I'll tell you

We stopped to pick sage in Wyoming at about 4 pm, making careful steps in the blowing sweet grass, surprised to find garbage bleached by the sun hidden in the hairs.

We were hungry, it was urgent, but there was only an IGA sitting ugly and meek next to the panting train tracks, on an Indian reservation. All of the workers there were white, their eyes were painting the linoleum, they never looked up. All of the customers were Indian and there were two beautiful women in the frozen foods section, very tall women with very long hair. They had a toddler boy with them, the boy ran up to Tom and dug his fists into Tom's shins.

On this same trip, a couple of weeks ago, they threw a snowball at me in Montana, a glittering morning. I wore my wool slippers into the snow, I would not put on my shoes. The night before, we wandered into a blizzard, a big piece of weather with semi-trucks tunnelling in and out.

At the rest stops the old people are stretching. They drive and drive, looking out the window and saying nothing.

We stopped at a road house somehow in beautiful Wyoming, a aluminum sided rectangle with a bar and tvs and convenience and bathrooms. The lady was web chatting with someone in the war. I think I fought Nick for exercise. The men came back from their hunt and started drinking beer and studying us. They did not really give a fuck, they laughed with me when I got very excited from being rowdy and fake boxing Nick, and I jumped around the parking lot in pretend flight. I complain about driving, I say it is dangerous and I complain about puddling into the seat for 8 hours a day, I will tell you a lot about how the food is just toxic and the lonely people and children are very sad at motels and truck stops. But I do experience a euphoria while travelilng, especially in the part between the west coast and the midwest. I like to be the driver, I'll drive through the most beautiful parts, I will listen to my favorite music and AM trucker emo oldies and drink in the ranges, bridges and oil refineries, I like to not speak at all in daylight, just drive and think and work up a fever thinking in premonitions and feel my eyes turn in my sockets, just very still and thinking.

Noticing the bracelet of sun on my wrist and looking into strangers' eyes for a long time. Buying a pint of whiskey from the bar attached to the gas station and drinking it in a motel. The television is always on in a motel room but I want to turn it off, the little room is a temple of relaxation. Nick and I always seemed to be falling asleep as "Roseanne" came on in every motel room we ever stayed in on the Jackie O tour.

i have been on the road since June 1, when I left for the first farm. I have been at two farms, went on two tours of USA and Canada and long-term visited Portland and Oakland. Now I am in Oakland and I am going on a West Coast tour next week and then going to Detroit for Christmas. My birthday 26 is December 29 and I will give myself the gift of a calm station existence for three months. All I want for my birthday is my food stamps reinstated and a cabin with a wood burning stove in a snowy area, also snow boots and a lot of chopped wood. I think I could lay on the floor and look at the ceiling and think things through for about two weeks.

Traveling can be very alienating. Your close friends (family) become kind of strangers when you become seperated by a blur of details. It's hard to be present with their lives while you're gone. I don't even have a phone, so nobody can even call me without calling somebody else to get to me. I like to write notes, but there is no time. And I just become psychedically afflicted with the density of traveling life. When I come back from tour, I feel kind of shaky and I act like a zombie, even stutter from exhaustion. I have cried spontaneously lately, just so overwhelmed. I want to share and shed some of the psychic weight of the richness of all of this, but it's hard to even begin. I am available to every detail so the immensity of the experience can't even be translated. Though it felt monumenta and it changed mel, it's somehow not that interesting or too long a story at first when I try to explain.

Now I am in Oakland, listening to Kellari Juniversemi and drinking a little scotch in Jackie's bedroom. I am at Huffin. Michael was hitchhiking for a week, so I slept in his room and then Jackie left for NYC so I have been sleeping in her room. She is returning tonight. I can't stop sleeping, every dream is so blunt, smears of embroidery that I can't inspect very closely. Bless Jackie and Michael, having a room to myself for the past 10 days has helped me. I needed that privacy.

I have been sleeping, wearing my hat and coat or a blanket, acting like a step-mother to Gregory because that cat is such a step-child when Jackie's not around! i have been listening to Earth and Terry Riley. I keep accidentally eating unripe persimmons; have you done that, it is something like "very sour" feeling in your mouth, but somehow with an adhesive instead of a sour.