departure from normalcy

on a serious note, this trip is really hard. many of the folks have responded to my trip in a sort of envious way and i have to bring them back down to earth a little bit, explaining that i live in a pickup truck. i have a good face that i use, the face that gets me through most of my life, shrugging and off and letting slide anything that is potentially harmful to happiness. i look at things with the brightest light that i can.

but, really, i will be happy when this thing is over and i can put it behind me. try to start some kind of life again. which will be equally scary and daunting...but maybe i will be in a place that has heat and running water. thats all i'm asking for. now - the departure from normalcy - i am back in valparaiso. i am staying at my parents house, sleeping in a bed and i have taken two showers in the last four days. talk about glory!

i dont really know when i last talked about my trip, i was in tennessee and then kentucky. then i busted into southern indiana, spent some time in bloomington, then indianapolis, then on to muncie. muncie was the most important stop ont he journey north from new orleans. there resides my sister tuesday.

i dont think i have talked mch about my sisters. and there is good reason for that - i dont know anything about them. when i left home, at 19, my sisters were 13 years old. there was a clear age discrepancy there. i was back in 2000-01 but they werent much older then...and i had my hands full partying.

so, i wanted to stop and see my sister, see where she lives and how she lives and just talk with her. i knew that i could do that when she comes back up here for the holidays, but it is different when you visit a person at their place and make that effort. and we wouldnt be surrounded by a bunch of people that hadnt see us or one another for a long time.

unfortunately, tuesday wasnt home when i got there. i waited for her at a bar while she drove from valparaiso back to muncie. when she got there, she didnt recognize me sitting at the bar. she sat against the wall and called my cell phone. once we found one another we sat there and talked for about a half hour. not very long, but still probably the longest conversation we had ever had with each other. and it was nice to just talk to her as an adult.

i told my other sister, becky, when i talked to her on the phone that i still think of her as 13/14 years old. i have never known these people as adults. so i tasked myself to learn something about them as adults and their lives. to be somewhat present. i want to be more present with all of my family, something that i never really thought about. but it isnt like people live forever and i have spent most of my life being selfish, living it for myself and not giving much thought to the people that have worked to support me unconditionally throughout my life.

true, i havent asked for much support but that doesnt mean it wasnt always there or frequently offered. so, it is nice to be here, to be present in the lives of my family and work on that more.

i got back on wednesday. no one was home at my parents house. so i made some phone calls, tried to turn on the tv but i broke it with my first touch of a button. then i gave up on that and read for awhile, waiting for folks to get back home. bobbie and i hung out for awhile until my dad came back and then we all went out for their regular wednesday night party.

whats more - much more than this - i did it my way

every wednesday they go to the local mexican restaurant - pepes - to hang out with their friends, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and sing karaoke. i went once when i was here earlier this year, it was fun. we were there for hours, drinking 32oz cups of beer, and sometimes doing shots. i pored over the karaoke books becuase i wanted to sing some bruce but again they had a poor selection. i sang "i'm on fire" but not very well. i went on to sing "my way" and "waterfalls" those went better.

growing up in this region i have many reasons to enjoy coming back. and i have a few reasons not to enjoy coming back. i like seeing some of the friends that have buckled down and created their own outposts here, i like seeing some of places i used to frequent or live and recalling memories that only come when i look at a certain place, or drive by someplace and let the flood come. although i have typed a number of starts to the reasons i dont like coming back here (and subsequently deleted them) i will just leave it here.

seagull screaming! (kiss her) (kiss her)

as i was leaving muncie this morning, i flipped through my cd's looking for that perfect one for a crisp morning as i trekked back to northwest indiana. i fell upon one of my standby's for driving, seagull screaming kiss her kiss her and i thought i should write about the role and progression of music in my life. actually, i have been thinking to write this for a long time, but now i am actually doing it.

growing up, i listened to the oldies. like the oldies station, 104.3, all the hits from the 50's and 60's. this was what my mom listened too and up until about 12 years old i spent much of my music listening time around her. so that was the music i liked, she also had an affinity for old musicals...oh, mom.

after that i mostly listened to the music my dad listened too, which was the classic rock station. music from the 60's and 70's that had more of a rock edge to it. i latched onto this much easier than the oldies. i took in my own direction and fell particularly for a band called 'the doors.' this persisted for at least four years. in that time i devoured everything i could about the band. i have read every book about the band that was released before 1996. i obtained every single one of their albums, including imports and harder to find ones like the album released after jim morrison died.

it was during this time that i got my first cd player and my first cd. ironically, the first cd that i ever had was vanilla ice. that was a good album. and, left to my own devices, my musical tastes could have progressed more along the lines of vanilla ice. luckily, they didnt. through the doors i started getting all other kinds of classic rock music, liking creedence clearwater revival quite a bit and eventually finding the velvet underground.

this was a revelation. one of my favorite albums ever is white light/white heat. after finding this band i devoured their discography and then fell into the trap of finding out more about them. that led to a deep appreciation for lou reed and laurie anderson. specifically i liked that they broke free from musical barriers. and certainly didnt give much of a shit what the public wanted to hear, they made music for what they wanted to make. commercialism be damned.

it was around this time - 1995 - when my family went to visit some family in wisconsin. the family in wisconsin is my dads family, consisted of his "cousins" (this is in quotes because they are actually his real brothers...but he wasnt brought up that way), including my uncle stuart. i dont know this family very well (as if i know my moms side of the family any better) 1995 might have been the last time i went to see this family. i have seen some of them independently over the years. but whatever.

while i was there, i told my uncle stu about liking the velvet underground and other experimental bands. then he changed my life forever. he gave me a double disc cd, the greatest hits album of a band called 'half japanese' i had never heard of them, not many people had at the time. maybe not many have even now. they are two brothers, jad and david fair, who started making music in 1975. the music they were making was punk, but not in the way people were thinking about punk at the time. their musical philosophy was that tuning and even learning the "proper" way to play an instrument inherently limited the number and variety of sounds that you could produce from any instrument.

david fair explained how to play guitar in the liner notes: I taught myself to play guitar. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you want to play fast, move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That's all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that's pretty limiting. Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that's absurd. How could it be wrong? It's your guitar and you're the one playing it. It's completely up to you to decide how it should sound.

and after i listened to this cd and read the liner notes my entire idea and appreciation of music had changed. thanks uncle stu!

i didnt stop listening to other music, but i listened to this much more than other music. later that year my love of classic rock and the doors would peak and then make a drastic decline. the peak came when i visited paris and went to the pere lachaise cemetery to see jim morrisons gravesite. i beleive it was the first and last time in my life that i made a conscious trip to a graveyard.

when i got back the luster had died down and anyway i had this new stuff to listen too. i ramped up listening to the velvet underground, especially after i learned that moe tucker (the drummer for vu) was an on-and-off-again member of half japanese. how awesome. delving into the world of the velvet uunderground and that whole scene around andy warhol's factory in the late 60's and early 70's also produced a literary gem that changed my life.

the book was called "the SCUM manifesto," written by valerie solanas. i read this book dozens of times, it was dog-eared and highlighted beyond belief. one of my high school teachers found me reading it in class and confiscated it, i was very unhappy about that. i dont know if i ever got it back. but reading this book was where i first started learning about dominant power structures and the role i play as a white male. born into a natural power position and able to walk all over women and people of different races based purely on the color of my skin and the junk in my trunk. i was more conscious about my role in the world, certainly not all-aware but somewhat aware.

then i met steve and he introduced me to more recent punk rock music. really, i met alex and he introduced me to the music, but i wasnt ready to appreciate it until steve re-introduced me. it was at this point that i completely renounced classic rock and worked to be punk rock. i changed my style of dress, cut and dyed my hair, applied copious amounts of knox gelatin and voila. a young punk kid.

the bands at this point were operation ivy, rancid, the suicide machines, things like this. i progressed this way eventually finding more punk - crust punk - bands and also local music from chicago. almost weekly, in 1997, we made trips to the fireside bowl to catch whatever show was playing. it was in this way i met a girl named kelly and she introduced me to minor threat, janes addiction, slapstick, and gave me reasons to appreciate the smashing pumpkins and also some world music. there was something missing though. all of the music i listened to was made by men, and mostly white men. because of this, i started to think that women just couldnt make good music.

and that led directly to one of the most vivid memories of my stupidity. now we are in 1999, and i am living in new york - with tiffany. at some point virgina (our other housemate), she and i got into a discussion about music. and i can see the room and myself so clearly...and the words that came out of my mouth. for some reason, during this conversation, i got heated and announced that women (i probably said girls) couldnt make music as well as men. so much for whatever i had gleaned in my younger years from the scum manifesto.

at the time i stood by and defended what i had said. luckily tiffany spotted me for an idiot and started indoctrinating me on some really amazing music made by women. she introduced me to sleater-kinney, cadallaca, k-records, kathleen hanna (in the form of bikini kill, le tigre, and julie ruin) along with countless other bands (and record labels), predominantly women or at least fronted by women, that were making awesome music RIGHT NOW. i didnt acquiesce straight away. i played dumb, but i found myself taking out her BMW with more regularity simply to listen to the cd's that she kept in the car. and, instead of admitting that i was wrong, i just acted like nothing happened and that i had enjoyed this music all along.

by the time i left there i was more punk than i had ever been before, more well read, knew a greater diversity of music and bands, and i was vegan. the last time i ate meat (before 2008 when i renounced veganism) was may 2000 in bryan, tx at tiffany's moms house.

steve and i were traveling and i found myself back in indiana, with a ton of money and no desire to move back to the region. so i picked up a copy of time magazine (a magazine that i loved at the time and still find myself reading with some pleasure). on the cover was sleater-kinney, and the main article was about the music revolution happening in olympia, wa. i got on the internet, found an apartment and wired a down payment. in two weeks i would move to the other side of the country, to a place that i had never been within 1500 miles of....because i read an article about music made by women in time magazine. my dirty little secret.

a drawing of my apartment in olympia

when i got there it was another opening for music. i didnt know anyone, and in the 9 months i would live there i didnt meet anyone. but i did rediscover the library. and many of the local bands and labels would deposit their releases at the library for circulation. i ate it up. and my horizons expanded. on one mix-cd i learned of the mountain goats, dead moon, mirah, calvin johnson, little red car wreck, and seagull screaming kiss her kiss her. i was constantly checking out cds from all styles and just listening to them. i had nothing in my apartment aside from a chair and a cd player.

punk rock was fading a little bit from my preferred style of music to listen too, but half japanese remained in my top five. i mail ordered for thier entire catalog (like 16 albums or so) and they werent very easy to get. i also got a very hard to find record by a band called "the stinky puffs" which was some of the members of half japanese and some of the members of nirvana fronted by a seven year old. it was hilarious.

also, while i was in olympia, i got to rekindle my love of musicals with my first rock opera. the show was called 'the transfused.' and this show, this amazing show, changed my life in so many ways. i know i have been throwing around the "changed my life" stuff, but really, this was an epic event. there are some clips on youtube watch and find out just why it was so amazing. the week after that show closed the first lady fest was staged in olympia. this was why i had come here and now i was a part of it all. it was great.

anyway, so my musical tastes were rounded out for the next couple of years. i left olympia and eventually moved back to indiana for awhile. there i started collecting records (hello eBay...and tons of money down the drain) and buying all sorts of wierd new music. i also got back into classic rock some - mostly because of the records i was getting at garage sales. and life was good. it was also during this time that i found out about plan-it-x records and started listening to folk-punk music in general. it was a very good melding of a few different styles and i liked it alot.

since i started writing this, i kind of lost focus. because i had to listen to all of the different music i was writing about and then watch some youtube videos and such. but, what i wanted to get across with this post is that there is a band called 'seagull screaming kiss her kiss her' and it is one of my favorites. top five. the album 'red talk' is the one that i have been listening to in my truck. bye!

the end of the world will come at night time

i got beat up once before. (i thought that was a very just/funny opening sentence, laugh if you agree.) seriously though, growing up i was never a fighter. in middle school i punched some kid in the head becasue he towel whipped me. when my brother and i would fight, he would throw punches and i would ridicule him. psychological warfare, it worked most of the time.

the only time i was really in a fistfight was the typical "meet me after school at the tracks so we can fight over a girl." i guess i was a junior in high school, some dude that i didnt like very much and whose name i cannot recall for the life of me had recently had a falling out with girlfriend. for whatever reason, i seriously cannot recall any right now, i liked her. he took this as an affront to his manhood and challenged me to a fight.

i didnt want to accept it, but there really wasnt any other choice. so i agreed to meet him, but he seemed dirty so i called upon some friends and friends of friends to accompany me to the battle site. remembering it, it was hilarious. just like an 80's movie, his group of people were waiting for my group of people in the clearing. there was a warm-up fight between one of my friends and one of his friends, my friend lost - but lost gracefully. then it was my turn.

i was terrified. i dont even think i threw a punch, but he certainly did. psychological warfare wasnt going to work here. i went quickly to the ground and after that the fight was called. i wasnt hurt too bad, i never really had too much pride so that wasnt even damaged too much. and the end result? his ex-girlfriend, cara massa (the girl i had a crush on) asked me to the prom. apparently, sometimes when you win you really lose and sometimes when you lose you really win. and sometimes when you win or lose you actually tie.

this pre-story is just some buildup for me to talk about going to prom. why in the hell am i thinking about this now, and thinking about it enough to write about it? well, at some point on this trip - i dont remember when or from who - i learned that this girl cara was dead. she committed suicide, at least thats what i hear. i havent talked to her or really even thought about her since the day after prom. and the reason i am writing about it now is because i am near where we had our day after prom thing. you know, after prom your party goes out somewhere and does something? well, we went to turkey run state park.

so, lets hear this story out. and, remember, as with all the stories of my past some of this is certainly made up because i dont remember it all but you'll get the gist of it.

i am pretty sure she asked me to the prom. i am pretty sure of this because i am pretty sure i have never asked anyone in my life out on a proper date. thats something i have been thinking to work on, but it just seems so funny to ask someone out properly. so, i was probably pretty surprised by this turn of events. i was 16 (i had to do some math to figure out how old i was, so dont try to prove me wrong) and i really had given that much thought yet to girls. i was too busy figuring myself out at the time to complicate it with members of the opposite sex, or i was high.

she and i had never gone out or even hung out with each other before prom. i really dont even know why i wouldve had a crush on her or why she wouldve asked me to the prom. but we worked it out, talking in the hallways. we got a two other couples - friends of mine who were seniors - to round out our prom party. although she asked me to the prom, the burden of buying tickets and renting a limo and stuff was on me.

so i went to my dad. my dad knows people, and it just so happened that he knew someone with a limo and he would work out a deal with the guy and secure it for our prom party. because the limo was at my house and my parents are cool people the three couples met at my house to take pictures and leave for the prom. and we were got up too. fancy dresses, slick black tux's and all. i had a cane and a top hat. i felt suave, even if looking at the pictures today i feel like an idiot.

part of this has to do with my hair. i was coming out of being a loner/hippie/stoner kid into being a more well known punk rock stoner kid. so, i still had long hair. hair longer than it is today, although i didnt have any facial hair yet. i wasnt yet ready to cut off my hair, but i had to do something with it, so i got someone (perhaps even my future girlfriend, melissa) to braid it. hundreds of little braids with little colored rubberbands at the bottoms. again, i felt cool. but in reality i was ridiculous. this type of thing wasnt new for me, i had been doing cornrows and other types of braids in my hair for awhile.

so, dressed like a fool we were all in a limo and off to the prom. since we were high most of the time in regular life there is no reason for me to think that we werent then. i am also pretty sure that we were drinking because our limo driver, my dads friend, had a ready supply of alcohol...and he wasnt holding back. i do not remember a single thing about the prom. there are pictures to prove we were there, i still have these photos in portland. i dont think cara and i took couples shots, but i was in a group shot with "all my friends." of the twenty or so guys in the picture i could probably name twelve of them then, maybe four now.

i think we left rather quickly, i dont think we danced at all, i am positive i was a bad date. but, i also think that i was finding out that i didnt even really like this person that i got beat up over and received the consolation prize of paying her way and entertaining her for a night. so, my night wasnt going awesome. we found our limo driver and had him drive us - the three couples - to the after prom dinner. we went to the house of kobe and i am pretty sure that we met some of those guys from my group picture there. but by this point i dont beleive i was really with the world anymore.

we were at dinner a long time and afterwards we were going to go to a party. however, there was a problem. our limo driver was, by now, completely wasted and passed out in the driver seat. we deliberated for a little bit and decided to push him aside, take his liquor and drive the limo ourselves. it wasnt like he came from a company or anything. so, this happened. i didnt do the driving, one of the other guys did, he wasnt completely sober himself - but what a good prom story. part of the deal that my dad had made with the limo driver was that he could stay at my parents house that night. so we took him back to my parents house, got him inside on the couch and then the six of us deliberated for a few moments.

we decided that we would take the limo back out and go partying. although i was the one that would be most on the line should anything bad happen - and it was bound too - i was all for this idea. we were outside again and just pulling away from the house when my dad came out of the house. awesome as he may be he quickly identified some shady business going on. he took me aside and i told him that the limo guy was drunk and we had to take over the limo. then i asked my dad (as if it were his limo) if we could continue with our plan and take the limo out partying.

unfortunately, he said no. he encouraged all of us to stay the night at the house. we were allowed to drink there and there were plenty of places to crash. the entire upstairs was pretty much my domain. there were two bedrooms and a bathroom, my little sister that lived with my mom had the other bedroom and wasnt there a whole lot. it had bunkbeds, and i had three couches, a bed, and a cubby hole. i dont remember if everyone stayed, by i did. and i think cara did. but, unlike the way many prom stories end, nothing happened between us. we never even kissed one another. not ever.

the next day our group reconnected and drove down to turkey run state park in southern indiana. this was a popular day-after-prom thing. we went hiking and such throughout the park. i think we may have even camped out there. but i am not so sure. and now, here i am, near turkey run and thinking about prom. twelve years later, i cannot remember the names of the people i was with and my date is dead by her own hand. i guess thats one person i wont be reconnecting with.

every streetlight reveals a picture

well, i am in a wierd place right now - louisville, kentucky. really it isnt that wierd here, whats wierd are the time zones. becasue now i am heading north straddling the line between the eastern and central timezones. my phone updates automatically but the clock in my truck and on my computer do not. so i get conflicting times and it just messes with me a little bit.

earlier on this trip i read a book about daylight savings time and how it came into effect, amazingly it was only adopted (as we know it) in the 1980's. in the book it also talks about how time zones were established and all that stuff. it was really interesting. it is something i had never really thought about but the manipulation of time is probably one of the largest turning points where humans took over and completely dominated nature and the way we perceive it.

here i am!

before time zones were a thing every town had a central clock that would chime at noon - based on the position of the sun - and the people would adjust their timepieces to be in accordance with the sun at noon where ever they resided. which mean in louisville in would be noon but thirty miles east it would be 12:15 and thirty miles west in would be 11:45. people lived based on the position of the sun. the standardization of time zones was implemented becasue of the emergence of railroads as a way to make scheduling easier.

industry dominating the natural order to provide better service. i think i wrote about it earlier on the trip.

anyway, i have been moving fast. the other day i was in bowling green, ky and it was a nice small town there. i left yesterday and went on to mammoth cave national park. about thirty miles north. mammoth cave is a place i visited as a kid. i have no idea how old of a kid i was but i know that i went there with my mom and dad so it was before they were divorced. it cost a fair amount to actually take cave tours, so i contented myself walking around the park.

and it was real nice. moving fast i have mostly been sitting in my truck or at a coffee shop in large towns or cities. it was awesome to be back out in nature. on the way out to the park i almost celebrated thanksgiving the american way - by killing a turkey. i was cruising along the empty road that lead to the park and a wild turkey (i am pretty sure thats what it was) darted across the road and i slammed on the brakes. then i laughed loud and heartily. i drove slower after that.

once i got to the visitor center, i walked through it and then found myself on a path to the natural entrance to the cave system. it was locked down so i continued

the cave entrance

on the trail system. i walked for about 4 miles throughout the park. i saw a few other smaller entrances to the caves, all of them barred from human entry. i also got to see some underground rivers come out from the caves. the best one was the echo river spring. where the river comes out from the ground there is a lake and you can see whirlpools and such where the water is flowing out from underground.

they had a plaque there about some of the cave water animals. i had seen pictures of these things before, but reading about them so close to where they were had a different effect. animals like the albino kentucky shrimp. an endangered species that doesnt exist anywhere else but in this cave system. or the albino fish that dont have any hardware for eyes. these animals live completely in the dark. they had pictures of these animals and i wondered how it affected them when these pictures were taken. these animals must've died. i mean, they never seen light in their lives and all of a sudden a bright flash of light takes your picture.

anyway. along the trail i saw some dumb white tail deer. they were just feet from the path, but they wouldnt come when i called them. i just wanted to pet them a little bit. i wondered why deer were never domesticated. in another book i read on this trip - i think the history of salt - it had historical accounts of europeans first encountering bovine, cows. the testimony was of a large fearsome animal that the explorers were terrified to approach. now look at cows.

it was a nice brisk day and the hike was very pleasant. i liked seeing the icicle formations on the rocks. this is something i had seen quite a bit on the expressway and always wanted to stop to take a picture but stopping on the expressway is a dumb thing and thats why i dont really like expressway driving. there was one cave that looked like i might be able to get into, but if i were caught there was a $20,000 fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. i weighed the risks and benefits then decided against it.

when i left i headed straight to louisville. i thought about going to frankfort, the capital of kentucky, but it would add about 100 miles to my journey and i wasnt

where the underground river styx emerges

prepared for that. so i got to lousiville and my first experiences were typical. in a larger city the first thing i look for is the main library. i do this because libraries generally have wireless and information on the city. also, there are usually signs to point the way to them. the library was closed, but i sat outside searching the city for a place that i could walk around, like a hawthorne district or something.

i found it, bardstown road. i drove over there, parked somewhere and then walked around. it wasnt too chilly here and i had a nice place to spend the night. i went about twenty blocks up the road and back, just watching the city and killing time. i sat in a bookstore and perused the new titles. i think i want to read the book '1424.' it is about the chinese explorations of the americas 70 years before the europeans. i read through the introduction and it was fascinating.

then i went and sat outside under a light and finished the book i was reading. while sitting there some lady gave me some spare food she had. that was nice. i guess i look homeless enough to warrant it, sitting outside in the cold with a large beard and mostly unkempt. i appreciated the offer and ate the food. when i finished the book i went back to my truck and settled it. the night was raucous around me, but i had ggod wireless where i was parked and the night wasnt nearly as cold as it had been recently. i slept better than i had all week.