060608

                                                                                                   Nitro to Charleston, WV

Friday June 6, 2008

     8:30am  I woke up. I got 5.04 hours of sleep. I woke up behind the lake here. I wish I had a camera. I'm going to wake and bake.

     9:12am  I am leaving from my squat. Hopefully the library will be open now.

     9:22am  I came to the Nitro Public Library. It's right on the other side of the field I crashed behind. They open at ten so I'm going to eat breakfast.
                  
     9:25am  I am still waiting for the library to open. There's a Nitro Pool right across the street. I'm going to go see if I can score a shower after the library. Then I'll take off walking and explore Nitro. I'm going to check my email and see if that dude from Dairy Queen emailed me about the shirt. If so, I'm going to hitchhike back to Montgomery.

                   There's this Asian dude parked in a car in front of the library waiting for it to open. I'm going to try and tell him my story. He's on a laptop busy right now. I'm going to take a hit of weed, hehe.

     9:36am  To kill time I'm going to read a book in front of the library. I got this one from my mermaid Laura. It's called The Book - On The Taboo Of Knowing Who You Are. By Allan Watts. I just read this paragraph that I should've told the Christian dude last night.

"What then, would be The Book which fathers might slip to their sons and mothers to their daughters without ever admitting it openly?

     In some circles there is a strong taboo on religion, even in circles where people go to church or read the Bible. Here, religion is one's own private business. It is bad form or uncool to talk or argue about it, and very bad indeed to make a big show of piety. Yet when you get in on the inside of almost any standard-brand religion, you wonder what on earth the hush was about. Surely The Book I have in mind wouldn't be the Bible, "the Good Book"—that fascinating anthology of ancient wisdom, history, and fable which has for so long been treated as a Sacred Cow that it might well be locked up for a century or two so that men could hear it again with clean ears. There are indeed secrets in the Bible, and some very subversive ones, but they are all so muffled up in complications, in archaic symbols and ways of thinking, that Christianity has become incredibly difficult to explain to a modern person. That is, unless you are content to water it down to being good and trying to imitate Jesus, but no one ever explains just how to do that. To do it you must have a particular power from God known as "grace," but all that we really know about grace is that some get it, and some don't.

     The standard-brand religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist, are—as now practiced—like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don't seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day.

     The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man's place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call "I myself," the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

This is a great book. Everybody read it. By Allan Watts.

Page 8
 

     We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature." This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.

     This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.

     The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world "outside" us is largely hostile. We are forever "conquering" nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order. In America the great symbols of this conquest are the bulldozer and the rocket—the instrument that batters the hills into flat tracts for little boxes made of ticky-tacky and the great phallic projectile that blasts the sky. (Nonetheless, we have fine architects who know how to fit houses into hills without ruining the landscape, and astronomers who know that the earth is already way out in space, and that our first need for exploring other worlds is sensitive electronic instruments which, like our eyes, will bring the most distant objects into our own brains.)(1) The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events—that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies—and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.

Page 10

     It might seem, then, that our need is for some genius to invent a new religion, a philosophy of life and a view of the world, that is plausible and generally acceptable for the late twentieth century, and through which every individual can feel that the world as a whole and his own life in particular have meaning. This, as history has shown repeatedly, is not enough. Religions are divisive and quarrelsome. They are a form of one-upmanship because they depend upon separating the "saved" from the "damned," the true believers from the heretics, the in-group from the out-group.

Page 11

     An ardent Jehovah's Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

    12:06pm  I am leaving the Nitro library. I had originally thought I might be able to type my stuff up here. I've got weed. I spent a dollar on some earbud headphones which I need. They're good to have. I'm going to walk to the nearest bus stop.

     1:18pm  I am the bus headed to Charleston. It hasn't left yet. I got a lot of typing done. I researched my stuff and I think I lost two days, I recorded over them. From 4-29 to 5-2. I have my whole adventure with my mermaid to type up. I love you, Laura. I went across the street to some music store where they sell pipes and stuff. I met this guy named Jimbo. He rides a wheelchair even though he can limp just fine. I told him my story. I told him The Note From The Rich and he loved it. I gave him my website. He said it was really nice meeting me. Then I went inside the shop right here. I tried to tell them my story, but the guy turned the radio on when I asked him if he was willing to listen. Forget it. The guy behind the counter is looking the phone number up to call the bus operator. They called and found out the time the bus comes at.

     1:20pm  Going to Charleston. It's a dollar fifty for fare. I paid it with the last of my money. Bye, bye, Nitro. It's steaming hot. I need to go North already.

     2:33pm  I came to the plaza, the bus terminal in Downtown Charleston where the buses come. I don't think I like Charleston so far. Maybe I'll try and get a courtesy ride out of town.

     2:58pm  The greedy ass driving the bus won't let me on.

     3:01pm  I got told no by a driver for a courtesy ride. I started walking back and all these ICP fan kids noticed my clown wig. They stopped and talked to me and now they're smoking a brother out. Thanks, guys. Everybody gets credit.

                   Me, Cody, Amanda and some other dude just smoked me out. Cool, welcome to Charleston, Victor. Seems like I didn't get that courtesy ride for a reason. I'm going to hang out in the transit mall and tell my story. I'm all stoned.

     4:22pm  I'm stoned. I was walking around Downtown Charleston. It seems pretty cool. It kind of reminds me of Downtown San Antonio. I got bored at the transit center. No cool people showed up. I'm turning left on Quarrier and Laidley. I wish I had a camera.

     4:28pm  I stood my post in front of the public library. Anyway, I offered this dude my website and he said he'd check it out. His license plate said MORGANTWN. I just came to the library and smoked in front of this fountain. I wish I had a camera. I could go inside and check my email if I wanted to, but I don't need to. I am liking Charleston. It reminds me of San Antonio so much. I'm just letting people read my shirt.

     5:30pm  I just had an awesome presentation with Montana Rock. I just walked up to that guy and he listened to my whole damn Odyssey.

     5:43pm  I met up with another crazy person. Amanda Dawn Rhodes. Man, I so wish my camera worked. Amanda: "Yesterday, I walked to the capitol in Charleston, WV and I was following around a tour group of kindergarteners. I was bored and there was somebody explaining all this stuff. Then the lady goes, "Where are you from?" I told her, "Green Creek, you've never heard of it." She told me that I might be able to go to the governor's mansion. I asked her when was the next tour. She said there was a tour going on right now. Something about finding double doors. I walked over there, went to the door, I knocked a couple times and thought maybe this was the wrong door. I walked to the garage and told someone I was looking for the double doors. And then state troopers led me in through the security level, through the kitchen and into the ballroom of the governor's mansion. I walked in, across and sat there. Surprised, they asked, "When did you get here?" I told them now. I looked at the wall and there was a painting called Portrait of a Lady. They were like who did it? Where did it come from? What year is it? I thought for a second then said, "Davinci." Don't try to figure me up. Just go with it.

     5:47pm  Man, that guy I had just told my story to earlier, Montana, he saw me come into Capitol Roasters with Amanda, which is where she works, he came inside and offered me some Chick-Fil-A chicken. He works there. He called me Antonio.

     7:47pm  Man, what an adventure I am having. I have already arrived at a safe-house, a temporary headquarters in Charleston. This beautiful girl Amanda.

Next day..