure we are worthy of the north.
Our first day on the road brought us much further than I had bargained for the same can not be said for our second day. It felt as though we where going backwards. At days end, or at least what we considered days end I didn’t know where we were. The rain seemed to break or at least relent it’s temper, we could see far enough off the side of the road to notice a high ridge with a small clearing in the woods.
Home.
We climbed the rock ridge, in dry conditions would not been much of a feet, but we were wet, cold and exhausted. The rock felt like ice on our hands. And a loud cronk echoed from above, I think he is beginning to like us.
From our perch above the highway I could see nothing but shadows of the trees around us even the highway a mere 100 or so feet away seemed to disappear in the haze. But the sound of an occasional car whirring by assured us that the Manitou had not stolen it on us.
There was little time to properly survey the surroundings. The rains became heavy again and we needed shelter. The tent was on my pack. As quickly as my cold hands would allow I untied it and we rushed to get it erected pounding pegs with native rocks where we could find enough soil to receive them. We made sure we had a tent large enough for some comfort. It easily accommodated we 2 weary road goers and our packs in one corner so as not to soak us. The next chore was to blow up our air mattresses. Done with exhausted wind.
Feeling solemn in my shivering body, little comfort against the cold rain tapping its’ night song on the skin of our home. Little hope for dreams of pleasant futures curled and wrapped tightly in our new and used for the first time sleeping bags. Little said, flashlight out, torrents from above and chattering teeth, no bird songs or even the cronk of our raven guide to lull us to a good nights rest.
Morning was welcome to all our senses. Early sun peering over the pines, cool dry breeze to dry our soaked clothes, birds , new birds also happy to be in the bright morning, the smell of wet grasses, and there he is gliding and flapping his delight greeting us with chains of cronks. Deirdre rummaging for our breakfast, trail mix and granola bars. Meditation comes easy in the delight of this bright day. We both like bodhisattvas sit on the earth and know our own breath. The raven,( I have now named him Sir Hector) perching in the pines above quiet and resolute, it ends. Snap to consciousness and sounds of the road. A good road ahead.
With our packs loaded on our backs, climbing down to the road was so much easier than the previous night, exhausted, cold, wet, dreary road worn. Now a new day refreshed with full bellies and minds emptied of burdens, with the sun to our left, the manitou to our right, Sir Hector above, and arms stretched to determined thumbs.
This leg of our journey was full of various and varied sights and smells. Mantle that I imagine being spat up from the centre of the earth during the big bang, huge outcrops of this lichen encrusted granite would humble us at every turn, and with more miracle was the growth of jack pines and wispy grasses in their many crevasses. Another element to traversing the lakehead was the lake, it’s sound like the whirring of a city highway, relentless waves that seemingly come from nowhere and where do they go after breaking on the gravel beach, and where is the centre of the earth anyway?
21
Doubt, had been September's obsession. Time spent in the studio, had been just that; time spent. Meager attempts, disappointing results, mud on my palette.
Fuck.
September is now a memory of cool evenings and warm afternoons. Blackened limbs and fallen leaves are now dominating the already shortened days. A time of year that is often good to me. The crisp air gives my mind room to grow. My days are filled with long walks in High Park, shuffling my feet through the leaves filling my ears with a child long gone. Weathered old men play checkers, and talk of then, and I glimpse the future.
My palette is renewed.
A new painting. Long nights in my studio are once again productive. This new work feels good. It has import. Autumn euphoria as it is to be named, not unlike a child, restored my palette and my self. Euphoria may be a strange suggestion, a temporary sense of well being. I hope this painting is more than temporary. I can't help but to think though that this piece projects an image of a warm colorful dance through autumn that is fleeting. Much the way that I experience painting it. The process is there, I once again dance, then it is over, and the music is silenced.
The air was misted with the pungent odors of oils and thinners. Not something everyone can appreciate. It put me in the mood to work. The scent possesses it's own physicality, it's something I can touch, something tangible, that means work.
I had been up all night working, and yet I wasn’t tired. The early morning light made my indulgence in Autumn Euphoria a gentle and satisfying experience. I don't know how long I had spent looking at it, wandering about my studio, even moving furniture and objects, getting as many views of it as possible. Sitting, standing, kneeling, even reclined on an old warn sofa, I had picked up at some second hand store, with hopes of one day bringing it back to life, but procrastination has once again got the better of me.
Apparently hours had slipped by unnoticed. A knock had come to my door and that too had almost gone unnoticed. The rhythm persisted, awakening me from my gaze. Normally I would have bellowed to the intruder to enter, but feeling a child like excitement about my latest accomplishment I couldn't resist but run and stumble across my far from vacuous and at times chaotic studio.
Deirdre.
She had entered my life a long time ago, so long ago that there are things forgotten. Deirdre, is physical. That is, she is statuesque, with hair that was to be the envy of every raven in our path. Everything about her is long, her arms , fingers and even her toes, talons.
Appearances aside, she shines an honesty that at once goes through one like Arthur's sword, yet can sooth even the hardest of souls. She held to me a presence that gave me validity, which endeared me to her in a life long friendship, and on more than many occasions got in the way of the strongest sexual attraction I have or will ever feel.
Sex is the strongest perfume known to the human soul. Sex dwells not in our genitals, but in our psyche, and Deirdre owned mine. If I where ever to pick up erotic art as my stock and trade she would be my muse.
Opening the door, we each looked into the other's eyes, it's our peck on the cheek, greeting embrace. Some say they are cold, her blue eyes that is. They too where of the raven, the trickster, they helped her to know that something was afoot and she needed to know, what.
No, not cold, something else, but not cold.
There over her shoulder another welcome kindred soul.
Merlin.
A short stalky Welshman. A nose that is no stranger to conflict, having met many angry fists. Merlin never turned down a cold beer or a good fight, or even a warm beer and a bad fight. Not that he ever rose victorious. I think he takes great pride in being the punching bag of slow thinking louts.
Merlin possesses another power that no sweaty thug can take from him, music, and more, the lyric. The story telling poetry of the balladeer.
His ever present guitar case, next to him like a faithful dog, obedient and trusted.
They entered, leaving the autumn chill behind.
Bumping things, art and non art, ( there are only these 2 categories of all things on earth. I'll explain myself later). I dragged them through chaos. They almost didn't see it for everything else, but there it was, as yet incomplete.
"Holy shit man, fuck. Can I put it on my first album cover?"
Merlin's enthusiasm always precedes him.
Deirdre, more ponderous.
Then looking around at the rest of my world.
She knows how to look.
"I'm not sure yet, there's more to come, leaving more to say.
It is a departure, a diving board".
-Splash-
"You're always exactly in time with what you are looking at. I mean this obviously is about now; autumn. It's not romantic though, not pretty, full of patriotic maple leaves, and rosy cheeked brats frolicking and BS, like that. It seems to want to check out how earth and sky are connected in a pagan kind of dance."
" Zooming through the season in some gas guzzling brutish 60's car, at 80 mph". That kind of pagan."
Sounds of Merlin's axe, plunking, picking. His nimble finger's turning the tuning pegs, his ear caressing the sounds changing each note to it's correct place.
Kinda like how I mix mud on a palette. Something I do instinctively as he does with his guitar; "plunk plink".
Something familiar in the air, a song. One he plays often, an original piece. Behind all of Merlin's music there is a foreboding sense of guilt, not his, but somehow removed.
This one about a working man's guilt. Guilty of not being equal to his predator, "the boss". Guilty of not lifting himself above his given lot on earth, and having to look that guilt in the mirror every morning as his razor moves across his face taking away yesterdays guilt, so that it may grow in again by days end.
I've put that part of guilt behind me now. Having left that world.
Now I wake up every morning in this place. Formerly full of industry, the rag trade to be exact. I look down at the floor and see the holes where the sewing machines where bolted to the floor, and out the huge windows, out over all the other buildings of similar history.
Thousands have toiled here, some feeling the oppression, but most where happy to go on every day at the chance of surviving.
I rant.
While the song played on, Deirdre at the window, watching the gray skies empty their acidic burden upon the city.
I stumbled across chaos to my fridge, knowing of the wine within.
Pulling the handle, the door ajar, the light from within.
Christ rose from his grave. Reaching in I take the bottle in my hand..."body of Christ....amen."
The wine of the last supper must of tasted as good as any made.
I like to think Christ was a drinking man. I think all people of vision are.
Now a corkscrew....new adventure.
After a futile effort routing through drawers filled with cutlery, paintbrushes and things I'd rather not mention.
I remember....it's in the fridge, cheese compartment....wine & cheese...corkscrew, my logic.
Don't ask where I found the glasses. Pouring, Merlin now playing something new, no lyrics yet. A great piece on it's own, with a classical bent.
His fingers slide along the neck as he sets the guitar down gently, with reverence, making a gentle sliding squeak. A Hendrix sound with out the amp.
Glasses in hand, "nice driveway", clinks all around. Yum.
Deirdre breaks the air. "I got a call today". Oh who? Think 20 years ago. I try not to, it reminds me that it's not 20 years ago, and that this body is 20 years older. I wish my mind could have grown old and wise and my body remained young. Merlin chuckled, swallowed down and poured himself another.
"Vancouver.....interesting walking stick".....No way! That over grown dick is still alive! "Ya". I guess he learned how to use a phone book. "He wants to see us all". No babe he wants to see you.
Merlin picks up his guitar and started to play a love song he wrote for them 20 years ago. Well, not really a love song, more of a sex song. I swear you two spent 2 months tied in a coital knot. So what brings Tarzan to the big smoke....Vancouver run out of smoke? Better hide my stash. Merlin plays on..." don't bogart that joint my friend.."
Laughter breaks out.
God I haven’t thought of those days in a long time. Was a time when I went to great lengths to block it out, but ya I remember, all too well. We were nuts. No thanks to Jack. Merlin lifts his glass, "to Kerouac". Cheers.
I think of doing a series of paintings about those guys, that writing, the jazz.
" How about tomorrow I could bring him here". No way! I don’t want to take a chance of him crashing on my couch, then becoming a fixture.
Ok then some where else, but are you up to it? Merlin and I....Ya ya I'll get high with him. Christ He must be pushing 60.
"Goodstuff, I'll give you a ding and set it up, but we gotta zip out for now. This new thing your working on, it's doing something, I'm happy to see it". Ya, Merlin agrees...putting his guitar back in it's case. His knees popping as he bends down to pick it up. I guess he's not a kid anymore either.
They leave, Merlin leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake. Deirdre leaving behind her own scent of life on the edge, or at least her own version of the edge. Walking on a razor kind of edge. Danger being much more intellectual than physical. If she ever were to sit down and write a book it would knock the world on it's ass.
I follow their ephemeral trail to the door. The corridor dark, dank as always. The elevator door slides open and closes with a hammering thud, swallowing my friends and dropping them to the wet polluted street. That acidic place where the city plays it's dirty game of commerce. Where angry frustrated people glide through their consumptive lives, seeking the holy grail of this centuries reason.
Pay to death, Mortgage.
The place where profit and poverty meet and mix in a toxic soup. Easily rolling over everything in it's path, the blue suits, taking their toll, and all so moral.
Spare some change?
No I am not prophesizing. I too am weak and prone to attacks of consumerist fantasies....Porsche 911 turbo carrera. Ha ha..
Deciding on a snooze, lying on my paisley patterned couch, the wine sliding of the edge of my brain....and remembering 20 years ago....
Chapter 2
It was Spring, late 70's. Backpack full and ready to hit the road.
The early morning sun played it's little game on my acid soaked mind.
Opening my eyes I took in the sun's rays giving soft shadows across Judes' full breasts, as she lay there in her quiet sleep. I want to remember this.
And I do.
After such a luxurious dawn, she wakes, and with out acknowledgement leaves the bed of our sojourn dreams, she knows what is to come, and does not take it easy.
Bye Jude.
Our relationship was short but not without fire. Sorry Jude but no strings, remember.
YA.
She drove us to the highway, not far. For Jude this was certain closure. Silence on the road. Too early for too much traffic. An edge in the air. Deirdre could feel it too. Not much was said. It was small comfort for Jude to know there was nothing between Deirdre and I. She eased the car over to the side of the road, just before the on ramp. A quiet moment, the sun still just rising. The trunk pops open, Jude not even getting out. I toss our packs out, barely snapping the trunk shut, the car jumping into gear Judes' foot slamming the accelerator to the floor sending her and car rocketing off into her future. Smoke, billowing from the rear tires, squealing loudly in the early spring morning, turning 180 degrees, car and Jude fish tailing down the road. Deirde shouldering her back pack..."Fuck is she pissed."
So, there it is...North, and then west.
Deirdre as though she had done this before carried her pack over to the
gaping mouth of the highway, the weight seeming effortless.
It really is quite simple I kept telling myself, the 400 to the 17 at Sudbury, then west, and we'll be in Vancouver in no time.
Canada's big and Ontario is huge. We were about to get a lesson in geography. Throw away those atlases kids and stick out your thumb, then you will know the scale of land air and sea.
Touch a rock on the side of the road, because the next one you touch will be entirely different.
Pull a piece of prairie grass, lay back and watch the sky, it's not like sky anywhere else.
The vastness of the world is not just in it's size, but also in all the creatures that move around on, in and above it. You think walking around a crowded shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon can overload your cranium, and short out your synapses? Check out the rest of the world.
Kaboom!!!
I digress.
So there it is, gray, hard on a cold day, soft when the sun is cookin'. Not a sight that gives my aesthetic spine the chills, but there it is, and we're goin' down it.
Look out.
I never took much notice to my thumb before. I know I can use it and an ape can't. Oh well. So now it has become instrumental in taking me wherever it decides I'm going. As the trip goes on I will wonder at times, if one with a more attractive thumb, or perhaps a thumb with a rambling spirit will have some advantage on this paved life.
A sexist thought; I have a woman with me, it's all the thumb I need, (oops).
Dierdre ambled over to the side of the road, threw her pack into the dust of the on/off ramp's shoulder, sat her butt on it and did as she would often do: opened "Looking For Mr. Goodbar". Her enthusiasm shone in the rides, rarely on the side of the road.
My approach was far different, attacking every passing vehicle with my projecting thumb, an in your face method of hitch hiking.
My decision to take on this trek had a history of 2 years of hearing an art college buddy ranting of his similar excursions. He would go on about it. Most puzzling is that it didn’t matter if he was straight, drunk or flying in the arms of LSD, the story never changed.
He always started with the physical journey...."There then there, him and her etc...", but then it would twist and morph into a journey far more internal, almost poetic, sometimes spiritual sometimes profane. How he could stand on the side of the road with no expectation of movement in some lost and forgotten place, and smell it, touch it and really see it in a way he could never see anything familiar. It was almost never in the moving along in some rubes' pick up truck that gave insight, but always in the empty places in between.
It is rarely ever in the written passages of a poem that clarity reveals itself but in the empty spaces between each stanza. When we take time to pause, to breathe, drawing in that blood changing oxygen so our minds can dissect and digest intellectual food.
Give your brain food and it burps.
My expectation on a physical level was to get to the Pacific coast, but on another level....?
Let it burn.
Let every image, smell, sensation and most of all any far-reaching experiences burn an indelible mark on my mind. I wasn't just taking a series of rides down the Trans-Canada, and further as I would find out...stay tuned, but we where throwing our selves at the mercy of whatever and whomever’s path we would cross.
So we wait, my thumb doing that fishing lure dance in front of unimaginable hulks of steel, rolling on rubber, propelled by burning dinosaurs.
We wait..., but not long. It lurches to the shoulder, red light flashing, signaling it’s intent, allowing these two young adventurers their first ride. The first of a scene that would repeat itself so often that it became anonymous.
A giant boat of a car, stable, safe, conservative, successful, a reflection of the American ideal. I wanted to remember this car above all others that would cross our path. It was bronze, lots of chrome trim, white walled tires, white vinyl roof. Inside, leather, comfort, air conditioning, ( it was the beginning of May and this guy has the air on full).
“Good morning”. Out of this obscene hunk of Americana, steps this tall round guy. I looked at his license plate: “Ontario yours to discover”, and then back at him. The image did’nt fit. This guy looked like an American tourist, right down to the white patent leather shoes.
While the word image is glaring at me on my computer screen let me tell you a little about us.
1978, two kinds of young people like Deirdre and I. The first is the disco type, not much different than the gent to pick us up at the naissance of our journey. Lots of polyester, afro hair do’s, bell bottoms, and especially for the guys who where too old for the disco scene, gold chains. The second type, that’s us, We wore clothes because it was illegal and too damn cold to do otherwise. So it was basic, T-shirt and jeans. Down the road I would take a liking to wearing a bandana. Image counts. One regret, the rawhide thong sandals I started out wearing, couldn’t keep the damn things on my feet.
Approaching, large, a big hulk of a guy. Casual attire from head to toe. A light dusting of gray hair on top of a large round head, carrying a well-traveled and very tanned face, luminous blue eyes, a remnant of perhaps a mischievous youth. Kind of a pear shaped guy, late fifties. If this ain’t no tourist then he’s the insurance agent from hell. What does he want from us? Maybe he wants to protect us from all the other freaks on the road.
Ha! I’ve got Deirde with me, protection is the last thing I need. Speaking of whom, it was poetic, should be made an Olympic event, the way she bagged “Looking For Mr. Goodbar”, shouldered her gear brushed her self off, and melted that gentleman with an ear to ear, that shone brighter than high beams at dusk.
Besides which I hope we meet as many freaks as we can,( and we will).
The beast opens up, trunk gaping. Approaching, greetings, intros all around. Gary, that was all that fit so far.
In.
Air conditioning blowing it’s furious wind, it’s the 1st of May. My skin responds, with a chicken’s texture. So, Gary where you heading? Not yet aware of the hiking ethic I beat him to the icebreaker. That got a chuckle. Orillia, I sell insurance. What did I say? You kids ? West coast.
Long way from home isn’t it? Gary, you live on the road, right? Right. I know what you mean, but you 2 are so young. 21 Gary, as old as some people get. Nice wheels. Dierdre pipes in. You, young lady, you not afraid of hiking across the country? No way dude this is as good as it gets. Hell we don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow. I wish every day was like this.
The big American monster hurtles north, carrying a cargo of polyester and adventure.
Easy listening on the radio. Never could figure out why anyone would want to listen easily, when there is so much hard listening to do. Ray Conniffs Singers doing a too palatable version of a Lennon McCartney composition. Gary very confident behind the wheel, eyes straight forward. Hands ladened with big gold rings lightly holding the wheel and finger tapping out of beat with the music, not that the music had a beat. You do a lot of miles Gary? Ya, crossed the country more than a few times and never left southern Ontario. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the old guy in a Willy Loman kind of way. I’ve got kids your age. Of course they’re both in college now. Ya we just finished 2 years of that. More of that to come. Dierdre sees her future in academics. I may check it out again some day too don’t know yet. My oldest is studying law.
So what makes you 2 want to do this? I tell him about Mike my old college buddy. He seems to really be interested, the salesman doing his work. Sizing us up for a deal. He never tries to sell us on turning around though. Too bad, we where both psyched to sell our position. Good salesman, he knew the chance of closing this deal was slim or none. He really just wanted to listen. Doing his home work.
A salesman, I guess has got to hear it all before he can he can close the big one.
The road flying beneath us.
When I was your age I wanted to go over seas to fight in Korea but…..flat feet. Closest I ever came to any adventure. Thought you said you had kids? Ya. No adventure there? Ya but we’re all suppose to have that one. I don’t even think of having that adventure . God no, Deirdre giving the perspective of a woman who might one day put her body through the ultimate torture. The thought of it makes me cringe and I’m only thinking of the first 9 months. Back to Korea, sorry Gary for sounding like a flower toting hippie, but you considered going out and killing other humans? Nobody ever thought of it that way. I suppose he was right. If anyone really thought of all the consequences of killing another brother, husband, father, mother, sister, daughter would they do it out of an affection for some misguided perception of patriotism? Apparently some do.
The both of you are card carrying hippies aren’t you? You mean we open our minds to every experience possible, and jump down the throat of injustice, war, pollution and famine you betcha. We once stood with 30,000 other students as the police threatened our lives because we believed. Remember that day Deirdre. I remember the fear on their,( the police), faces, and in my heart, but it was a good fear, it was the fear that brought us all to where we all needed to be. We where the “ Beautiful People”.
Good tune. I wish I understood you people. Gary you do, you just know a different fear than we do.
He drove on. Morning was announcing it’s self. Commuters filled the southbound lanes into the city. Man, we are gone.
The terrain started changing as we approached Barrie. Trees and rocks instead of subdivisions. Or not as many subdivisions.
Blue skies ahead.
Silence in the car.
First ride soon to end.
Dierdre jumps in.
She tells our distinguished chauffeur about being raised down east, being poor but happy. He seemed genuinely interested. Their conversation drifted off into the back of my mind, becoming barely audible. I just kept staring forward as though I could see the next 1500 miles of landscape in front of us. The entire trip was becoming visible in a single image.
Last nights’ LSD still lingering…….
Rock, lakes, prairie, mountains and ocean, all in a couple hundred yards.
Then my daydream is interrupted by Gary imploring, what about you? Oh not much to say really. Sort of a Leave it to Beaver existence. Dad worked, Mom didn’t. We went to church every Sunday. The only twist is, in this episode Ward & June get divorced. Not to be cliché but Dad ran off with his secretary. I’m sure Mom must of thought it was just another scene from her daytime soaps.
My life had become a test pattern.
Orillia exit 4km. The end of the beginning. Gary must think this was quite an event, or not. Being a salesman, reading humans must be no different than picking up the day’s newspaper. I hope that it was an event that he could think worthy of recounting to his wife, or a colleague, as I am telling it to you.
Well folks this is where I get out. You two take care. As though he does it every day.
In and out of peoples lives with or with out effect. I never kept count of the people we would meet and never meet again. Most of them I would never give a second thought.
But some of them……
Gary is a rather ordinary guy, on the grand scale of things, but none the less memorable. I could be cynical, and further criticize his attire, his car, and his bourgeois existence, but this whole adventure would be no adventure at all with out a small amount of blind acceptance.
So, Gary, car and the novice travelers amble to the dusty shoulder of the road. Blinkers once again indicating intention, and finally break lights, glowing bright red in the early morning light. Bright coloured steel vehicles zooming, flying, zipping by, ( what adjective to use?), leaving that familiar whirring sound in their shadow. That sound which will forever leave it’s footprint firmly stamped in my subconscious. Perhaps, why even today I have an affinity for zooming electronic music, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, et al.
Back on earth
Feet planted
Thumb dancing.
Cars of the world thundering by. White line, the guide, meandering the hard gray river. Cars of the world? Yeah, American hulks, Japanese compacts, European toys…whiiiiirrrrrrrr…..
Dierdre, stretching, her eyes up and around giving her a place to be.
“Cool”.
The dust from Gary’s departure lingering like a London fog, his shadow with us until it slowly returns to earth. The vista clear. Once again the Pacific is within sight. My thumb implores. Dierdres’ pack drops to the ground raising a little bit of Gary’s shadow.
She sits herself down opening her book once again leaving me to entice the next adventure.
Gazing back to where we came from I watch as the cars materialize from small metallic dots, they start to come into focus through the waves of heat rising from the pavement as it is toasted by the mid morning sun. They break through as through a barrier, glare from brightly coloured steel and tinted glass.
Getting larger
The form
The car.
( almost haiku)
Barely recognizable human silhouette within at speeds once unknown.
What a horse must think at the site of one of these man made horses….? W’eve gone from a roll in the hay to a tumble in the rumble seat. Until now I’ve never given much thought to how technology and it’s many changes have effected our sexual behaviour. If the type of car a man owns reflects his ego, or his attributes, ( big corvette little dick ), then what does that say about his computer. Is there a correlation between the speed of a mans’ modem and the speed of his conquest. What about women, sex and technology??? That question has got me baffled but then so do women period.
As I am writing this my mind wanders as it often did while standing on the side of the road.
The wait this time seemed longer than the first time. Some of the interludes between rides will often get seriously long, some extending into days.
An hour passed by. I never gave much thought to what I would do while we were in waiting mode. Deirdre had her book. I suppose it wouldn’t be quite so boring if we were in unfamiliar territory. Kicking around some unknown dust. I’ve been here before. Not standing right here, but up and down this highway several times before. We were only an hour plus away from home.
Then like a sudden gale, an old yellow pick up truck careened to the side of the road. Familiar dust every where.
Blinking lights, rust, gravel meeting ashpalt, meadow and sky this yellow beast, some 15 or 20 years old, farm vehicle plates, pock marked chrome, bits of straw whirl just above the open box and settling back down into it’s metal bed, the smell not unknown, manure the stuff that is factoried in the stomach of a cow from the earth to cud and back,tires as bald as I will some day be, glass spotted by the kamikaze insects of country roads the dirt of fields worked and fallow blotch the yellow body of this rumbling machine, blue gray smoke from it’s hemmoroidal asshole blub blub blub blub it idled, new untraveled back packs thud in the empty box raising more familiar dust and pungent straw door flies open agape Deirdre’s long arms swing 2 untraveled travellers mount it’s torn seats in gear and forward.
A rube, neither freak nor hick but a hybrid, handing a big well rolled doobie to Dierdre, spark it , Hi Bill names all around, yellow beast bouncing about the north highway as though driving itself, red well stoned eyes never gazing upon it’s white broken solid line stereo on not easy listening, but something far more grating with searing amplified guitar sounds some suthern dude wailing about the freedom of a bird as though it should some how be his own heavenly smoke wafts as the yellow beast finds it’s way, sucking sounds expanding lungs, and minds, long hair not unlike the straw now in tornadoes above the box now occupied by all we have, dust all of it unfamiliar on every surface his high smile revealing a gold filling and well smoked teeth pack of great Canadian cancerous yet cherished cigarettes peer from t-shirt pocket spark from the well travelled joint his hand barely caressing the wheel other hand clutching the passed joint, more bouncing.
Ambling north he just could’nt say enough how one day he’s gonna tell his old man what to do with the farm and head west . One eye on the road the other on us he was tired of his life, not knowing anything outside the land he was raised on, and the 6 o’clock news. Somewhere there was something else, he did’nt know what, but ya there was something else, and so went the spirit of the time, and so went our northbound trip. All local travelers with stories about how mundane their lives were and how one day, through means of mysterious fate all that would change. They looked at us with envious hope as though perhaps we represented part of the fate that was going to change their own lives, a spark, all we could do is nod and agree. We knew though that their lives would go on as they always had and that one day my life too would find a slot to rest in but now there’s too much burning to do, too much road to put behind, too much sky to look into, too much sea to talk to.
Sudbury was coming up faster than we thought bouncing and rolling through rock faced north, the truck stop diners. Cottage roads to lake country. Promises of catching the big one, muskie, pike, walleye, and bass. Miserable pines clinging to rock crevices for tenuous life. Hawks soaring in their circular hunt, and the raven witnessing the whole scene from hydro line perches at roadside. Graffitti sprayed on rock faces announcing true love and the names of travelers gone before us.
The morning surrenders gently to the afternoon and a lunch of good stuff we had prepared, fruit , granola some smoked sausage, bread and a wine skin of herbal iced tea. Better though was the prospect of now facing west, and everything unknown. The end of familiar dust. Chasing the unknown sun to its’ place of rest, the south behind us and lunch doing it’s good.
Our first westbound ride breaks hard to the gravel shoulder of the west going highway, stirring a massive rolling cloud of that glorious new dust. Grabbing our gear and running with child abandon to the great wheeled hulk some 15or 20 years old. Resting at the side of the trans Canada highway creaking doors fall open and in . The back seat welcomes us with more creaks of age. Two hard rock miners up front open case of beer at our feet. The warm brew is offered and gladly accepted. These 2 guys had some time off so off they zoomed in their tank to Toronto for some flashing lights and Yonge St. action. Haven’t sobered up in 4 days.
Deirdre socked back one and then another. Stories of their Viking conquests pillaging the big city nights recounted on the voyage back to the tunnel of ore and dark. The sun playing it’s reflective game through the windshield mottled with the corpses of untold bugs and stone chips. On more than one occasion we had skirted the edge of that westward highway churning up all that new dust, but the road caresses us knowing we mean it no harm. Owing it homage for taking us to our lives and perhaps some insight into what it means the raven cronks in humorous delight at the sight of it all.
Fast conversations of young party lifestyle, drugs sex and rock’n roll. The wide open experiences of immortality weaving on the well woven highway. Rock, bog thick brush home to the moose, bear and beaver sacred animals to the long past Ojibwa that once hunted and lived in this harsh unforgiving north . Great glaciers had once crept over this land only to retreat leaving behind the scene flying by my view. This ancient earth, and we are such infants crawling awkwardly upon it’s surface. A golden eagle hangs in the sky above seeming motionless as though a kite on the end of a child’s string. This wild ride careens to an end. The miners leave the highway and head north back to their day to day.
Unfamiliar dust rises and falls to let us view the stillness around us. Four corners guiding our compass. Absolute stillness, silence, except a distant chickadee chirping it’s vanity. Each diagonal a marsh, cat tails, a barrier to the dark brush beyond. All of it beautiful, but at the same time intimidating to my inexperience. If I were thrust into the need to survive in this north could I ? Probably not. A few cars fly by as we troll for their kindness. Our conversations at these in between places often were minimal as we explore a place individually, exposing all our senses. Thumbs up west. Enough time gone our feet find their place on the earth of these strange four corners to have a good smell of the air tinted by the ancient marsh the sun high and warming our flesh.
A car coming over the hill westbound this time approaching the side of the road with cautious ease. Finally to a stop without event or dust. The driver exits to open the trunk approaching and greeting, hers a large warm smile. A middle aged motherly looking native woman. One of those whose ancestors lived on the land. An Ojibwa to be exact. Thump the trunk closed containing our gear. Deirdre took the front seat and I the rear. Deirdre’s curiosity for this woman took on a dimension of familiarity, like talking to an Aunt she hadn’t seen in some time. Anne is her name she would go on about her kids and her husbands’ return to work at the sad hard mill after the north winter. Deirde with ears focused, dropping spare comments and acknowledgements she and her family lived on the reserve on Manitoulin Island . She’s on her way to Sault Ste. Marie, which is a longer ramble than I had bargained for that wandering May day. The two ladies of the front so connected as though never disconnected in their simple intellectual barter couldn’t wouldn’t break the rhythm of their music tuned into the gone road nature out the side rushing window, a video clip in perpetual repetition. It’s in the microcosm that all it’s chaos and abstraction jumps forward, occupies my eyes churns my psyche and I sigh just to hear myself breathe.
The road to the Sault was long rounding many bends, ascending and descending with frequency. The talk up front was constant, bumble berry pie recipe, but I allowed it to become distant and hollow. The little car traversed this path effortlessly, all the pine and brush spread and the ancient rock carved to allow our endearing passage.
The Sault at a junction of road water and nation.
Lake Superior with it’s deep mysteries opens to the north. The Ojibway gave it a spiritual respect calling it the Manitou, and we must round it’s great shoulders to keep our western way. The Manitou will test us to be sure we are worthy of it’s passage. Note that I do not offer the Manitou a gender as a true spirit has none. Not the paternal God forced upon my youth, amen.
Our gentle driver brings us to the junction of north and west, to the gate of the Manitou.
We will rest here tonight.
We bid our adieus and breathe in the misted air. A quick meal and a few enquiries lead us easily to a local youth hostel. With daylight still availed we walk looking at this steel town, a port to the great lakes feeding the lakers burdened with the ore of Algoma and grain of the west, off to points south.
Great boulders and cliffs, we sat on our nations shoulders from which we watched the ebb and flow of the great lakes, like oceans, only horizon no shore on the other side. Surrenders it’s meal to the diving birds, gulls and others. A ship, or a little boys imaginary stick boat floating slowly by. Gulls screeching in the evening northern blue. Tall grasses from the crevices and cracks between glacial rock. Survival on what, I can’t imagine. Trees too, pines from some old Buddha haiku, simply living, and again I don’t know how.
Deirdre quietly sits, perhaps recipes to ponder, or a northern simple thought, sigh and breathe in again taking that cool northern blue deep to churn into the butter of meditation.
It is May so black flies rule the evening blue. We are no fools a hasty retreat is made to the hostel.
We are traveling prepared for the cool out side night on grasses and rocks, in the shelter of great pines and the domes of great prairie skies, but hostels give us a source of knowledge. Other road goers share in their tales of here there and the empty spaces in between in which we with wide eyes like children around their first campfire stared in awe at the fuel of our dreams. These simple abodes also served our budget well.
The Sault is a town sprung out from the bush and rock it sits on. Wood clad modest bungalows sit precariously on rock out crops. The people of the Sault walk on the solid mantle of the northern earth.
Shelter for the night was indeed one of these bungalows; outfitted with army bunks, as though ready to bug out at a moments notice. It sleeps a dozen or so strays from the road at times bartering the labour of their bodies for simple shelter.
We, the wandering monks of our generation.
Our first experience at a hostel gave us pause, as we sat wide eyed listening to fervent stories of the road here and there and the empty spaces in between confirming truths I had suspected that there is a mantra and it is the road (dharma). My enthusiasm for what was to come grew with every story laid out before us like some all you can eat buffet, and I did.
I started to wonder what changes are given to the young woman of the Sault who manages this place as she sat listening with intent to all to all the roadgoing . She of a more sentient life bares witness to the winds of human travel and we, as the wind must blow through and beyond.
The creaking springs and waking hour, early sun through the bug spotted window. All are hushed in quietude of morning meditation: road ahead.
The stories live in the night before.
Shouldered packs and out to the day.
Noisy local coffee shop greasy too sweet doughnuts and knowing waitress, knowing her life before it’s half over and very content that tomorrow will not be much different than today or yesterday, a quality that now as I write this in my older complicated life I see as a quality pure and simply.
Deirdre with her calm smile knows too, that we have come, seen, enjoyed and now our traveling wind blows and needs us to fulfill it’s destiny. Doughnuts heavy in our bellies coffee sweet and black another memory. Exiting the diner she breathes in all in sight and smell and knows the stories of last night can carry us in that northern wind with the Manitou and the raven to watch us.
I can see the wind carries our first test, gray rolling clouds and cool damp mist in the wind. The rains of northern spring will come.
Not an hour later sitting at roadside, thumbs up high budding birch trees bending to northern will. The rains came slowly at first a warning for someone who couldn’t smell it coming an hour ago. We brought out our rain gear showing the Manitou and the raven our preparedness for their test. We will move on. We will pass the test. The rains fell from the sky in torrents with the Manitous’ wind to blow it in our faces, giving us caveat that only those of spirit will pass it’s shoulders.
Short hopping rides gave little respite from the deluge. The landscape disappears through wipers slapping. White lines dark sheen of the northern road were all we had to guide us. The Manitou was all but invisible. Our trickster raven would swoop occasionally and let out a loud cronk and still I don’t know if he is our guardian or in the service of the Manitou, testing us to be sure we are worthy of the north.
Our first day on the road brought us much further than I had bargained for the same can not be said for our second day. It felt as though we where going backwards. At days end, or at least what we considered days end I didn’t know where we were. The rain seemed to break or at least relent it’s temper, we could see far enough off the side of the road to notice a high ridge with a small clearing in the woods.
Home.
We climbed the rock ridge, in dry conditions would not been much of a feet, but we were wet, cold and exhausted. The rock felt like ice on our hands. And a loud cronk echoed from above, I think he is beginning to like us.
From our perch above the highway I could see nothing but shadows of the trees around us even the highway a mere 100 or so feet away seemed to disappear in the haze. But the sound of an occasional car whirring by assured us that the Manitou had not stolen it on us.
There was little time to properly survey the surroundings. The rains became heavy again and we needed shelter. The tent was on my pack. As quickly as my cold hands would allow I untied it and we rushed to get it erected pounding pegs with native rocks where we could find enough soil to receive them. We made sure we had a tent large enough for some comfort. It easily accommodated we 2 weary road goers and our packs in one corner so as not to soak us. The next chore was to blow up our air mattresses. Done with exhausted wind.
Feeling solemn in my shivering body, little comfort against the cold rain tapping its’ night song on the skin of our home. Little hope for dreams of pleasant futures curled and wrapped tightly in our new and used for the first time sleeping bags. Little said, flashlight out, torrents from above and chattering teeth, no bird songs or even the cronk of our raven guide to lull us to a good nights rest.
Morning was welcome to all our senses. Early sun peering over the pines, cool dry breeze to dry our soaked clothes, birds , new birds also happy to be in the bright morning, the smell of wet grasses, and there he is gliding and flapping his delight greeting us with chains of cronks. Deirdre rummaging for our breakfast, trail mix and granola bars. Meditation comes easy in the delight of this bright day. We both like bodhisattvas sit on the earth and know our own breath. The raven,( I have now named him Sir Hector) perching in the pines above quiet and resolute, it ends. Snap to consciousness and sounds of the road. A good road ahead.
With our packs loaded on our backs, climbing down to the road was so much easier than the previous night, exhausted, cold, wet, dreary road worn. Now a new day refreshed with full bellies and minds emptied of burdens, with the sun to our left, the manitou to our right, Sir Hector above, and arms stretched to determined thumbs.
This leg of our journey was full of various and varied sights and smells. Mantle that I imagine being spat up from the centre of the earth during the big bang, huge outcrops of this lichen encrusted granite would humble us at every turn, and with more miracle was the growth of jack pines and wispy grasses in their many crevasses. Another element to traversing the lakehead was the lake, it’s sound like the whirring of a city highway, relentless waves that seemingly come from nowhere and where do they go after breaking on the gravel beach, and where is the centre of the earth anyway?