the good times are killing me

for a long time my default favorite movie was 'mondo, new york.' for a number of reasons. first, i saw it when i was at the height of my impressionability, 19 years old, recently transplanted to new york, didnt know many people and worked at a video/convenient store. second, it is an incredibly hard movie to find so i havent been able to recheck since i last saw it to see if it is still as amazing as i believe it is.

the movie is a walk in the life of a young lady who is visiting new york city for the first time (presumably). set in the early 1980's she just walks throughout the streets of nyc with her denim jacket tossed over her shoulder. we see the seedy lower east side, go to a cockfight, see some animal crucifixtion, watch lydia lunch perform one of her poems, see some other bands perform, watch some people shoot heroin, etc.

another film that really struck home with me when i first saw it, i cannot recall the year, but i think whenever it came out, was a film called 'waking life.' this film is a mixture of a person walking through his dream world and having conversations with a myriad of people. sometimes he isnt directly involved, just a bystander watching this dream world unfold around him.

well, if you combine those two movies thats kind of what my life feels like right now, a healthy dose of detachment from what is going on around me at any given time, the sense that i am just a part of life and not an active part of it. and then every now and again i am engaged in a wonderfully diverse conversation in the unlikeliest of places or stumble upon something that is just a wonder to the world.

last night i stumbled upon the jeh kulu dancers/drummers. it was awesome. i was just cruising about downtown burlington vermont, it was almost 10. i was just enjoying the chill of the night and the world as it happened to me. i had walked down to the bank of lake champlaign and along the bike path to the boardwalk. then i just walked up a random street towards my truck. all of a sudden i hear a thunderous beat of drums above me and just within earshot. i walk toward it.

i find a huge building that appears to be completely locked down and on the top most floor (about 5 stories or so) there are lights on and i can hear clearly this beat awakening the night. i wanted nothing more than to get closer to the sound and experience it fully. i tried some doors, eventually walking all the way around the building until i found one that was accidently not closed all the way. i walked up dark stairs to the source of the sound, it was growing louder and more amazing with each step i took. when i got to the top, the last stairwells were blocked off, not very well but the image it portrayed was that they were not to be disturbed.

i sat at the last stairwell just listening. eventually someone found me and invited me up to watch. i sat on a radiator watching some of the most amazing and enthusiastic performers i had ever seen. they were simply practicing. wow. at one point someone else came up the stairs and told me that their time was up and that i would have to tell them to stop. i laughed very emphatically (on the inside) at this. here, a stranger in this wondrosity suddenly called upon to end something so amazing. clearly i didnt tell them to stop.

but they knew anyway and i beat a hasty retreat. i walked back out into the chill of the night and just smiled and let the memory of my encounter reverberate through me.

what this means, of course, is that i am now in burlington. i drove all day yesterday from watertown to get here. i didnt think it would take as long as it did, but i drove over 200 miles. i hadnt driven that much in one day since i left indiana, the day i left indiana as a matter of fact. i opened and closed the month of september with long drives to someplace new. what a life.

the last time i was in vermont, the first time, was when i was trying to cross the border in 2004. i think we stopped in montpelier then, and i am headed there next. today it rained all day. i spent the clear hours walking about the town and the rainy hours in the library or walking around town. i like it here. although it currently feels and looks like the heart of winter in portland. that part i dont like very much.

as i was milling about the town i kept remarking to myself just how much this place reminded me of portland, but then i caught myself and remembered that i have done this with other places, which i think adds up to me just seeing portland everywhere i go because i want to be in portland. only a couple more months of *torture* left. i dont really think of this as torture, but the winter is coming on much quicker than i had anticipated, i may not be able to beat the snow and i may run out of money.

that money think is something i figured out the other day because i looked into my unemployment benefits to see how much i had left. $1000. i started with about $4500 in unemployment. i left with $2000 or so in savings and now i have about $1500. which means i have spent about $4000 (this includes insurance, gas, the truck fixes, my cell phone, etc) so far on this trip. that means i have spent an average of $28 a day or so. the way that i am gauging the rest of my trip, 120 more days or so, means that i can spend about $20 a day (as an average, including all expenses) and wind up in portland completely broke.

i had planned to come back with a little bit of cash to start back up, but whatever. i have spent virtually no time so far thinking about money or its potential impact on the future of the trip. i dont really intend to start now.