Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Gone to look for America

I'm back in America, in the U.S.A.

I left on September 9, 2010 and came back to JFK airport on June 22nd, 2011, with eleven new countries and infinite new thoughts and life under the soles of my feet.
Everything I've done and seen and learned and everywhere I've been - unforgettable.  
But it's time for me to get back to knowing my own country.  If I'm not a patriot, and not a nationalist, I am still and forever an American, and I want to know what that means.  I want to see this country mile by mile from the ground, not 30,000 feet up in the air.  
I just got back from an amazing and probably life-changing weekend at the Socialism Conference in Chicago, and after a 20 hours bus trip with some badass socialists, reading Kerouac and feminist socialist theory, I'm in Texas.  I'll be here for a week, then back to Philadelphia/DC, and as many more adventures as I can fit in to the slipping summer months.


Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said, "The man in the gabardine suit is a spy"
I said,"Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost" I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America

I spun around till I was dizzy; I thought I'd fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice.  Oh where is the girl I love? I thought and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little world below. And before was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across gloomy, crazy New york was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam.  There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.  Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
- Kerouac, On the Road



Alexi Murdoch - Song for You

So today I wrote this song for you
'Cause a day can get so long
And I know its hard to make it through
When you say there's something wrong

So I'm trying to put it right
'Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I don't know even where to start

Maybe that's a start

'Cause you know its a simple game
That you play filling up your head with rain
And you know you've been hiding from your pain
In the way, in the way you say your name

And I see you
Hiding your face in your hands
Flying so you won't land
You think no one understands
No one understands

So you hunch your shoulders and you shake your head
And your throat is aching but you swear
No one hurts you, nothing could be sad
Anyway you're not here enough to care

And you're so tired you dont sleep at night
As your heart is trying to mend
You keep it quiet but you think you might
Disappear before the end

And it's strange that you cannot find
Any strength to even try
To find a voice to speak your mind
When you do, all you wanna do is cry

Well maybe you should cry

And I see you hiding your face in your hands
Talking 'bout far-away lands
You think no one understands
Listen to my hands

And all of this life
Moves around you
For all that you claim
You're standing still
You are moving too
You are moving too
You are moving too
I will move you
---
"The Industrial Workers of the World union has been accused of putting women in the front lines of protests.  The truth is, the IWW simply does not keep them in the back, and they go to the front!"
- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

"Israel is not a nationalist dream; it is an imperialist nightmare."
-Sherry Wolf
"America and Western Europe are feeling rightly penitent for the Holocaust - but it is the Palestinians who are paying this penance."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
---

I think my favorite thing about being home is the hour between 5 and 6, when the late afternoon turns into early evening and the sun is hot and slanting and slipping and seeping.  I only feel that warm, baking easy summer in America.

Coffee is cheaper here too, or at least my kind of coffee.

The driveway to my mother's house is flanked by bamboo and mimosa.

Wake up, stumble off the bus, dazed, needing and knowing no sensation but bloodflow in my legs, stare around, lean on a stucco wall, half listening to people talk, back to the bus.  The gas station sign says just in big white capitals on a red field, GAS.  
Where are we? Drive for a moment, peer at roadsigns.  In a barren shrub grass park, a sign wickedly proclaims, "Welcome to Miami."  More helpfully, the turnpike toll says Oklahoma and I know I'm in a part of the country I've never been before. What do the stars look like here? Lean back, look up and through the bus window's glare.  
I can see them all, hear them all singing in their spheres.  I'm going to visit them all, I think.  I'm going to get up there and see every star. And just for a moment, a long moment, I think that if I could rid myself of every human bond, every attachment, dependency, love, desire, fear, and be free from everything, I could get to every star.  And then I begin writing in the dark.

---

Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



P.S.  60th post!