what will possibly be the next?

mike and i currently sit outside, on some brick patio, at some cafe in portsmouth, new hampshire. the air is noticeably more brisk than it has been in some time, perhaps since california, and within the hour we will ride those black bicycles across the border into the state of maine. i'm not quite sure how that feels to be honest. as we sat at dinner tonight, there were many silences, knowing that tonight is the last night of the trip. the last night. so tomorrow, we will pedal another 60 miles or so, and our physical destination will be reached. there are many more things to tell of the last few weeks {month} and i really have no time to write. oh but there is so much in the end here. the end and the beginning of other new things. strangely, i feel emotional in ways that i never would have expected and tired in ways i would never have guessed. i suppose life is like that though. there was the most perfect qoute on keri's website yesterday, which i simply must steal for the way i feel at the moment.

"When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect." ~Schopenhauer

and so we ride into maine, beneath the dark night sky. the stars are out and the clarity of the world above seems the opposite of life itself. the water reflects the lights of our cities, and the movement of our cars. they outshine us all it would seem, and yet we persevere. we ride our bikes across countries and drink wine outside of grocery stores. we sleep in fields and playgrounds, and yoga studios, and we fall in love and we paint and we make music, and we ride and ride and ride, and leap off into the oblivion of our lives. sometimes, it feels as though it is simply one song after another.

maine.

how is it that we have arrived here at this moment? what will possibly be the next? the mystery of it all is staggering.

beneath the speaker, can mean so very much.

boston. sitting beneath the speaker in a coffeeshop, which is playing really bad electronic music, really loudly, making it terribly difficult to write. i try the headphones with music i wish to hear, but cannot drown out the sound. i attempt to move away from the speaker, but there appears to be only one outlet anywhere in this place, and both the cell phone and the computer need juice. so i remain. i also happen to be a foot or so from the restroom, which smells quite poorly. sour and damp. rank.

we arrived last night and stumbled around the city in the dark for a bit, ducking under doorways to avoid the torential downpour. i have seemingly lost count of the number of times we have sat inside somewhere, escpaing the rain, and seen a "severe weather alert" on the television, warning people to remain at home due to the severity of the storm. sigh. thusly, boston finds us trapped on newbury street, with our bikes hiding in a parking garage.

ok, i here ask that the universe please make them turn this music off. please. why do they think, on a cold and rainy night, in a tiny little cafe, i/we want to be bombarded with electronic music so loud, that mike and i cannot hear each other speak? hmmmmmmm.

there is no break in it. this is now my world, this music. the repetition and volume of this mess, keep the words locked within. the words, the words. the story of checking in and then checking back out five minutes later from the hostel. being moved by the cops on the green at brown university. merlin, one of the world's great bike mechanics, who was strangely enough, walking by at 2am and offered his home. the wondrous stories he has. sleeping last night by the river and waking to the joggers in the morning. rain rain rain. loud music which i can no longer take. loud loud loud. the sky is again a stream of lights. my clothing, again soaked through. this trip a river in so many ways.

alas, these sensitive ears of mine.

too distant to really comprehend

many things remain to be told. the nap in central park beneath the shade of trees. the woman, off in the distance dancing as she spins a hoola-hoop around her body. i was tempted to walk closer to watch, but concluded that it would be immeasurably more beautiful from a distance. the proximity of things in life can so deeply shape our perception of them. our perception of ourselves even. and today, here in this cafe in new haven, connecticut, i become so conscious of the time that remains. my awareness heightened, senses so alive. in seven days, mike and i will be in portland, maine. the words, are birds way up in the sky. too distant to really comprehend, and too beautiful to capture. birds in the sky, floating through clouds. the moisture in the air, a wonder of science. the rain that falls. the changing of seasons. the arrival of snow. my excitement is bigger than all of it. bigger than anything. to the coast we go. to the coast.

the humming of insect wings.

how could there possibly be so many people in one place? i recall well questioning the overabundance of humans in this city years ago, but find myself stunned a bit more this time. perhaps it has something to do with the lingering taste of the desert. that sour vomit sitting upon the tongue. it is in some way, more overwhelming to write about than to experience, for there are no words for this place. this place of wild boars running feverishly through an everchanging forest. a forest where everything seems to live and die with a million different trees. some ancient {petrified wood} and some nascent {saplings}. too many taxis and too many smells and too many unhappy people. televisions showing the spectacle of the olympics, and people carrying bags full of expensive things. somehow as stunningly beautiful and hauntingly grotesque as the desert. if two places can be complete opposites, {the cancelling out of nature} new york and the desert are them. if they were closer together, would they cancel one another out? would they both cease to exist, and simply spiral into some vacuum of eternity? oh, none of it makes sense. and the joy i feel, the extremity of my exhuberance is a moon in the sky. a giant and endless orb, spinning into a reckless blur of the most beautiful light. two young college aged girls, do math to my right. god help me. a woman sits across from me, combing her infant's hair. he wears blue, and stares about restlessly. a young bird peering out from the rim of a nest. his twin brother sleeps in a stroller, the diamond on the mother's hand the size of a grape. oh the wealth here is frightening. the shopping. the stores still oepn at 1am. how do people refrain from questioning this?

so mike and i narrowly escape the continuing thunderstorm, and ride into penn station at lunctime our bikes shaking about violently on the train. ahhhhhhh lunch in new york. the last time i was here, there was seemingly no place to have a burrito, which has since changed. mike checks into a hotel, and we walk out across central park, as the light begins to drop. and the day runs on forever. mike leaves by bus to go retrieve jennie at the airport, and i sit in the park on a bench watching the runners and cyclists pass by. i talk to keri, and lament that she cannot be here with me, the common lamentation of the trip. it grows dark, and i find myself riding up central park west, through the neighborhoods i used to know so well. the place where i washed my clothes, and the place where i caught the bus to ride across the park on rainy or snowy days. i turn left, and break into the ghetto riding slowly to try and absorb whatever feelings will arise with passing by my old home. generally speaking, i find that our perceptions of how nostalic and emotional the old places will be, always far surpasses what emotion really exists there. flat. a bag of wet sand, dropped to the floor. the street {103rd between central park west and manhattan} is littered with "tough" young men, listening to hip hop and drinking "forties" with pit bulls at their side. it is astonishing to me, how little this place is changed. how i feel a strange sense of comfortability as though i have some ownership as i once lived here. like i am invisible to them, though i am not. "four point six," the girl to my left says. i am so thankful, that i am not doing math right now. so i ride through the projects, and rise up onto the street where we saw the children hit and killed by that car so many years ago. i pause to let the images and memories run their course. the sounds of fragility, at the hungry mouth of steel. the brittle makeup of bones, and the sound they make when they die. i break out onto broadway and remember standing in that unbearable line at the post office around the holidays. i see koronet on the right at 110, and stop for pizza, before heading up to reid's place. they have raised their prices, and there is too little sauce on the dough, but it serves well as one of my coveted new york experiences. i drop down the hill to the water, and find some bike path that skirts the edge of the land. the area is littered with people driking and listening to music in lawn chairs. the population grows more and more dense and i ride further into harlem, and i find myself terribly lost down by the water, eventually reaching the washington bridge up around 190 {?}. and then i am at reid's. i am telling stories of the trip, and smiling incessantly. everyone leaves, and reid and i are immediately back on that plaza in barcelona, laying into the sinew of our lives. the muscle beneath the skin. we are speaking of music and of love. we are watching the sky cloud over as the light rain begins to fall on the city, the buildings a mess of flickering lights. i hold the phone up high as reid begins to sing, but the sound is a mess says keri. digitized. and then mike and jennie arrive. we sit for hours playing guitar and singing, handing the guitar back and forth. back and forth. sometimes, i think i could listen to reid sing for centuries, that sweet voice of his cutting the air.

the next day finds me hiding from new york, though unintentionally so. i wander the city a bit with reid and help him work on cabinets. drink far too much coffee. mike and jennie are out there, amidst the people and the endlessness of it all. water upon water. i meet reid's oldest sister for dinner and we sit by the windows above times square watching the spectacle of it all. the infinite strangeness of humans run amok. it is then, on the way home {reid's} that i call keri and stumble around the intersection for fifteen minutes or so, trying to figure out where to stand so that she can see me on the webcam. we laugh and laugh and laugh at the odd beauty in this. riding the subway home, i recall a letter written by a friend years ago who pondered as he stargazed in greece, if the stars were the same ones that saw my face beneath them on the other side of the world. though we both knew well that they are indeed the same stars, the potential connectedness of it all is staggering. cameras in new york, where the woman i love can watch me stand there. beautiful and overwhelmingly frightening in its implications in the most orwellian of ways.

and the rest of my days here, have been reserved for and consumed entirely by me. lunch at some thai restaurant in soho. dinner at the french place in greenwich. late night tea. pizza in washington square park, as the bucket players play their buckets and twirl their sticks. this people, is one of the more honest forms of music out there these days. not because it is primitive in its design {ie: the playing of buckets rather than drums} nor is it because of it's technical ability, but simply because of its passion. the buzz in the air is like the humming of insect wings by one's ear; completely inescapable. alas, new york. the place that i so love and so deeply despise all in the same instance. it is both the desert and the ocean, the earth and the sky. if new york was a bird, it would be a turkey vulture, with the mind of a dove and the soul of a cardinal. if it were a drink, it would be absynthe with just the slightest hint of irony. a color, it would be black. and white. gray perhaps. if it was a desert, it would be the sahara, flung out into the middle of the mediterranean sea. oh new york, you beast, you bloody beast. you seduce me and taunt me and love me and kill me. if it was a snake, it would be a black twenty foot python, with the weight of a butterfly. if it was a city, it would be new york. new york, new york, new york. you have stunned me into silence once again. you have woken me, and put me to sleep. you are an angel and a king. a devil. god itself. everything and nothing. sleep well, my dear prince, sleep well. i have so much more of you, but you wear me out. you tie my hands and my tongue. you close my weary eyes.

spotted again

JP in Greenwich Village, 8:15 pm. (the one in the middle of the intersection.)

(as seen by Keri on her computer in Canada.)

the great sitting in the big apple

Jeff Pitcher live at times square, via webcam, 11:45 p.m.

(as seen by keri sitting on her computer in canada.)

the furriest caterpillar

we ride into princeton, new jersey, rolling slowly through the jungle of trees, the lushness of which is stunning. it is the furriest caterpillar you have ever seen. it is a place that immediately grabs me, and seduces me into daydreaming of late night walks on the narrow streets. i find myself wishing badly that i had come back east for college, but life didn't work that way. slept last night behind a grocery store just east of trenton, which was seemingly one endless ghetto. the broken buildings, hiding the broken lives, the streets littered with trash. i was struck by how small the worldview of the people there seemed; ie: their perception of distance. when they told us things were far away, i was stunned at how close they really were. made me think that their lives may not reach out very far beyond the shattered walls and crumbling streets. though i confess, my knowledge of their world is so limited, i couldn't even really begin to make any assesment. none.

so they finally shut down the lights behind the grocery store after midnight, and the sleep was peaceful and hard, a reminder that sleep is so easily attainable when so deeply needed. so today feels electric and charged with light. sitting now in a brewery having lunch, awaiting my banana split. fuck yes! bob marley singing 'no woman no cry,' one of the more brilliant songs written in my opinion, the emotion in his voice the sweet sugar of an honest heart. and the mind drifts. i am on the patio at a restaurant in canada with keri, eating my salmon and her pasta {which was quite a bit better than my salmon} watching the sun land on her face. the face of the woman i will soon marry, a thought that still fills me with such a tumult of joy and gratitude. immeasurable. and as the end grows close, i wish to write and write. to document every moment, every second. i wish to breathe it all in to my lungs and never let it go. i try, as i have throughout the entire trip to live in this moment, and this moment only, but find {as i always have} that this is an extremely difficult task. how can i, when friday night, i will sit on some rooftop in new york, playing music and having a beer or two with " reid maclean. how can i keep from drifting there? there, there.

ps.
no takers on the haircuts, though yesterday evening, i did come so close that i had removed my scissors from my bag, and was pushing my hands through a 62 year old east indian man's hair. sadly, he backed out at the last minute, feeling as though he needed to get home with the mcdonalds for his family. alas.

the strangeness that lies in our proximity.

philadelphia.

i stopped counting days and miles and many other things some time ago.

and presently, i have no idea what to write. i have concluded that it is virtually impossible for me to place all of this into compartments. these hours on the bike, these evenings with friends, these nights in canada, and rides in rented cars, these nights spent sleeping in the median as the big trucks go by. i grow excited about a time when i can stand at a distance, and peer in on this experience with the space necessary to absorb and process it all. not necessarily compartmentailze it, but place it in some form of context. i find that our brains work in such a way, that we greatly desire {if not need} some point of reference for our experiences. not necessarily something to compare them all to, but a room in the house of our lives if you will. as i see it, i've been busy these months pouring the foundation for this, but the walls are only partially erected. this lifting of walls and placing of windows takes time.

a few days ago i realized that having left on june first, mike and i have been out here for nine weeks, which is so small in the grand scheme of a life, but so enormous here. the duration of it all has lost much of its meaning, and the experiences themselves come to overshadow all other things about the trip. does that make sense? the bikes have become somewhat irrelevant, as mike and i have let go so much. we're now attempting to let the trip move us more and more each day, which is ultimately the goal no? to find that graceful place where we are in control of our lives, and yet allowing them to move us as they wish. trust in the universe i suppose. some of the time, i feel as though i am so in touch with it all, so deeply connected to my heart and the knowledge of these steps, and i am stunned by the beauty. other times {like the night before last when mike and i spent 1/2 hour deciding whether or not we should try to ride across a bridge that does not allow bikes...at 11pm} these decisions seemed veiled in a thick cloth. {we did not ride it, and as we shot across in a minivan with bob the religious fanatic, who would not stop and let us out when we requested [until i fairly yelled at him]. we were amazingly thankful, having concluded that it would have been one of the more dangerous things we would ever have done.}

and so i begin to contemplate the things i have learned out here and where they fit into the grand expanse of my life. oh people, these things take time. so much time, for there is so much in all of this. as the end grows near, i find some anchor to lay my hands into. the people have become the trip now in some way. mike and this friendship we've been able to grow. something that will continue as our lives move on. something i am immeasurably grateful for. jake and helen in madison, friends i've missed so much. people that i love. the continually stretching distance between me and my old home in california. the continually shrinking distance between me and my new home in canada. my first watercolor paintings, and their placement in a room where i will sleep many, many nights. my growing excitement to live in the country and make art. another year in the snow, sending my mind reeling back to that winter living in new york. oh, my dear new york, i will be there soon. days. illinois. baltimore. maryland. delaware. here.

it is all blurry today. all blurry. in the best of ways though. blurry does not, in this instance, carry any negative conotations, it simply means that i need time too look at all of this from afar.

a few days ago mike and i spent some time speaking about the fact that this will all be done in less than three weeks, and all that will come with the end of this and the beginning of the next place. such a great sadness and such a great joy that lives in this. the strangeness that lies in our proximity. approximately 400 miles from the end.

the last 400. what does that mean? today we will return the rental car having driven here from newark, delaware yesterday as mike had a broken derailleur. we stood on the roadside for three hours with signs that read "broken bike! ride to philly?" not one stop. zero. the other side of the sign read "roadside haircuts.....$5" zero. well, not zero exactly, as the 64 year old guy working at safeway gathering the carts was interested, but a bit mentally slow. as i have little to no confidence in my haircutting abilities, i had to decline his request as it would have felt cruel. and so we will return the car, and begin our short jaunt {105 miles?} up to new york city, with the need to arrive there by noon or so on the twelfth. how did this all happen i ask myself. all of it. how is it, that i'll be back in new york on thursday, on my bicycle. i guess life is like that. stunning in its unpredictability. absolutely stunning.

one grows tired of the flat tires.

so here's the deal: i have in the past, and will continue in the future, to encourage discussion and debate on my website. disagreement with my opinions or the opinions of other people involved in the forum, is absolutely fine and quite frankly necessary, in any well functioning society or microcosm thereof, ie: blog/debate/discussion. what i will no longer tolerate, are insults to me, my friends, my future wife, or other people involved in the discussions. it is, in short, immature, needless, and absurd. though i could carry on and on about my reasons, i will refrain from doing so. from now on any posts of this nature will be deleted. ultimately, i would like to think that people could have enough class and respect, to not have to be monitored in this way, but such it is. the bottom line is that this is after all my website. were people saying these things to me in any other context or place i would either walk away, or tell them to leave. there is a great difference between intellectual criticism and disrespect. one grows tired of the flat tires.