At dawn, they ride again . . .
. . . My life starts again.
Be well!
– SAWK
One of the main reasons I drove east for 2,000 miles last month and then sped back west again was to attend the Feet First Sessions workshop in NYC.
It was led by photographers Max and Margaux and Jesse and Whitney and based on the idea that sometimes, you just have to jump in feet first without thinking.
And yes – I learned a lot about photography and the business of photography – but hoo, boy! – What I needed most was a good, fat, home-cooked dose of creative, smart, witty, and energetic people to spin me like a top and give me something to think about while I walked all those blocks in the rain from the train down Nostrand Avenue back to Bear’s.
I learned so much in two quick days.
Channeling the Cheshire Cat for a moment, Whitney Chamberlin of Our Labor of Love teaches us to smile while Max Wanger of . . . well, Max Wanger! takes a picture of us trying.
Stone cold, cool cat Jesse Chamberlin of Our Labor of Love.
And I could blather on about it here for 10,000 words, but the most concise, little speck of knowledge I took – something that has lately been shaped and honed and chewed into a decided pencil point to put in my pocket and take out when needed to erase or underline a bit of white life – is to do what you like.
Just do it.
It is such a simple idea, but a rather wily one when things like finances, reason, opinions, or fears come into play.
Find what you like, and then do it. And when you do that – doing what you like and being you – the people and places and ideas and things and events and everythings that will feed and nourish you will gravitate towards you without your even noticing.
Like finds like. The end.
Be well out there! And be happy, my pets.
– SAWK
6:33a CST – Good morning! – from El Dorado, Kansas
(Kansas)
Not used to giant thunderstorms to go with my gargantuan cup of morning coffee. My black, lighting apocalypses are usually afternoon tea affairs. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of a potential Oz-esque tornado to interrupt or follow this cup.
8:04a CST – The thought that I am very alive hits me with butterflies and stirring prairie grasses in my gut.
(Missouri)
9:04a CST – Independence, Missouri, the start of the Oregon Trail. It is good that I am heading east, otherwise I’d be in for killing bears, fording the river, and losing my son Tommy to cholera or yellow fever, and I don’t have time to write a proper epitaph before study hall is over and the lunch bell rings.
9:08a CST – Humidity, I wish I hardly knew thee. 93° already.
(Illinois)
1:15p CST – It is a very satisfying life experience to be busting down the highway, leaving St. Louis with a full tank of gas and crusty blues-rock playing, and spitting sweet Rainier cherry pits out the wide open window.
1:57p CST – Felt hot. Glanced at thermometer. 103°.
2:46p CST – Illinois is the place for birds of prey . . . Four hawks in an hour.
(Indiana)
(Kentucky)
6:22p EST – Stopped outside Louisville for gas and a restroom in the midst of the Rapture – lightning every second, cracks of thunder followed by dreaded deep and angry rumblings so heavy that the car beat and throbbed to its bass while still in motion.
(Ohio)
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End of day in Cincinatti – with sushi and Suza and Adam – where we saw an owl perched on telephone wires, and then he flew off to hunt at the beginning of his day.
Be well.
– SAWK
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26 days ago I left to drive east.
While driving for four days out, three days back, and elsewhere in-between, I grabbed a pen and threw thoughts haphazardly into my cheery, red Moleskin anytime the mood struck me, writing precariously with the steering wheel for a desk.
Sometimes I marked the time; oftentimes I did not.
What a vast and amazing country we have.
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(New Mexico)
1:12p MST – Here began a whole lot of gorgeous nothing, bleached skeletons of wooden bones – empty billboards – wide skies, and clouds moving slowly through the heat like herds of great, white cattle.
Traveling solo, I found myself in the awkward, hated position of taking pictures of myself.
2:48p MST – Glad I wasn’t banking on that sign for gas in Tucumcari on 54E, old Route 66.
The Allsup’s bathroom in Logan, NM is so sterile and white you can smell the clorox from outside the restroom by the Doritos.
Calexico over the plains! – I love themed, ambient music.
(Texas)
It’s amazing how little time and its traffic jams and sitting stopped for one-laned road construction affects and stresses you when you make no parameters, plans, or allotments for it.
Driving across these hot, open stretches of highway makes me wonder of the hands that stretched to lay them, the backs that stretched, hunched, over them, and the legs that stretched miles along them. How many years ago was it now that these men worked, leaving their families to dust and depression to earn something – anything – from stretching connections across plains from one tiny town to another? . . .
Pink-tinged dunes between patches of coarse, dark brush of sage and yucca are smooth, bare ripples of sunburned flesh – a sensual landscape of dry ground.
(Oklahoma)
6:34p CST – OK welcomes me with rain – eight drops of it splatting on the dirty windshield – and it is finished.
7:04p CST – Crossed Pony Creek, with no water and two entwined cottonwoods sunk in the sandy bed. I imagine two teenaged lovers meeting after rain – when the creek is full – to climb the same bough and kiss over the water until the stars come out and shift quietly over head.
Mascot of Hooker, OK – the Hooker Horny Toads . . . Somebody sure has a sense of humor . . .
(Kansas)
Kansas is a land tinted gold. Golden sunflowers, golden wheat, gold-painted, black preying mantis-like oil pumps praying to the ground.
Ice in an empty cup – pounded on the face of the steering wheel – makes the best crashing beat.
From the echoing McDonald’s bathroom, the beeping of the kitchen’s ready food sounds like a hospital with multiple codes happening all at once.
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End of day was in Kansas.
Be well. I miss you, open road, and the faces I saw upon you.
– SAWK
I am sitting at a white table, the leaves extended up to hold two computers, the salt and pepper, the jar of sugar, a water bottle, the black t-shirt, keys, scissors and sewing things, the Bag Balm, and a subway map, which I am using as a mouse pad.
I think to myself inwardly and smile outwardly that Olive – famous cat that she is, now sitting on a chair across from me – would find the idea of a mouse pad comical: a flat in the City, home to a bachelor surrounded by friends and girlfriends, all young, all hip, all mice.
We laugh to ourselves and she perks her ears – eyes still closed – at the sound of my almost audible chuckle.
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I am in Brooklyn! – In a homey, familiar atmosphere, made always new and interesting by the buildings around it, the smell of the city, the sounds of beeps and cars and Mexican music floating up from somewhere out the window. Everything is quieter and more subdued than I expected it to be on this urban Tuesday, before noon, with its bright, grey, clouds hovering far, far above (the sky always seems much further away from me while I’m east than it does while I’m west), but I am expectant, and content, and happy in the same way as the full, green maple tree out the window – not in its most natural habitat, but quivering excitedly at the day and its friends and its prospects and its Prospect Park.
I have so, so, so, so so so so much to say – of how I came to be here and what I saw and who I saw and what I thought on – but it will keep longer, or at least as long as it already has done.
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While the Bear works, the Coon plays and protects the bed from three-legged, feline overlords, the Cat sleeps, and the City waits out the window.
Be there in a minute, City.
Be well. With love!
– SAWK
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