Thoughts of the legend today

I need better things for myself than this

I

find I am so bored 

of games with people and their inconsistencies 

I want to be happy and people keep smearing it; they pretend to be friends but they really don’t care; they just use with no conscience and it gets boring and it leaves such an empty feeling

I want to get out of here, a change— yeah, I have to think hard about this

Assess where I’ve been 

I guess you might say that I have the total immersion kind of life adventures. That is, I mean; I do go places; I do travel; I go to a completely unknown new place each time; I go there from a long distance 

I guess how mean this is, it’s not for a week or fortnight —when I travel from one location to the next, I really get to know the new area. I stay a couple of years. I go alone each time. I know nobody each time. I go with almost no belongings too

I have been to so many weird places. 

But I was just reflecting on this year. I arrived just over two years ago which is my average as I’ve said here before.i do these journeys. It seems. And then I go. 

I looked at my date book and realized how it’s been only a year since I had to dump my car. Just one year. Weird. I mean—in the US, unless you are lucky to live near public transportation, having no car is like walking death row for the human or someone knows someone who has a car.

I’ve managed to live in a lot of American towns without a car where this again holds true and I don’t recommend it. I don’t. It’s dangerous for one thing. And it’s not fun. But I’ve done it— like in this case, I have done this for a year here where I guess I still know no one (to ignore the predators) and …. 

I don’t recommend it but I have learned a lot about this town where I am its stranger. I have learned what most people who live here couldn’t know as they drive around. I have learned the most here about Americans as I see it as the perfect microcosm to witness what’s going on in the country right now— and me? I’m just Jack Kerouac watching it through my poet’s lens 

And what.  

My mom didn’t understand why I left New York to live to Michigan years ago. “Why Michigan?” she asked me and turned the question to all her New York friends —those from the Madison Avenue life 

No, they didn’t get it. How did I go from Southampton Long Island to ….

Long Island was interesting in and of itself; also impossibly hard without a car and a million times more fun with one; especially speeding along the beach on ocean parkway and breathing in the sea air with the windows down in summer 

Traverse City will always be magical to me where I as an outsider having only just moved there (that instance with a boyfriend)gave birth without drugs and just a midwife ….was an adventure. Ann Arbor I would do again, we lived outside in Ypsilanti 

What did I think of Detroit? I was the checkout girl on 12 Mile Road at a busy general drug store where hold ups occurred but never when I was scheduled. But I knew the locals well mostly all by name and they knew mine.

What did I think of Ashland Oregon— I had a gig at the famed hippie shop there (I’m not giving them publicity, she was a witch) but only stayed (record breaking) six months, I’ve never been so bored in my life. The town is beautiful. The mountains beautiful but only until August then the landscape turns to Mars. Lithium is a street name. And a nearby place. It flows in the water through public marked fountains. Everyone and everything about it there felt spacey and surreal. 

What did I think Of Colton New York ….?of Poughkeepsie….of Henderson Maryland ….

sentences and I’d call that unanimous 

I think looking objectively on all those adventures, I’d never have gotten the gist of any of those places until I sunk myself in its walls and walked their streets through the seasons 

I’ve been looking for something you see

But it hit me that it feels this one year has been more like two or three but no —there it is; the day I was stranded in the mountains when they took that beast of a burden away. I wanted to know the locals. What is middle America really like? Thoughts like this. I did that in Henderson too. 

it’s research, I guess I’ve been at and I’m glad of all I have gathered. It’s made me more aware what I want and need and it has helped me to see how each of those places reacted differently to me as an outsider.