Author Archives: Jerry

And Nicole…

Posted on by
6

When Nicole came in, I was sitting off in my corner, writing, and doing pretty well. She was walking into a volatile situation and she had no idea. Things were starting to get ugly. Buddy of Chris was beginning to cheese the other patrons. He was hitting on the girls instead of pimping for Chris. He was out of control.

When she saw me, she was really happy to see me there. Happier than I am used to contending with. She waved across the room and said, “You’re back! Or, you’re still here!” She not only remembered my horrible beard, she remembered me. She remembered my story. Accelerated regularization at its best. And man, oh, man, she was looking good. She’s going to read this, and that means I probably can’t go back to The Cannery without freaking her out. Strike that. I’m already freaking her out, that’s why I can’t go back. ‘Cause here’s the thing. She’s really something. I actually entertained the idea of asking her to come to Vegas with me, before I overheard that she had a boyfriend of some years.

I don’t think I would have had the guts to ask her along anyway. The prospect of rejection is far less frightening than the possibility of her saying yes. What the hell would I do then? And just because she has a gift for making all her patrons feel special doesn’t mean that I actually am special. I saw it work. Whoever she talked to was the most important person in the world. Yeah, I know all that. In my head I know that, anyway.

So I sit here, late at night, writing about it and that’s all it’s going to be. Why? Well, let’s be realistic. I’m just passing through. Beautiful women who repaint their own cars aren’t looking for drifters. Of course, I could be wrong. I’d love to be wrong. But I’m right. (Still, Nicole, if I’m wrong, let me know.) But I’m right.

For those of you worried about Chris, he gave his number to one of the girls at the bar. Now I have to sleep. Adult Swim has given way to Tom and Jerry. Tom is drunk off his ass. Good kitty!

Thanks!

Get Drunk!

Posted on by
Reply

Chris just got dumped by Christina. Or something like that. His buddy is trying to take his mind off his woes.

“It’s Saturday, you don’t have anything to do, you don’t have a girlfriend, so get hammered.”

“Chris, have self-control. Get shit-assed.”

“Chris, I won’t get you any fries until you finish that up.”

“It’s summertime! It’s warm out, you’re wearing a white shirt, let’s hit Hops.”

“Get stumblin’ drunk, Chris. Get druuuuuunk.”

“They’re all waiting for you. Janine, Laura, Natalie, they all want to see you drunk. I promised them I’d get you drunk.”

“Heather’s a beautiful bartender. If she says drink, you drink.”

“What shot do you want? I’ll get you a shot of Johnny Walker Red.”

To Heather: “He has an evil girlfriend. An evil imaginary girlfriend.”

“Dude, Chris, get down to it. Get into it. Get it done. I bought you a cigar, I bought you some drinks, let’s do it. There’s many beautiful girls waiting for us.”

“I’ve got my Dao. I passed out, I didn’t even touch her.”

“Dude, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out if you need it.”

(Holding a basket of fries away from Chris) “Every drink, you get a fry.”

“You’re an amazing guy. Just fucking start drinking.”

“You used to be great fun. Then you started dating these horrible women and they sucked you dry.”

“Hey, dude, you’re the one that determines when we get to start eating the fries. I’ll give you twenty seconds to finish that drink.”

“If you don’t drink I’ll give the fries to the guys at the bar.” He turns to a couple of guys at the bar. “Hey, dude, you want a fry?”

They have joined the guys at the bar. Buddy: “do you remember the days when you used to be a man, and you used to have fun, and you used to go fishing? These guys heard your story. They feel your pain. They want to buy you a shot.”

All I can say is, I want a friend like that in my corner. It makes breaking up worthwhile. The buddy is now pimping his friend to the cute women at the bar. They’re interested.

Chris, through all of this: “I have to stay in control, man. I have to keep my head.”

My message to Chris: Take it from a guy almost twice your age: keeping your head only goes so far, buddy. I was married, and I was the one that kept my head. I was the one who stayed calm and in control. Through the swings, through the ups and downs, I was constant, conservative, and predictable. I never raised my voice and never held a grudge. Solutions to problems were negotiated rationally. For that very reason the marriage was doomed to die, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Chris, you have to open up sometimes. You have to howl at the moon and make a stand. You have to do stupid things. You have to beg for forgiveness and you have to forgive. You have to let the passion inside show on the outside.

I think back on some of the times I’ve gotten butt-royal wasted (man, what a good phrase) with some of you out there that read this. We’ve all had our moments in the sun and in the gutter. Sometimes you have to let go. If that means your buddy carries you out of the bar over his shoulder, well, all right then. If you don’t let go, if you don’t trust your friends to catch you when you fall, you’ll hurt your buddy’s feelings, and, worse, you’ll forget your own.

Thanks!

Montana Highways

Posted on by
11

Bozeman’s a pretty cool town; it has all the stuff you need to be considered civilized, a significant percentage of the population is associated with the university in some capacity, so the (um, how to put this gently?) redneck influence is reduced, and it is small enough that it would be very easy to use a bicycle as one’s primary means of transportation. Plus, it’s got a couple of pretty nice bars.

Oscar John’s place isn’t that large, made to feel smaller because it is filled with toys. I’m not talking about nerf balls or action figures here, John’s toys are of the high-end sort. (Question: What do you do when you have too many CD’s for your jukebox? Answer: Buy another jukebox!) I expect that the computing power of his remote control far exceeds that of the Apollo spacecraft. He’s still tweaking some of the commands on it (you set up the commands on your computer then transfer them to the remote.) It is a gadget-lover’s wet dream, and John so surpasses my love of toys that is makes me look like a Quaker. (Although I did get some credit when he learned I was traveling with my own wireless network.)

I call it John’s place, but we stay here with the permission of Oscar, a cat, who is spry considering his twenty years.

Out for a cruise John’s favorite toy of all is parked outside, and we have been exploring the highways of Montana in it. It’s a Miata like mine, except he has added on a really nice sound system and some other go-fast parts. Also, there isn’t a giant suitcase in his passeger seat. That’s a big plus. So is the radar detector.

Buuilging Our first day out clouds covered the tops of the mountains, but it was still a great trip. I think, even after all these years, Lewis and Clark would still recognize it. The grass is probably shorter, and there are fences and buildings and cows instead of bison, and highways with cars hurtling along, and bridges over the rivers and railroad tracks and fly fishermen, and billboards and no Indians, but the sky is still Big, and the mountains are still majestic. The Missouri River is pretty much where they left it, though perhaps tamer.

The Indians that subsequently got kicked off the land may have a harder time recognizing it now, since they’re not on it.

As you can see from the picture above (That’s John driving, me in the passenger seat), the beard is getting pretty bushy. When I imagine my face I don’t have a big beard, so when I see pictures, especially with myself in profile, I see just how ugly it’s shaping up to be. I’m glad I didn’t drop the camera on that shot; at highway speeds that would have been the last of it. I have a few more pics that were good enough to not throw away, but most of them will be for the upcoming Yellowstone entry.

Thanks!

Oooooh, My Head

Posted on by
15

I’m not suffering, but I certainly feel less than tip-top. My concentration is shot, my eyelids are on the scratchy side, and my brain feels like something you find at the back of the fridge.

What’s your favorite hangover cure?

Thanks!

Night in Bozeman

Posted on by
1

It is late here, ridiculously late almost to the point of being early. It is raining outside.

In the distance is a siren, slowly fading in the distance, but taking a long time to go. They can’t be trying too hard to go fast or they would be long gone by now. There is thunder. Rumbly distant thunder and the sharper intermediate distance sort. The thunder takes a long time to build and just as long to fade away. Cool air is rushing through the window – maybe I should close it before John’s electronics get wet.

But the smell, the smell. John just passed through, so I’m off the hook for the safety of his toys.

Went to do some bar writing tonight, and that went well. I was at a look-at-the-cieling point when a guy at the next table asked, “You writing the great american novel over there?” I was working on The Fish, so I said, “I can’t say whether it’s going to be great or not.” One of the girls at that table was very excited – she’s studying history and literature so she can write historical fiction. I ended up turned around and talking to her about the process of keeping your brain out of the way while you write. Finally I joined their table. There were three women and two men. As soon as I sat down, the two men left. Cowabunga.

It turns out I was in the midst of a low-key bachelorette party. The one studying to be a writer had had a quickie marriage with her boyfriend who was in the Air Force a couple years back, but they finally had the chance to do it right. (“Do it” is a euphemism for getting married.) I was sharing the table with the bride, the mother-in-law, and the sister-in-law. After the menfolk left I kind of felt like I was crashing the party, but they were all drunk enough to welcome me. For the most part they talked books, specifically chick-porn, and I listened and learned. I managed to participate when the conversation took a wild swing to Homer via that movie Troy. Apparently the wrong people survive in the movie. LitBride was quite in agreement when I said “The story’s been working for people for thousands of years; there’s not much point in changing it now.” LitBride and I found a great deal of common ground over the thesis that most of the best stories do not have happy endings.

Had I worked at it, I might have gotten somewhere with Mother-in-Law of LitBride. She made a point of mentioning that she was single, and she seemed fun and happy. (*BAM!* a nice sharp thunderclap.) Let’s face it. I’m not interested in working at anything like that right now. Better to walk away “the most interesting guy they met that night”, walk away clean, walk away before anything got complicated. Just Walk away. When closing time was called, MiLoLB was extra-friendly, but they were all together and nothing was going to change that. I’m just a shadow here anyway.

Thanks!

Jer’s Novel Writer Milestone

Posted on by
1

I actually learned this a while back, but hadn’t bothered telling you guys. Derek Gilbert used my software to write his novel, The God Conspiracy. When it comes out, I expect you all to flood Amazon with orders and post reviews like, “Wow! He must have used one hell of a word processor to write a story like that!”

You can find more info here. In my limited correspondence with the author he strikes me as an articulate and thoughtful guy, so I have high hopes for his work. It appears Derek’s wife has quite a few books out already.

I can’t be certain, but I believe every novel ever written using Jer’s Novel Writer that has been submitted to a publisher has been accepted. What other word processor can say that?

Thanks!

Something to notice

Posted on by
9

You’ll hear nothing of my most magnificent trip to Yellowstone today. I’m going back and building something bigger. I’m going to try to step up and photograph the place well, and write something new.

In the meantime, I have added a link in over there to the right – Baghdad Burning. It is a very personal story of life in the ancient city by an articulate and passionate individual. Check it out.

Addendum: I’m coming up empty for the next poll. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Writing in Bozeman

Posted on by
2

Been getting a lot done here in Bozeman, mostly fixing bugs in Jer’s Novel Writer and going over The Monster Within. The thing’s going to come out to about 600 pages, I think.

I’ve spent a lot if time in this chair, with my laptop in my lap of all places, and my ass getting sweaty. It’s a well-designed chair, comfy and all, but it’s leather and after a few hours things get damp down there. I need to be going to bars more, sitting on wood, drinking beer pulled from taps, and chatting up waitresses. Instead I have been content most of the time to sit here with a sweaty ass.

Speaking of bars, I haven’t done any writing there, but I have certainly spent plenty of time at the Aleworks. John is a bit more than simply a regular there. On the day I came into town he waited for me and after I had hung out for a while it was time to go for a beer and a bite to eat. We got down there and the girl at the door said, “John! We were worried about you.” OK, I think he qualifies as a fly. We’ve been back almost every day since. I would guess that John has more than half his meals there.

That’s all for today. The novel needs more work, and the TV ate my brain.

Thanks!

Reusable Space Vehicle, part 2

Posted on by
8

After watching SpaceShipOne on TV this morning, I was thinking again about my electromagnetic double-barreled space gun which captures the energy of a returning craft to launch the next one. Obviously, since a hotel on the moon is my ultimate goal, the gun needs to be able to fire its projectile at what is for all intents and purposes escape velocity, plus extra for the loss due to drag the first few miles of flight. Since the acceleration would have to be moderate in deference to my squishy guests, I knew that to get up to that kind of speed would take a launcher several kilometers long.

But how long? Well, this morning I did the math. Escape velocity is about 11100 m/s. We’ll shoot for 12000 m/s to give us a little cushion. Plus, it makes the math easier. OK, the first warning bells started to go off when I realized that in the last second of the launch the capsule would need almost 12 Km of launcher. Uh, oh.

Get out your shovels, boys and girls, because to get the capsule up to target velocity at the only moderately-stressful acceleration of 40m/s/s would take 300 seconds, or five minutes. In that time the capsule would travel 1800 Km, almost 1/4 of the diameter of the Earth.

The electrogun could still be used for an initial boost for a ship which also carried its own rockets to allow it to claw up out of the gravity well, and indeed several people have already thought of that. (I have not seen any design that recaptures the energy on return, however.) A gun with much greater acceleration and a shorter barrel could also be used to launch non-squishy payloads.

It’s also worth noting that it would take only a tiny fraction of the energy to needed achieve escape velocity to match the feat of SpaceShipOne, so I’ll still happily accept any large donations to make my dream a reality. In the meantime, I’m back to rooting for the Space Elevator boys to deliver my hotel guests.

Thanks!

Glacier

Posted on by
5

reflected mountains You’ve probably already seen the pictures, but while I am happy with several of the pics for what they are I look at them and I know I utterly failed to capture what I saw in Glacier National Park. Some times I just put the camera away and pulled to the side of the road, breathless. Just me among mountains that defied the sky, air so clean it hurt, and the sound of birds singing their tiny lungs out.

And lots of cars.

I was on a thin, crumbling ribbon of a road, riding the shoulders of mountains into the pure blue sky. On my right the world fell away; on the left cold streams danced down the rocks, splashing the road and sometimes me with a sweet mountain kiss.

There was construction on parts of the road, places where workers were being lowered over the edge in cages to do I-don’t-want-to-know-what to keep the road from sliding down the mountain. At those places there was only room for one lane of cars, so the uphill and downhill traffic would take turns waiting. Inevitably, the car waiting at the front of the line was controlled by a terrified driver not willing to go up the hill at any greater than walking speed, slowing further when forced by oncoming traffic to occupy their own lane. Thus, crawling up the hill were long, creeping trains of cars. I wasn’t in a hurry, but I had better things to look at than the ass of some SUV.

Obligatory_dead_tree_shot.jpg After one construction stop, there was a scenic pullout just past. I broke away from my train and parked. I found some food left over from my my shopping trip in Columbia Falls and sat on the low rock wall that was there to keep cars from taking the shortcut down. Dangling my feet over the edge into space I ate my apple. The train passed, and most of the others at the pullout moved on soon after. Two Harley riders and I hung out for a while, I having a snack while they peeled off a layer of their riding gear. It was quiet – up here there weren’t even many songbirds. There was the sound of wind and the sound of my apple crunching between my teeth. It was a good apple.

Finally I could see the next train pulling up the hill toward me. I climbed back into my machine and pulled back onto the road before it reached me, with nothing ahead but empty road – until the next pullout, where someone else was doing the same thing I was. Someone who was terrified driving up the hill, creeping along, pushing well over into the oncoming lane, away from the edge, slowing down even further when forced to occupy their own space. Best laid plans and all that. Oh, well.

At Logan Pass there is a visitor center which is a nice place to get up and walk around, but not such a great place to learn about the park. There are a few stuffed animals and things, but nothing about the history or the geology of the area. That information is on signs at the pullouts along the drive. Stop and read them. It’s good stuff.

So, Glacier National Park. Go. Take snacks. Relax, and enjoy a slow ride.

Thanks!

Odd and Ends from Canada

Posted on by
10

Don’t ask me to be chronological here. All right, you can ask, but you’re just asking for disappointment.

The sign that read, “Trucks please do not use engine retarding brakes in urban areas.” In this case the urban area was at most ten buildings.

The time I was a capital-F Foreigner. After a little while at Earl’s in Edmonton (“We’re pricey, but we’re trendy!”), I decided that perhaps a quiet brewski or six without the silliness of a manufactured drinking environment was in order. Had there been a real bar within walking distance, that would have been a better choice, but you take what you can get. It was raining and windy and downright nasty, but there was a convenience store nearby so no problem. I dashed through the nasty weather in shorts to the Husky store to grab myself a sixer. There was nothing in the cooler, but I thought I’d better ask. “Do you have beer here?” She looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Beer? No, eh. Beer?” She didn’t have any idea where someone could come up with the notion that one would go to a convenience store to buy beer. She turned to the other guy working and said, “Is the liquor store over there going to be open today?” It was Sunday. In the end, there was no six-pack for Jerry, I just got a funny look and perhaps I provided a story for some Canadians.

A word I made up on the road from Calgary to Edmonton: Constructivitis

In Naksup I stopped by a little record store with a fairly eclectic assortment of used CD’s. What was most impressive was the amount of vinyl for sale. I was hoping to find some good Irish music and one of the first CD’s I picked up was exactly what I was looking for. It was a collection by various artists, but most of the tracks are really good, freighted with sweet sadness. That’s what got me thinking about that Solitude episode back there. (I’m going to go back and redo that one soon; I’m not to happy with how it turned out.) Listening to Irish music alone is much like drinking alone.

Thanks!

The Sportsman Club

Posted on by
Reply

Location:The Sportsman Club, Columbia Falls, Montana (map)
Miles: 5606.9

Safely and legitimately back in the US, with a tankful of crappy gas I bought in Bonner’s Ferry, I steered east toward Glacier National Park. Highway 2 is in pretty good shape up there, and now that I’m keeping the daily dose of driving down, I am better able to appreciate the beauty of the land once more. Top down, sunscreen on, tunes playing louder than was strictly necessary (Desolation Boulevard by Sweet – remember them?), I was making time.

I missed the sign welcoming me to Montana; I was trying to read all the different speed limits to make sure I didn’t get caught in the fine print. The speed limit is different based on what you’re driving and the time of day. Speed limits are not based on the size or quality of the road. I know of no other place that allows you to drive 70 on little twisty two-laners. Montana’s approach to speed law is more or less to let people drive as fast as they want, and point out along the way where people have died. There are lots of little white crosses along each side of Highway 2, sometimes in bunches. I wonder if people drive differently as the number of death markers increases. The locals have probably stopped seeing them.

I had planned to stop in Kalispell, but all the hotels were the upmarket Holiday Inn sort of thing or were crappy-looking. I would have accepted crappy if there were a interesting-looking bar nearby. There were lots of casino/lounge combinations, but I wasn’t up for that kind of thing. The sound of video poker and slot machines is not what I’m looking for when I want to relax with a beer and write. I even stopped at one crappy-looking hotel that didn’t look so bad from the road, but I couldn’t find anyone to give money to. I didn’t try that hard. Onward, then, toward Glacier.

Columbia Falls is a nice little town. I found a room that was only marginally overpriced and asked about a bar while registering. After some consultation the hotel staff recommended The Sportsman Club. It was on the main drag and I found it easily. I didn’t take any technology with me; I decided to try some conversation with the bartender and to just relax for a while.

I wasn’t too surprised when I discovered myself in a bar with both kinds of beer – Bud and Bud Light. I had a Bud and my first pleasant surprise was that the beer was pretty cheap. My Cheap Bastard genes overcame my Beer Snob genes and it became a Budweiser night. The NBA finals were on that night, and the bartender told anyone who asked, “We’ll have that on all the TV’s except this one right here. I’m watching baseball.” The bartender and I got along great, and I spent the rest of my time on the fringes of the conversations around me.

Happy hour started. Two drinks for the price of one. Patrons would walk in and Helen the bartender (her name probably wasn’t Helen, but that’s the best guess I can come up with now), would set up two glasses and pour a pair of cocktails. Three guys came in from fishing, and she immediately set to work on six glasses of booze.

At one point an attractive woman settled onto the stool next to mine. Two drinks appeared in front of her almost immediately. She didn’t seem to be in a conversational mood, so I just nursed my beer and wished the fishermen would take at least a short break between cigarettes. I talked baseball with the bartender. Two younger woman came in and once they had a drink in each fist they started talking to the woman next to me. The bitter, angry girl turned out to be the woman’s daughter. At that point my surreptitious ring check was out of curiosity more than any personal interest in the woman. Ring finger empty. The two girls went down to the end of the bar and the woman ordered another pair of drinks.

Alcohol in quantity attracts a pretty good crowd, and soon the place is getting pretty loud and my eyes are starting to burn from the smoke. I was still having fun talking to people, however (except the guy who refused to speak with me after I told him I was from San Diego) so I ordered another beer. During that beer I learned that a happy, scruffy drunk around the corner of the bar was the woman’s husband. He was drunk, she was drunk, the daughter was getting rapidly plastered and increasingly angry. One big happy family. About to get happier – the woman told me her daughter was pregnant.

Happy hour ended after – get this – an hour. People stayed in the bar, however, having got their drinking momentum going. I chatted a while longer but it was time to get out of there. I went up the street to the supermarket and got supper, then headed back to the hotel. I was so throughly impregnated with smoke that I took a shower when I got back to the room. My clothes reeked so badly that after I got out of the shower you would never have guessed that I was in a non-smoking room. Thick smoke aside, however, it was an interesting and educational evening at the Sportsman Club.

Thanks!

Customs

Posted on by
6

Heading out of Creston, I grabbed a deli sandwich and a coke at a convenience store and headed south. It’s not far from Creston to the border, and I was there before I knew it.

Was it the beard? Was it the Deli sandwich? I spent quite a while in customs. I pulled up to the window, happy to see that there was no line. The customs agent started very politely asking me where I had been and what I was bringing back with me, and asked me for ID. I pulled the shirt from the passenger seat where I had had my passport. It wasn’t there. Hm. I pushed the winnebaggo out of the way to check the seat for the passport. Not there. Uh oh. Wait a minute.. it’s in my pocket. Whew.

The sandwich has beef in it. It’s not coming into the US. I’m hungry. “Is there a place I can sit and eat my sandwich here?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “park over there and bring your sandwich into the office. You can eat it while we search your car.” So there it was. I was in secondary. I wasn’t in a hurry; I knew that getting searched was likely. I suppose if I was a customs agent I would send people like me into secondary. This way I got to eat my sandwich as well.

In the office another guy gave me a more intensive grilling. Where I’d been, and so on, then a very long list of questions about what I was bringing back with me. In the end, the sum total of the things I had purchased in Canada and brought back over the border: a deli sandwich and a coke. “No souvenirs?” No. “Nothing?” No. Finally I’m allowed to sit and eat my sandwich. Mmmm. Good sandwich.

From where I sit I can see the agent outside, pulling the bags out of my car. Out comes the bag with everything from my bathroom. (I’ll do an episode on packing soon). I hear the echo of the customs officer: “Any prescription drugs?” “No,” I had said. But what if there were prescription drugs in there? At such times, the most inconsequential worries are somehow magically magnified. Like they’re not going to let me back into the country if there was some old penicillin I missed when I was throwing everything away. so I was nervous for no reason. But did they notice I was nervous? Was that suspicious?

The woman searching the car moved on to another bag, and I returned to my sandwich. Finally she was done, but I had to stay for a while longer. They were running some kind of check on me in one of those new-fangled databases of subversives and no-goodnicks.

Lighter by one sandwich, I pulled out of customs and into northern Idaho. Now I’m back in the good ‘ol USA, and it’s nice to be here.

Thanks!

Pepper’s

Posted on by
6

Location:Pepper’s Pub, Creston, Canada
Miles: 5400.2

Just another drive through beautiful country amid scattered showers. I thought about stopping in Nelson, but I was in the mood to travel, and Nelson seemed too “shoppy” for my mood. I drove the downtown and stopped at the Civic Pub for lunch – burger and a beer for $5. The burger was excellent.

Pepper’s is the lounge attached to the cheap-ass motel I’m staying in tonight. Across the valley the rain is falling on the hills, lit from behind by the setting sun. There are railroad tracks paralleling the highway outside the window, but no trains while I’ve been sitting here. The bartender when I came in, Diana, turned forty today. She must not be too bothered by that if she told me. She stayed for a while after her shift drinking with two girlfriends who I assumed were a couple until I heard them talking about their kids. I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not a couple.

The new bartender is very pretty, friendly, and a fan of Monster Garage. Don’t get too excited, boys; I’m pretty sure she’s taken.

Thanks!

The Flavors of Solitude

Posted on by
6

Solitude is not simply the state of being alone, it implies active insulation from the rest of humanity. Solitude has many flavors, characterized by what is avoided and what is missed.

The taste of solitude changes dramatically depending on whether one is stationary or in motion, isolated or ostracized. When you are stationary you can form a connection to a place, even if it’s just a rock in a meadow, and even if it’s just for a short time. You are somewhere, and it is a place that is yours. Sitting alone at your spot in a bar or in your comfy chair, solitude at rest is peaceful, a shelter.

Solitude in motion has a different flavor. No connectedness, no restfulness. There is a drive behind the motion, something disquieting that prevents rest, either a quest for something unattainable or a flight from something. The mind is at work, gnawing at itself, yearning for the unattainable. The only thing harder than moving on is staying put, for motion becomes the mechanism that enforces solitude. By never staying too long in one place, no attachments can form.

I heard an interview of a guy who spent five years riding freight cars, not knowing how he was going to eat that night when he woke up in the morning. He found a way to express his thoughts as he drifted, and published a book of poetry that made quite a bit of money. In the interview he said something like “I’ve been settled down for a few months now, but I’m going back out there soon. I feel the need growing in me.” Unasked, unanswered, unanswerable, is where the need comes from. Is life in mainstream society smothering him, threatening him, or just disappointing him?

Solitude is the state that allows the mind to turn inward. Free from the obligations that come with all human interaction, you can simply think. This is the essence and the allure of solitude, and also its curse. Free to think, there is no avoiding thought. ‘Curling up with a book’ is not solitude, even though you’re not with other people. You’re with a book. Solitude is the state when thoughts are free and unfettered, and consciously you have very little control over them. It is the state of complete personal honesty, when the thoughts happen that you will never tell anyone else. It is the time we dance with madness.

Artists are the ones with the courage to tell us what they saw there.

Thanks!