Quote of the Day:

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.. -Erasmus
 
  11:52 AM

Back on the road, just rolled through Duncanville, and if Duncanville is not the proud owner of a gas station we're going be running out of gas any RPM now.

Jon's asked me to not answer his malapropistic proclamations with silence but instead to say: "Wow, Jon, I hadn't thought of that . . ."

Birds of prey are riding the warm updrafts of the baked Napa Valley; not a good omen for the petrol-ly-challenged; we just hit Coastal Route One and over the Russian River heading the wrong way! Doahhh! Goat Rock Beach and a citing of the crystal blue Pacific; my heart is full except for the knowledge that it won't be long before the ole Doc of Gasoline says to our little Mazda engine: "Turn your head and cough!"

Well the gas crisis is over! We made it. From here on out it's smooth sailing Skipper! What's the next crisis to make our little hearts go pitter pat, pitter pat?

We're traveling up and down the coast of California with every possible device for recording the primordial matter of consciousness (laptop computer, modem connecting us to the internet, video camera, digital camera, journal, micro-recorder, and oh yeah, good old fashioned human memory) that I can't help but wonder if our reminiscences will somehow grow flabby and be the poorer for their sheer dependence on technology rather than memory, for example Jack Kerouac (whose Dharma Bums I just started today by the way) or John Barth (see the short story Lost in the Funhouse).

Time (12:37 PM) for a Sam Adams. John does a mean Bob Dole; he shares with him his voice of callused gravel and, of course, his hairline. Heading north on Route One finally. It's fucking great, all those years ago . . .

Flashback: We awoke that morning at The Farm sleeping on the floor in a cleaned out chicken coop to the strained strains of "Morning is Broken" emanating from the yap of some bearded minstrel (Theo, Jon informs me; Theo was also known for altering the words in pop songs so that they didn't upset the fine sensibilities of the Unification crowd to words that propagate--see BRAINWASH--church doctrine; for example: Simon & Garfunkel, "toss me a stick of gum (cigarette) I think there's one in my rain coat", or Mr. Robert Zimmerman, "The answer my friend is in the hearts of men (blowing in the wind, the answer is in the hearts of men"), smiling his own saccharinized version of peace/love/dove, will you be paying for your internal salvation with cash or credit card, no personal checks, please.

After breakfast, we sat passively in classes in which the truths of the universe were revealed, like: be nice to people and they'll be nice to you, look both ways before crossing the street, and don't talk to strangers unless they hit you up for money in which case give til it hurts.

By lunch my jaw hurt from clenching my teeth at their sappy aphorisms; one of my fillings was coming loose--God sending me a message? Let's face it: the people spouting this stuff were the kids in junior high whose arms almost came out of their fucking sockets raising their hands to be hall monitors, and the people hoovering this garbage up were the kids in high school who the only reason that you even knew they existed was because on the last day of school every year they won the blue ribbon for perfect attendance.

We spent our afternoons in smaller groups outside, sitting around the ranch under the yew trees; during this session they actually allowed the inmates to reveal their own personal pearls of wisdom, as long as it was preambled with: "It's really special that God . . .". Here's one of my favorites from one of the worker drones--who by the way was conducting a virtual relationship with one of the female drones; virtual in the sense that their first obligation was to the Unification hive and not to one another; the both of whom would really get-off when it came to the GROUP SEX WE HAD WITH OUR CLOTHES ON; don't think that I don't know that the only reason that you've read this far is because of the expectation that I'll fulfill the promise of yesterday's gratuitous cliff-hanger; so I guess what you call this right here is extended foreplay; no, finally (have you ever seen so many semi-colons and parentheticals? Ooops!):

"It's really special that God made apples so that it fits right in your hand, I mean that God would just create an apple, and he could've made it any size, but just because He loves us, he made so it would fit perfectly inside your hand!"

Nods and murmurs all around. I mumble to Jon:

"I guess they haven't invented watermelons where this guy comes from yet."

Here's the one that I shared with our little group after being needled for being non-participatory for the nth time, and with an absolutely straight face I might add:

"It's really special that beauty is relative, I mean that beauty is where you find it, like in this tree, or that rock, or in that garbage over there [indicating a stray {fill in the name of your favored sugar-water beverage here 'cause Tripping in Reverse don't do no stinkin’' product placement! Couldn't get a high enough fee, the bastards!} can nearby in the grass]. I mean if you think garbage beautiful, then it is."

Nods and murmurs all around. Jon suddenly sits bolt upright. I wink at him and he struggles to suppress a guffaw.

"And God is responsible for that beauty, for that tree," adds the apple-lovin' worker drone, "and for that rock, isn't he?"

"But especially that garbage" I add with a gooey sincerity that only Jon registers in the tensing of his body trying to hold back another laugh." Nods and murmurs all around. Jon can't stand it any longer:

"I think I saw Jim drop that trash . . . Hey! does that mean Jim is God?" Silence. Suddenly Jon isn't the golden boy, for the moment anyway. Everybody's looking at me. Has the black sheep finally come into the fold? The drones, with new found admiration. The pair of group leaders with cautious suspicion: the Devil comes dressed in the finest robes after all. Through an exercise of sheer will alone I resist the urge to break into Cum Baya.

Flashforward: Just picked up two hitchhikers, Lee and Elvis. . . no not Elvis, Malcolm, and their dog Dirty, a kind of collie of some sort (is that right Lee, Malcolm?). Lee and Malcolm are from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, serendipitous journeyers coming by way from San Francisco. They just happened to bump into one another at the recent Symphony featuring members of the Grateful Dead. There heading toward Jenner. Jon asks them what the most memorable ride of their journey has been to date. Actually he asks them which has been the most "funky," but funky's not in the lexicography matrix. (Someone out there send us the most modern equivalent for funky and we'll give you a big Tripping in Reverse How'd'ya do!) "There all memorable:" says Malcolm, of the rides in his journey. "There the fucking bomb man."

"Those are real people, they're not ghosts" says Jon looking at our oh so cool and happy hitchers in the rearview as we pull away. Jon and I are both on the same page as to why we picked them up: they were us in the now, a time capsule buried 15 years ago, unearthed today. I had to shake my head several times trying to clarify if I was one of the guys in the back or if I was one of the guys in the front; was I 34 or 20 again? Malcolm seemed a lot like Jon (the people-person, the dreamer), and Lee, like me, (introspective, the cynic). (Zat sound about right you guys?) Our questions reminded us of the questions that we were peppered with when we hitched: Destination? Purpose? Whatcha gonna do there? Jon and I realized that this is our orientation now, the orientation of the western-nine to five mind; but our orientation 15 yrs. ago was Malcolm and Lee's orientation: Destination? Up the road. Purpose? To get there. Whatcha gonna do when you get there? Eat, sleep, check-it out. The primal drives replace the non-primal; as Malcolm said when I asked him what they were up to: "Gonna get a cup of coffee, getting hungry", saying this as if he's almost sorry, and I think he is, not for anything that he's done . . . well, short of making me realize with the Zen simplicity of his response that I'm on a different track than he is; the sorry I sensed was not that he felt superior, but perhaps he sensed that being forced to confront the track I am currently on was a surprise and maybe even a regret for me. All of these realizations are the exact reason why Jon and me are back on the road, to rediscover who we are by way of discovering who we were. And that's why we picked Malcolm and Lee up, to do the time-warp again. Thanks a lot guys; happy trails!

At least Jon and I didn't ask them if they got any pussy on the road, which was a question that Jon and I fielded on one dark Texas night.

Malcolm happened to see the copy of Dharma Bums on the dash and remarked that he liked it better than On the Road, and also that Japhy Ryder is a pseudonym for the beat Buddhist poet Gary Snyder. Cool.

11:20 PM

Manchester Beach

Well, we didn't quite make it to Booneville--so I guess that it's appropriate that I haven't finished my Moonie story yet--but we're almost there (27 miles); we'll be there the first thing in the morning, and I'll finish my Moonie story then, promise. Check's in the mail.

Smirks-n-smiles

Mac Pilsner

P.S. Jon just pointed out that the fact that two males our age are "vacationing" together makes us sexual suspects (Hullo, Jenny Fields); perhaps there's no other part of the country where that would be more true. Feeling suspect . . . but not one damn bit sorry.