1/12/06 - 3:05 a.m. Eastern Time
i am in a motel room in cleveland, drinking spanish wine from a plastic cup. i am listening to a jazz station on the alarm clock radio. real jazz, not smooth jazz muzak bullshit. the station barely comes in through waves of static; the tinkling of piano keys is mixed with the strains of “jump around” from the next station over on the dial.
then, after the jazz piece ends, comes on a spooky old recording with howls in the background and maniacal laughter: “have you ever heard the ghoooooost story?” now “earth angel” is playing!
(i have spent more of my life trying to stop traveling than i’ve actually spent traveling.) -zcn
fuck man, this is weird. i had a realization today that you could plop me down in a car on any of the interstates runnin thru wisconsin or illinois and from there i could easily find my way to: minnesota, iowa, michigan, indiana, ohio, missouri, pennsylvania, maryland, new york, virginia, or west virginia. more specifically: duluth or minneapolis. iowa city or des moines. detroit, lansing, ann arbor, battle creek. indianapolis. cleveland, columbus, bowling green, toledo, akron, cincinnati. st. louis. pittsburgh, waynesboro, philadelphia. frederick or baltimore. washington d.c. new york city. arlington. shepherdstown. without the use of the map. especially the turnpikes of ohio and pennsylvania. i have driven these roads so many times that even the names of streets and one horse towns are starting to be familiar to me.
i don’t know how to get rid of my wanderlust. sometimes i wish i could find the formula to extricate it from my body. or soul. but i’ve tried everything. it makes no difference. even if i live in a city i love, it still seems i am always (thinking about) leaving. and no matter how many shitty, fucked-up roadtrips i go on, i keep comin back for more. when it comes down to it, even if i could figure out a way to rid myself of this cursed wanderlust, would i really want to? i wouldn’t be me without it.
yeah, i know i romanticize everything, but you can’t deny the utter poetry of being in a motel room in cleveland at 2:15 a.m., tipsy from red wine, clacking away on an underwood typewriter, with the jazz station and the swishing of car tires on the parkway as yr soundtrack.
i feel like i am genetically mutated. you grow up learning that it is the boys who are the adventurers. but i grew up as a girl whose heroes were peter pan, jack london, jack kerouac, aaron cometbus, various pirates & writers & musicians. and i never wanted to be one of the women they loved and then left. i wanted to be them. i wanted to be the sailor, not the girl stuck on shore. i wanted to be peter pan, not wendy darling.
so i decided to go on this road trip: first chicago, then a one-night stopover in cleveland, then on to the city that never sleeps. the universe seems to approve. my uncle sent me 500 bucks for xmas/my birthday, and i had no problem selling my guitar. i found a cheap enough motel. everyone i contacted about hanging out or staying with said “hellz yeah, let’s party.” the weather is supposed to be warm the whole time. even my horoscopes and tarot readings said that this journey was not just a good idea, but necessary. said i would learn many things and have epiphanies and be inspired and start off a new chapter of my life. and then it became more than that: a couple days before i left, i got outbid on ebay for a copy of the del-byzanteens album. the del-byzanteens were a band that jim jarmusch was in in the early 80s. me getting outbid caused me to joke: if i ever get to hang out with jim again, i will tell him it has been my life’s quest to get a copy of that record. which, in turn, sparked an idea for a grandiose story/screenplay. i am sort of mirroring the main character’s journey: she begins in cleveland and goes on a trip to new york.
this trip is many things - a creative journey. a time to see old friends, meet new ones, and lay to rest the ghosts of some others that are no longer in my life.
yesterday was chicago. k. and i had a lot of catching up to do. we hadn’t seen each other since early october. there was a dinner and too much coffee session at earwax, where we ran into folks we knew. as always. can’t go anywhere in chicago without running into someone i know. then a trek thru rain-sprinkled-sparkled streets to quimby’s. offering the finest in independent literature. back to hell house. ah, hell house, also lovingly referred to as the dead smurf cos it is a fading bluish color, squat, caving in on itself. it has gone thru so many mutations since i lived there in the sordid june/july of 2004. it is strange now: there are no boys living there. evie and kanga the cat are the only remaining original members. there is now a hippie girl named jess, who has a sweet mutt by the name of sonora. sonora likes it when i scratch her behind the ears. yes, back to hell house. we popped ambien and percoset and took shots of whiskey, chainsmoked and had much girlie chat. next thing we knew, it was 6 a.m., and my throat was raw from smoking and talking. i knew it was time to go to sleep when i started hallucinating from the ambien. it looked like joe strummer was climbing out of the clash poster on k.’s bedroom wall.
the whole pilsen neighborhood is weird, now. lots more white people. gentrification, hooray.
this afternoon before i hit the road we ate at the golden nugget diner on clark street. it is a real fuckin diner - uncomfortable purple plastic booths, shitty coffee, bad pop music on the radio. i like it because it still has a smoking section, is open 24 hours, and has 2 different breakfast specials named after tom waits songs: “little boy blue” and “small change.”
i saw an almost-full blue moon standing alone over the belching smokestacks of gary, indiana. i saw a sticker on the coindrop of the indiana tollway for a band called “the new lou reeds.” stopped at the scuzziest travel plaza ever in western ohio, for coffee and to pee. saw a billboard that said: “let freedom ring, and let it be rung by a stripper.” once i arrived at the motel, i realized i had a bottle of wine but no corkscrew, so i used my switchblade to open the bottle. i ate a meal of an apple, a tin of smoked oysters, and some toasted sesame crackers.
i am very close to akron, and tempted to go there. granted, i have no reason to go there other than the fact that my absolute god jim jarmusch is from there, and that’s kinda a dumb reason to go; tho no dumber than stopping in osseo on my last roadtrip just cos it was mentioned in a hold steady song. still, i think i’ll forego akron and go to the rock’n’roll hall of fame instead. i’ll probably cry when i see the clash and ramones exhibits.
i’ve got a bottle of wine, a fresh pack of smokes, jazz on the radio. i’m all by myself, and i’m having the time of my life.
(a freewrite/journal entry I typed in a motel room in Cleveland, c. January 2006)
