...light up

 Some Santa Barbara

California is indeed a menagerie of climates and atmospheres and moods. I didn’t see the entire south-north stretch, but I got most of it from Los Angeles through Sacramento and up to the Mount Shasta area before leaving the state for Oregon. I believe the Northwest really begins in the roots of Shasta. Though Sac and The City and L.A. and Santa wherever each have a unique feel, they are certainly all California-y. 

Some Hollywood

But as soon as the flatness starts rumbling again and that white capped mountain shines brightly in the distance, things begin to change. The pines come out in force, and rivers dig gorges into earth again and rocks thrust into the sky in a frozen excitement loom over the winding man-made highway. This is the Northwest.

But before I was there I was somewhere between the Southwest and the West.

Some Vegas

It seems like so long ago, now, when I was standing in Las Vegas looking up at sights I’d only seen in movies and feeling a bit cardboard, like I was in one of those movies, as a prop or scenery perhaps, that those facades would all be torn down when the final take is completed, to be replaced, that the illusion of three-dimension was accomplished by skilled artists and master magicians. I couldn’t do anything but stand and look around—besides, there isn’t really anything to do if you aren’t checking in somewhere and gambling. Perhaps that isn’t completely true—it felt that way—for it wasn’t void of excitement. No, there was electricity in the air—not just what was lighting up the whole strange colony—and everyone was in love. Couples meandered, took selfies and laughed, sometimes stumbling, and that joy was infectious. This is the city of sin, right? Well I didn’t have much time to indulge in many of my vices, so a cigarette had to suffice. I lit up, looked around, left.

Some San Simeon

After the long descent through Apple Valley the great state of California greeted me and I managed my way into L.A. Good thing for GPS; without it navigating the inverted labyrinths of roadways would have been impossible. Southern California was not without its perks—namely congenial weather—and the traffic wasn’t even so bad as the rumors purport. But you do drive everywhere. I know I drive everywhere in my own hometown, but the driving is thicker in L.A., or something. You want to wipe it all off like sweat, but it sticks too well. It may be some illusion—if it is, it is besieging—but everything seems so far away and takes so much energy to find and at the end of the day you wonder if you spent more time behind the wheel or away from it.

Some Los Angeles

It was a kind of relief to leave the valley and traverse the beautiful coastline up through Santa Barbara and then to Monterey and Carmel and Solinas and then to San Francisco (aka “The City”). The coast surprised me, actually. Thinking it similar to the golden shores of Miami, which is maybe the case in the L.A. area, it was oftener steep drops into crashing waves, like Icarine mountains that finally realized it was too hot and decided to go for a swim, somersaulting into the Pacific. As I went it proved to be a continuous (really) collision. North of San Francisco the coastal road was so windy I slalomed my way north feeling like a test driver avoiding orange cones in one of those commercials.

Some Carmel

But the Bay Area should not be passed over without mention. It is much larger than I ever anticipated—I’m not sure why—but just as hilly. The City is brimming with an energy, artistic, historic, diverse. The Spanish heritage is revived in authentic taquerias, and new and used bookstores speckle the strips of shops on roads filled with so many people dressed conspicuously that they are swallowed in a sea of eclecticism, like all those beautiful lights blinking at the same time in Vegas where the gorgeous marble statues go unnoticed. There seemed to be quite the “immigrant” population—all friendly—Easterners who abandoned their home for a Western one settle in the most Eastern city of the West. Honestly, Frisco’s a regular New York or Boston, in feel. But the city’s veins run west, and that attracts we who want something different, but the same, sort of.

Some San Francisco

So, I suppose it is like any other city in these regards. And maybe I liked it because all this time out West makes me long for home. Maybe that’s what’s nice about Oregon: how East it feels—they have a Portland even!—and no matter how close to the sunset I get, my heart is in his rise. Isn’t that what I loved about Santa Fe? How like morning she was, clear and fresh and crisp? Isn’t that what I left in Vegas and L.A., the cities who wake and live in the electrified dark?

The New Yorkian skyline of The City (not to mention the arrogance—our city is best) is familiar so far from familiarity. I lighten up.

Some Northwest

How good to bookend the trip, from one Portland to the other; from one pineland to another; from East to West. It makes me think how we really are all one, all United Statesian. Being at Pacific’s scratching fingers I am no farther from Atlantic’s reach. I stand on her shores and look far into the distance, to the Cathays and Tartars I may never see, may not even exist. Isn’t it true? Far enough West brings me still farther East after all. 

...do it tomorrow

All I kept saying was rad. The people, totally rad. The weather, the view, totally rad. The activities, professions, museums, performances, all rad. But what an outdated word for New Mexico! It is no longer the 80s, Simon; no one’s saying rad. Except me in New Mexico, apparently. But I couldn’t help it.

The Midwest is back there...ahead is the South West

Before I left I had a feeling I would like the South West, and I did. It began the moment I crossed into the state…something in the air shifted, perhaps. We were no longer in Kansas—thank God—and Oklahoma was behind us too. We were officially in the South West. The landscape responded immediately, as if to greet us from a deep sleep. First there were the easy, deep breaths in rolling hills. Then the mesas—glorious mesas!—rose in first movements and fresh eyes. That kind of love only morning sees gently grew into mountains in  the seated position, eyes rubbed with clouds. And that sun, fully awake, smiled at me and said ‘hello’ in a ‘good morning’ kind of way.

Omega Bridge outstide Taos, NM

Our first stop was in Taos, an artsy spiritual town unsurprisingly nestled in the heavens. In every direction you can see for miles and miles and then up even higher to surrounding peaks. In one corner lies the land of the Pueblo Indians, the other has a shrine to poet D. H. Lawrence, and in between are the shops and restaurants of tourist-fed wares and well-fed tourists. Indian artifacts and artwork, cowboy garb and southwestern spices were in the windows of shop after shop. But it is becoming with a view. Maybe even quaint. 

Easter sunrise in Arizona

At the Taos Diner II we interacted with genuine gals more concerned with contact and communication than orthodoxy, and I enjoyed every bit of it, from the off-color jokes printed on their menus to the casual way they poured coffee, to the matter-of-factedly way they denied service when the power went out. We sat and drank coffee until it went cold or the electricity came back on and told stories of bears in the mountains. Outside the restaurant the cook toked on her cigarette and laughed with the neighboring businessman about the situation.

It is the land of mañana, apparently, so this is par for the course. I met a transplanted New Yorker who told me that first when he explained the difference between “the way it works” in the North East and South West. Cowboy poet S. Omar Barker (aka Ol’ SOB) said it this way:

Mañana is Spanish word I’d sometimes like to borrow.

It means “don’t skeen no wolfs today that you don’t shot tomorrow!

An’ eef you got some jobs to do, in case you do not wanna,

Go ‘head an’ take siesta now! Tomorrow ees mañana!

Le Canyón Grande

But I like it this way—not so fast paced and crazed, with less stress clinging to us like our wintery garments.  I like that it is markedly different in the South West. The character is distinct from other state clusters. Maybe that's why I'm on the West Coast and finally getting to this haphazard post. Santa Fe is growing on me. Or maybe that’s why everything was rad—because it wasn’t cool, like California, or wicked like the North East. It isn’t awesome or tight or right-on. It’s just, totally rad.

…get the hell out of dodge

It’s been day after day, it seems, in deceptive listlessness. Like plains rolling into farms rolling into fields—the experience one has crossing Kansas—these recent weeks have been monotonous, though anticipatory.

My travels back from Nicaragua went as anyone’s would. I was able to spend my final hours on the stoops of the Ometepan locals, a joy I often miss on the fenced porches of the States. It takes a certain kind of life to end the day sitting outside, peaceably, watching children pass, conversing with neighbors, content with stillness. In Palestine they understood this secret pleasure. So too did those in Nepal and Jordan. I was reminded of my sweet life in the West Bank as I tried to speak Spanish, both jokingly and seriously, which are hardly different to the local. I sat through dusk into darkness; the volcano silently faded into the navy night and a host of starlight broke through the sun’s waning cover. Paradoxically, the conversation was light, but the contact much deeper, like Michelangelo’s God touching Adam. These moments of connection are so delicate, intricate, even beautiful, and they occur wherever we are able to really meet with someone as ‘other-worldly’ as a Nicaraguan, or United Statesian or wherever-ian.

However, I had to say adios beneath hopes of return and a smoky volcano. I rode the ferry across the choppiest waters I’ve ever experienced and I marveled at the fact that we docked. For a moment there I honestly had no idea how or when we’d stop and what we were going to smack into and from where I will jump to save myself. Good thing I don’t have an iPhone to get wet—I thought (yes, these are my concerns). Luckily the plane ride was smoother.

The PoeMobile gearing up for departure

Home was freezing, my back peeled completely from a burn and I discovered I had developed shingles across my side. So when folk asked me how was Nicaragua, I found myself replying with a kind of love-hate paradox. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, really; it was packing time! My father were to be off to the West on another leg of the Dead Poet Tour—this one exploring from Santa Fe to L.A. to Seattle. And there was much to do.

As I write this, on our way to our first stop in Taos, New Mexico, we are in the windy, cold, precipitous tedium of Western Kansas. The phrase “get the hell out of dodge” was first said in reference to Dodge City which we just passed through. It makes sense. Three titillating days of sunshine in Kansas City and Wichita spoiled us. Now all I am hoping for are the sunned clay homes, mesas and cacti of my imagined Southwest as we chase the horizon.

Westward Poe!

Ever westward. Towards occidens, the setting sun. It is a historically poetic direction in which to explore. Eden was in the East, and so lay our beginnings. From our exile until Lewis and Clark, until now, even, we have been headed West. It seems it is as Kerouac says, the east of my past with the west of my future. It is in the west our days end, unreachable but chase-able. And so in the hand of Discovery is the hand of Dusk, and they are inseparable.

So let’s get the hell out of dodge and head westerly. There’s nothing here for us anyway.

...sleep lightly

I implied it in the last two blogs--to put away the technology and that it is hard to sleep here in Nicaragua. In writing those words I didn't suspect how they would turn around to both spite and protect me.

I met up with the group I would be traveling and working with in Managua and we began our trip toward Isla de Ometepe--the Island of Ometepe. As we moved we met people who asked where we were from. I caught myself a handful of times:

"I'm American--I mean, I'm from the United States." After all, I haven't left Greater America, and I share a continental, maybe hemispherical identity with the Nicaraguense who are also "American." In fact, it was in modern day Brazil that the name "America" was first planted, so perhaps I am only getting closer to real deal. Not surprisingly, it is an easier question to answer in Spanish, where my only option is Soy de Estados Unidos. They have understood this concept far longer than we have.

Despite ourselves, we arrived on Ometepe after half a day,  smiling and excited, and were carted over to the orphanage, CICRIN, where we were to spend the next week doing construction works. Indeed, exciting it was, even by the first night.

I have always been a light sleeper--or perhaps an ever-aware sleeper--and something near me stirred my senses the first night at the orphanage. A moment later I heard the delicate sound of two lips separating and curiosity led me out of subconsciousness. I softly turned my head and opened my eyes to a crouched figure, pawing through my friend's luggage, looking up intermittently in caution. I suppose you never think you are being robbed until it happens--it is too far-fetched to happen to me, I thought without thinking--and so I sat up calmly. I looked over, hoping my friend had just risen early in the darkness for a morning stroll and didn't want to wake the others. Instead I caught sight of the burglar darting out of the room on noiseless feet and in the instant I was able to make it to the door, he was gone with only a crunch of dead leaves left behind. He made away with my friend's money and my beloved iPhone. An iPhone I care little for except for the photos he stole with it.

It goes without saying that I spent the entire rest of my stay in Nicaragua not only without a way to contact home but also without a camera; I could only memorize the beautiful sights, not immortalize them. And this is much to my chagrin because I love to take pictures of my travels and use them to color this blog or my desktop background or just to armchair travel in the future. Either way it forced me to have even fewer barriers between me and my experience than before. A camera is a wall, and the call of Instagram and Facebook, a distraction. This situation gave me a more unadulterated perspective. And what came into focus was an older world than I would have thought.

I noticed that there is something antiquated about this place, perhaps in their faces which still have the markings of ancient peoples (some of which are even Asiatic, reminding me of the great migrations during the Ice Age). But the sun seems older here too. They wear it on their skin and in their wrinkles. The toughness of their high cheeks, the trenches that crack in expression, the flat foreheads, they are all tanned by a hereditary sun. This is not like me, who gets it on vacation; it is a recent and fleeting color. At the beach where I waited for the ferry to leave, I saw young boys in their underwear chasing one another into the bar for a quick, sopping look at the Real Madrid-Barcelona score. They are various tones of brown, and in their skimpy attire I notice that the color is everywhere. There is no tan.

The sun bakes the land like a tortilla in this dry season where everything is dead or dying--something I wouldn't have been able to notice if I wasn't told since I come from the barren northern winters. I feel like we are harvested maize, popping under heat or puffing like souffles in the rolling hills. I look around in my stuffed minibus ride (what the locals call inta mortales, or something like that, meaning "on your way to die") and see an aging orange haze that takes me out of the bus and into the realm of the Olmec, Zapotecan and Mayan civilizations which thrived for hundreds of years, each adding to the menagerie of technological and agricultural innovations. They produced uniquely accurate calendars, great religious structures and the world-changing maize. Quite a bit has been discovered about these peoples, and quite a bit more is left undiscovered.

But perhaps all this is what I want to see--the vestiges of a glorious ancestry--because it helps me with my Euro-Caucasian guilt for spilling their blood so thoroughly and systematically, and for destroying those rosetta's stones of cultural information. With it I'll sleep better, but even the young men with gelled hair and tight shirts clicking their tongues at the passing women seem more American than I. Their eyes are Mesoamerican and their blood reaches possibly farther back in time than mine does, even if I trace mine back to Mesopotamia. Everything here is baked--a timely process--like that tortilla, dry and crumbling but rich in flavor and reaching far back into traditional and cultural history. I am a gringo, a microwaveable import.

Well, maybe not. I decide a stolen iPhone isn't such a great big deal and I relax into the views passing outside the windows. Sitting in that bus, my knee in the crotch of the man facing me and his nearly in mine, I take the trip from Managua to Jinotepe to Rivas to San Jorje to Isla de Ometepe as a local, as an American.