"Listen up and I'll tell a story // About an artist growing old // Some would try for fame and glory // Others aren't so bold." -Daniel Johnston "Story of an Artist"

 Oh my brothers…I think it's over again.

Yesterday, I crossed that goddamn state line into California and wept. But the tears were not bitter, but instead sweet and sentimental and mixing with the snow as it turned to rain on my windows. It has been turtles all the way down.

I spent a night in SLC with a poetry professor of mine and his wife, good people. He and a partner run Tavern Books, a small independent non-profit poetry press (5x fast) that I HIGHLY recommend. It is brilliantly curated. Order from their website, here. His own work is also just awesome. Michael McGriff. Hunt it down. Here's one brutal little poem, here.

Monday night I made it into Battle Mountain, Nevada, after 5 hours weaving between mountains and warring against the desolation of the salt flats. Battle Mountain is a brothel and a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. I had a pizza and some rest and finished Nevada in the morning.

Now, I'm a stones throw from home, nestled in Sierra foothills in the old mining town of Nevada City, California. Nevada County in CA was named so before the state came around. The shape of Nevada County, which points right at Nevada State, serves as a constant reminder to keep their shit together in the Silver State.

I'm heading home tomorrow, but in the meantime I'm catching up with some old friends here and contemplating the events of the preceding five weeks.

Let's take a look at the numbers:

Miles Driven: 5,250
States Visited: 7
Total Days: 39
Driving Days: 19
AMDD (Avg Miles per Driving Day): ~276
Average Speed: ~82MPH
Cops Seen: ~25
Times Pulled Over: 0
Animals Killed: 50 (3 flies, 15 gnats, 32 bull-moose)
Animals Killed Inadvertently: ~0
Photos Taken: ~1500
Ratio Smiles:Cries : ~80:20
Awkward Moments: ~74566

If God is in this country, he's a right prick. There is no universal language, but if anything comes close it's cheeseburgers and strip malls, not music and smiles. I haven't learned anything grandiose. If you are waiting for some stately conclusion of my mission, I apologize. This is an ongoing process that I pray I never complete. You're all on this path with me, like it or not, and I appreciate the company. As always, I hope I haven't been a bore.


I didn't find love, not that I was really looking for it. Not that I think I know what it is. Maybe just an honest connection. Something warm and close. I don't know, somehow I'll manage.

I'll leave you with one bit of wisdom. Don't eat cold food at truck-stops.

Leave 'em laughing.
-Isaac










PS. Here's your slideshow, D-Lew.

"They legalized alcohol, they legalized tobacco. What is it gonna hurt to legalize this medicinal, medical marijuana that’s used for purposes of cataracts?" -Snoop Dogg

I talk about legalization of marijuana a lot. But yesterday I got to tour the back-room of a legit, legal, medical dispensary.  If you want my opinion on the matter, you can find some of it here, some of it here, and a great story about Mickey Mouse here. Today, I let the structure of the plant speak for itself. Because from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I think it ranks among the most beautiful plants on the planet.

Oh. Yeah. The last one is a dog.

-Isaac

"I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth" -President Harry S. Truman

I arrived in Roswell, New Mexico in the shroud and mystery of a rainstorm. Mysteriously, I was drawn to pull off the highway onto a mysterious stretch of road in order to take a mysterious whizz on an unusually mysterious tree. 

Suddenly, the clouds burst open and a shaft of light shot down all around me - pale, blue, and calming. I felt myself being lifted, bodily, off the ground. Not by rope or chain, but with a force that made my body suddenly weightless and whisked me up, up, up. My eyes drooped and I fell into a deep slumber.

When my eyes reopened, I was laid out on a table - a tray of shimmering instruments at my side and a wispy creature bent over me. For a moment, the pain was excruciating, and I looked down in horror to see my stomach splayed open, a kidney grasped in one of the beings long slender hands and a fistful of wet intestine in the other. 

Another of the creatures approached the table and passed its hand over my eyes. The pain, and the terror along with it, subsided immediately, replaced by complete serenity and understanding. This will be over with soon. We can put you back together again. We have technology far beyond the reaches of all the King's horses and all the King's men.

Again, my eyes grew heavy and drooped. A smile, unbidden, sprouted on my lips.

I opened my eyes once more, to see only the trunk of the mysterious tree. I reached frantically for the wound in my stomach, to find nothing but the vague memory of a past pain - the sharp, but faraway ache of an old scar when prodded.

I zipped up my pants, got back into my car, and continued on my way. When I arrived at the UFO museum, I was shocked to see that all the displays were exactly as I had seen them. The shimmer of their alien metals, the slenderness of their form, right down to their damnable blurriness. The beings must utilize complex cloaking techniques to discourage human imaging. 

We. Are. Not. Alone.

I've driven 3,600 miles so far. I've been on the road for a month and it has been an enlightening and shocking one. 

First, I got into school in New York and Chicago. Which is great, but complicated. Then at the apex of my trip, as far from SF as I was going to get, my San Francisco plans changed dramatically. For the better and also for the more complex. So I'm racing a bit, to cope with the literal and figurative turnaround.

Things change. Sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. The only absolute is that things absolutely change.

This sign-off is just for my parents. So, earmuffs unless you provided me my genetics. 

You dick. If you've read this far and you're not my parents, you have disobeyed me for the last time - no soup for you.

Just kidding. Read it. It's way adorable.

Seriously. Guys. Holy shit. Atheismo be praised. You bear the brunt of so much of my complexity and strife. I constantly seek your counsel and you forever offer it freely - absorbing some of my struggle as your own like penance. Leaning on me the same way, perhaps, and voicing your own opinions, to be sure. But you're there and that means so much. You're wonderful. You deserve all your joys.

I just wanted to let you know that today, I had an incredible day. Practically perfect. I was in New Mexico when the sun rose, and Colorado by the time it set. The fields were sun-burnt and yellow, and the sky was blue like nothing but the desert sky can be. I darted in and out of sweet-smelling showers all day, and you know how I love the rain. The clouds bore down around me like some fearsome glacier in reverse.

Keep your eyes on the skies.

Love,

Yer (youngest) boy.

-IP

B&T Shout-out! The O'My's.

Check out my high-school buds The O'My's - throwback funky-soul, representing hard for Chicago at SXSW.

Sorry folks

Slowed down a bit here. I'm in Austin, Texas at SXSW music week. I've been shooting a ton, but most of it is going out for publication with a couple other websites, so I have to wait until after it goes up elsewhere to post anything here. In the meantime, check out my first photo byline for sister act HAIM.

I'll be with you shortly.

"And it's getting agonizing to hang out // With grown adults who actually believe // Mythology and history trump physics and science // My aversion has turned to abhorrence." -NoFx "Best God in Show"

San Antonio is a nice enough town. The Alamo is here. The site of a famous battle in the Texas Revolution.

Nice job fellas. You kicked the Mexicans out of Mexico and called it Texas. Well fucking done. America the beautiful.

But the food is good and the weather is nice, and I got to listen to a very impassioned man preach for twenty minutes right out front of the Alamo.

I know what you thought it was.

This guy was feeding pigeons from his hand.

I went to a market.

This is the old courthouse.

I haven't been sleeping well.

Good night.

"You say it's a good thing // that you float in the air // that way there's no way I will crush your pretty toenails // into a thousand pieces." -Weezer "Only in Dreams"

DISCLAIMER: I love people. And America. But I also hate some American people. If you know me, you know I'm a gentleman and a scholar unless I'm not. In which case, I'm not. If you can't handle this public/private, utterly contradictory existence here at B&T, please STFU and GTFO.

It's hard to not think of Jesus here. He's damn well everywhere. 

Shown strung up and bleeding, his crown biting holes in his forehead. Suggested in the empty crosses that tower over church parking lots. His name is spoken on the radio and etched on the water towers. He's on everyone's lips. He's on everyone's bumper. There's a trucking company with big bold letters on their mammoth eighteen-wheelers, "JESUS CHRIST. HE IS LORD, NOT A CURSE WORD." 

From where I sit, I could practically spit on the gates of the Yearning For Zion Ranch.

I arrived in Eldorado in the rain and almost dark of storm clouds. If your mind drifted while passing, you might miss it. But people live here. Real people with real thoughts. Real feelings. I often disagree with those thoughts, and they no doubt disagree with mine. But we have them. Our existence is authenticated by them. 

Who am I to blow into town and judge anybody?

So here I go.

The Christian radio has been…of interest. Today, they told me that Pat Robertson wants to decriminalize marijuana. Yes. Pat Motherfucking Robertson. The televangelist. 

He's a self-proclaimed "hero of the hippies" for this stance, though it's primarily an economic interest. The war on drugs is costing the taxpayer too much, he says. Of course, he continues, he's never tried it and does not advocate trying it, but he's just appalled at the young people clogging our prison system and being turned into hardened criminals while doing time for minor possession.

Right on, Pat. That's huge.

He doesn't tell the whole story, I don't think. It's also more innocuous than alcohol. It's also not the only drug that should be viewed this way. It also has medicinal applications in proper dosage. It could also be MAKING the country money as opposed to costing it. It also reveals an antiquated way our country looks at things.  But hey, it's a start. And he did hit the big one. We're making criminals of ordinary people.

The Christian mission too, continues doing good work in other countries, drilling wells and promoting access to nutrition. But with your water and food, you have to swallow Jesus. That's the part that I always choke on. 

"We're with you, because God is with us," they say. 

The host continued, "The Lord knows how you hurt. He knows how you struggle. Hey, he even knows how much you weigh, but Bless Him, he doesn't tell anyone." The opening chords of an uplifting ballad hummed though my speakers.

God. It would be so simple. It would be such a relief. 

But the ill and delusion that comes along with it all. The ignorance and misogyny and violence and just stupid bullshit that seems to nip at the heels of faith is all too substantial to ignore. I don't believe in Ghosts, and the allegory has become reality for too many.

It would be a comfort though, to imagine oneself as never alone.

When I sleep, I dream of a slight figure pressed against me. Her small hand is clasped under mine and our breathing falls into a rhythm, then gradually syncopates and falls out of time, the way sounds do when one is faster. I idealize her, of course. She's perfect. Perfect in a way no one could ever be. In a way that would, in reality, be fucking annoying. But I miss the imperfections of reality, too - the cold and the huddling for warmth against it, the slow ripples of too much to drink, the knowledge that time is short and would be over all too soon. I miss that even.

There's no love. It's just neurons misfiring. But when she really was, so recently and briefly, pressed against me, a feeling swept me that sweeps me still when it creeps into my mind without invitation. And that is a feeling I chase. 

When I wake, I keep my eyes shut a few seconds more to savor the other world, then reach over to feel the space where my mind placed her, vacant.

It all comes back then - the cold of a winter dawn in Texas and the rush of the world and my place in it. Alone with myself, one more day at least. And that's ok. Some things are so exquisite as to be worth waiting for - or even worth knowing and never having.

That's all.

-Isaac

"It is illegal to possess realistic dildos." -Dallas Law

No words. 

But no photos either, so I'll push out a few sentences.

I drove through West Texas to arrive by evening into Odessa, a town that seems to primarily serve employees of the surrounding oil fields. As I drove, the dust turned to rain, making a sludge of my windshield. I passed through some interesting looking deserted towns, but it was raining too hard to get any good photos.

As a consolation, I'm posting a poem a wrote a few years back. I've been seeing a lot of soldiers on leave, since El Paso is near a big military base. It feels relevant.

Digital Desert Camouflage 

Three years ago the Armed Forces mailed me a card. 

A "wish you were here" thing, requesting information.

I made my brother to take it to the mailbox.

Now I'm twenty one 

and I can get drunk or die trying

and I see them everywhere -

in squads at airport bars, 

staking claim to girls on Rush in Chicago, 

and I think they call it ass or action,

not poontang like the heroes from films about 

Vietnam. Man, those guys were great, 

born to kill,

bad to the bone, 

bomb the whales.

My dad says we aught to learn lessons 

about intractable quagmires and the Tao, 

but what am I saying? 

This is America,

we've been busy starting schoolyard scuffles

and this evening at 9/8 central,

we're going back to back and taking ten paces. 

It's will be a shit show. Absolutely don't miss it.

Digital camouflage disappears them in the desert, 

but at Rush and State, they stick out like cow lick.

Half-smiles, raucous shouts, post-traumatic stress disorders 

and absolutely I envy their dedication. 

They’ve got so much moxy that it might literally kill them,

and that Jewish boy from the movies 

looks as handsome in desert fatigues 

as Brando did in jungle green in 1979.

So we'll have that for the years to come.

Surely, that will help.

Also, this. 

Good night.

FORGET THE ALAMO 

"I wan't to be a Texan 24 hours a day." -James Dean

I drove into El Paso in a dust storm. It got so bad, they were actually closing the highway right behind me. I also passed the place where a police blockade was diverting people from going the other way down the same stretch of I-10 that I had just traversed.

It could have been worse. I kept passing signage that said, "ZERO VISIBILITY POSSIBLE." That never quite happened.

It followed me all the way into El Paso and the sun never set. It just got dark.

Someone asked if I was having a good trip. I told them it was conflicting. Almost inconceivable. I'm feeling really good, see. But I'm also in Texas.

El Paso is ok, but I'm going to keep moving east. I've heard there are some interesting towns between here and San Antonio, so I'm going to go investigate.

This state is fucking RED. I'm swimming along the interstate with Jesus Fish and it's big fields of big cows all along the way. I ate breakfast near a big dude wearing big cowboy boots and talking on his (big) cell phone this morning. He kept talking about "The Corn," and at one point he said, "Well…were you able to get a look at any better horses?" 

If only I could make this shit up.

I think I hate it here. Or at least I have absolutely no way to contextualize West Texas in my mind. I mean, the girls are pretty and all, but I got better wi-fi in Cambodia.

I was once impelled to write a song called West Texas, in response to the Yearning For Zion Ranch, a closed religious community near Eldorado that was raided and all children taken into state custody when allegations of abuse were raised.

It may have been sensationalized a bit. The first articles I read suggested that their leader, Warren Jeffs, was deflowering young girls in the temple. I don't know the real story. He absolutely married a 12 year old girl.

So, I'm off to Eldorado. To drink of the land that impels a man to do something like that.

Best fishes,

Isaac

B&T shout-out! Crack the Curse!

Ran into these guys randomly at a truck stop in Arizona. Six guys and a goat named Wrigley. They're walking from the Cubs training camp in Mesa, Arizona all the way to Wrigley Field in Chicago to "Crack the Curse" of the Billy Goat and raise money for cancer research. 2k miles in 90 days! It's a great thing. Buy a shirt or just "like" them with the link above and tell your friends! Keep on keeping on, fellas. Cubs win, Cubs win....

"As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die sometimes." -Orson Scott Card "Speaker for the Dead"

I undersold Tucson. It's not such a bad town. I was just stuck on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak.

I went south next, to visit a friend. That means I've gone from the border to the canyon and back again. My cyclical tour of Arizona has been a pleasure. 

This friend I visited is a big walker. He likes to hike around Rio Rico, the area he lives in, which is only maybe 50 miles from the US/Mexico border. Several times he has run into people illegally crossing into the states. The most notable thing, he says, is how unprepared they are. A dream, a little hope, and no supplies. 

One asked, "Where is Phoenix?" He had friends or family there, but no way to contact them. No idea where it was. The Sonoran is a harsh and unforgiving place to be that disoriented.

It's a petrifying thought.

It reminds me of a Kickstarter project that was just brought to my attention. This guy spent time photographing packaged belongings at a facility where they process the 150+ corpses brought in from the desert every year. People who did not last the journey.

Then I crossed another border checkpoint. This one had a sniff-dog and a batch of fellows in real slick uniforms with shiny guns at their hips. Wasted taxes are so sexy.

I can't help but think, if we weren't spending so much money on keeping them out - and the war on drugs and the other wars, a stilted justice system, a corrupted political system and a desperately mismanaged system of taxation (did I miss anything?) - there would be plenty of room in our economy for anyone who wanted in. Bring us your tired, etc. Call me crazy. Or shit. Write me in. We've got an election coming up.

About 80 miles east of Tucson, I found myself at a friend's place in Cochise County, Arizona. Named for a chief of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, and leader of an Apache uprising in the mid-1800's. 

My buddy isn't here, he just arranged for me to come and crash here for a few nights. I am in his debt.

The wind moans on the metal roof. Mountains surround the valley on all sides. The light shifts by the minute as the sun sets a thousand times. It dips below the western range and illuminates the east. Moon is nearly full. 

I ate dinner at the local watering hole and a big motherfucker burst in wearing spurs and ordered a PBR in a can.

I think I love it here.

I've been listening to the audiobook of Speaker for the Dead while driving - an old favorite. As it came to a close today, my throat went tight and tears came to my eyes. What is it about old, fascistic sci-fi writers that make me so fucking emotional? Something about eternity. Something about dying. Something about leaving a mark.

Thank you for reading. I'm off to Texas.