Trips
Outer Life has a nice piece on vacations. I get confused about the difference between traveling and a vacationing. Krista told me today that we have spent 16 of the last 21 days on the road; I was surprised, but it’s true. Some might call it vacationing. Vacation, in the typical sense, involves a cessation of work—a punctuation mark in mundane life. Vacation, for me, seem more like a caesura in a poem—traveling is a line break, or at least a pause for breath between the verses of a song.
I suppose I prefer to think of it that way because I never stop working. Most of the time traveling involves accomplishing something beyond “recreation.” Not that there is anything wrong with recreating—but I could count the number of times I’ve actually gone somewhere to recreate in the last thirty years on one hand. I suppose it comes from my experience with family vacations growing up. Trips were to visit relatives or fishing spots; no stopping at any tourist attractions—only miles of watching them go past in the window. My dad’s chosen “recreation” was fishing. The rest of the family went along, but stayed in camp while dad wandered off alone. Mother and I dodged bugs, read books, and daydreamed. But the best daydreams were looking out the back window of our family’s 1966 Ford Fairlane after dark as we returned from the mountains.
Not many tourist photos were taken. If the fish were big, dad would pose with them after he got home. Most of our family photos were rites of passage involving graduation or school functions; vacations were generally programmed obligations or negotiated escapes. My family album does not contain any photographs taken in front of landmarks, and few that were taken during trips.
Bitter Lawn Ornaments
Bitter's Critters
Driving across Nebraska, Krista suddenly shouted “Gorillas!”
There were gorillas, so I stopped to investigate. Lawn ornaments seem to be popular in the Midwest, but I hadn’t seen that many gorillas. I wasn’t prepared for the name of the business. In the little town of Tekamah, there is a shop called “Bitter Lawn Ornaments.”
This place reminded me of a story told by Tom Waits on the 1999 tour—Angry Flowers (posted for a limited time for your edification if you haven’t heard it). But “Bitter’s Critters” didn’t really seem to be all that dissatisfied.
Auburn, NE
Dairy Sweet, Auburn, Nebraska
Stop
Another Stop in Kansas
Kansas
We're in Kansas, Toto
Keota Parts
Keota Parts, Keota OK.
Andy's
Andy's in Levy, AR
Same as ever
Little Rock looks the same
Intersections
Still in Arkansas
Dash Dolphin
Dash Dolphin Swings in Arkansas
Beat the Bar Scene
Beat the bar scene
A dream has been fulfilled—I’ve finally visited the Spam Museum in Austin, MN.
Dow, IA
Iowa Rest Stop
History Stops: Narcotics
I’ve tried to quit smoking several times before, but I’m beginning to think that this time will actually be a success. It’s been around seven weeks now, with two weeks of being completely clean with no lapses. It’s one of my last vices. I pretty much gave up on drinking around a decade ago, and I hope that I won’t have to give up on caffeine—now that’s a vice I truly love. Smoking, well, after thirty years the magic is gone.
Roland Barthes’ Michelet is a peculiar little book. It is quotes interspersed with commentary and biographical detail. One of the chapters features Michelet on smoking:
Henceforth, men increasingly resorted to seeking the brutal illusion of drink, of dreams in fumigation. Two new demons were born: alcohol and tobacco.
Arabic alcohol, eau-de vie distilled in the West in the thirteenth century and still, in the sixteenth, a very expensive remedy for the sick, will be diffused, offering all the temptations of a false energy, barbaric overstimulation, a brief moment of frenzy, the flame followed by the moral chill of the void, by humiliation.
And also, narcotics: nicotia (now known as tobacco) substitutes and indifferent reverie for serious thought, causes all ills to be forgotten, and their remedies as well. It makes life undulate, like the faint smoke whose spiral rises and fades away at its own sweet will. Vain vapor in which man is dissolved, unconcerned with himself, with others, with any true affection.
Two enemies of love, two demons of solitude, antipathetic to social concerns, deadly to generation. The man who smokes has no need for women; a widower even in marriage; his love is this fume into which the best of himself passes and vanishes. (65)
Pause
It has been hard to try to write lately. I’ve pulled back from writing because I’ve been doing instead. As the readers of Krista’s blog already know, we got married a little over a week ago. We slipped away to Duluth for the weekend, and now we’re headed south for a week or so.
Thanks to QB, I have a flickr account that I’m trying to start using. I’ve actually started taking pictures for fun with the digital camera I got last spring. It’s been fun. An interesting parallel just occurred to me. When I was active as a photographer, I very seldom wrote (or even talked) much. It’s as if there are two different modes of thought involved entirely. But, all the same, my research for the last few years is directed at undermining that observation. I think words and pictures have much in common.
Perhaps its more like this: the activity of interpreting any symbolic activity (word, sound, or picture) seems to follow the same path. However, actively generating messages—in the sense of poesis— usually means concentrating on one mode to the exclusion of all others. But that’s kind of a cop out too. I’m not really taking serious pictures; in fact, I’d like to avoid taking serious pictures. I just want to have some sort of fun this summer!
Now that it’s almost over and all my teaching responsibilities are done for the moment, I might be able to relax. But probably not.
