NYC over spring break. i took notes. here they are (the first day, the drive up):
steve (on finally meeting amy's dad): now everything makes sense about you and jody.
amy: yes, because jody hung out in my dad's garage and i was raised by my grandparnets. jody was strong and chubby as a kid, and i was sick all the time. jody tough, and dad could rough-house with her. he could relate.
steve told us about his childhood in indiana, growing up in the middle of cornfields and cows, tapping maple syrup trees. i was reminded of my own childhood, surrounded by sorghum, and the ubiquitous cows.
we saw a cop pull a u-turn on the interstate, crossing the median, not even putting his sirens on. amy said "he doesn't care."
drove through a land of silos, and amy pointed out the composition of their arrangement, the simple block shapes of farm architecture.
a winter field, full of snow, a backhoe parked in the middle.
talked about politics, bout taft. "as ohio goes, america goes," amy said. new no-tolerance drug laws gonna cause more problems.
the skies, the water, the silos, all the same shade of grey. yellow corn stubble poking out of the dark brown earth, frosted with snow. the darker brown of bare trees and the rusty red of the barns.
we stopped for food and saw a tow truck that said "EL BURRO TOWING."
the three of us talked about maybe going to boston, to MIT, and steve said "i'd have trouble relating to those kids. i'd say to them 'your college experience is a lot better than mine. you have a nice place to live, whereas i live in a fucking shanty.'"
talking about houses, architecture, and anthropologists being bad at designing things. steve quipped "haven't you heard? anthropologists are bad at intelligent design."
we passed near muskingam, and steve and amy told me about this tribe of indians that live in a village inside a warehouse, as a sort of tourist attraction. "imagine what this was like when it was all indians," i said. forests so dense and thick and massive, small communities spread out, more ecologically friendly.
Drove around wheeling. past the cememtary, where someone smiled and waved to us. we drove past a huge, absolutely massive nail factory, made out of tin sheeting. it must have been six or seven stories at its tallest point, and was probably an 1/8th mile on a side. it said "La Belle cut nail plant, the largest in the world" in painted letters on the side. it was surrounded on all sides by flying highway overpasses, and steve said "those are the cathedrals of our time, " quoting david byrne as we went under. wheeling felt truly rust bowl, industrial, drab as hell, and feeling abandoned or left behind. amy said "seattle has parts like this, but sunny and happy."
amy: i wonder if we'll sit around and tell stories of when we were 20 when we're fifty, like about the canoe trip when eric fell in the water, or when jared saved dave thomas.
the landscape in PA more rolling, but otherwise very similar to n. Ohio. the barns are white, though. dusk in the darkly forested deeply creased hills, with that blue cast to the light after the sun has disappeared but the light has not yet faded. windmill generators on a hill.
lines of light moving through the inky black shapes of hills in the dark.
at this point, i took over driving, and drove through all the white-tiled, flourescent lit tunnels to NYC, where i traumatized amy by driving like a new yorker. steve was pretty quiet and didn't say anything, but he didn't let me drive on the way back, which i think says it all.
***
being good isn't nearly as hard as i thought it was going to be.
in other news, i'm poor and need a job that pays more than $200/month. conversa is shafting me. meh.
rousseau was such a hippocrite. like, wtf, 'n stuff. knocking up yr maid and putting yr kids in orphanages cuz ya think ya won't make a good dad after writing "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains" ain't too terribly punk rock. no-body's perfect. 'cept maybe dead people. i'm learning middle english in my medieval lit class. which i'm taking for fun. bwahahahah. i'm fucked up.
