Well, I`m about to get to the Rainbow Gathering. As you all might imagine, there won`t be internet access while I`m there. Hopefully I`ll have something interesting to say when I get back.
A problematic bag
July 27, 2008 at 11:29 pm (quebec)
Tags: bags, craigslist, discovery pass, drum circle, greyhound, journal, lindsay, lost and found, rainbow gathering, rideshare, tamtams
The shoulderbag I was using so I wouldn’t have to carry my enormous knapsack all over Montreal turned up at the Metro lost-and-found office. Unfortunately said office was closed today, and I’ve been without my journal and notebook. That’s been making me a little crazy.
It’s not been all bad, though. I got to see my old friend Lindsay and several of her friends. We climbed the mountain yesterday, and today we visited the Tamtams. Drumming helped me forget about the bag.
(I’m afraid my Discovery Pass may have been removed from my bag by whoever found it, or by someone else. If that’s the case my trip is essentially over – I may not even make it to Burning Man.)
Getting to the Gathering is also posing a problem. Greyhound will take me as far as Sherbrooke, PQ, but from there it’s another 60km to the actual site. Since Craigslist has failed thus far to provide me with a rideshare, I’ll have to either hitchhike or – failing that – walk the 60 kilometres, which amounts to a two-day hike with a heavy backpack on. I could maybe do it in a day, but my body wouldn’t be very happy about it.
Not a very interesting entry, I know, but in the absence of my journal this outlet has to suffice.
Episode IV
July 22, 2008 at 6:20 pm (Ontario)
Tags: cosm, delays, direction, drum circle, mike sharpe, montreal, pan, quebec, rainbow gathering, tina, toronto
Wandering aimless and discontent into Kensington Market, I encountered a lady I’d met at CoSM in New York. She was with her boyfriend – whose name is Pan, I shit you not – and both of them turn out to know my friend Mike from Peterborough, whom I was trying but had failed to meet today. They encouraged me to delay my departure even further and come to the Trinity-Bellwoods drum circle tonight, where Mike will also be in attendance.
I was still reeling from this vivid display of synchronicity when they mentioned offhandedly that they were planning to go to a Rainbow Gathering in Quebec a few days from now. I’ve never been to a Rainbow Gathering, but I’ve heard enough gushing about it to know I should attend.
So yes, I’m staying in Toronto tonight, and maybe also tomorrow night. But after that I’ll go to Montreal for a couple days, visit some of my family who lives there, and then join Tina and Pan at the Gathering. I have no regrets: as I see it, I’ve given up a couple more days of travel time, but received a much-lacking sense of direction. That’s certainly a fair trade.
Telling Time
July 21, 2008 at 7:36 pm (Ontario)
Tags: affair, art, chicago, communication, flash, Ges, Mike Bailey, Morgan, N, Nick, sister, tarot, telepathy, time, toronto, writing
Flash. I am back in Toronto. It is after 2AM and my friends are helping me bring my stuff back to my apartment. We go eat at Fran’s afterward. Read the rest of this entry »
The Greyhound Blues
July 17, 2008 at 9:12 am (Ontario)
Tags: bobbie, greyhound, pocket knife, toronto
Twenty-six hours into a twenty-five hour trip I am still in Cleveland, and I am beginning to wonder if this was a mistake. Incompetent baggage handlers have forced me to stay awake most of the time and handle my own damn baggage; in order to stay awake, I have had to ingest much coffee and tobacco and very little food, which has me feeling wound up like a junky. Repeated delays and erroneous connections have prolonged my agony by a full nine hours. And the coup de grace, the blow that almost brought me to tears, came when a Cleveland security officer confiscated my beautiful pocket knife, in accordance with a zero-tolerance policy that Greyhound had utterly failed to make known to me.
It hasn’t all been bad, mind you. It turns out my two-month pass covers travel not only in Canada and the U.S. but also in Mexico, which I was hoping to visit this summer. I was so pleased with this discovery that I had to tell a random stranger, who happened to be a cute girl named Bobbie bound for Detroit. Bobbie sat with me all the way from Atlanta to Cincinnati, and although she was asleep for much of the time I appreciated her company.
At any rate, I did arrive in Toronto with all my belongings, and a few of my wonderful friends braved sleep deprivation to help me carry it all home from the station. I’m in town for a couple more days and then hitting the road again, most likely bound first for Chicago.
Greyhound, you seem to have a grudge against me, although I’ve always treated you right. You have gravely tested me and, no doubt, will test me yet. But though I am bound to you until September, I will not submit quietly to your torment. Greyhound, I know your secret: you are a creature born of the minds of man, and so man can destroy you by changing his mind. With every bent or broken rule, with every strange and novel situation, with every moment of genuine human connection among your beleaguered staff, you dissolve a little into the fog from which you came. The choice, therefore, is yours: either you show me a good time, Greyhound, or I will have a good time anyway at your peril.
They Dress Real Bad and They Think They’re New York
July 13, 2008 at 7:45 pm (Georgia)
Tags: bags, dinner, ethiopian, firm hand spanking, friends, greyhound, rideshare, sleep, toronto
This is the plan. Monday morning, I acquire a bike box, disassemble my bike, and load it in. Into the various interstices surrounding the bike I will stuff my clothes and sleeping bag (protected by garbage bags from bike grease), my bike lock and helmet, and maybe my handlebar bag if I can manage it. Three more bags, now lightened by lack of clothing to be (hopefully) less than 50 pounds, will go inside a larger duffel bag so that Greyhound will count them together as one item of luggage. These two will go underneath the bus, while I board with my one allowed piece of carry-on plus an additional bag about which the driver will hopefully not hassle me.
Anyway, I’ve got a rideshare to Atlanta, where I will board the bus Monday evening. I will ride for almost 24 hours, including several transfers and layovers, and arrive hungry and sleep-deprived in Toronto around 7PM on Tuesday, where my mother will pick me up for dinner with my family. After that I’ll hang out with friends, sleep, go to the dentist, hang out with friends some more, probably have Ethiopian lunch or dinner, possibly both, on Wednesday with whoever is interested and available. I’ll sleep again (that irritating but necessary gap in activity), perhaps hang out with people again, and then depart at some point on Thursday for god knows where.
For now, I’m sitting in a library next to an elderly man who is browsing a porn site called “Firm Hand Spanking”. So it goes.
Tell me your schedules, O glorious ones, so that I can begin to construct some sort of itinerary of hanging out. Leave comments or e-mail me and I’ll try to assemble it in my head into some grotesquely intricate master plan in which I get to see you all.
A Change in Plans
July 10, 2008 at 4:02 pm (Georgia)
Tags: car, change in plans, get-together, greyhound, toronto, visit
Alright. I have a growing intuition that the rules of this game are changing, that the universe has a new lesson for me to learn. I’ve decided to get a two-month Greyhound pass, drop off my bike in Toronto, and then continue on my way by bus – with or without Frankih. This way I’ll get to revisit some of my favourite locations, see the west coast, maybe even head down into Mexico. I’ll be able to live with less food (don’t need to expend thousands of calories biking), less shelter (don’t need to protect my expensive bike) and less sleep (don’t need to be well-rested for biking). I’ll have more time for writing, exploration, meeting people and on and on.
I’ll also be much freer to go off-course, so if there’s anyone anywhere in Canada or the U.S. who would like me to pay a visit, just leave a comment and I’ll see about it.
This will also mean, of course, that I’ll be back in Toronto. It’ll be sometime next week, due to some credit card hassles, but I’ll be there. Might need someone with a car to pick me up from the Greyhound station, since the alternative is to completely reassemble my bike right there on the bus platform. I’ll try to see as many people as I can while I’m there, but I don’t want to spend more than a couple nights before going on my way. Some kind of get-together might be in order. Stay tuned for details.
Pain and Wonder
July 8, 2008 at 6:28 pm (Georgia)
Tags: backpack, dead elephant bicycle, frankih, green man, greyhound, schedule, secret squirrel, tattoo, toronto
The girl who approached me yesterday afternoon wanted to know where to buy a U.S. map. I could not resist but ask where she was trying to get to. “Everywhere,” she said. She had a two-month pass for unlimited travel by Greyhound, and had but recently hit the road. Her name was Frankih; she wore low-key, vaguely hippie garb that reminded me somehow of Janis Joplin. When I asked her where she’d started from: “Toronto.”
This was only the earliest intimation of what turned out to be a truly eerie compatibility between us. To name only a few: we both are driven to travel; we both have found inspiration in Kerouac, the Beats, and the hippies; we both intend to have writing careers; we both seek spiritual knowledge. And of all the people on the street, she had decided to talk to me.
We parted ways after chatting awhile, but agreed to meet at a concert that evening. The show was mediocre, but we two were invited from there to another club – the only honest-to-god secret club I’ve ever been privileged to visit – where a number of better bands were lined up to play. We found the entrance in a descending alleyway behind a gas station. A small crowd, no more than thirty people, were gathered there to watch this haunting performance: Dead Elephant Bicycle, consisting of an acoustic guitarist, a violinist and a singer, no electronics, not even mics or amplifiers, lit by a single red floodlight, playing soulful ballads with surreal and psychedelic lyrics.
Frankih and I were both entranced, but she perhaps moreso than I. She began to gush about the Athens art scene – or what part of it she’d seen, I suppose – and vowed then and there that, come hell or high water, she would move to Athens as soon as possible. I was pleased that she seemed to have found her home, but also sad, for I feel no such draw to Athens, nor indeed to anywhere else I’ve been. Home remains an abstraction for me.
Anyway, two souls so closely akin to one another cannot help but seek consummation. We did this in a shaded, grassy lot in the night and then again in an abandoned boxcar after the sun rose. From there it was breakfast, a trip to the Greyhound station, more exploration of each other’s psyches, vows to meet again someday soon, and then she departed on the bus.
I was rather sleep deprived at this point, but decided to stay awake until after my tattoo appointment. I went in at 1PM and received a portrait of the Green Man on my upper back, in commemoration of this summer. It hurt like a motherfucker. I’m glad I got it over with, but I’m in no rush to repeat the experience. Meanwhile the healing process may once again delay my departure from Athens, setting me even further behind schedule…
In all honesty, I’m tempted at this point to buy myself a two-month pass like Frankih’s, go drop my bike off in Toronto, throw on a backpack and travel with her the rest of the summer.
He felt lost but he felt pretty intensely good
July 1, 2008 at 2:34 pm (Georgia)
Tags: asheville, hope for agoldensummer, music, peanut butter sandwiches, pipe, religion, rise, rising appalachia, writing
The day I arrive in Athens, I attend a concert. Rising Appalachia (whose name is in fact R.I.S.E. as of a couple days ago) is double-billed with Hope for Agoldensummer. I’m mainly interested in the latter, but it is the former that earns my rapt attention. Rising Appalachia’s lead singers – two sisters in immaculate and exotic hippie garb – sing folk songs in harmony, everything shifted into subtly Middle Eastern-sounding minor keys that lend a certain yearning mystique to their music. The combined visual and auditory aesthetic sends me back to Asheville momentarily before propelling me further, toward the molten heart of the world. Read the rest of this entry »
