Sketches of the Road-Part 3

Impressions

The San Remo Hotel is an old hotel that reminds me of an establishment one would find in Europe.  It’s narrow halls, adorned with old prints, bookshelves, and enough plants with vines to give them the appearance of a garden, are a labyrinth.  In a way, it is difficult to find the right words to describe the hotel’s peculiar nature.  The narrow halls are straight, more or less, but other halls branch off intermittently.  Inner courtyards, more like shafts, shoot up to provide light and ventilation.  Rooms meet at angles, so that people at adjoining doors are uncomfortably close.  And there are interior windows, usually in the shafts that provide an easy view into rooms when the shades are not drawn.

And the rooms themselves—although the halls are carpeted in the old, red, musty fabric of, I imagine, the 1920s, the rooms have wooden floors painted green.  Our room contains two twin beds, a wardrobe, and a small table with a spacious cabinet that we use to keep out laptops out of sight.  Cheap at around $75 per night, Kerouac never knew such luxury.  The toilets and showers, separate, are at either end of the hall and though sharing such intimate items might sound inconvenient, I always find that at least one is available.

The Fior d’Italia, where we eat our first night mostly due to its convenience, is a bit expensive, but a good restaurant nonetheless.  The staff all seem Italian, speaking in heavily accented English.  I say seem because it could be a well-orchestrated rouse on their part.  Our waiter appears to know only a little English and he is a man torn apart by two traditions.  He is trained, I think, in the European school of waiting tables.  One must appear when summoned, but should otherwise remain inconspicuous so as not to disturb your customers’ meals.  If your customer wants something, he will let you know.  Now he is forced to operate under the American guidelines, that is, one should be polite and constantly check on your customers to make sure that if there is anything they can possibly want you can provide it quickly for them.  Interrupt, it’s just a meal after all, customer first, the customer is always right.  And so he stands in his tuxedo, one foot out to go, go, go, the other pressed firmly back, wait.  The final impression is one of polite rudeness.

Pat’s Café is a great place for breakfast.  The small, brightly painted café stands out on the otherwise neoclassical street.  Inside, the waiter serves me one of the best, no the best, cappuccinos I have ever had with a thick cap of foam.  The café serves a varied fare ranging from omelets filled with pleasant combinations to pancakes and crepes.  One of my favorite omelets is one filled with salmon, basil, and feta cheese.  Pat’s Café is just around the corner from the San Remo, so we eat there every morning we’re in San Francisco, although we make a half-hearted attempt to eat at another café that we find to be too crowded.

Water Street should perhaps be called an alley and it floods in the rain.

–

The trip has, from the beginning, seemed unreal to me.  I have talked about going on a long road trip out to the coast and to San Francisco most of all, but somehow I never thought that it would actually happen.  In fact, this trip came about rather quickly after I mentioned the idea to Hans in an offhand way and he surprised me by letting me know that he could take a few weeks off in October.  At the time, I thought my job would be over and so we started planning it.

The idea of a road trip has seemed so removed from my job that I didn’t really think about it over the summer.  Now, I still have to marvel that it is actually taking place, that I am on the road, as I’ve wanted to be for so long.  But how does the reality hold up to the romantic fantasy?  Being on the road and seeing the changing landscape of America is fun, but there are practicalities that must be addressed.  In the end, it comes down to money, as do so many things.  Hotels, food, and gas all cost money.  In the days before my trip I began to worry about the cost, but now I try not to think about it too much.  Unfortunately, Hans’ credit card does not work, probably the strip that he doesn’t use in Norway has worn out, so the money issue is constantly on our minds.  I spend more than I’d planned because I’d budgeted only for myself, but it doesn’t really matter because I know he will pay me back eventually.

Another practicality that did not fit into my imaginary road trip is the problem of the car.  The car provides a convenient means of transportation, but it becomes a hassle in a strange city. The hotel has a deal with a garage, but that represents an additional cost.  The streets in San Francisco are confusing, switching from one way to two way, and they are choked with cars and bikes and pedestrians and cable cars.  On the way in I am not sure if I can drive in the lane with tracks.  The hotel has an article from the local paper saying that the best way to drive in San Francisco is not to drive at all.  It goes on to describe the peculiarly aggressive style of local drivers.  It is humorous, but it rings true.  Best to leave the car when possible and walk or try out the public transportation.

This we had planned to do anyway, besides a few day trips.  After breakfast we head out on foot to see more of the city.  It immediately begins to rain and I’m glad I’ve brought a raincoat.   San Francisco is, after all, a hilly town and we soon stretch out our legs cramped from a long car ride.  Past Italian restaurants and cafes, Italian flags painted on lampposts to denote Little Italy, a cathedral and then Washington Square with its Ben Franklin statue.  I pretend to be Richard Brautigan and pose for a picture in front of the statue as pigeons pick at little old ladies watching me suspiciously.

I am struck by the thought that this city reminds me of Europe, perhaps Paris in a way.  Perhaps it’s the gray rain, as it rained the whole time I was in Paris two years ago.  Perhaps it’s the tangle of streets, the worn pavement, though here there are no cobblestones.  This could be Italy, I think, watching fashionably dressed men sipping coffee outside a café.  A long strip of tables where people sit facing the street served by well-dressed waiters and where the sidewalks are checkered tile slick with wet footprints, confirms the impression.  And the buildings, the buildings are the pastel colors of a Mediterranean town, bright despite the overcast sky, neoclassical but for the bay windows curving out invitingly.  With traces of America in an odd familiar way that I suppose I felt in Europe too, though it’s stronger here.  Still vague, not sure in what way, but America.

Cut down Columbus that cuts through North Beach at a diagonal, streaked with cars and buses that run on cables, at times streetcars, always the definitive image of San Francisco for me.  Down to Broadway with its girly clubs with names like Taste of Eden and the Condor Club.  Now we are at the focal point of the whole city for me, perhaps the real reason why I came.  City Lights.

I am a bibliophile.  I have bought so many books that I have not yet read them all, though that doesn’t keep me from buying more.  City Lights is a dangerous place for me.  With three floors packed with books, I am able to find almost everything I had ever wanted to read and discover other books that I now want to read.  The real treat for me is the poetry room on the top floor with its Beat section.  Here, laid side by side, every book Kerouac ever wrote, every collection Ginsberg ever releases, books by Burroughs and Neal Cassady, and the owner of this establishment, Ferlinghetti.

I find that I am sweating to an alarming degree, something I’ve noticed that happens whenever I am in a place with humidity, as if my body used to the dry desert of Denver responds to moisture in a joyous release of any and all moisture.  Or perhaps it’s the excitement of being here, surrounded by enough volumes to keep me occupied for hours?  There are words and ideas to discover.  I can almost hear them whispering in the holy hush that all bookstores seem to provoke.

I pick up Neal Cassady’s The First Third about his youth in Denver and sit down, determined to stop sweating.  I’ve wanted to read this for a long time and know that I will buy it eventually.  Meanwhile, a silent crowd passes through the poetry room, creaking up the narrow stairs to stand in awe before the Beat wall, some carrying cameras to attempt to capture the aura of the place.  And where is the poet, the owner of City Lights?  I’m not sure.  I’ve talked to two people that saw him when they were here and I half expect him to appear at any moment.  I can hear people in the publishing offices behind a wall, is he there?

Now the stair creak and I look up from my book in anticipation.  Hesitant, slow steps, limp of age.  Gray hair coming into view, the head bobbing in exertion.  He stands on the top step and takes his bearings.  Old man in a tweed suit, sans tie, angular features accentuated by crooked glasses.  His thinning hair, worn long, is tied back in a ponytail.  Not Ferlinghetti, but an interesting figure nonetheless.  He hobbles over to the Beat Wall and sidles up to a customer browsing there.  With a polite bow, he straightens his spine, gaining at least six inches, to reach with twiggy fingers for a City Lights edition of Howl.  The volume retrieved, he slaps it with his hand and tells no one in particular, “This is the one,” before creeping back down the stairs.  I will see him later, stooped as he climbs a hill in North Beach, his coat slung over his shoulder, Howl in his back pocket like a precious wallet.  Worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

My sweating subsiding, I gather the Cassady book and a book by Inger Christensen, a Danish poet I admire, and head downstairs to browse the fiction.  I find Hans in the basement, a much different and colder room than the ones upstairs with a concrete floor as opposed to the old wood of the other two.  Here books of revolution, all forms of revolution from Communism to the green movement, are stacked though not exactly hidden, underground.  Books on history and philosophy also fill the room.  I browse, distracted by the sounds of someone behind a warped door labeled “This Is the Door,” though I’m not sure what that means.  I picture Ferlinghetti crouched behind it, ready to leap out to scare tourists, and smile.  But I will not see the poet today.

We leave City Lights, I’ve bought the Christensen book, The First Third, a collection by Pablo Neruda, and John Barleycorn by Jack London, and head up the hill to Chinatown.  I must admit I expected Chinatown to be a tourist trap full of Americans.  Instead, I find that I am in a different country.  Not only are all of the signs in Chinese, but all of the people are Chinese as well.  The streets bustle with activity as people go about buying groceries, strange mushrooms and dried seaweed, the salty smell of which haunts me.  Music in Chinese blares out from TV screens.  There are typical tourist shops with fake souvenirs, but there are also markets and barbershops, all authentic looking.

The rain has picked up, so we step inside a teashop.  Here we are able to sample several different types of tea, a complex process.  We sit at a counter in front of a wooden grate.  The attendant takes a scoop of the tea we choose and puts it in a pot with hot water.  He swirls this and peering down, as if reading our fortune, he discards the dark liquid through the grate.  Now he fills the pot once again and, not looking at it at all, strains the liquid into two tiny cups a little bigger than thimbles.  We try several exotic teas before I decide on some ginger pine tea.

Back out into the rain and a foreign country.  Tires on water and Chinatown is getting tiring.  Paper lanterns and ticktack characters are only novel for so long and there isn’t much else to do, but get wet in the rain.  So we walk out of China and back into America only one block away, surreal that so much can change in so small a place.  Crawl back up Columbus, surroundings blurred, we find our way back to the San Remo to dry off and plot the next exploration.

–

Hold my hand in the water.  Then it warms.  Press palms to face and awake a little.  Hair tousled almost on end, growing long, will grow longer with attached beard over these two weeks.  Growing a disguise but here I am anonymous, a stranger to all besides Hans who really I have only seen twice in eight years, so that there is a familiarity and a friendship, but much is not known.  We have lived two different lives with different stories that can be told in fragmented conversations in the car or as we walk, but only glimpsed after all.  Again the limitation of language.  I wonder if two people can ever truly know each other.

A man was in the teashop as we stood dripping on the tile floor gazing at the canisters of dried leaves wondering.  “Come in, come in,” he says like a shop employee, a barker on the street, in accented English.  Polite bow and then he walks off to the street disappearing into the faceless crowd never to return.  Off to other errands, other things that only he knows.

The rain continues so I wear my Irish flat cap, made from wool so that it warms me and shields my glasses from the meddlesome water.  Strike out for Fishermen’s Warf, an old port converted to tourist shops and restaurants, I’ve been told, but still worth a look.  First a stop at Hot Spud, a restaurant that serves gourmet baked potatoes with interesting toppings, all gluten free.  I try “The Wharf,” a potato with corn and crabmeat.  Good, but the best part is the gluten free sweet potato brownie for dessert.  A hearty late lunch so we won’t have to worry about dinner for a while.

Now we reach the wharf, glistening wood reaching out in unnaturally immobile blocks into the swelling bay.  Stop in a gallery showing brilliantly backlit photographs of America.  Familiar places like Yellowstone and Yosemite captured in new angles, new plays of light.  Other places we hope to see, Oregon Coast and Redwoods.  And here and there, slices of the anonymous America we have somewhat seen.  An abandoned homestead in Wyoming, ghost-like in a rainy haze.  Sage and chamisa flats, slot canyons shaped like subway tunnels.  The mosaic of America all laid out in one big room.

There are shops up and down the waterfront.  Digital cameras and ski hats in the shapes of animals besides telescopes and a store selling kites.  Turn away and face the bay out there as a gray shape, unsteady horizon half-hidden in fog.  Islands and a hilly coast out there—an unknown distance.  Past streetcars, their wooden benches wet, past bicycles for rent and parked cars and a man playing guitar in half-slap half-stuttered notes choked voice singing.  We are drawn to the water though we have no wish to swim.  Go down a pier and Otis Redding is whistling in my head.

Alcatraz, a tumble of rocks across the water, its lighthouse blinking at tour boats that rock their way toward the old prison.  And still it rains, though it is not really cold.  A group of sea lions loaf on a crooked dock floating by itself without any boats to give it legitimacy.  The sea lions’ fat bellies turn toward the overcast sky and they bark at one another in a constant babble that seems pointless.  Only making noise like children because they can.  A coast guard boat, fat red rubber border, large machine gun up front, cruises up to the sea lions as if looking for anything suspicious in their idleness.  A floating restaurant adorned with palm trees and fake lighthouse is lashed to the pier, moored for the season.  And a sea gull is annoyed by our wandering, shakes off the rain and takes flight.  Let them try to look out to sea, see nothing.

Down the pier you can see the Golden Gate Bridge, a faint outline of red in the distance.  I am reminded of Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower from the Louvre.  Not close enough to touch, but its presence inextricably reminds you that you are in that city, makes it more real, though these mists and foreign images still make me think that this is a dream.

A parting of the ways.  I go on a WWII submarine while Hans begs off and looks for a dry place to sit.  For a discounted student fare, I still look the part after all, I am up on the narrow deck, imagining Cary Grant in spite of myself.  Down the hatch, the slick stairs swaying with the gentle sea rolls and I suddenly picture myself falling into the blackness below, breaking a leg or my tailbone or both.  Grasping the rails tighter, I slide on until I stand on the not so steady metal floor and find myself looking at the torpedo room, complete with four disarmed torpedoes.  And so I explore the old ship without the benefit of the audio guide I neglected to buy.  Still, the submarine is interesting.  Old pictures of sweethearts and a buxom pinup are a nice touch.  Hard to imagine living in such a small space with a whole crew for months at a time.  And going down, down, down, into that pressured darkness, not fully sure if you would ever reach the surface again.

I find Hans in a sort of museum of old arcade games, some of them dating from the late 19^th century.  Most if not all of them are working, so we spend a good amount of time going around and inserting coins into the amusing machines.  I play an old baseball game where the pitchers throws a metal ball you’re supposed to hit around the small metal players.  Hans and I battle two boxing robots against each other, though our fingers grow tired as it takes a long time for Hans to finally land a knock out punch.  We take turns practicing our marksmanship by shooting BBs at metal targets.  Other machines are not so much games as performances.  Inserting fifty cents (a markup surely) into one machine sets a piano and drums into playing a ragtime song.

I give some of my last quarters to a fortune-telling wizard.  A figure waves his wand a few times and then the machine ejects a card.  The wizard tells me that I need to take life more seriously.  Dreams are okay, but I need to pay more attention to practical things, like money.  I am struck by the appropriateness of this fortune, but wonder if it advice I should take seriously.

Only dwell on it briefly before we head through the scattering rain to Ghirardelli Square and some chocolate.  Back toward the bay and we contemplate the long line of tourists waiting for men in heavy coats to turn a cable car for the ride back into North Beach.  Should we?  No, not wanting to wait we walk on back to the hotel and then a light dinner of fresh sushi.

Light through the crooked shade.  Voices in the hall, guess the language, guess the country.  Jazz, always jazz (and once Astral Weeks) from the front desk tap-stepping up the stairs and sliding across the carpet.  We are tired, but the hotel makes us wonder and in that wonder is the question what should we do?  Not stay here.  There is the promise of something out in that night with car horns and tires growl coming from invisible streets.  And from that promise comes one word, to my mind at least, Vesuvio.

We’d seen it from City Lights.  A narrow passage paved with quotes and inspiration—now dubbed the Jack Kerouac Alley—separates the two venerable establishments.  I looked at the scrapbook mural on the wall, the naked cartoon man on the sign, and even ducked in the door as we walked to China Town.  Vesuvio looked like the kind of bar I would like and I had been told great things.

Strange to go drinking with a friend I knew when we were too young to even think about what alcohol would taste like.  Feeling of unease that this somehow seems out of place, like breaking some purity of childhood, as if it was a straight acknowledgment of the time that had passed.  This is nonsense of course.  Time has passed and I do not much regret it.  The artificial segmentation of life into stages and the attempt to keep them from overlapping is not something I want to indulge.  Alcohol does not hold enough importance for me anyway, so why worry?  Because I can.

North Beach has an edge to it at night.  Not as much as some places, but it is urban and, like any cities, there is a slight possibility of danger.  It stalks along in the darkness with muttering figures, most of them benign, but then—wonder.  Not to say that we dwell on this as we walk through the remnants of rain and the cold blackness of shadows cast by great globes of street lights, flakes of gold the fallen leaves that are less pronounced here and now because the season has not quite found the coast.  But there is the thought and like all thoughts it creates a certain mood that is one of caution and not complete headlong bravado.  Or maybe I’ve always been a coward all along?

We walk up Columbus, as we did before, but decide to hop onto one of the famous streetcars as it rumbles to a halt in any otherwise deserted street.  We purchase tickets and slide back as the brakeman positions himself.  There are a few other people on the trolley and so we scoot back and are not quite seated when the car jolts forward, knocking us back into the bench.  The ride is rough and loud.  The driver speaks with another worker, probably training him in this old art.  Leavers and knobs, loud scrape on tracks and watching for lights and cars and waiting passengers.

The streetcar turns off Columbus, which we hadn’t counted on, and on up a side street.  A young man, perhaps a student, climbs on with the air of a practiced rider and stands with his laptop bag behind the brakeman.  He wears a neatly tailor coat carefully disheveled into a faux carelessness and fingers his smartphone as we move on.  The glow catches his eyes.  Suddenly a light turns red and the brakeman, who was perhaps going too fast to impress the trainee, slams on the lever to bring the car to a screeching halt.  The young man flies forward onto the driver’s back, hugging him involuntarily as his phone scuttles across the floor.  Someone retrieves the phone, the brakeman apologizes and the man, his confidence shattered, sits down on the bench opposite us.

We get off at Broadway a little relieved to be off the rickety machine and walk the few blocks back to Columbus.  We are in Chinatown again, but now the streets are quiet.  The area is quite and seems sad or tired, perhaps a little of both.  A saltiness rises from the air, the dregs of that day’s business it seems, though there are many signs expressing the strict illegality of dumping anything, especially crabs, in the sewers.  The rain has stopped, but water still gives the streets an oily shine.  It runs downhill toward the lights of Columbus.

The night is in full swing on the major artery.  The strip clubs have illuminated their neon and shadows stagger in and out of the curtained doors.  We slink past them, look in the windows of City Lights once again, and then enter Vesuvio.

Mosaic of colors and sounds.  Signs advertising concerts, plays, poetry readings, and a drink called a Jack Kerouac that is a catchall collection of booze that I avoid.  I do not possess a wino’s belly.  A narrow room, extending out and away from us, filled with young and old, not wholly dominated by either age group as most other bars.  Beatniks and hipsters—the modern ironic version of the word—yuppies and a man who looks like he stepped out of the 1930s in a dusty coat complete with tattered leather shoes that flap as he wiggles past us in an impression of some old boozehound like Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not.

A momentary hesitation and then we head up the stairs to the second floor, a gallery overlooking the bar below with an ornate railing and tables in dark corners where one can ruminate or burst forth in overlapping conversations like the large group of young people by the window.  We sit at a small café table that has been painting into a abstract wash of browns and reds and yellows, the colors of the place that will stay with me.  The Vesuvio an abstract wash itself of new delights that continually surprise me and it is as if someone had taken all of the pieces I like best of the various bars I’ve been to and assembled them in this one place.

A waitress, whose low-cut shirt and shining eyes serve their purpose and draw my eyes, swings over and we both order Scotch.  Another surprise—I did not think Hans drank much, let alone single malt whiskey.  And so we sip—he on his sweet Glennfiddich, I on my smoky Laphroig—and talk in the meandering way that defies true description about our shared past and the time we have spent apart and grown and learned some things though not all, not much.

The waitress returns as we down our bitter dregs.  I remember that the Vesuvio advertised absinthe, something I’ve come to love, and cautiously ask her how they prepare it.  Her answer, a surprise, pleases me.  She says they prepare it the traditional way, by pouring water over sugar into the absinthe and that they will not fire it unless a customer insists.  They also carry Kubler, a decent brand, so I go ahead and order one.  Hans asks for one too out of curiosity and soon they arrive, perhaps not in the proper glass, but nicely louched.  I launch into a lecture about absinthe, how tales of its hallucinatory properties are incorrect and how the practice of burning it, started in the Czech Republic in modern times, is an abomination.  I get a little carried away, but only because I enjoy absinthe so much and resent how much it is misunderstood.

And so the night deepens.  I feel a slight but pleasant chill through the window opened to Jack Kerouac Alley.  The bar buzzes with talk and a jukebox and we grow tired, aided by the alcohol I’m sure.  And so we head back down the stairs and out into the still damp streets, back up Columbus in animated conversation that I now forget.  Past the darkened doorways of restaurants and dry cleaners.  Leaves stick to our shoes as we pass by Ben Franklin and the deserted park where now he stands alone, bereft of pigeons.  Coit Tower is a pale ghost as if lit by moonlight up on that hill, also alone.  I am used to wandering strange cities alone in Europe and this city seems so European and it is strange to have companionship.

The hotel room is warm as a soft rain starts against the window.  Lean into bed and listen to the irregular rhythm, occasional squeak of floorboard as someone walks by.  And this darkness is not complete and this night is not quite silent.  Sleep is slow in coming as my mind still buzzes and conjures the Vesuvio, some forgotten song.

Sleep in San Francisco is unsettled by the closeness of the sea.

Sketches of the Road-Part 2

The Loneliest Road

Woke up in Ely, Nevada in a clean hotel.  Sort of strange to wake up in a town whose name you’re not sure how to say.  Ate a complimentary breakfast accompanied by the sounds of Fox News, not very complimentary.  Tried to ignore it while other guests stared blankly at the screen, attracted like moths to bright lights.  Forget that now.  Bought some provisions, made sandwiches, and head out on a stretch of Highway 50 that has been dubbed the Loneliest Road in America.

The route takes us by a large strip mine where mountains have been tore down to the dregs.  A few remnants of cabins and mines remind me of the history of the place, most of which is unknown to me.  I’m at the wheel as we enter the first of many flat plains where the road goes straight and the driving is easy.  We see more cars here than we did yesterday, though they are still few in number.  There are ravens on the road feeding on carcasses crushed into almost unrecognizable carrion and I slow to allow them to fly out of the way.

Highway 50 begins a repeating pattern.  Slow climb up passes named Little Antelope and Pinto, then down through winding canyons—watch for crossing deer—down into great wide valleys stretching on almost endlessly to the north and south before beginning another climb after a gun barrel-straight stretch.  Sporadic signs advertise geological attractions some sixty miles down side roads, pale tracts of dust in the sage.  We see a marker for the Pony Express, though no indication of its route.

Hans takes out my dad’s yellowed copy of On the Road, which he has never read, and begins to read aloud at the beginning.  A great idea and when we switch at a small gas station—pull in off the road, a tiny market attached with strange squat bathrooms where a sign states Employees Must Might Hopefully Wash Their Hands, buy a Coke and call it good—I take over the reading and make it to Denver in the narrative by the time we stop again for the last opportunity to get gas for over 100 miles and I take the wheel again.

And now we enter deserts, great wastes of sand that are perhaps dead lakes.  We pass by a sand dune where people race buggies and dirt bikes down the steep slopes.  The sand along the road is almost white, bleached bone by the sun.  Travelers have collected dark volcanic rocks that litter the basin and formed them into words, mostly names, but every now and then there is Love.  These epitaphs form two rows on either side of the highway, one long stream of human thought crying for expression even in this hostile environment.  Some are painted green and blue to add color.  Driving on, we spot a grave.

A hundred miles.  Lord, lord, lord a hundred miles.  One hundred miles without a town and hardly a car in either direction.  Slowly the landscape becomes greener.  Irrigation-fed farm fields appear more frequently and we wind our way into Fallon—Nevada’s self-proclaimed oasis.  Now fellow travelers share out route.  Some scream by into the distance while others lag and are soon left behind, silhouettes in the mirror.  And yet, these drivers remain anonymous, the camaraderie of being on the same road at the same time is slight.  The road is not less lonely because other cars traverse it.

Moving on.  Into Carson City, another state capital, down in a valley and wider than I imagined it.  Suddenly, we enter stop and go traffic, a shock after the wide-open path we have just left.  Now up into the Sierra Nevada, a great wall of rock, timber and snow, steeper and grander than the brown mountains we have passed through for so long.  Up and the engine struggles, wondering if it is something to be looked at or if the climb is really that steep a grade.

Granite peaks, shadows of snow, I think of the Donner Party and for some reason Treasure of the Sierra Madre, we don’t need no stinking gold.  On the map, there is a large splotch of blue labeled Lake Tahoe.  I picked Highway 50 as our road partly because I wished to leave the interstates and travel the so-called Loneliest Road, but also because I wanted to see Lake Tahoe.  Images of The Godfather in my head, and amusing stories told by my father who lived there for three months in the 1970s, I round every corner expecting to see water.

Further on, nothing but stone and trees.  Perhaps the road does not pass too close to the shore?  And then, there between peaks and jagged outcroppings, a lake deeper blue than the sky cut by shadows and white caps.  Must be windy out there.  Stretching into the uneven horizon, Tahoe looks more like a fjord than a lake.  I wonder if Hans is not as impressed as I because he comes from the land of fjords, but he is.  The lake is fresh water after all.

Now Highway 50 traces the lake’s southern shore closely.  Too perfect is the reflection in fact that I have to concentrate on following the course, curve after curve, and cannot look at Tahoe as much as I wish.  So I decide to turn into a parking area, pay a two-dollar fee, and stop beside the lake as a warm wind buffets my car.  Hans and I grab the sandwiches we have packed and walk down to a picnic area for a lunch overlooking the lake.  Here we can see the ragged cliff the road just passed through as well as a private dock stretching out into the tumultuous water.  A cove curves into the forest, forming a pleasant beach that would be nicer in warmer weather.

Water rolls and waves crash, at times so hard against the rock that vague spray dusts our hair.  Try to take pictures but worry that the bright sun, reflected off the uneven surface like off of a thousand pieces of glass, will distort them and mar the beauty.  Frustrating that a lens cannot quite match the human eye and capture everything that it sees, including the memory.  The inadequacy of words matches the inadequacy of photographs.  Pick the one that you’re best at and hope that you can capture a shade of the experience.

Lake Tahoe, the body of water, is beautiful, South Lake Tahoe, the town, is not.  An amalgamation of tall hotels, tourist shops, and casinos, the town sucks us in and is slow in spitting us out.  Hans is driving and it is his first experience of driving in thick American traffic, but he does fine.  Then we are moving out and begin, in stages, our descent.  The road moves through thick pine forests.  At times, the highway seems to lose its way and I fear that we have somehow left it for a narrow country road, but a sporadic sign always proves me wrong.

The gas gage dips to near empty and I begin to wonder if we will need to find a gas station before we leave the mountains.  A suitable establishment appears around a bend and we swoop in, brushing by an Asian woman sweeping up glass dangerously close to the highway.  As the pump runs, I see a young bride, attended by a group of girls holding her train high lest it touch the many cigarette butts, entering the gas station.  When the tank is full, I venture inside where the wedding party, or at least the female side of it, is speaking in rapid Russian while they wait to use the restroom.  A random sight from the road.

And now, into the breach.  Traffic increases at an alarming rate until I once again become mired in stop and go traffic near the town of Placerville.  But at least we are in California, I think.  Here traffic lights snare the highway traffic so that it builds like water behind a dam, ready to burst forth.  The traffic volume never truly lets up, all the way from here through Sacramento to San Francisco.  Not much more to note.  Cars cut and weave, the Californian capital appears as shadowy skyscrapers in thick smog, and Highway 50 disappears into the hell of I-80, 6 lanes of cars, most of them unwilling to stay within a ten mile per hour window of the posted speed limit.  I am glad I am driving, somewhat used to heavy traffic after years of struggling with rush hour in Denver.  But this is Denver at its worst only worse.  Rush hour on a Sunday in the middle of the afternoon.

Anticipation builds as signs indicate the route to San Francisco, but the going is slow.  The traffic is merciless.  Changing lanes becomes strategic and must be plotted in advance.  Lanes disappear, cars merge, and there is little time to notice the landscape, other than a few orchards noted with excitement.  Familiar names, names on maps of cities and valleys, appear on signs that are not followed.  No time now, must go.  San Francisco!  Somewhere ahead.

Finally signs for Berkeley and Oakland.  Glimpse the Bay as a sheet of gray in a general haze.  Must be near.  Must be closer.  But no, traffic halts again.  The local NFL team is playing or has just played or has been mentioned and so the local fans have taken to the streets.  Grind on—congestion is such an accurate label—and exit for the Bay Bridge.  The crossing is not free and here there is confusion.  The interstate widens to form countless lanes so that cars can pay and theoretically move on faster.  Still, we must move at a slow speed.  The reason is soon revealed as I slip an attendant money and drive on.  Right after the toll, the many lanes come merging together into three or four.  With the setting sun watering my eyes, I am taken by surprise and have to slam on my breaks.

Finally on the bridge.  Finally we can see the Transamerica Pyramid and Coit Tower and in the golden mist the Golden Gate Bridge.  Finally we smell salt water and we on the Embarcadero and down to Broadway and then on to Columbus, past cables cars to Francisco St. and then Mason and there the old San Remo Hotel above the even older Fiora d’Italia Ristorante.  Stop the car and get out.  Finally in San Francisco and dead tired.

Sketches of the Road-Part 1

Introduction

I first met Hans when he was living here with his family for two years in middle school.  My mom, who worked at the school, had told me about a kid coming from Norway that summer.  I knew nothing about Norway, other than its location on a map, so Hans seemed mysterious to me when I first saw him in class.  Somehow, I cannot remember the sequence of it, we became close friends for those two years.  Our families even took a trip to Lake Powell together the summer before he moved back to Norway, his father’s stint at a company in Colorado over.

Hans and I promised to keep in touch and we did, mostly by e-mail.  But our lives changed and we grew up, both physically and emotionally.  In the eight years since he left he’s visited me once and I visited him at his college in Trondheim when I studied for a semester in Copenhagen.  Each time, I marveled how much we had both changed and yet how similar we were, including our tastes in literature and music.  Although our e-mails grew less frequent, we remained friends.

Over the last two weeks, Hans and I took a road trip to the West Coast, specifically San Francisco and Portland.  I prepared by plotting our route, trying to stick to mostly highways, and by getting recommendations from people I knew had been to those places.  What follows is an account of our trip.

Colorado, the leaves are changing.  Down low off the mountains the color comes in patches that slowly grow.  To see autumn you must leave the city.  Go up where the air thins and grows cool, the sun slants down slopes and catches the aspens in peak color like flakes of gold in the mountains dark green or gray where the beetle kill has taken a toll.  And shades of vermillion in the yellow where, for reasons I have yet to discover, a solitary tree or grove has decided to make a statement of nonconformity.  Colorado, the season is changing.

 Shades of Anonymity

I-70 is the route west.  Faster than swinging south to catch Highway 50, which is the road we wish to take further on.  The interstate is crowded, but the speed remains high and we make good time to Grand Junction and the fruit country of Colorado.  Here US 50 runs into I-70, funny how all roads eventually meet like veins across this vast America.  Now the change in season is less apparent, the grass is faded to straw yellow or dusty brown, but otherwise the antique tones of fall are isolated to pockets on high in the distance.

Scenery changes, broken Colorado plateau.  A high mesa of many wrinkles, flat baked sand, dominates the wide Colorado River valley.  Beige desert above the fruited plain still green and growing though it is now October.  Going now, really going, because the trip has been committed to and we must race to the sea.

Crossing the state line into Utah, we find we have fallen off of the Rocky Mountains into a sea.  It is ancient, long since evaporated into the too blue sky, but the water still dimples the earth into a rumpled though mostly flat landscape.  Down, down, down until we hit a reef and must slow like a boat struggling to make passage through the narrow path carved through the towering rocks uprooted by forces I cannot comprehend.  Great shelves, layered in different stripes of time, cut up into the sky, angled and broken.  The car labors up the steep climb until we pull off to a scenic overlook to find the canyon we have just traversed is called the Black Dragon.

The dragon’s belly is red, almost crimson, sand stained by oxygen.  Signs explain that this is the remnant of the San Rafael Reef pushed up over the course of 50 million years or so.  A mere pittance in the grand scheme of things.  A diagram demonstrates the different periods of time—millions of years—that each layer of rock represents.  Here, the Permian, when most species on Earth suddenly went extinct.  We are standing on their bones.  Here, a slot canyon cut sharply into the reef, the drop from the parking lot staggering.  And there, up ahead, something called Castle Valley, the promise of more wonders to come.

The Great Basin is wide, but broken by many ranges.  The mountains are not necessarily high, but they are abrupt and rough, hewn by great upheavals and volcanoes, forces that I hope never to encounter in person.  At Salina, we finally leave I-70 and find Highway 50 at last, a narrow ribbon across a vast sage plain.  Hans and I take turns driving, making sure not to get too tired behind the wheel.  The conversation meanders much like the road.  It is sometimes emphatic, a story develops and is told to completion.  Other times we sit in silence, each lost within himself and his experience of the road.

I have been thinking about Jack Kerouac.  Unavoidable on a long road trip, especially one to San Francisco.  I can remember that summer, five or six years ago, when I first heard his name.  A friend of mine was waxing poetic about how influential On the Road had been on his life.  “I still take it with me on trips,” he said.  I admitted I had never read the novel and was immediately handed a copy.  Over the next few days, for I devoured the book, I sat stunned in my trailer, pouring over the great rambling descriptions of going and digging and jazz and San Francisco.  I was pleased by the appearance of my own native Denver, but felt more compelled by this strange white city on the coast.  I credit the novel with introducing me to jazz, which I now love, and for planting the seed of a desire to not only visit San Francisco, but to drive there, across America.

And now I am.  Jack Kerouac captured much about what traveling on the road is like, the ups and downs of it and the frantic motion of it.  But what he touched on and did not fully illustrate is the way the road becomes a canvas for one’s soul.  Thoughts out on the road turn inward as they turn outward, seeing the surroundings but also separating oneself from them, remembering past experiences that relate, and examining one’s hopes, dreams, and desires.  Some of these thoughts come out in conversation, but most are lost with the small details of what you see along the way.

There is the thought that in a way this is all futile.  That words are merely approximations of experiences and cannot capture everything.  This, to a literary and yet logical mind, is maddening.  To know that the solitude of that highway will be lost as words try to describe the open valleys littered with small clumps of yellow chamisa, the rough hills striped, like an Indian blanket has been thrown over them giving the feeling that something remains hidden, and the ever encroaching night.

–

There is a lake that does not always exist.  It is called Sevier Lake and it belongs to the same remnant of an ancient sea as the Great Salt Lake.  Many years there is not enough water to form a lake and even when there is, the water is much saltier than the ocean.  Highway 50 crawls along the lake at a respectful distance, like one of the living giving reverence to the dead.  A misty haze of twilight hangs over the now extant lake as we move along, the sun balanced precariously on another range of jagged mountains that look like a broken jaw bone.  We must go on into that lonely night broken only by the occasional headlights going the other way or the small casino crossroads town (we’re in Nevada now) brightly lit in the blackness and then gone.

We have been driving through anonymous America.  I won’t say real, because it is all real, but it is anonymous because it is hardly shown on the map.  The small towns have main streets that have perhaps hardly change in the last half-century.  The same flat store fronts, brick buildings built solidly against the indifferent landscape, the same groups of regulars at the cafes coming in and asking Louise or whatshername to make something good.  The usual.  It is romantic and it is frustrating, the unwillingness or the inability of these places to change.  At an outpost called Hinkley, Utah, mostly just a gas station and one diner, a rancher fills up tank after tank with gas so he won’t have to make the long trip into town again while his dog smiles from the truck’s bed.

As we go on into this American wilderness, we too are anonymous.  Another customer at the gas station buying fuel and drinks.  Another obstacle to be passed or a stranger passing by.  We are a mobile object on the road.

A Complete Unknown

On Saturday, a Norwegian friend and I will embark on a 3,000 plus mile road trip from Denver to San Francisco, up the coast to Portland, and then back across Idaho and Montana. I am taking two weeks off of work for a trip I have wanted to make since I first read On the Road in a small trailer in Fort Smith, Montana and jazz exploded in my soul.  I have never been to the West Coast and I will keep a log of my travels that will be posted when I return in mid-October.

Adios.

You say you want a Revolution?

Autumn has arrived.  The trees change unevenly, mostly yellow here, but the temperature remains unseasonably high.  The heat perpetuates the lighthearted feeling of summer and so the falling leaves, early sunset and sudden blast of cold at night injects my days with a sense of contradiction.  And then there is the almost unreported news story of a protest in New York City that heightens my feelings of existential ambiguity.

Maybe I am just out of the loop, but apparently there is a protest going on in New York City its organizers are calling Occupy Wall Street–although the protesters are gathered in a square three blocks away from the infamous thoroughfare.  What’s more, the protest is not more of the same Tea Party buffoonery of the past few years, but it is a leftist movement, though one might point out more than a few similarities between the two groups.  The organizers modeled the event (if it can be termed that) after the recent actions in Egypt and Spain and they have garnered statements of support from Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and Noam Chomsky among others.

Reading about the events in NYC over the past few days has stirred up several issues for me.  First of all, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to hear about this, after all the protest is in its 11th day.  I consider myself fairly well informed; I peruse the New York Times website, subscribe to the Economist and the New Yorker, and I often listen to NPR at work.  And yet, I only found out about the protest because someone posted a link on Facebook.  I’m not what you’d call an “advanced” social media user.  I have a Facebook that I check fairly regularly, but that’s about it.  I appreciate what sites like Facebook and Twitter can do, but I’m not a disciple of the “new media” or anything.  But finding out about Occupy Wall St. exclusively on Facebook made me wonder:  is social media’s growing role of reporting the news legitimate?  Searching the Internet, I found that the so-called mainstream media was largely silent on this protest even though a group of women was sprayed with tear gas point blank for seemingly no reason this weekend (see more here). Why?  It might not be a large protest, it might even fizzle out to complete irrelevancy (I’ve read where some people say that it already has), but a diverse group of Americans protesting the easy target of Wall St. seems like something the media would report.

Enter the conspiracy theories.  What if there really is an alliance between the government, corporations, and the news media that maliciously censors information and and shapes the views of the American people to the extent that Noam Chomsky has been saying for decades?  Okay, I’m not a conspiracy theorist wack job.  I do think that the media creates a narrative about events that shapes the way we understand the world–I even wrote my senior thesis on that topic using Venezuela as a case study.  But I don’t quite buy into this idea that there is this evil–how do I put this–shadow organization made up of corporations that dominate our lives.  I don’t like corporations, and I acknowledge that the U.S. government has done some horrible things both to its own people and to people around the world.  But it’s hard for me to accept that the government, made up of people that “we the people” elected, and all corporations, made up of “we the people,” albeit owned by ridiculously rich people, are inherently out to do me harm.  Sort of.  Wow, this is a rambling and ambivalent post.

See, I want to trust people and institutions.  But I’ve seen the bad they can do and now there is a protest of people that are frustrated like me and that are unemployed or underemployed like me, and the media that I trust to provide me with relatively unbiased information does not tell me about it.  Facebook (and alternative news sources like Democracy Now and Twitter) did a better job of informing me about an event than traditional news sources like the New York Times.  I’m still a little baffled.

Granted, more information is starting to reported on.  CNBC, ABC, and the New York Times have posted some articles about Occupy Wall St.  Still, most of these articles are short and not nearly as informative as other sources I’ve mentioned as well as foreign newspapers and Al Jazeera.

Moving on from the media coverage or lack there of, this protest is stirring up other feelings in me.  As I read more about it and learn what the protesters stand for, I start to wonder how much I agree with them.  I don’t like the blind greed of capitalism, embodied by large multinational corporations that operate with little regard for the environment or their fellow man.  But shut down Wall St.?  As bad as the economy is today, wouldn’t shutting down banks and the companies that, like it or not, are the engines of the world economy make things a lot worse?  The global economy is so complex and countries so interconnected, you can’t just flip the off switch on what you don’t like.  Many of the people in the so-called Liberty Square in New York say they don’t have jobs.  Well, they certainly won’t get a job if the entire economy is destroyed.  This part of their platform, if the movement even has a coherent platform, reminds me too much of the Tea Party’s demand that the government shut down the Federal Reserve (on which our entire monetary system depends).  It is too extreme of a position and it isn’t realistic.  Incidentally, I saw a sign in a picture at this protest demanding the same thing.

I do share some of the beliefs espoused by some of the people in the Occupy Wall St. protest.  The heart of the movement is anger at the inequality in this country and I agree.  It is ridiculous that 1 per cent of the population controls so much wealth.  There is also a lot of anger at corporate tax breaks and the way that Wall Street bankers contributed to the financial crisis and were then bailed out by the government.  I think most Americans share this sentiment.  People are frustrated at our gridlocked political system.  So am I.

There are other things I like about this movement.  For example, each day they hold a General Assembly and decide on actions as a group.  I like this level of democracy.  There are many young people in the movement who I can identify with.  They seem to be educated and tech savvy.  There is a library in Liberty Square and their website utilizes social media and keeps visitors updated in a timely manner.  Here’s a more polished video from their site.

And now apparently people around the country are acting in solidarity, organizing their own “occupations.”  The first General Assembly for Occupy Denver is tonight.  So why aren’t I down there?  Part of the reason is because I’m not sure that these events will solve anything or that they are the right way to go about accomplishing this goals.  The website for these events calls them part of a “revolution.”  Revolution is a word that worries me; it seems a little extreme.  Maybe these times require extreme action, I don’t know, but I do know that people that are well off or think they are well off are not typically willing to change the status quo.  Even with a 9 per cent unemployment rate, Americans are on the whole better off than the vast majority of the world.  Things aren’t great, but they are still comfortable and this comfort is one reason why I think the number of people at Liberty Square has declined.

The truth of the matter is, I’m pretty well off.  My parents aren’t rich, but we are definitely middle class and they have the money to support me as I try to find a more stable job.  I’m guilty about this, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not suffering as so many people are.  I’m not saying I don’t want things to change.  I’m what I would call a bourgeois progressive.  I support government regulation, welfare, and stimulus spending, all of the typical progressive stuff (I don’t use the word liberal because it means something totally different in most of the rest of the world).

I guess what I’m wondering is, do I fit into this movement?  Am I a hypocrite because I not only have decent material comforts but I also enjoy them?  Because I work at a large corporation–I don’t like it, but I do?  Does my failure to go to Occupy Denver lump me in with those that oppose social change?

I guess my feelings can be summed up by the following video (I often relate my own life to music like most people).

You say you want a revolution? You can count me out…in.

 

UPDATE

Here’s a link with a list of demands proposed by the group.  I agree with most, but some are a little off–re-investigating 9/11 and shutting down the “foreign-controlled” Fed Reserve are the two that come to mind.

A History Lesson

Internships are all about gaining experience and being at the Denver Justice and Peace Committee has definitely taught me about working in the nonprofit sector.  I am continually amazed by the tiny size of the operation.  The computers are pretty old, the office cramped, and the lack of air conditioning makes working there unbearable  when temperatures rise above 90 and the windows refuse to open more than a few inches.  Legislators do their best to ignore us and there is never a shortage of issues that seem so important that we have to act now, but our time and resources are limited.

This description makes interning for a small nonprofit sound discouraging, and by all rights it should be, but I am actually more encouraged than I ever was in college.  You see, not only am I learning about nonprofits, but I am learning about the incredible goodness people are capable of.  DJPC would not work if not for the generosity of the regular volunteers as well as the people that take interest and act, if only occasionally.  The director, a Dominican Friar named Jerry, is one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met.  He sweats it out in the office three days a week, sifting through the thousands of e-mails that come pouring in, and makes sure that the rest of us are organized.  He and the other members truly care about people they have never met and will probably never meet, in a place thousands of miles away.  They understand that they have the ability and resources to try to help these strangers, and then they actually do something about it.

When I was in college, I often felt cynical and depressed about the state of the world.  In my International Studies courses, I learned about the horrible things people do to each other and about the pressing problems in the world that did not seem to have a solution.  When I was motivated to act, I was frustrated by the apathy of my peers.  To be fair, there were people in clubs that were volunteering and I myself did not do enough, but too often I saw people caring more about partying than helping their fellow man.  I definitely do feel pessimistic at times now, but working at DJPC has given me more hope and has motivated me to volunteer more.

DJPC has given me self-confidence too.  I suddenly find myself organizing meetings, writing position papers, and sending e-mails to Congressional offices, and last weekend I met with Coloradoan Congressman Ed Perlmutter.  I tried to persuade him that he should vote against the pending Colombia and Panama Free Trade Agreements and I feel that it went well.  Before this internship, the prospect of talking to a representative would have filled me with apprehension, but, although I felt a little nervous, I went into the meeting with a lot of confidence.

My internship has been such a positive experience and I am glad that I took it.  A few weeks ago, it also provided me with an opportunity to learn a lesson about Colorado history.  A small amateur acting group called The Romero Troupe put on a play called “A People’s History of Colorado,” and the “price” of admission was a suggestion donation to DJPC, so I volunteered to collect money at the door.  I was amazed at how many people showed up and I’m sure that DJPC made quite a bit of money.

The play itself took Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” as its model and acted out several less well-known events from Colorado’s history.  I was a history minor in college and always thought that I knew a lot about the history of my home state, but the troupe chose a few events with which I was not familiar.  For example, the play showed a miners’ strike in Leadville that led to a massacre and it discussed the lynching of John Preston Porter Jr.  This latter episode in particular horrified me.  I knew that the KKK had been powerful in Colorado and that there had been lynchings, but the brutality of burning a 16 year-old at the stake shocked me.  “A People’s History of Colorado,” also included topical poetry and songs between acts.  One of the actors, a girl who I think was in high school, sang an incredible song that I’m pretty sure was an original composition.

Was the acting in the troupe wonderful?  No, they were definitely amateurs, but that didn’t really matter.  The actors were clearly passionate about their material, as was the audience.  A particularly moving moment was when a Japanese-American who had been interned during WWII got up to speak about his experience.  At the end of the play, the cast and the audience sang “This Land Is Your Land,” which might have been predictable, but it was still an incredible feeling to have a theater full of people singing such a hopeful song with such feeling.  The whole night reminded me of the old community theaters or civic events in rural America.  It was grassroots.  It was real.  And it surprised the hell out of me.

Education, it seems, continues after college.

Restart

I have drifted away from this blog over the last month or so.  I could blame this on the fact that I’m working full time and the reason I started this blog seemed to be because I was unemployed.  I’m not exactly satisfied with this answer.  My employment is only temporary after all and this blog really should be about  more than working.  Life is about more than working.

This summer has been thoroughly more enjoyable than my last.  My parents and I went to Montana a few weeks ago and we saw parts of the state that were new for all of us.  I want to post about this eventually, though it will might be a while before I get to it.  There have also been several more developments with my internship and I want to write about them first.  But not tonight.  I’m tired from a relaxing weekend–this contradiction puzzles me too.  Perhaps tomorrow.

I want to end this post with a recommendation.  I just watched a fine Irish film called Ondine.  It’s a story about a fisherman (Colin Ferrel) who pulls a women from the sea in his net.  Here is some more information.  The movie deals with myth and reality and all of the crucial elements, acting, script, and direction, were pretty great.  The scenery definitely made me want to go to Ireland.