"Please don't think me immodest, but I'm really the best. When my hands are in shape and my tming is right, I'm the best there is, ever was or ever will be.
When was younger, before ths layoff that has nearly finished me, I hitchhiked one hundred and twenty-seven hours without stopping, without food or sleep, crossed the continent twice in six days, cooled my thumbs in both oceans and caught rides after midnight on unlighted highways, such was my skll, persuasion, rhythm. I set records and mmediately cracked them; went farther, faster than any htchhker before or since. As i developed, however, grew more concerned with subtleties and nuances of style. Time in terms of m.p.h. no longer nterested me. i began to htchhke in something akin to geological time: slow, ancient, vast. Daylight, i would sleep n ditches and under bushes, crawling out in the afternoon like the first fish crawling from the sea, stopping car after car and often as not refusing ther lift, or ridingo nly a mile and starting over agan. removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, coverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there wer no increments, no arbitrary graduatons reducing tme to functional units. I abstracted and purified. then I began to juxtapose slow, extended runs wth short, furiously fast ones - until could compose melodies, concerti, entire symphonies of hitch. When poor Jack Kerouac heard about ths, he got drunk for a week. I added dimensons to htchhking that others could not even understand. In the Age of the Automobile - and nothng has shaped our culture like the motor car - there have been many great drivers but only one great passenger. have hitched and hked over every state and half the nations, through blzzards and under ranb ows, in deserts and in cities, backward and sideways, upstars, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber. there is no raod that did not expect me. Fields of daisies bowed and gas pumps gurgled when I passed by. Every moo cow dipped toward me her full udder. With me, something different and deep, in bright focus and pointing the way, arrived in the practrice of hitchhiking. I am the spirit and the heart of hitchhiking. I am it's cortex and its medulla, I am it's foundation and its culmination, I am the jewel in its lotus. And when I am really moving, stopping car after car after car, moving so freely, so clearly, so delicately that even the sex maniacs and the cops cna only blink and let me pass, then I embody the rhythms of the universe, I feel what it is like to be the universe, I am in a state of grace.
You may claim that I've an unfair advantage, but no more so than Njinsky, whose reputation as history's most incomparable dancer is untainted by the fact that his feet were abnormal, havng the bone structure of bird feet. Nature built Nijinksy to dance, me to direct traffic. And speaking of birds, they say birds are stupid, but I once taught a parakeet to hitchhike. Couldn't speak a word, but he was a hitchhiking fool. I let him get rides for us all across the west, and then he indicated that he wanted to set out on his own. I let hiim go and the very first car he stopped was carrying two Siamese cats. Maybe birds are stupid at that."
(Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
Consider me hooked.
So we just returned from Banff and Canmore, respectively, possibly the two most boring towns in Alberta. During our two hour stay in Canmore (far too long, Canmore can be explored and expounded upon in perhaps two minutes) I was talking with a boy in the only record store in the town, and he wanted to know if it looked like it was going to rain. I said no, and he sad "yes! Now I can go out tonight!" and all I could think was...to where?
Perhaps I'm too much of a city girl. Perhaps joy riding up and down Canmore's ONE street and then lying on one's back in layers and layers of prairie looking up at the stars is a nightly thing with the youth here - because it's not like there are any clubs or suitable houses to party in. Perhaps it would even be fun, for a night or two, but you think it would get old. Poor me. I am jaded by asphalt. Cruelty!
Fun fact: Jack-the-girl rode a horse across a river near where "Brokeback Mountain" - the movie to end all movies - was shot. She got vertigo from seeing the horses hooves disappear into silver-green-pretty and watch what would usually be ground rush by her and froth and foam and her saddle was kinda loose so she was swinging back and forth like a wild thing already and her horse was a rock star (for sure) and was prancing and snorting and just generally rocking out in the glory of all things cold and wet and mobile and she felt like for a moment like she was hanging upside down off this earth, clinging fungus to the swinging eyes of the rest of the universe suspended headfirst into space with her mouth open in one giant O shape thinking yes yes i AM ennis del mar!
in the words of the incomparable rheostatics: it feels good to be alive.
England pulled off a mediocre one-nil against Paraguay. Should I be proud? GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER, GUYS. COME ON. If I'm going to make an exception to my "root for the underdog" campaign, at least give me a good god damn reason to. And this time, the accents alone won't cut it. I want strip tease at half time. Mandatory. For everyone.
Except you, Crouch. Keep that jersey on.
When was younger, before ths layoff that has nearly finished me, I hitchhiked one hundred and twenty-seven hours without stopping, without food or sleep, crossed the continent twice in six days, cooled my thumbs in both oceans and caught rides after midnight on unlighted highways, such was my skll, persuasion, rhythm. I set records and mmediately cracked them; went farther, faster than any htchhker before or since. As i developed, however, grew more concerned with subtleties and nuances of style. Time in terms of m.p.h. no longer nterested me. i began to htchhke in something akin to geological time: slow, ancient, vast. Daylight, i would sleep n ditches and under bushes, crawling out in the afternoon like the first fish crawling from the sea, stopping car after car and often as not refusing ther lift, or ridingo nly a mile and starting over agan. removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, coverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there wer no increments, no arbitrary graduatons reducing tme to functional units. I abstracted and purified. then I began to juxtapose slow, extended runs wth short, furiously fast ones - until could compose melodies, concerti, entire symphonies of hitch. When poor Jack Kerouac heard about ths, he got drunk for a week. I added dimensons to htchhking that others could not even understand. In the Age of the Automobile - and nothng has shaped our culture like the motor car - there have been many great drivers but only one great passenger. have hitched and hked over every state and half the nations, through blzzards and under ranb ows, in deserts and in cities, backward and sideways, upstars, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber. there is no raod that did not expect me. Fields of daisies bowed and gas pumps gurgled when I passed by. Every moo cow dipped toward me her full udder. With me, something different and deep, in bright focus and pointing the way, arrived in the practrice of hitchhiking. I am the spirit and the heart of hitchhiking. I am it's cortex and its medulla, I am it's foundation and its culmination, I am the jewel in its lotus. And when I am really moving, stopping car after car after car, moving so freely, so clearly, so delicately that even the sex maniacs and the cops cna only blink and let me pass, then I embody the rhythms of the universe, I feel what it is like to be the universe, I am in a state of grace.
You may claim that I've an unfair advantage, but no more so than Njinsky, whose reputation as history's most incomparable dancer is untainted by the fact that his feet were abnormal, havng the bone structure of bird feet. Nature built Nijinksy to dance, me to direct traffic. And speaking of birds, they say birds are stupid, but I once taught a parakeet to hitchhike. Couldn't speak a word, but he was a hitchhiking fool. I let him get rides for us all across the west, and then he indicated that he wanted to set out on his own. I let hiim go and the very first car he stopped was carrying two Siamese cats. Maybe birds are stupid at that."
(Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
Consider me hooked.
So we just returned from Banff and Canmore, respectively, possibly the two most boring towns in Alberta. During our two hour stay in Canmore (far too long, Canmore can be explored and expounded upon in perhaps two minutes) I was talking with a boy in the only record store in the town, and he wanted to know if it looked like it was going to rain. I said no, and he sad "yes! Now I can go out tonight!" and all I could think was...to where?
Perhaps I'm too much of a city girl. Perhaps joy riding up and down Canmore's ONE street and then lying on one's back in layers and layers of prairie looking up at the stars is a nightly thing with the youth here - because it's not like there are any clubs or suitable houses to party in. Perhaps it would even be fun, for a night or two, but you think it would get old. Poor me. I am jaded by asphalt. Cruelty!
Fun fact: Jack-the-girl rode a horse across a river near where "Brokeback Mountain" - the movie to end all movies - was shot. She got vertigo from seeing the horses hooves disappear into silver-green-pretty and watch what would usually be ground rush by her and froth and foam and her saddle was kinda loose so she was swinging back and forth like a wild thing already and her horse was a rock star (for sure) and was prancing and snorting and just generally rocking out in the glory of all things cold and wet and mobile and she felt like for a moment like she was hanging upside down off this earth, clinging fungus to the swinging eyes of the rest of the universe suspended headfirst into space with her mouth open in one giant O shape thinking yes yes i AM ennis del mar!
in the words of the incomparable rheostatics: it feels good to be alive.
England pulled off a mediocre one-nil against Paraguay. Should I be proud? GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER, GUYS. COME ON. If I'm going to make an exception to my "root for the underdog" campaign, at least give me a good god damn reason to. And this time, the accents alone won't cut it. I want strip tease at half time. Mandatory. For everyone.
Except you, Crouch. Keep that jersey on.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
halohaynes:
i have to say i did like that poem, right an you have got no chance of doin a streak we're gonna loose an you on a horse the poor animal how ever did it cope, bet the poor buggers on valium 
haha hope your ok anyhow speak to oyu soon
haha hope your ok anyhow speak to oyu soon
decedent:
spoon has a song called "sister jack". i saw this on a TV commercial, and it reminded of unmet internet users such as yourself (specifically, more or less). and then i thought that kyle is also a really hot girls' name - and i was intrigued upon discovering that that there are no SGs named kyle. surprised, to be sure.