July 29th, 2008 by Hoopleton

After going head-first over the handlebars of my bicycle last weekend I find myself with little desire to work on my book projects and even less desire to think about the state of the world in any meaningful way. Suffering a minor concussion has a way of making you allergic to the rhythms of normality you may have established and I’m definitely in the mood to embrace the strange.

So, in honor of the ongoing campaign for President and Barack Obama’s continued efforts to dispel rumors that he is in fact a white-hating, radical, Muslim, flip-flopping extremist, I offer this short list of past Presidential scandals and rumors that plagued the former occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and may offer some incite into the power of political slur and muckraking.

1. Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Perhaps one of the earliest and most infamous political rumors/scandals in United States history is the little story of Thomas Jefferson and his long-standing “affair” with one of his slaves. First reported in 1802, and continually discussed ever since, Jefferson was not only accused of having sex with his slave, Sally, but also of fathering at least one (and as many as three) of her children. Although the writer of the Declaration of Independence denied these stories and even once famously decried the mixing of the races as a “degradation,” subsequent DNA tests have proven that a male from the Jefferson line most certainly was the father of some of Sally Heming’s children. Whether the allegations are true or not remains debated in some quarters, but the public at large, convinced mainly by at least two films on the subject (one starring a very gruff Nick Nolte tenderly pining for a vulnerable and consenting Thandie Newton), now overwhelmingly stands in the Sally camp. As far as political scandals and rumors go this one certainly never hurt Jefferson’s political career in any substantive measure, but it has clouded the legacy of America’s third President in an oddly positive/negative way ever since it first appeared in the gossip columns some two hundred years ago. At times the would-be scandal is portrayed as an example of Southern inequalities, at others as a great American romance. In the end it’s interesting that so much passion and romanticism has been injected into what is essentially an allegation of rape.

2. James Buchanan and his “wife.” Buchanan, who ascended to the Presidency in 1853, was known as America’s first bachelor President. Although engaged at an early part of his life, the fifteenth Commander-in-Chief never ended up getting hitched (his fiancée, iron heiress Ann Caroline Coleman committed suicide for unknown reasons, linked by her doctors to a case of “female hysteria,” the blanket diagnosis for everything that men didn’t understand about women). Vowing never to marry, Buchanan spent over fifteen years sharing an apartment with his close friend, Alabama Senator William Rufus King, another well-known bachelor. Yes, you can probably see where this is heading. Almost immediately rumors abound that Buchanan and King were actually lovers. The gossip was so heavy that even Andrew Jackson often referred to Senator King as “Miss Nancy,” or “Buchanan’s wife.” The true extent of this relationship and Buchanan’s proclivities remain shrouded in mystery (helped to large extent by the destruction of the two men’s correspondence by concerned relatives), but one thing we can be sure of, whether or not the man was gay, is that he remains one of the single worst Presidents in American history, blamed by many historians as being almost single-handedly responsible for the inevitability of the Civil War. Questions of sexual orientation seem of very little concern.

3. Grover Cleveland’s love child. In 1884, Grover Cleveland, the Governor of New York, found himself in a heated campaign against Republican James G. Blaine, who was seen by many in the United States as overly ambitious and immoral, especially after revelations that he had been involved in less-than-kosher financial deals with several railroad companies. To counter Cleveland’s pious image, the Republicans put into motion a smear campaign, which used as its lead a tale that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child to who’s mother he was still, ten years after the fact, secretly paying child support. This is where the story gets strange and why it remains one of the most remarkable scandals in American history. To everyone’s surprise, Grover Cleveland not only admitted to the affair, but to having a child as well. Although he stipulated he could not be certain that the boy, named Oscar Folsom Cleveland, was definitely his (apparently the woman involved had several lovers at the time of conception) he did accept full responsibility for the entire thing. Much to the frustration of the Republicans, not only did Cleveland’s scandalous behavior not hurt him, but more than likely helped push him over the top in the Irish-heavy districts of New York and Boston thus propelling him to the White House. The lesson seems clear: when given lemons, make lemonade, even if it turns out to be illegitimate.

4. Franklin Pierce, boozer. The fourteenth President of the United States had a very hard life. Although good-looking and charismatic, Franklin Pierce spent much of his early life deep inside a bottle. Dealing with feelings of isolation and the stresses of politics, Pierce was well-known for the kind of binge drinking that makes so many college memories frustratingly hard to exhume. When he finally did get on the wagon with the help of his painfully shy, temperance-minded wife, Jane Appleton, he found himself in a deep depression as all three of the couple’s children died before the age of twelve and the nation headed at breakneck speed toward Civil War. If all this wasn’t enough, Pierce’s political enemies constantly dogged him with allegations that the newly elected and very sober President was still a secret lush. The unfounded rumors of his drinking not only aided in his failure to get renominated by his own party for a second term, but also more than likely had the tragic effect of bringing alcohol back into his miserable life. Pierce ended up friendless, disgraced and alone, eventually dying of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 64. If little else his story proves that political slurs have the power to become self-fulfilling agents of destruction, especially when they have a foundation in truth.

5. Bill and Monica. Rumors of Bill Clinton’s extra-marital activities were nothing new by 1997. In fact, most people almost accepted the forty-second President’s over-active libido as just one of those quirky, if not almost endearing, qualities. It probably didn’t register that much for most Americans anyway, although now and again a starlet or former beauty queen would appear in the tabloids testifying to the Commander-in-Chief’s shortcomings as a husband, nothing was ever really proven. And then suddenly, the damn broke. Tapes surfaced of recorded conversations in which former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky detailed her affair with the man from Arkansas. Never had a political sex scandal been outlined in such lurid detail. Dates, times, blowjobs in the Oval Office, a stained blue dress. After an initial denial under oath, Bill Clinton finally admitted to the affair and found himself to be the first President since 1868 to be impeached by the House of Representatives. But the most shocking part of the story was what happened next. Not only did Clinton survive, eventually being acquitted of all charges by the Senate, but he managed to end his second term with some of the highest approval ratings in recent history. Ironically it was others who paid for Clinton’s debauchery, the long shadow of the scandal arguably derailing the Presidential bids of both his former Vice President and his wife. But the biggest loser in the entire story was Monica Lewinsky herself, who remains till this day little more than a national joke. The lesson here? Scandal can be a powerful weapon, but it’s never clear where the bullet will land.

6. Warren G. Harding. The winner and still champion of the contest for most rumor-filled, scandal-ridden Presidency in United States history is the twenty-ninth man to take the oath of office, Warren G. Harding. Initially plagued by stories that his grandmother was black and later accused of having multiple affairs and fathering multiple illegitimate children, Harding was handpicked by a secret cadre of top Republican powerbrokers in a smoke-filled room at the party’s convention and subsequently elected to the Presidency in 1920. During his brief term of office (he died in 1923, rumored to have been murdered by his wife), Harding was said to have overseen the systematic plundering of the nation’s oil fields in the infamous Tea Pot Dome Scandal, taken millions of dollars in bribes, gambled away tax dollars as well as the Presidential china, financed a private brothel across the street from the White House, and even was said to have ties with the Ku Klux Klan, allegedly inducted into the hate group in a secret Oval Office ceremony. What’s amazing about all these rumors and scandals is that most of them were true. The Harding administration was so diseased and corrupt that some eighty years later it still remains as the benchmark for all things dirty in politics and new allegations still come to light on an almost annual basis. In fact, the shit is so deep that today it’s nearly impossible to tell truth from fiction. Perhaps it may seem a little unfair to Warren G. Harding, but it doesn’t really matter, he did so much wrong that the few inaccuracies and unfounded accusations seem to pale in comparison. The important thing to keep in mind is that Harding only represents the most transparent example of dirty politics. All the bastards are guilty of something. The bottom line is this: after all is said and done I’m usually more concerned by the politico who seems squeeky clean, rather than the one who so obviously just crawled out of the sewer. The ones that seem to sparkle always have so much more to hide. Or, at the very least, are just much better at hiding it.

July 27th, 2008 by Hoopleton

The light is mesmerizing.

The light is everywhere all around. Pure, white, bright and warming. It consumes and devours. It penetrates the wall of skin and lingers in every blood cell. Every strand of hair. Every ligament. Down to the core of every bone, transforming the body and electrifying the soul.

Warmth. It’s the heat of the light I can remember most.

Sparks of energy colliding like atoms swarm the emptiness of air. Firelight filters in through the gaps. And out of the blinding nothingness there comes all sound lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting into the cradle of the sky.

This is the face of God, he said.

This is the face of God.

I have looked into it. I have known it. Comfort and fear, happiness and agony, good and evil, all existing in one split second. In one moment. All as one. All as everything.

The light is mesmerizing.

Time and space fold together. Holes are created in the very fabric of reality, and out of them come phantoms. Out of them come ghosts. They whirl and spin and climb at the edge of the event horizon like lightening bugs.

The mass expands. The light grows warmer.

Molecule by molecule I fade.

This is the face of God, he said.

Before the thunder comes, before the torrent of lightening shards and the red fires, before the void, I see darkness. I’m not scared.

I’m not scared because the light has warmed me. I’m not scared because in the darkness there are stars.

I drift to one of them. I can touch it with my fingertips. It pulses as I graze it.

I drift to another and another.

They swirl around me. The stars streak in circles. And sunlight appears.

I’m sitting on a bench. Early summer. Afternoon. The trees and grass are lush. People play catch, jog, talk and children swing. Dogs scamper. Decimated squirrels dig for nuts.

I watch the wind catch the branches. They all sway in unison, like a tide. Back they arch and sling back. In and out. In and out. They take a breath and exhale. Leaves applaud and the bark cracks. The trees they talk. They ask questions. It takes them days to respond.

I’m looking at the sky. The foam of clouds drift. Birds circle overhead. The blue is deep, but warm. So much warmth.

Can I stay? Can I stay here and be safe? I miss being safe. I don’t want to think anymore. I’m tired. So tired. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to know. I miss not knowing. I miss not being tired. I’m so tired.

A single spark. The flash of light. And all life stops.

The park is empty. The trees are dead. No wind blows. Only I and the bench remain.

This is the face of God, he said.

How’s this going to end?

The Devil probably.

I spat at the hearse.

Suicide I think.

I was in New York.

They’ll say he was so young.

Tragedy.

Poor son of a bitch.

The face of God?

But you keep fucking saying that.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

God’s cashed in.

He’s done for the night.

No.

I won’t die.

It’s the world that will end.

Five letters.

One sentence.

How much do undertakers charge per word?

I don’t care what they think.

I don’t care what they say.

Tragedy.

Poor son of a bitch.

One life per customer.

No refunds.

You keep what you get.

Till someone takes it, he said.

What?

No.

No.

The mind’s gone.

He can’t hear you.

You should probably pull the plug.

The face of God?

There you go again.

Pure poison.

All lace.

Listen to me.

We’ll be fine.

They won’t kill us.

We’ve done nothing wrong.

Murdering them is all right.

Torture is okay.

But if they lay a finger.

Just one finger.

You hear me?

You bite it off.

Wait.

Wait.

You didn’t answer me.

How’s this going to end?

The hearse was full of bodies.

Suicide I think.

The light is mesmerizing, but it doesn’t last that long. Darkness filters in. Shadows overtake every surface.

The cars full of dead drivers collide and run into shop windows. Fires burn without mercy. Planes fall like hail from the sky. Nuclear reactors melt to the ground. Water filled with sewage and toxins overtakes everything in its path. Streets cave into subway tunnels. Polluted rivers form. Skyscrapers topple like amputated trees. Plumes of black smoke rise and bleach the oxygen right out of the air.

There were too many of us. Extinction was the price we paid for so much sin.

We inherited a blue planet.

It was so full of life.

A Garden of Eden.

Forests and rivers.

Mountains and streams.

Oceans full of life.

And we turned it into a parking lot.

Coast to coast strip mall.

A factory of waste.

A mass grave.

So many mass graves.

Because we killed everything we could.

Because we invented new forms of murder.

Genocide.

Torture.

We love to torture.

We love to make them scream.

Because we played God.

One God per world.

Them is the rules.

It was such a nice planet.

It was such a nice home.

So blue.

So full of life.

The fucking Garden of Eden.

I drift away from the stars. The sunlight’s faded and I start to walk. How will I escape? I don’t even know where I’m going. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to find.

Four men lost in a desert, idling under a ravaged sky.

And then comes the light. It’s pure and white and warming.

Molecule by molecule I’m reconstructed. Hair, skin, eyes, ears, fingers and toes. Blood begins to circulate again. Muscles start to contract. The heart pumps, the lungs inhale. For a moment I can feel heat again, but soon this also fades.

All that is left is a rising white cloud billowing out of a crater. It looks like a tree. A mushroom. Rising with the atoms that it’s destroyed.

We built this too.

I look into the soul of it. I focus on the churning stem. And I finally understand.

This is the face of God, he said.

July 19th, 2008 by Hoopleton

With the amount of crap that Hollywood produces on an almost daily basis, it’s often hard to sift through the mire to find the gems worth watching. Beyond the brilliant exception of The Dark Knight this summer movie season is certainly no different. The pickings are slim and for the most part the critics are of no help at all, giving rave reviews to the watchable, but hardly amazing Hellboy 2, as well as the unbelievably horrid Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

So ok, you’ve seen The Dark Knight and now you’re wondering what else is out there. I know, you’re considering Hankock, but before you waste your money I’d recommend scurrying to your nearest video store instead, and to help you out I’ve compiled this short list of films from the last thirteen years (in no particular order) that somehow managed to defy the Hollywood crap factory and that you’ve probably missed seeing. Sure, the majority of these films don’t reproduce the big-budget action of The Dark Knight, but in all terms they’re just as good in forms of substance, if not leaps and bounds beyond.

1. ExistenZ. Completely overshadowed by The Matrix and receiving lackluster, but generally positive reviews, this surreal sci-fi action drama from 1999 barely broke even at the box office and remains today one of the best, unseen and underrated films of the last decade. Written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, the story is about a game designer, played with alluring mystique by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who must go into her own fully immersive video game to ascertain who is trying to kill her and why. Together with Jude Law, her equally sexy bodyguard, the two gamers find worlds within worlds as they navigate through a psychedelic universe of deception and adventure. The question that The Matrix failed to ask, namely – where does the game end and reality begin? – is the driving mechanism of the plot and is resolved with chilling cleverness. If you’re looking for action with substance and brains, this is a film that will reward you in a style that only the twisted mind of David Cronenberg can deliver. Until then, ExistenZ is paused!

2. The Good German. Whenever Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney team up they tend to either make formulaic all-star shell casings designed strictly to suck the cash out of our wallets, or off the wall indie-wannabes that sometimes have the potential for greatness. The duo’s 2006 homage to film noir, The Good German, which was ripped to pieces by critics and practically made its way straight to DVD, falls into the latter category. Shot in glorious black-and-white and set during the Big Three’s Potsdam conference at the close of World War II, the film is equal parts love story and espionage thriller with an atmosphere so thick in Hollywood nostalgia that you could cut it with a knife. The cast, including a scheming Tobey Maguire and an even more scheming Cate Blanchett put George Clooney, the Bogart fill-in, through the ringer as spies do battle through the war-torn streets and Allied conspiracies come to light. Although the plot and character development may remain aloof at times, the ultimate question of the film, what is an acceptable price for survival, is one that is not only well framed, but brilliantly answered.

3. Dead Man. Staying with the black-and-white theme, Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 “acid western” starring the ever whimsical Johnny Depp can only really be described as the ultimate anti-John Wayne depiction of the Old West and is probably the most underappreciated film on this list. Depp, a man brought out to the frontier in the hopes of employment finds himself on a journey to the afterlife, hunted by the minions of the Devil embodied in the silently menacing Lance Henriksen and guided by an Indian guardian angel named Nobody, played with scene-stealing wit by Gary Farmer. The film is dotted by familiar faces in cameo form, including Crispin Glover (as crazy as ever) Robert Mitchum, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop and many, many more. Let me make one thing clear, this isn’t your father’s western, Dead Man is not about good guys in white hats or shootouts in the streets of Dodge City. There are no heroes here. The west and white expansion are shown in all their dirtiness, ugliness and filth. Although the film is very much a morality tale, making clear the destruction and genocide unleashed in the name of progress, it also never takes itself too seriously, allowing us, the audience, to take a much needed breath now and again. After its debut, Dead Man took in only $1 million at the box office (about an eighth of its total budget) and was destroyed by critics from coast who couldn’t understand what the film was about. Till this day Dead Man remains one of the film masterpieces of the 20th century, one that most critics simply don’t get. Stupid fucking white men.

4. The Jacket. Another Steven Soderbergh film, although this time only produced by George Clooney and starring Adrien Brody, The Jacket is one of those films that you know is going to bomb with critics and with audiences, but dammit, your going to make the thing anyway. For the sake of us, the viewers, it’s a good thing they did. A time-travel love story about a man seemingly losing his mind while finding his purpose, this film builds so much dread and longing that it’s hard not to feel like we’re the ones in the straight jacket. Adrien Brody is a man who, while locked up in an insane asylum for a crime he didn’t commit, finds himself able to travel into the future for brief periods of time where with the help of a tortured woman from his past, aptly played by Keira Knightly, tries to solve the mystery surrounding his own future death. The film’s mood is intoxicating and the growing relationship between the two leads is both sensual and tender. The Jacket may not be the greatest movie ever made, but it’s certainly one of the most underrated movies that you’ve never seen.

5. Dinner Rush. Sometimes the critics get it right, but the audiences seem not to notice, which is not surprising in a world where a movie like The Mummy Returns can get some asshole calling it the best film ever made. Pretty soon you rightfully stop trusting the “experts.” The indie gangster flick, Dinner Rush, directed by Bob Giraldi and starring Danny Aiello took in a measly $600,000 during its entire run and has made nearly nothing as it accumulates dust on some video store rental shelves, but it remains the best film of 2001. Set during one night at a trendy Manhattan restaurant, this exquisitely shot and wonderfully enticing film is the kind of toned down and sophisticated crime drama that makes you wonder how you ever sat through something as vapid and bellicose as Martin Scorsese’s Casino. With the possible exception of the soundtrack, this movie does everything right. The acting is superb, the characters fleshed out, the multiple plotlines are interesting and entertaining, the mood is realistic and the story is never even momentarily dull. What’s most fun about Dinner Rush is that the setting and the food have roles as prominent as the mainly unknown but hugely talented cast. Like any good meal this sadly underappreciated film is something to be enjoyed, savored and discussed. My only warning is that you shouldn’t see it on an empty stomach, or you may find yourself tempted to bolt for the nearest restaurant before the ending credits even appear on screen.

6. Kicking & Screaming. No, this isn’t that stupid soccer movie with Will Farrel, this is a film directed by Noah Baumbach that no one seems to know ever existed and wasn’t even released on DVD until eleven years after it briefly appeared in theaters (good luck finding it at Blockbuster). Slashed by critics and grossing less than Big Momma’s House did in it’s opening day, this witty story about a group of friends dealing with the loss of love and the pangs of growing up in their post-collegate years is not only good filmmaking, but exceptional storytelling as well. Funny, at moments tragic, and always heartfelt, Kicking & Screaming reminds us that although a big film budget can make for amazing thrills, at the end of the day it’s a question of a movie’s strength that decides what’s worth watching and what’s not. The greatest strength of this film is the cast, featuring such relatively unknowns as the heartbreaking Josh Hamilton, the beautiful Olivia d’Abo and the unjustly underappreciated and ruthlessly funny Chris Eigeman. Kicking & Screaming is about as far away from The Dark Knight as you can get, but it also proves why The Dark Knight is as good as it is.

July 17th, 2008 by Hoopleton

In the modern age of America, we the free and the brave, find ourselves ever more on a descending plunge into the unknown. Although our politics is consumed by the dichotomy between good and evil, what we face most clearly is the unnerving struggle between order and chaos. To survey the state of the nation and the world it isn’t hard to see which way we’re headed.

The perpetual fight against terror, mismanaged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the crumbling economy and the erosion of our must trusted institutions are just the most obvious signs of what America has become. We all sense something wrong, most evident in our own increasing stress and desperation. The frustration is only compounded in that little exists to offer voice to this dread. Hollywood has certainly been no help up until now. Up until now.

The name of the movie is the Dark Knight, but it’s the Joker that steals the show, and in his shadow we find a true reflection of modern America and the choices that we must now make.

In many ways the critical praise is right on the money. The action scenes are phenomenal. The pace is quick. The story weaves in and out among dozens of characters creating multiple layers of conflicting interests, motives and flaws. The acting is impressive.

The city of Chicago filling in as Gotham sets a choking, stressful mood that’s both familiar and unnerving to any urbanite. Modern yet antiquated, gargantuan yet claustrophobic. This isn’t the over the top fantasy world of Tim Burton or even the semi-fantasy of Batman Begins, it’s the real city, inhabited by real people. It’s stark and isolating. It’s a city that serves as microcosm for our entire society, where the forces that are to protect us are often as corrupt and broken as those that would rob us of all the things we find most precious. As is the case in Gotham, these two elements are often one and the same.

In this every-city, director Chris Nolan sets the stage. Not for a war between good and evil, but between order and chaos. And what’s most brilliant about the ensuing struggle, is that ultimately all civilization is filtered through the rise and fall of just one man.

Christian Bale and his all-star supporting cast carry on where they left off with admirable strength (with the exception of Maggie Gyllenhaal filling in for the lackluster Katie Holmes). All around the performances are more than you’d expect from a superhero flick. Bale’s eccentric Bruce Wayne is arrogant and tortured. Gary Oldman, Michael Cain, Morgan Freeman reprise their roles displaying even more humanity than they had in the first one.

But more than anyone else it’s Heath Ledger’s Joker that leaves the most lasting impression. He’s not just an agent of destruction or a two-dimensional psychotic murderer, in Ledger’s hands he’s the puppet master of the show. Pacing like a caged wounded animal, the Joker’s presence is often chilling and ultimately truthful. He is not only the stuff of nightmares, but the darkest recesses of what lies within us all.

As the Joker reminds us time and time again, we live on a very thin line. People are just one step away from unleashing untold brutality on one another. Good men are just one step from turning bad. Although the canvas is Gotham city, the lab rat is Aaron Eckhart’s masterfully played Harvey Dent.

Dent, a rising white knight, a real hope in the darkness of night, ultimately becomes the focus of the Joker’s “social experiment,” and proves the master’s point. No man is above corruption. No man can stand alone.

If Heath Ledger’s death did not seem tragic before, it’s only after seeing what he’s created out of a comic book character that the full loss of this actor can truly be felt. The Joker isn’t chilling because he’s evil, he’s chilling because of the chaos he’s able to create. He’s terrifying because seemingly without effort he’s able to make us all cross that very thin line.

If there was one problem with The Dark Knight, is that as it is a Batman movie, Batman had to make an appearance now and again. The realism and the poignancy of the story are almost derailed by the man in the bat suit. Almost.

The bottom line is this: the Dark Knight is an incredibly ambitious film and unlike the majority of movies this summer, it delivers in full force. But more than that it’s one of the very few films in recent history that actually addresses the current state of what the United States is, and just how close we are to the abyss. Not bad for a franchise blockbuster.

July 17th, 2008 by Hoopleton

I once watched a Buddhist monk walking down the street, slowly, patiently, taking his time with every step. He seemed to concentrate on every motion. Heel to toe. Every foot, an act of patience and restraint. What would take a normal man at a normal pace a few seconds, seemed to take minutes out of his day.

The monk kept his eyes on the ground ahead and before willing the muscles of his leg to move, he seemed to hesitate, as though contemplating if the next several inches were the correct path.

Until today I didn’t understand.

I got off the train as I always do. I stepped onto the sidewalk. I glanced at the people passing by, and as I began to move, I let time slip past me. I let my pace slow.

What if everything I do is for nothing? What if all my accomplishments are meaningless and I will never ultimately rise out of the middle? What if this is my legacy, trapped in the unremarkable silence of normality?

I will never be a President. I will never be a star. My life as it is has been not unlike that of the majority of the people that occupy this land. I am a face in the crowd. I am a voice in the static. These thoughts are not original. My art is not genius. I am like everyone, and they are like me.

I am everyman. Everyman is me.

As I took each step, feeling my foot connect centimeter by centimeter along the concrete, I watched as dozens of people walked past me as though sprinting. I looked up at the buildings of the city and the bright sky. I let time slip past me. I let time slow. And I was still moving too fast. I was still racing, even at a snail’s pace.

I think I understand that it’s all right to be indistinguishable from the rest of the people on the street. I think I understand that it’s all right to be forgotten. I understand that beyond what we see in the blur of time there’s more than we can imagine.

I think I’m beginning to see what I never saw before, but what’s always been.

It’s not about fame or money or family. It’s about stopping. It’s about slowing down. It’s about soaking up the whole of everything and seeing past it till nothing exists anymore.

If you don’t understand, take a breath and walk slowly. Feel each step connect. Let go of ego. Let go of stress.

July 14th, 2008 by Hoopleton

It’s taken me some time to decompress. To let all the sights and sounds reorder themselves in my head. On the last night of my trip I had a dream that I was being attacked by rattlesnakes. They would jump out of the ground and along the highway. I didn’t know what the dream meant except that it kept me from writing.

In less than a week my father and I crossed some four thousand miles of open road. From the flooded counties of Wisconsin to the summit of the Rockies in Montana. We had few companions on the road, as gas prices kept most of America at home. There were trucks now and then, sometimes a hybrid, but for the greater part of the journey it was just us and an endless blue sky.

On the night we started off, the New York Times declared the American road trip dead. In a front page story the paper of record happily relegated the car vacation to the dust bin of history along with Tupperware parties and Red Scares. But we were going to a part of the world that still had Tupperware parties, and nuclear missile silos dotted the landscape.

On the first day there was nothing but flat empty farmland and the hypnosis of four-lane blacktop. The pitch and thud of the road was our constant companion, blaring even louder than the taxed engine or the hum of wind along the window frames.

Moving along at a constant seventy-five it was easy enough to get lost in the passing voids of tilted soil and corn. It was a place that everyone drove through, remarking on the emptiness, commenting on the flatness, but never stopping long enough to grasp why anyone would stay. It was a place that even the exurban revivalists feared. Too far from the holy light of their megachurches and corporate shrines. Too close to the realities of poverty that they hoped to cleanse from consciousness if not from the world.

The Midwest is often called flyover country, boring and monotonous there’s little to stimulate the mind outside of the occasional windmill farm, but it’s still enchanting somehow. It’s not the forests of Ohio Valley or the deserts of the Border States. It’s history unraveling. The last of what America was. Promises never kept. Traditions bought and sold. The legacy of toiling masses. Our enchanted agrarian past.

On the road among the crumbling farmhouses and rusted silos were the diners no one ever visited. The motels that only truckers stayed in. The small dying towns that rooted for the high school team. And like everyone else we didn’t stop. We just kept on driving, the pitch and thud our constant companion.

In South Dakota, as farms gave way to the prairie and rolling grazing land, we stumbled first upon the Badlands and then the Black Hills. We visited old western mining towns and climbed Boot Hill to pay our respects to Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane.

I won’t bother recounting the beauty of the land. There aren’t words enough to do it justice. But it’s easy to see why Native Americans consider these places sacred and why the United States government would never give it back. In the sunlight the peaks of iron and rock almost glisten. It’s hard not to look into the mouth of the landscape and not feel the presence of God. Above it all stands Mount Rushmore, partly a patriotic standard and partly an insult to the people who once owned this land. Promises never kept. Traditions bought and sold. The legacy of toiling masses.

We saw Crazy Horse, still in progress and crossed the border into Wyoming to hike near Devil’s Tower, which rises like giant out of near completely flat surroundings. But our thoughts were always on the highway and the long journey ahead of us.

As big sky country rolled outside of our windows and in the distance the snow covered peaks of the Rockies grew deceptively closer, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen to the small towns along the highway if gas prices continued to rise. I was struck by the restaurants, motels and out of the way tourist attractions that no one would come to patronize. I considered how much life in America would change without tourists driving in to keep the already poor economies of the Western states afloat. In another year would anyone still come to see the site of Custer’s Last Stand at Little Big Horn? Or would this chapter of American history be forgotten and unseen?

It wouldn’t be the same, I don’t think. Seeing pictures of a place isn’t at all the same as being there. An old battlefield may just be empty grassland today, but the ground has stories to tell. There’s an energy left by those who died there. There’s a story in the massacre of American soldiers who themselves had the blood of innocent people on their hands.

There are places along the interstate where long barricades can close off towns for weeks at a time when snow can’t be cleared off the road. In Deadwood, South Dakota there are Old West shootouts every hour on the hour along the streets. If you want to, you can gamble in gas stations in Wyoming. At a rest stop in North Dakota, you can climb out of your car and watch as the sun sets on a section of the Badlands where Theodore Roosevelt used to hunt. If you look hard enough, you might see one of the few remaining herds of Buffalo, chewing on tall grass, unconcerned by their brush with extinction.

If the American road trip is dead, will anyone other than truck drivers get to see these places? Will anyone again truly experience what America is?

We rode on, not speaking for hours at a time. Father and son and the pitch and thud of the road as our constant companion.

July 1st, 2008 by Hoopleton

It’s the month of July in the eighth year of the second millennium.

July was renamed for Julius Caesar, that most famous of Romans, who was born in this month. It is thirty-one days long and marks the celebrations of the founding of at least two of the first modern democracies on Earth. It is the often the warmest month in the northern hemisphere and the coldest in the southern.

This July is a month alive in turmoil. Two wars rage in the Middle East. The global economic crisis grows more precarious as unemployment and foreclosure rates increase. The election season breeds disenchantment. The biosphere begins to exhibit radical change.

Storm clouds are gathering on the horizon, this is true, but shafts of sunlight pierce the darkness now and then. And we are left sitting on our hands, wondering what can come next. Wondering where the next twenty-four days will lead us.

I’m back in Chicago now, still digesting the fragments of my trip. Look for a full report later on. Till then, enjoy the warm weather. Ride a bicycle. Go for a walk. And for a moment at least, find solace in that we’re only in the first act.