So much has changed in just one week’s time. Last Wednesday I was out on the roof smoking at Fox Den. Rainwater was crackling in the citronella and the bluebird was out there, baiting me. 7days and 1,300 miles later and I’m up on the 6th floor of the Holiday Inn, overlooking Buffalo, NY, drinking coffee and listening to Death Cab For Cutie. Today we go up on the mountain.
It’s almost like I was given another chance to really see America. Was it dire&grim? You bet. Ohio&Indiana will ruin anyone’s mood, destroy any good feelings or grand notions about where this country is headed. But I, the pilgrim, no longer separate myself from it.
I’m seeing a world of people and things
Bob Dylan, Song To Woody
The last time I was on the rust belt was in a 15seat Ford Econoline hauling a double-axel trailer and 4 dudes addicted to four different drugs. That was back ‘05, when this country made its decision and cast its vote FOR MORE WAR and for FOUR MORE YEARS of a caniving richboy President who would shit-tank the economy and condone the torture of anyone in the world unfortunate enough to be misaligned w/the Christian Pogrom. What we’re looking at now could be your just deserts, motherfucker. Dumbshits like my mom’s ex-husband, who had such a hardon for a $600 taxbreak and blowing the “sandniggers” back to a hole in the ground may be starting to see the big picture. The Year of the Cock was an ugly one for America but it takes the average citizen a little time to wake up and realize that the government lies and is corrupt. Aho and this was perhaps why I chose to separate from the horrors I saw out on the road that terrible summer. I also had ineffective coping skills and ultimately I would have to lose everything until I took that final ride down to Hippie Town.
What do I see now, seven years later, out on the road in America? I see working people. I see a once thriving country fade out its final days of prosperity and lolling into a new Century of War and a disappearing middle class. I woke up in Mansfield, OH yesterday to the chilling&rueful sounds of maggot Romney singing America The Beautiful on t.v. I see people with their heads down and their hands caught in an American dream, scared to wake up from the nightmare that their lives have become. And I see myself in all of these.
But I’m just a pilgrim between Temple&the Bad Road. I don’t have any answers. I’m drenched in sin&greed&lust. The only break I get is doing Yoga or writing on here. All else is struggle, all else is fight.
We’re going up on the mountain today. 300miles into the wilderness from Buffalo, NY. No internet. No phone. Just an old typewriter, a yoga mat and $200worth of gourmet cigarettes.
This blog is on hiatus. In the meantime please check out my friends and compatriots’ work, here:
Everything Sucks
Groundwork
PSALMSHIPS
SEAGULLS CIRCLE MY CORPSE
La Adventura With Lybsta
Un-Granola
The Big Weasel’s Weblog
a series of moments
Stay tuned for a guest blog from the inimitable D.C. Bloom. He’ll be guest blogging on here and you’ll get a kick out his sarcasm. It’ll help you through the dog days of summer and put a little mirth in yr black heart&mine.
Be good and be good to each other, babies. We’ll be together again. See you in August, motherfucker.
Namaste
Jim Trainer
Buffalo, NY
The Land of the Free
Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.
He won’t be afraid of the destructive act:
half the house will have to come down.
This way he’ll grow virtuously into wisdom.
-C.P.Cavafy
Going for the Throat 