Truckstop Postcards, Pt. II.
Dearest Lillith,
Dad’s butterfly bush is as busy as ours; moths, hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, bees, butterflies of all different shape & size, all chasing each other around the purple flowers. It’s busy over there! And Pootie don’t care, he’s basking between the larch and the mint with his orange stripes and his nine lives and his tomcat smile. Dad somehow wrangled him into a handsome flea collar. I tell him it looks nice but Pootie don’t care; he’s here to bask and I’m only here infringing on his space hunting down good sentences.
The sun is bright and the air is cool for an August midday; and unusually still here in the hollow. I just stomped out a deer fly, a biter, that was flitting about my ankle looking to draw some blood. There’s no breeze. There’s only the squirrels’ frolicking up in the canopy to rustle the leaves today. It’s silent out back and the clack of this old Remington carries right up the stream and disappears into the woods. No echo returns from this hollow. This is a good place to write and I miss stepping away from the keyboard on breaks to loose some arrows from the recurve. And if it weren’t for the poison ivy along the path I wouldn’t even need to put pants on to do so. Nia says sending arrows downrange helps the Zen along. There’s no windage to do today, just nock & inhale, draw, exhale & release. And the aim is true.
The turkey were here this morning (so I heard, I slept late today) along with the doe and her twin fawns who have been in everyday, twice a day, which is no surprise as the Moon is presently waning through Gemini. They’re getting tall and their spots are finally fading. Dad said one of the fawns followed the gobbler off into the verge and disappeared this morning. They’ll be back this evening. No sign of the bear this summer.
Well, it’s almost 2:30 and I just broke a sweat from throwing these green keys. It’s finally warming up. I can’t believe it’s time to load up & leave PA already. I never did unpack & settle in this time. This cove out back has been cool and quite nice at night as well but I’ve been typing in the dark. These pages are swollen with ink and humidity. They will have a nice crinkle and crunch to them by the time they arrive home to your delicate hand.
Okay, I still have to walk this letter to the post office on the other side of town and I’m nearing the bottom of another page. It’ll be good to stretch the legs now because I’ll be at the wheel all day tomorrow. I’m planning to do the drive in three stints with two stops for fuel, food, and rest if needed. I am prepared to sleep in the backseat if I can’t make it one day. The baseball’s been good this week but Autumn is coming on fast now and I want to stay ahead of it. So back to the wheelhouse I go,
Love, Love, Love, for You & a few kisses
for the cats, those little jerks,
-PSL <3
P.S.– Please check on my cactus.
And pick new colors for the walls. I will want to paint whenever I find my way back home.
And make sure the Selectric’s UNplugged. And be careful when you do. Check your loose clothing & jewelry & count your fingers.
Hengies,
Candices wants to hang out in Asheville with some aged paper & the pinking shears & a good hat. I don’t know what Asheville’s ordinances say about sidewalk hours or transient typewriters on their streets, or if they require permits, but Mom’s there so she’s looking into it. Before I get down there though, I have a lot of miles to drive through the wilds. I know there’s no such thing as “safe” and the roads can be very un-so. I must navigate an interstate trip tomorrow, remaining wary of pirates & mechanical failure, and fleets of possibly distracted, angry, screen-dwelling and/or otherwise incapacitated drivers. You know I don’t ask for much and what I take I put back with interest as soon as I can (Musie says I’m a thief, but if I am, then I am an honest one), but I’m only now learning how to ask. I am learning how to ask. I am learning how to receive. I’m practicing what I’ve learned of listening. So, if you would, please wish me a safe & round trip & I’ll write you a poem on the other end of it, perhaps from the playlist or more of the enclosed snippet…
& Thank you, I’ll see you upon my return. While I’m in town I’ll keep my eye out for the good finds. If I see SALE’s smile outside the bookstore again I’ll pick up more of his postcards. If not, I’ll just drop in for a quick tuna salad croissant sandwich & the side salad with fresh raspberries & vinaigrette dressing. Oh, and iced tea if my first hatful will cover it.
Please, get our little Witchie to school on time! And make sure she has at least a semester’s worth of good music cued up. And please tell her I said, Remember Your Telos.
Southbound now, in the mountains and rollin’,
Choo Choo Ch’boogie
Asleep At The Wheel & dreaming…
-PSL
P.S. - Amani’,
She'll miss home. She'll paint you a picture.
She'll get busy. She'll make new friends.
She will be a new friend.
She'll be challenged and she will get hurt.
She will wish you were there & she’ll write you a letter.
She will wish you weren't & curse you.
Then after a spell she'll learn & she will wish
You were always there, of course she will,
Because she’s your girl & she will ALWAYS miss you both & carry you both in that big beautiful heart of hers.
You made that.
She'll be Home. You made that too.
Oh, She’ll get homesick & she'll write you a song.
You know it'll be a good one.
Dear Nigel,
I woke in the middle of the night last night with a two-fisted grasp on the sheets. My dreams were still buffeting in the draft of a south-bound semi. It takes a while for the speed to wear off. It was only the ceiling fan spinning.
Yesterday I went barreling down the eastern range of Appalachia at 75-85 m.p.h on Route 81. Perhaps to an imperial speed merchant it doesn’t sound that fast but that’s a good 120-137 in your metric speed. All. Day. Long. Solo. Your 10-hour playlist along with a 20-some-ounce cuppa something in a paper cup that vaguely resembled coffee with froth, an egg & sausage bagel breakfast sandwich that somehow came slathered in extra+extra honey-dijon mustard (trying to order on a screen before first coffee——No Bueno…I confess, ’twas my mistake with the extra-sweet mustard and the sausage…I just wanted an egg, a little bread, and a coffee to get me through the first bathtubful of fuel and I’d already dealt with a fritzy screen on the petrol pump…no wonder the smirking punk at the grille was curious to see who picked up order #549), a couple liters of H2O, a Happy Meal & a diet Dr. Pepper, another coffee to make up for the disappointment of the first, the subsequent pee-stop, more water, and a box of Cracker Jacks got me to Asheville before sundown. Candy wants to go panhandling on the city sidewalks & parks and shed some poetry to the streets. And I thought I’d visit Mom while we’re in town.
It was a solid day’s drive on two stops for two tubs of fuel in a little over ten hours, almost to the song.
Thank you for the playlist!
Junior Brown is genius.
Semi-Crazy,
-PSL
Dear Art,
LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION. By now I’m down in the park with Candices. We’re sitting back here in the lilac spires & catmint under an umbrella in a late summer flurry of bees & cobwebs watching the toy dogs, twin puppy dogs, and a real dog’s dog with a sturdy collar trotting their owners around by the fountain and I was thinking of, or maybe even contemplating, how to find the right shade of words to hang on a question: Why couldn’t I ever see myself as part of the scene? Why did I never frame myself in the shot? Was it instinct to hold position? What if it’s natural to hold? What if I am a perennial wallflower in full bloom? What if I’ve been there doing exactly what I’m built to do? Keeping the notes, taking the minutes. This. Whole. Time… Here, hold this a sec…
“Raul don’t speak English.”
…Thank you. I must write this down. That there is a title. You go on without me. This will take a moment of courage. Like throwing the hook on three & two. I gotta get this down and these bees could kill me you know. The surroundings are swarming.
I just received a nugget of gold in my straw fedora; or a stone bejeweled in flecks of fool’s gold. I hope it’s the latter. It looks like local rock, prettier than solid gold with its striations of khaki, brown, red, slate & gold. It’ll trade well and Candy wants to eat. I’d be sleeping on the streets this week but the weather’s way too nice and I feel that that would just be cheating. Plus my mother lives on the outskirts of Asheville and she has a nice library in which to sleep. But today Candy & I, we gave a streetnick a beat & a new lyric / We shed some prose & poetry like jagged scales / We rolled out some free wheels and a sandwich for skaters in the street / We slept on some good sentences / Penniless but we’re still going dancing tonight /
Hold on… a crowd… this is just walking by now…
“…it sheltered the wind.”
“…nothing’s wrong with the bloodwork…”
“…his brain’s on art…”
“…it turns out my brain is Healthy & Happy On Art.”
“Take me home, Angel.”
“I just got off the train from L.A. and holy shit…”
“Darcy loves deer meat.”
“The Tourists are playing at home tonight.”
“We’re still going out for ice cream tonight, yes?”
“Is there a coffee place around here?”
Hah! That’s all I got. That’s all I did today.
Nothing…
On a sidewalk with no chalk,
There’s only Ink & Magic,
The city street sweepers are power-washing tonight,
Now available in Disappearing Ink,
-PSL
What if you were a natural-born tourist who’s never traveled?
O Musie,
Welcome back stateside to the land of vast, wide-open, air-conditioned spaces! You must tell me about Ireland next time we get together. And tell me how London’s doing. Not Paris though, I don’t want to know. I don’t think I could bear it right now. There’s way too much in the world I won’t see this time around and it exhausts me. But I know it could be fun trying to catch up——did I tell you that I finally got the Selectric overhauled? It’s scary effin’ fast. I forgot how fast. It’s not for someone who wears a tie, it says so right on there somewhere. That thing was built for speed & mechanical grip and it still has the factory warning labels attached to it that say Keep Everything Clear… You know why it & I are still here, Musie? Because we were built to be in the present & built to last & after all that’s gone by we’re still here, in the present, doing our thing. Stayin’. I never thought to plan for obsolescence, but then again I’ve been working this whole time. On stayin’.
But that’s another story and presently I can’t go there; I don’t want “fast” at the moment. I’m down here to get away from that hulking electric powertrip for a spell—-How fast, you ask?—-My A.E.H. has been really kicking of late and I was beginning to catch up to it all of the sudden! That scary fast. So I ran away with Candices to the blue city in the green mountains to find the brakes and slow it down. So be vewwy, vewwy, quiet, we’re huntin’ now.
Sentences, Musie, sentences.
In the throng,
-PSL
P.S. Guess what I found! I thought it impossible but I found a Thomas Wolfe book that Mom did not have on her shelf already! And her birthday’s coming up. It’s a book of letters to his mother, Julia, signed by his mother, Julia. Yeah, it was in a little glass case downtown and right across the aisle from it was a “Green Mansions” in a box just like mine for $8. She doesn’t have it either. One-stop shopping! Which is good because I really don’t feel like shopping for anything else but sneakers on this trip.
Amani’,
This is like trying to cook in someone else’s kitchen! Now I see why you travel with your own wooden spoons & cutlery & wares whenever you think there may be some cooking to be done somewhere. In a strange kitchen I simply open all the cupboards and pantries and drawers and scan for the peeler or the grater. No, I’m not complaining one bit but I can’t find anything. So I stopped looking and let it find me. I think that’s how this place works.
This morning I woke in a nest I made on the floor of the Language/Poetry/Reference wing of Mom’s library. Last night I went downstairs looking for Eliot’s Waste Land. I don’t know that I’ve read it. But now I’m lost again. Down in the dining room (the Fiction/Literature/Historical Fiction/Biography wing) I found plenty more poetry garnishing the edges. I was dragging the bottom shelf for Eliot and almost got snagged on Bishop for too long. Mom said I was on the wrong hook and insists Waste Land is somewhere up in my room. I haven’t found Waste Land yet but last night I did find myself lost in “Wonderlands,” a book of essays by a kind and big-hearted someone named Charlie Baxter.
Listen,
A little Witchie will always find her way.
I know it’s a dumb thing to say to a mother, but don’t worry.
She will have a whole new crew of minions in place by the end of her first semester, I’m tellin’ ya. In fact, in the first letter to school I send her I’m going to remind her to be on the lookout for a drummer. There’s only so many places they can practice and she’ll know where they’ll be. Trisk’l’s a little Scout.
So don’t worry because her Mama do dance and her Daddy do Rock-N-Roll, and so shall she.
We’re All so proud of you around here. You're a solid Mom&Dad!
Out on the range with the Moon,
At 11% and fading fast,
-PSL
P.S. Would you pencil me in for swimming lessons this fall? Any days but Mondays or Fridays. Maybe fill the pool this time because I’m only halfway through my itinerary and I’m already sick of wheels. No skating please, unless there’s ice & blades.
Hengies,
Thank you for the spells & prayers & well wishes. The road’s been good to me so far and I swear St. Catherine Herself just blew by in a ‘Vette doin’ 95 in the fast lane, keeping it moving. I’m headed to my nest soon. But here, I clipped this from the local classifieds…maybe…or maybe I dreamt it…I don’t know, I woke up last night with an unfamiliar book pressed on my face:
“Skating To CAKE”
Dear Jean, Your Most Witchedly MeanNess,
Like Your Totally Bitchedly Wicked Eminence,
Our Witchie Confidante,
Dearest Jean, If I may ask,
—My friend and his fencing instructor were skating to CAKE, like in long jackets & everything, when this question came up:
How many pairs of socks could you possibly wear at once in order to size up before having to admit that the skates are just too big for your feet? And wouldn’t that stretch them out? The socks, that is.
—And if I may also ask,
What if you suddenly found some strange magic in your bag of tricks and you didn’t put it there, you’re quite sure of it, how would I or my friend know if the new magic was genuine? Or even safe to cast? I guess what I’m asking is: If a working magician were enthralled and therefore were a thrall and not the spellcaster at all, rather his Enthraller’s bitch or his Enchantress’s lackey, would the magician-thrall have the wherewithal to know if he was castin’ his own magic or just doing some Wicked Biddie’s second-hand bidding? And would the Enchanting Witch’s magic even work through the thrall at all if the thrall were simply some muggle instead of a magic man in the first place?
Thank you!
Yours in Magic,
an apprehensive adept
Semi-Crazy -Junior Brown
Motoring -Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
Let’s Go -Montrose
Choo Choo Ch’boogie -Asleep At The Wheel
Short Skirt/Long Jacket -CAKE
Trouble -Rex Smith
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah -KIX
Your Mama Don’t Dance -Poison
Panama -Cornbread Red
Hitchin’ a Ride -Green Day
Cherokee Boogie -BR549
Abracadabra -Steve Miller Band
Driving South -Stone Roses
The Wild Side Of Life/It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels -Hank Thompson
I Smell A Rat -Howlin’ Wolf
Ballad of Thunder Road -Robert Mitchum
Fuel -Metallica
Fire – Pointer Sisters
Disappearing Ink -Heatmiser
Paper Scratcher -Blind Melon
Spirit In The Sky -Norman Greenbaum
Back Porch -The Presidents of the United States
…