Lonely stars look sociable from very far away

Originally uploaded by amnesoid

I am day lights that were knocked out of a Sioux warrior in 1874. I found them in the Badlands and no one else was using them.

On Sunday i decided to go to the Badlands, probably because i think it is the name of a Bruce Springsteen song. There are a lot of jagged hills, and i obtained plenty of documentation. I met a girl named Itzy in the park, and we helped set up each others’ tents. We both had NY license plates, so that is a good enough way to meet people i guess. Itzy is Puerto Rican and lives in NYC and likes Ani DiFranco and Itzy was upset about my story where i saw Ani DiFranco in the Buffalo airport once and did not introduce myself.

I also saw many prairie dogs, which get annoying after awhile. And! I saw a bison. And we heard coyotes at night. They were trying to sing a harmony of “Mrs. Robinson” but could not get their shit together.

I have decided that i am not rugged enough where i couldn’t use a nice thick foam sheet in addition to the scant material that cushions me from the ground, presently. The ground is impossibly rigid, it turns out. I blame it on gravity.

On Monday i drove by Mount Rushmore at 30mph. It felt right not to care enough to spend ten dollars for the privilege to park in a three-story parking garage in the middle of nowhere.

And then i went through Wyoming, and then part of Montana. There is something meditative about those. I ended up setting up my tent at a KOA campground in Billings, nestled naturely beneath a series of three-phase power lines, surrounded by families in massive RV’s. It is all very authentic. I sit on a plastic bag, cooking myself a few hot dogs, shoveling coals around with my Florida license plate. It is the only metallic and fire-worthy piece of metal i seem to own, and it had become impossibly lugubrious after being placed in the trunk for the past many months. Finally, some sense of fulfillment.

Suddenly, i would like to ride a horse. But not just any horse. I want to ride a spirit horse, just like my forebears did. Or Four Bears. Did.

Crazy Horse looked at me yesterday, and decided that he would not be liking me, either.

Only a fucking idiot would drive across the country with gas prices the way they are.

So there are two; me and this other guy. For South Dakota, we agreed that i get the right lane and he takes the left. We also have a handshake to promise to keep the rest-stop toilets the way we found them. Thank lords that gas prices keep the South Dakota highways from being the hell of gridlock that they are accustomed to.

Also, money that i am losing on gas is being gained on lodging. For instance! Last night, i spent the night in the fetal position in the back seat of my own beloved automobile, at a truck stop very near to Rockville, Illinois. There was a thunderstorm that went on for six hours, pummeling the thin sheet metal of my car like a story from the bible. I slept terribly, woke up six times in five hours, had a crick in my neck and a leg went numb for the morning. It made me feel very rugged, like a salty sailor man.

Tonight i am in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was expecting fifty people and two stop lights, but instead there are thousands of people, a throng even, inflaming streetparties all in the name of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. My scene exactly! There also seem to be an inordinate number of young and single females, all hating on my nonmidwestern vibe. Lord, what happened to all of my gruff? I was intimidated back to my familiars, which involve booze and closed doors.

I was in Chicago last night! Michelle and Kevin and i ate bucket after bucket of mussels. Kevin allowed himself to consume a beverage with a ridiculous level of Belgianism. Hedonistic! I like to dip french fries into spiced mayonaise. Who thinks this stuff up?!

Kevin recommended “The House on the Rock” for Wisconsin. I went. I don’t know if psychedelic mushrooms would have contributed or chastened the experience. It was the most eccentric place i have ever experienced firsthand, for sure.

I don’t know who is it.

Someday i will stop writing little bulletins into the ethers. Someday i will give it up.

There come the thrashers.

I met a girl in Seattle. We have everything in common. We saw each other for four days and then the last two made me feel like there were pulsars inside my chest. I came back east and immediately decided to spend the rest of the summer out west. I was feeling invigorated, like i was falling in, yeah. But. There have been emails. And i read between the lines. The lines that say she is still dating, i mean. And it seems like, despite appearances from 1.5 weeks ago, she is not quite feeling the same way. She did not have pulsars in her chest, i don’t think. Not like i did. So it goes.

I still am going west? I am planning to leave today. I have a tent and a suitcase full of paperback books. I have a little LED lantern. I have two or more months off. I am going to Montana. I will probably go to Seattle. I don’t know what I am doing. Someday i will lose my grip that keep all of these pieces into the one human being. I have a sleeping bag and it is good down to 40 degrees.

I am rooted to the ground.

It should be written. Until recently (and maybe still) i had felt like a dirtbag since Victoria Day 2007. That is the day that i made myself sit down face to face with Liz and try to tell her i could not be her boyfriend anymore, despite never having a fevered word or an ill feeling come between us, in nine full months, just because i felt emotionally absent and did not feel what i should have been feeling. I could not look her in her eyes, i stared at her kitchen floor and glanced up only a couple times and didn’t do it very well. She got over me within a month but i found it hard to live with myself for about a year and more.

I need no justice. I know i will never do something like that again, because i cannot.

I am tired of writing about less than happy things and about evanescent girls and such. I truly am. But i am short on other material, is the thing.

Oh, except then there is Facebook. A lot of people added me on Facebook last week. Including Renee. Renee is my first girlfriend. The first one, we were primordial romantics. Or teenagers. We were together for three years in the most tumultuous sorts of times. Now Renee has a husband and a little baby boy and she wishes me well. I am happy for Renee and i am glad we were together when we were, despite being so different. It was nice to know that she still remembers me. I like when people remember me and wish me well.

My guitar is out. I have not packed it into the car yet. It has a fresh sticky note that says “I still haven’t heard Stairway to Heaven yet?”. But my dad listens to 96.9 and 107.1 a lot so i know that he is lying.