Planning The Big Trek

I continue to read blogs of people that have walked across the United States. Several have used a carts to carry supplies which seems like a good idea. Mark Baumer's cart kept breaking.  It was essentially a stroller meant to be pulled behind a bike. In Texas people kept yelling, "Those babies must be dying."

Matt Green also walked with a cart, but his looked much sturdier. I kept searching for what kind of cart it was. It turns out that his cart also started as a stroller but was built by Runabout in Aloha, Oregon.  The owner of Runabout will sell the frames separately.

Here is a picture of Matt Green with his cart. He also kept a blog that you can read here.

This is Indian Land

I found this on a Berkeley sidewalk during one of my afternoon walks.

Walking Shoes

I have become obsessed with walking across the United States. It fuels my daily life and fills me with hope.  It strengthens my resolve to live boldly.

I have read through Mark Baumer's blog and his account of his own cross country account.  Some how we have linked in the psychic realm. Originally I thought of walking from the Golden Gate Bridge to Brooklyn Bridge, but I am worried that I won't have enough time. So I keep exploring routes with Google Walking Directions. Two nights ago I decided I might walk to Savannah.  After getting further into Baumer's blog I discovered that Mark Baumer also started there.

I have devoured his words and I am full of beef and cheese.  Not every one finds him witty. One man thought he must have a degree in stupid. If this is true, then Mark is my kind of stupid.  He is a one-wheeled motorcycle with a pizza oven and an entourage of clowns hiding in the gas tank.

Yesterday I found the shoes I want to walk across the U.S.  After all, the voyage starts with the feet covered in rivers of lines.  Those piggy-digit-ed extremities make first contact with the earth that is screaming for an embrace from something besides radials and steam rollers in these trying times. The boots were made by Teva. Light. Comfortable. Water proof. The ends of the soles were curved, which forced my knees to bend more.  My knees said Thank You. The boots retailed at $120, but they were on sale for $79.99. I didn't have the cash to take them home, and they aren't listed on the Teva website.

Decisions need to be made.  Planning has to happen. First of all I have to get leave from work to do this. Things are usually slower at the end of the spring and through out the summer. Could I go then?  Can I get a green flag?

Then there is money. I don't have enough vacation time socked away. That means I won't get paid while I am gone. Student loans and other bills still have to be paid. I also have to buy equipment and food. Can I get a sponsor. REI can you help me? Sony can you give me a netbook to blog with.  Can I have my phone for free for a few months Verizon? Canon will you give me a camera for Christmas.  I could be a field tester.  Hey Teva do you want to see how your shoes hold up to hot asphalt for thousands of mile. I can find out for you. Hey snack bar and drink companies do you want pictures of me with your products?  I will be your guinea pig. I will fly your flag. Come on let's do this thing.

Excerpt One: The Boy That Burned His Shoes Crossing The Bridge

                When Jeremiah was young his mother was often startled and scared. She scrubbed the kitchen and the bathroom.  She vacuumed the carpet.  She took control of the space and destroyed anything that did not present a picture of calm perfection.  She did this with bleach and she did it with ammonia.  Sometimes she mixed the two hoping for an early exit from Hamlet’s mortal coil. She only admitted this once, and she played it off as an accident. At the dinner table she would start the confession with the simple words, “You’ll never believe what I did today.” She would then continue, “I was mopping the kitchen floor.  I mixed the ammonia with water.  That is what I always do, but then I realized that the kitchen floors are white. Then I thought bleach is the best thing for white things.   “So I mixed some in,” she said.  “I don’t know what I was thinking.  It was such a stupid thing to do. I nearly died

                Of course the waves went out among the family with forks perched above the chicken fried steak.  Jeremiah sat staring at his plate pondering the words I nearly died. His step-father said, “Why did you do that?  You know that you can’t mix bleach and ammonia!”

                “I don’t know,” said Rose, “I just wasn’t thinking.”

Jeremiah was suspicious.  It made no sense to him. He could not reconcile his mother’s knowledge of danger with a lapse of reason. He could only hear the words I NEARLY DIED.  He knew at that point that she could disappear just as quickly as his dad. No one could be depended on.  People disappeared. It was better not to invest in those he loved.  He knew they would always be on the verge of leaving, so he burrowed further.

                This burrowing was the reason for Rose’s often startled state. As she scrubbed and scoured Jeremiah’s sister Christian hung about her feet seeking attention.  She dragged flowers in from the country with wild black berries.  She presented pictures that she had drawn to Rose. Constantly her presence said Pay attention to me! I am here.

                In the midst of the cleaning and wild berry presentations Jeremiah was silent. Suddenly Rose’s head would explode.  Her attention would snap wake as if an oven timer had chirped louder than six crickets trapped in a Texas pantry. Her brain sounded where is Jeremiah? Then she would dash about the house looking for him. Finally she would find him in his room calmly pushing dump trucks across the wooden floors.

                Jeremiah was two then and he could feel the alarm in his mother’s presence.  Her panic shocked him, but he noticed that she noticed him. At two he was armed with the knowledge that she was aware of him if he was not present. She was aware of him if he worried her. So Jeremiah would perfect the art of absence.  When he was present he would learn to startle.

You Were Not But Became And I am Sad

His feet

Short

Wide

Strong

Never had I really looked at them

Closely

I only remembered his boots

Red Wings I think.

I remember multiple eyelets

And hooks.

I watched him take them off.

He unwound the laces from the Above  Achilles

He unhooked and uneyed.

I was just a child but I

Was fascinated.

Those shoes were shed at home

Upon the seventies carpet

In the light of atrocious lamps.

Where did the lamps come from?

Some Rent A Center style store

In a strip mall I presume.

I obsess over the lamps now

But not then

Then it was just the boots.

Metaphorical encapsulations then.

I wondered what he did in the day

Wearing those boots that I could not see

In my desk at school.

I wondered this staring at the scar where the chainsaw

Ate his finger off.

What other life did he lead in the day.

What else did he do

Besides drink beer

Pass out

Piss on the couch

And make me fear him.

Except it wasn’t always that way.

It was mostly that way,

But there was that gift when I was ten.

There was the awkward hug.

There was the tongue tied up that couldn’t speak

When his eyes said

I love you

I love you

I love you so very much

That I cannot say it

I cannot say it

I never learned how

And for that I am sorry.

Mother divorced him.

It was the first summer that we had MTV.

Gun n Roses were getting their big shot

And Def Leppard was pouring sugar on everyone.

I didn’t miss you.

I didn’t know then why she divorced you.

I didn’t know about the disease.

I didn’t know about the refusal to stop.

So the cans kept going to the dumpster

Your liver kept deteriorating.

I wasn’t there to see it.

I was in Texas hating you

And playing father to brothers and sisters

With no knowledge of what a father did.

I locked them in the closet.

I stuck knives in the floor by their feet.

They feared me

Respected me

Loved me

Played me.

I wanted to cry

But I never learned how.

So I screamed.

I hit things

And threw the throwing knives you gave me

At the great oak in the yard

That uncles and cousins used to hoist engines.

Your feet.

Your short

Stout feet

With no boots

A hospital gown

A catheter in your penis

A tube in your rectum

And every night I come here diligently and happy

For every moment you can speak.

I love you.

The course of life is curved.

How could I guess that you would call again.

And again

And again

Over and over

Until I learned you loved me always.

How could I know that the water beneath bridges would carry us?

You in an ambulance

And me in a plane

To a hospital where I wore tall boots

With many eyelets

Where I would watch your feet

And wait for you to speak.

How could I know that we would find love?

Just three years before the machine went blank.

I miss you.

How could I know that I would miss you?

Living in California

With the red Texas clay covering your coffin.

How could I know?

I did not know

How much it would hurt

For you to be gone.

Your body is dead

But I am still in mine

Sitting at this desk

Wondering how to make

Some purpose

Of my Time.

The Attic In the Yellow House

There is no water in the attic,
 No sunlight either
Niether
Not
Just vacant space for imagination
Just ceiling joists and
Spaces that we shouldn't step through.
It is just a space that we were told not to enter,
So of course we entered.
We were brave.
We searched in the nothing
Not finding something
Or anything to warrant the warnings.

Our parents were so adamant.
They were so angry to discover that we cleaved to the shingles.
There must be something.
There must be some great secret.
Perhaps the ghost that Granny saw
Could live here.

We were in so much trouble for seeing nothing.
We were in so much trouble for being hotter than usual.
We couldn't understand the trouble.
We couldn't understand the fear of adults that we might fall and die.
Death had not entered our conscious yet.
Just an attic with so much warning we couldn't explain.

Surely God lived there,
Or the Devil.
Surely there was something more important than we could see.
We believed this because adults wrung there hands and spanked us.

It was just an attic.

Cautiously Reminisce: From the Morning the Mechanism Broke & Other Poems

Do you remember me?

It’s been ages . Years.

Eons. Divorces. Marriages.

Kids. Babies

Sixteen changes in hairstyles

The death of Kurt Cobain

And Mr. Rogers.

Three moving vans.

Six funerals ago

Before iPhones

My Space

Facebook.

It has been crack ups

And breakthroughs.

Where are you?

Pass the red rubber

Ball.

Remember?

Remember hopscotch

And four square?

Remember recess football

On the black top?

Remember

The barbed wire

Constructed from

Thorn bushes

That we strung around

The tree house to

Keep invisible enemies out

Beneath the shadows of

Impending teenage years

And the promise of acne?

Remember?

Remember drinking

And puking?

Sliding off the road at 2 AM?

Remember hanging

from the balcony

By our fingertips

And building towers

From beer cans

In shady motels.

Do you remember

The hot green meteor

Fat as a house that

Streaked the atmosphere

Above the moon stained

Oil top?

 Only we saw.

A private experience

That we can never

Relate the beauty of with words.

So we swallowed the Milky Way

And the moment.

We impregnated

Our blood cells with it

To keep for a day far away

When we would need to revive the

Magic of our being and

The luster of promise.

Remember the stolen water melons

And the toilet paper we hurled

At the trees of literary instruction?

While pumpkins grinned

And police lights flashed

We ran

Hearts beating

Big throbbing

Bass notes across

The country club grass

Finally rested laughing

That we had escaped

The tyranny of adulthood

Red tape, and the structures

Of constrictors.

Remember when Deroyce

Accidentally pissed

On someone’s back after

The lights went out

In the institutionally

Tiled bathrooms?

Remember how

Animated he was

Telling the story

With a mouth full

Of white teeth

And good natured charm.

Remember

When he was animate?

When he was still able to breathe?

When he was still with us?

Before he was on death row

Before he was dead?

Do you remember

Building castles with

The flexible blocks of corrugated

Cardboard?

Remember when a refrigerator box

Was a treasured find?

Remember when it meant

The presence or absence of an east turret?

Remember when sheets were tents

And saw horses galloped.

When Spider Man tennis shoes

Gave you super powers?

Do you remember when sticks were

Swords and ditches were bunkers

And how in your innocence

And abandon you already

Realized the need for self-protection?

Remember crayons?

Magic markers. Church Camp.

Sunday School.  Remember

When the teacher exploded

 Her cool with

The certainty of an

Aneurysm when you

Colored the Texas capitol

Blue? When you colored

Outside the lines?

Remember roosters

Made from colored pasta

Corn kernels, and white glue?

Remember how all the art

Projects were planned to

Look the same? Remember

How your creativity was manipulated

By the heads of programming

To teach you to stand up straight,

Stand in line. Stay in line.

Keep your mouth shut.

Do you remember

The beauty of fractions?

One quarter

One sixteenth

One one-thousandth

Finally a way to keep track

Of all that was cut from you

All that you swallowed.

Each word that you didn’t speak

Each need that wasn’t met.

A precise formula

To gauge the fading of your shadow

The decrease in laughter.

A micrometer to analyze

How little of you was

Left and how

Well your body

Fit the uniform.

Remember sunglasses?

Remember feeling cool.

Remember hiding your tears

In the class room to avoid the teachers

Incapable of knowing your pain

Because they had swallowed theirs years ago

And couldn’t be reminded of what they ate.

Remember hiding your blood shot eyes?

Remember getting high walking from field house to classroom?

Remember sunglasses.

Remember hiding who you really were?

Remember hide and seek?

Remember dark corners of closets

Where your families hid their secrets?

Remember not wanting to be found?

Not wanting to be found out?

Remember hiding to well

And feeling forgotten?

Remember wanting to be found?

Remember wanting to find yourself?

Remember the bright stars you lay beneath

While the family screamed inside

A broken house?

Do you remember how bright and pure they were?

Do you remember feeling that they were inside you,

That you came from them

That they understood you better

Than those that put their arms around you

And threw rocks at your window at 2 AM?

Remember feeling good about being in trouble.

Remember feeling giddy for doing

What you had been told what not to do

By those that had done it too?

Do you remember laughing

When they expected to you to be sorry?

Do you remember holding your tongue

When you knew that you knew

More than they knew that you knew?

Remember the orange merry-go-round that you spun wildly,

That you rode like a cowboy that broke the unbreakable?

Remember when you were unafraid of dying?

When you were invincible

Before the teachers fluttered over holding their skirts in the wind

With first aid kits on hand

Before your parents screamed

And told you that it was impossible to fly from a roof

With a cape made of Super Man sheets tied to your neck?

Remember the willingness of bed sheets to take the shape of all that you imagined?

Remember the sheets that made tunnels?

Remember the sheets that you stretched over chairs and beds

To create a new route to China?

Remember the Strawberry Shortcake sheets

And the Super Friends sheets?

Remember Holly Hobbit sheets?

And Battle Star Galactica sheets

Stretched over your tiny safe bed?

Remember the white sheet that turned red when the hymen broke?

Remember the white sheet that turned red

When the police covered the body?

Do you remember the white sheet on the concrete

Of the car wash?

Remember how big the moon was?

Do you remember how it turned orange as Halloween

As its yellow lips absorbed his young red blood?

Do you remember how his blue Chevy truck sat

Door open waiting for him to get up, climb in, and go home?

Do you remember wishing he would get up?

Do you remember wanting to wake up?

Do you remember wanting it to be a dream?

Do you remember wanting to pinch yourself awake

And start a new day with a fresh sun

That illuminated the smile of a Lance Darnell

That was still with us?

Remember graduation?

Remember when they switched from cloth robes to those thin paper ones that we had to pay a stupid amount of money for?

Do you remember how they gave us empty folders and threatened to withhold our diplomas if we cut up or acted out?

Remember how they threatened to keep our diplomas if we celebrated our accomplishment and dared to have fun?

Remember how free we felt afterwards.

Remember not knowing that we were escaping the imprisonment and censorship of school just so we switch cell blocks for the chains and rules of jobs, politics and society?

Remember celebrating afterwards?

Remember fleeing into the woods in fast cars loaded with beer and adrenaline?

Remember the phone calls at 4 Am?

Remember the cars that twisted like straws with the screech of metal.

Remember the vigils?

Remember counting how many people in your school never made it out alive?

Remember?

Remember me?

Pass the red ball.

Pass the obituary

The mortgage, the dead end job, and the death certificates of individuality.

Pass the ash urn, the insurance policy.

Pass the blindfolds and the ball gag.

Pass the barf bag

Pass the bolt cutters and the blow torch.

Pass the skeleton key.

Pass the finger paints

and the crayons

Pass the bus ticket

the plane ticket

the train schedule.

Remember me.

I’m a pulling a green hot meteor out of my mouth.

Remember me?

I am ripping out the microchips and deleting the programs they downloaded.

Remember me.

I’m finally getting free.