Chapter Eleven

Beatnik writing crap: a shot rings out and is that all there is and that’s all there was, when did that happen, how did it happen, the shock, this is the end, really? Why didn’t you rally, say something. No time to say good-by or wonder what the hell just happened; it ended its gone how can I remember it now, how can I remember you now, with the way it all ended. He kissed me, he kissed me, it was everything, light in me erupting, light bugs circling my head, a soft gauze a warm breeze blew over and in me it tickled it tingled it felt like everything than it ended and it was gone and it never happened again, did it ever happen, and where is your life now, huh, buried under the ground decomposing so who cares I guess I have places to be I hope. Others to try to kiss I hope, I want it to last I want it to mean something, please mean something big to me, please be something big coming up, I want to go up, I want to live, I want you to wish you could live with me, in envy. Damn you Jan, the music you’ll miss. The friends you had I wish I had now I have and you don’t have; it ends and what does it all mean. It means nothing but everything because in the end that’s all there is; just this here, and the future, to make it better.

“I’m sorry for the boring parts,” Candice said to me when we reached home. I hugged her. I felt like crying. I thanked her. I didn’t care about any failures of the trip. It saved me. Including all the dull parts and boring parts. A lot of life is made up of dull moments and waiting to get somewhere. Being alone with your thoughts. Maybe those moments are hard to love but I want to love them anyways. Tolerate. Not hate anyways. Because sometimes in the moments it’s all I have, all I am.

“I see your sister’s resemblance in you,” Kang said to me in Vegas, or in Moab actually, I think, drunk or half drunk, I can’t tell. “I really liked her,” he said. “Really, really liked her. I never told her. I wish I had.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Because I’m an idiot. People have such stereotypes about Asians. We’re silently persecuted. More ignored than open hostility. We’re all supposed to be smart. What’s wrong with being smart?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Smart but never the leading man. Never the action star. Never the guy good enough for the hot girl. Meek, quiet. Good in math.”

“Jackie Chan,” I said.

“That’s different,” he said.

“Bruce Lee,” I said.

“He was half Asian,” he said.

“He was? No he wasn’t,” I said.

“I’m not an expert on every Asian-American celebrity there is,” he said. “I never took a Kung-fu class in my life.”

“Aren’t you half Asian?”

“Maybe,” he said. “People don’t take a blood test when they look at you.”

“I like Kung-Fu,” I said.

“Have you ever taken a class? Or karate.”

“No,” I said. “But I have nothing against it. A way to stay healthy. Feel empowered. Gain confidence. Make friends. Achieve goals. All that stuff I guess it provides. There’s, like, a philosophy attached to it also, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “People don’t watch Kung-fu movies for the philosophy.”

“That’s true, I guess,” I said. “Everyone thinks you’re cool. I think you’re cool.”

He smirked. “You don’t know what everyone thinks.”

“That’s true,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“What was it like kissing Seth-Rem?” he asked.

“Um… nice I guess,” I said.

Reading his face I guessed his next thoughts. Why didn’t you make out with me? Would you make out with me? If you weren’t so young. If I make out with you I can pretend I’m making out with Jan. You’re the closest I can come from fulfilling that dream now… never mind. Glad I didn’t say those thoughts out loud. I’m putting thoughts into his head there, of course.

We played the desert island game in the van. What would you bring if you could only bring one thing, types of questions. Of TV series I think “Saturday Night Live” was a good answer, because there’s a lot of episodes, forty five seasons or something and still going, and each episode has a musical guest, and you can see how culture changed through the years, through topical, at the times, humor, and what not. Good argument that a lot of it is just awful and a lot hasn’t aged well, but, you’d be getting a lot more material to watch, to be stuck with for the rest of your life. “The Simpson’s” would be a good choice for that reason also. But it’d also be fun maybe to have the series box set of “Friends” and memorize every line of every episode. Or not “fun” but… a more satisfying way to waste time then watching old SNL episodes every day and night.

Music was a topic of conversation. British music vs. American music. What’s better, who “wins.” Why we, America, don’t have as good rock bands, from the 60’s on, as the British do, when “we” invented rock. Good, sort of, question. Because of conservatism and wasting time and talent with country music which the rest of the world hates? Seth-Rem made that argument. Who “won” each decade in music? Maybe the U.S. could claim to have “won” the 80’s in pop and rock music, with Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Prince, compared with their George Michael, Culture Club. They had “The Smith’s” then, which didn’t really translate over to U.S. audiences until much later, for some reason, and that trend sort of continued in the 90’s, where a band would be ultra popular in the U.K. without the U.S. really knowing too much or caring too much about them, for some reason, and visa-versa.

But it’s such a stupid thing, such a “guy” thing to place rankings and “winning” and ‘losing’ labels on art. And isn’t the U.S. fascination over princess Kate strange? She only became famous for who she married; isn’t that anti-feminist? And shouldn’t America be anti monarchy? Based on our history? And why are there so many anglophiles’ here, who think British culture and arts are better no matter what, yet so few people willing to adopt what actually is better about the U.K. with their more practical and reasonable gun laws and national health care? Isn’t that a strange thing? And why doesn’t Canada and Australia declare independence from the U.K already, isn’t that also strange, that they have the queen of a distant geographic monarchy on their currencies and images of the queen hanging in their courtrooms, here, in 2012-2013, supposedly the age of enlightenment, for the past two hundred or so years? Yes, it is strange.

A lot of little lizards ran over the rocks at the campground in Moab. They were strangely cute and sort of fascinating to see. There might be native lizards in Washington, I’m sure there are, but I’ve never seen any. Fascinating how still they’d sit, like sculptures, then how quickly they’d scamper away when you got too close, as if statues suddenly jerked to life. The terrain looked and felt alien, like Mars. These big red pillar towers jutting from hard red earth. Rock arches. Hot sun. A little river. Bats at dawn, skimming over the water, hiking through the narrows, a river, from calve to knee deep, in some places higher, you hike through between sand stone. That was fun. I saw a deer carcass on the side; killed by a mountain lion I bet.

Back in the van, on the highway, Chan Marshall’s “He War” played: ‘He will kill for you’. A cool song. It only made me think about Jan much later. Play ‘Manhattan’ Kang said, another more recent song by Chan Marshal, a.k.a. Cat Power. ‘Don’t look at the moon tonight, it will never be Manhattan.’ She sings. I remembered the video for that song. All the glory shots of grimy real and beautiful New York, the streets and subway platform guitarist and the bus ride through Harlem and over the Brooklyn bridge and the hip hop dancers on the Subway and the record store, she thumbs through records, and she’s on the basketball court at night, and interacting with mostly happy looking, mostly young New Yorkers; she does a goofy dance in it but looks cool. And it’s weird and interesting to listen to that song and think of that video, those New York images while driving through Montana and seeing the Mountains and thinking Montana is beautiful but so sadly barren, so lonely, so few see this’.

“Nirvana” was great to listen to. Blasting it loud, annoying the old farts at the camp ground and rest stops. Seattle kids here to murder your ears. You dummies, what do you know, nothing. Strange, how long ago Kurt Cobain shot his brains out. Like Jan did, thinking it were romantic or some dumb shit. Better to blaze out in a burst rather than fade out in little drips, or some dumb shit. You know what the dead do? Nothing. They don’t dance. What’s the point of death? Nothing, there is no point. Whatever pointlessness you think is in life, there’s more pointlessness to death. Way more. Not even close. Imagine who eagerly Teddy Roosevelt wishes he were alive right now, so he could be in the arena.

Then I thought of “Mad Men” for some reason and wondered, is it weird that it’s such a New York show about the 1960’s, but actually filmed in present day Los Angeles? Well no, why is that weird. It isn’t any weirder than a TV show or movie about outer space being filmed on earth. I thought about gun accidents. Since there’s been more focus on guns you hear more about the accidents of children shooting other children, five year olds who got a gun shooting his eight year old sister, and variations of that story happening every day; we love guns, love, them, give them to children like candy, more guns the better, for everyone, a little death a fair price to pay for rights and America and freedom and politics and gun symbolism of glory things to cling on to and define you and your group and your friends and what you want to believe is good, go all the way, no room for nuance, everything is either all good or all bad and guns are all good always, we need them or else our government would abuse us, so many believe, so that’s why expanding back ground checks to include gun show and internet sales didn’t pass the Senate despite 90 percent public support.

But we’ve moved on, that’s old news, time to get enraged over something else in Washington, things that don’t matter as much but that are more important because they could be more potentially damaging to somebody’s political enemies. Power and money rule. And guns. Thirteen percent of Americans think Obama is the anti-Christ. With that many that legit crazy (although it’s hard to believe that many really, truly, literally believe that; they just have to check the most extremist thing to express their hatred or displeasure or whatever, just because that’s how the game works; but who knows, maybe thirty million people or whatever thirteen percent of three hundred million is, sorry, bad at math, really do literally believe Obama to be the anti-Christ, in league with Satan to ensnare souls in eternal hell forever and burn the earth to ashes before Christ, or whatever nut-case Republican, can come and save us all); with that many legit crazy, what hope is there really for us as a society? If we can’t have calm, reasonable discussions on serious issues?

I thought of some of that type of stuff on the ride through “red states” Montana and Idaho. There’s some neo-Nazi white supremacist organization settlements in Northern Idaho, I’ve heard. There’s also some walled fort community some nuts live at where they horde gun stockpiles in anticipation of that great day, in their minds and imaginations, that they’ll get to fight the federal government, because of tyranny and freedom. And the crazy thing is, these people, anti-government radicals, think of themselves as American patriots rather than as treasonous wacko’s, which they are. Montana and Idaho. Lonely open land, freedom, cold snowy winters. Do people who choose to live out here not like people? Cowboy hats; what statement are they trying to say about themselves by wearing cowboy hats? What’s their purpose? A baseball cap blocks out the sun just as well but doesn’t look as dumb.

‘Real America’. Good, hard working people of the earth. If you’re not punishing yourself and miserable you’re not a good real American person. Salt of the earth. White people. No big businesses are based there. That’s another ironic kind of thing; the “Real America” of Sarah Palin and the GOP’s imagination is this rural cowboy hat rancher people, but the dogma of the GOP is to protect rich people and corporations from ‘intrusive’ regulations or fair taxes; that’s what’s best for everyone, is their creed, despite evidence; the “good working man” is the CEO, the ‘job creators’; those are the hero’s, yet these hard working poor people here in Montana and Idaho vote to give the rich guys more tax breaks, lessen regulations, putting more danger and less power for the laborers, because…why? I don’t know why, because they’ve been tricked into voting against their best interests, partly because of social issues, because the G.O.P. is the party of Christ, despite Christ pretty much being anti rich and stressing feeding the hungry and clothing the naked ‘taking care of the poor’ basically, which is more the liberal position on things, while the G.O.P wants the poor who can’t afford health insurance to go ahead and die because giving him what he doesn’t “deserve” is anti American, anti-freedom, whatever. Just stray rambling random thoughts I’d never share, because people hate political discussions, while driving through Montana and Idaho.

“No One’s Gunna Love You,” by The Band of Horses played in the song rotation on the road trip. The same band that sings “Funeral.” That ‘Love You’ song is so beautiful; makes the heart grow big. Under the right setting, in the right mood. That’s kind of one weird thing about music; your enjoyment of songs sometimes depends on other in the moment factors separate from the song.

I imagine boy band and boy pop idol fans get an extra jolt imagining how cute the singer, or singers, are, and imagining life with them, while listening to the songs, which makes them like the songs more than they would without this image and fantasy attachment, I imagine. It is strange how image driven popular music is, when music is supposedly only a audible appreciation. Drugs and sex of course have an effect on how good a song might sound; better than they otherwise really are.

But anyways, that was a nice song to hear while driving through Montana in summer, sort of feeling nowhere. Grand and lonely Montana, on the way home, just passing through, lamenting an ending and reminiscing over only just days ago occurrences as if they were precious jewels of polished nostalgia, although you can’t really place down any grand big life altering event which happened; it all mashes together, sort of, all these various flavors from different experiences in different places mashed, making one unique flavor. Just, nice breezes that affirm the zest and beauty of life.

Driving through Idaho sunsets (guess that came after Montana) open skies, geysers, rock arches, lizards, buffalo, California Beaches, more ‘Baywatch’ like then I had thought, red trunk life guards and all (Oregon and Washington beaches don’t have lifeguards), the Pacific Coast Highway, driving through Laguna Beach (remember that show, oh my gosh!). Talking, eating (so much of vacation time and money is centered on eating; food becomes almost as linked to memory as smell; unfamiliar restaurants in unfamiliar towns and places being sort of these pillars defining the trips more than anything, for some reason; the van snacks from gas-station stores; wandering the gas-station mini-marts and all the tacky touristy trinkets, their individual uniqueness becoming memories of which come to separate and partly define one place over another, yet they’re all similar; the magnets and key chains and post cards and posters and such; a lot of great Yellowstone stuff of that variety; bears and buffalo themed, great picture notebooks; Idaho is heavily potato themed; California, sunglasses and palm trees and flip-flops).

Music. Riding. Thinking. Writing bad high school poems and thinking they’re great but a moment later knowing they’re not, but then thinking, who cares. Watching the passing scenery. Thinking of sex, sadness, and life. Happiness and excitement and hoping for moments of bliss and welcome surprises. Kissing. The mini-mouse plush doll in your bag; wondering why you bought that, you’re not a little girl anymore, it was overpriced. Ashamed you bought it but glad you bought it also; you don’t know why. Keepsakes; physical proof to link to past memories. I got this during that one time when. Remember when I kissed him during the Pixies ‘The Happening’ and how great that felt. You heard him play guitar at a campsite by a fire under the stars, the night sky a glitter in an astounding way you’d never seen before, with red rock Martian like landscape around you, and it was grand and lovely and you realized maybe you don’t love him but you love the thought of him and him in this moment and that’s enough to affirm the validity and beauty of life in this moment, and that’s what I need, what I came here for, and they all knew it better than I knew it.

I sort of felt like Dorothy hugging all her Oz friends at the end of Wizard of Oz, back in the parking space in front of Seth’s house. The trip all over. Dad there to pick me up.

“How was it?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Good,” I said.

“Do you feel any better?” he asked.

“I do,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m trying to survive,” he answered.

Beatnik writing crap: A gunshot rings and that’s the end of everything, abruptly. Did you see all you wanted to see? Maybe, maybe not really. We wait for resolutions but there’s not always solutions to everything in reality, really, the way things really are, the way we want and wish things could always be. This disappointed me—did it really? Still, point up at that star, follow that star, maybe you’ll go far (go away, far away, still wherever you go, there it stays, whatever is inside you). Do you know the way?

We’re all here together so we better do better enjoy each other, help each other, share pains and triumphs, keep trying don’t give up, swallow the cheesy clichés, or just enjoy today, after all, what is life other than right now? Things that sound dumb can still be true, suicide doesn’t have to be you or define you, Jan I wish you had chosen to live; I’ll choose to live—even if all life has to give is just all this nonsense like this.