#thisisntforyoucarl

[rebustein94-blog]

What’s Inside of Room 25?

Glacier National Park is indescribable. You turn a corner and wham, there’s another peak, even taller than the last. Another corner and blam there’s an entire range you haven’t seen before. And you’re standing there, admiring the way the mist steams out of the very trees along its side, so awed that it takes you a full minute or two to realize that’s not mist. It’s the clouds. The mountains are so tall that the clouds can’t even rise above them.

Nothing will make you feel God like a mountain will. Nothing else in the world like it. You can almost hear them humming with age and power.

You can mess with the desert. Conquer it. Live in it. Whatever. You can own the prairie and the plains and the woods, of course. Swamps, too, I guess. The tundra, if that’s what you’re into.

But nobody fucks with a mountain.

I made friends with some of the staff at the Inn and they invited me to go on a hike with them down to this place called Swinging Bridge. You go over this excitingly treacherous, definitely swinging plank thing and up towards a peak called Scalplock. We stood by the bank of a river running through the center of a wide valley for a while. The water is this pure light blue and it keeps pummeling over the rocks so hard you wonder where all that water is actually coming from. If it’s all just melting snow pouring down from the peaks, how much fucking snow is there?

I looked around the valley. It swept out over a long stretch of rocks and dirt and bare trees. I told one of the girls who had invited me there that we didn’t have open land like that in New York.

She blinked at me. Glanced around the valley. I guess it looked relatively small to her because she said, “You think this is open?”

“Well...yeah.” Wasn’t it?

“Maybe I’m just spoiled,” she said, shaking her head. “But this is nothing.”

On our way back to the car, we came across the foreleg of a deer. It ended in a red and bone-white stump. It was bent just so, and lay directly in the middle of the path. No sign of blood or a struggle or anything else around. As if someone or something had carried it there and dropped it. Had left it exclusively for us to find.

“Must be bears nearby,” one of the staff members. But there was this edge to the way she said. This clipped tone of confidence and we all knew. Or felt it. That there was always the possibility for something more.

We moved quickly back to the car.

Because nothing makes you feel the devil like a mountain.

***

Since Glacier is so indescribable, let me describe instead an update on the Izaak Walton’s ghost.

The girl who invited me on the hike and told me I didn’t know what “open” meant is named Margie. When I asked Margie about the ghost on the third floor yesterday afternoon, she nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “We had a member of our house staff always refuse to go in room 25 because she said it freaked her out.”

I rubbed my hands together. Of course, I love a good ghost story. “Any specific reason?”

Margie shrugged. “Just a feeling she had. And one time, one of our security guys saw someone standing at the ATM downstairs way after the lounge down there was closed. So he went down to check it out. But nobody was there.”

“Excellent.” Yes, this was good.

“There’s a guy who stays in 25 every summer. He says he can see weird markings on the wall.”

My eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah. Like something’s in the wood.”

“Please let me go up there,” I said.

She gave me the key and I went up. Room 25 was at the end of the hall. I felt nervous opening the door, but in a fun haunted-house kind of way. Not a “I’m instinctively sensing my at-hand death right now” way.

Inside, it was just like all the other rooms. Except it was cold as death. For a second that got me. For a second, I went, “Ooohh!” But I figured they probably just didn’t have the heat on, since no one was staying in there. Dread gnawed at me as I opened the bathroom door but inside was just some dumb old bathroom.

No markings on the walls. Nothing.

I had expected symbols burned into the woodwork. Or maybe claw marks from some horrible nightmare-dwelling beast. Or demonic designs formed by the knots and warps of the very wood itself, indicating some demonic presence within the very beams of the hotel.

Nope.

I brought the key back down and said, essentially, “Well, that was all a nice little ghost story. Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, obviously feeling the same way. And I would have mostly forgotten about it.

But then I met Bill.

Bill’s hairline is halfway up his head. The hair he does have is this white straw stuff that swishes around when he moves his head. He has thick glasses that magnify his eyes to insect-like proportions and the widest, most genuine smile I’ve ever seen.

Bill’s from the Midwest.

“Oh, sure,” he’ll say if you ask him a question. “Yeah, you bet.” As he bobs his head agreeably, grinning such a straight-up smile it’s almost off-putting. Almost. Then you realize he means it and you’re like, “Okay, right on, Bill.”

Bill was on the night shift last night, so it was just him and me and the darkness after about nine (when all the elderly couples curl up into their pods and unplug their alien brains...I assume). So in the dim light of the lobby, I asked him about the ghost.

“Oh!” he said. “I’ve never seen anything here. I’ve heard some things from people but I think it’s all bogus, you know. I used to own a bar, though, and we had some things happen there.”

“Like what?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, gosh. Let’s see. One time, I took this photo of the dance floor when there were all these people dancing. But in the middle of them, in the picture, was this very tall black man in a tweed suit. Like, seven or eight feet tall. And you could see right through him.”

“Spooky,” I said, intrigued.

Bill, encouraged by my enthusiasm, went on. “Another time, we snapped a picture of the stairs. And we saw three little orbs at the bottom of the staircase. So we took another picture. And they were closer. Another picture. Closer. Coming up the stairs. Until finally they were right in front of us. And, gosh, we got a chill, then, you know.” He laughed.

“That’s awesome,” I said. Bill had some good stuff.

“And this one time,” he said, really beaming widely now, “I was upstairs. And my wife was down in the bar. And I heard this bloodcurdling scream. So I stopped. And listened. And I heard another one. Just bloody murder, you know. So I run down and I ask, ‘Barb? You hear anything?’ And she goes, ‘No’. So that was pretty weird.” He laughed again.

I stared at him. In the darkness of the lobby, almost entirely alone, thinking about the notion of hearing anything out of the ordinary, let alone a bloodcurdling scream, I was not on board with this laughter. How is that your reaction? How do you hear a disembodied scream and go, “Say, that’s odd!”

“That’s nuts,” I said, less enthusiastic. My spine felt suddenly cold.

But Bill was on a roll. “Another time, somebody got stabbed in the hallway by the bathroom. But there was no one else there.”

Stabbed?!

“Okay, Bill.”

“Oh, and we had someone get pushed down the stairs.”

What?! My room was upstairs!

“Hey, that’s great, Bill.” I started backing away.

“Oh, and here people have seen figures walking around the lobby at night sometimes. I just remembered that.”

Sweet Christ! We were in the lobby! The very same lobby!

“Anyway,” said Bill, shrugging. “I’m about to close up. So good night!”

And he left me alone there, which was a terrible idea. I have a very good imagination.

Although, really, who’s to say Bill isn’t the ghost?

I mean, I’d buy that. I’d buy that in a second.

But it’s an old hotel. It creaks and groans all the time. The pipes clang and the wood snaps as it settles and warps. The floors scream and the walls ooze and the elk bust on the wall drools blood. Just normal old hotel stuff.

It’s got character, you know? It’s cozy. Super cozy. Not scary at all.

In fact, I’m sitting in the lobby right now! All alone, long after dark. And I love it! There’s this clattering sound that strikes up every few minutes somewhere by the bar that I’m seriously having trouble identifying and someone keeps walking around above me and I’m not 100% sure there’s anyone staying down that hallway because I haven’t seen anyone down there yet but there are people around and it is a cozy cozy old hotel. So what if I honestly can not shake the feeling that I’m not alone right now? Right? It’s just an old hotel!!!! RIGHT??!!

(Essex, MT)

[rebustein94-blog]

Man Fucking Down

Sir Hincty Brinkley

sometimes a Lieutenant

sometimes a Captain

depending on my mood

but always a knight

and a handsome 

beige 

little man

is lost to us.

Gone.

Swallowed

by the great unknown

and the unknowable.

The missing

and the damned.

Ye Gods!

How could thee tread

on a precious 

beige 

little soul

such as that

of Sir Hincty Brinkley,

adventurer extraordinaire.

Damn ye!

May your spines break

your muscles melt

and eternal torture 

torment thee!

Seriously

just like 

why?

Fuck you.

***

Sir Hincty Brinkley was plucked from a basket of free figurines at the WWII Museum in Toccoa, GA. I was trying to think of a strong army man name and Lt. Brinkley popped into my head so it stuck. And I was reading On The Road at the time, which was a wishy-washy idea, at best, because it made me a little nuts for a while. Dean Moriarty flicking at the back of my skull and whispering mania into my ear. One of the words he and good old Sal Paradise use a lot in the book, and plastered to my mind, is “hincty”. He’d say, like, “We stopped at this hincty town.” Or something. So I figured it was a name that would encapsulate The Trip (or part of it, at least), and it stuck, too. Hincty Brinkley. 

Anyway.

The birth of Brinkley at this simple event in the museum gift shop was a wondrous one because he stuck with me until now. Over a month! For many magical moons we traveled together, across endless states (especially Texas--talk about endless). He was a perfect, silent companion. Never complaining from his home in the...bottle holder? The fuck you call that thing? The outer side pocket thing on a backpack? What is that?? Look, we all know what it is and the point is that that is where Sir Lt. Hincty Brinkley lived for nigh on a month. A comforting presence through many travails. He never made a peep, even when we were out in the blazing sun and the shivering rain. Or when I shoved water bottles on top of his tiny, plastic beige form. Because that’s where you hold them, you know.

Nope. Faithful to the last, that Captain Brinkley.

Bless him.

I thought he vanished many times. Swept away by my own carelessness or a too-hard bump of the backpack. Accidentally dumped on some train or trail. But he always persisted. Always greeted my groping fingers with his firm, beige plasticyness. Always there at the bottom of the...bottle holder. Strong as Hell, that guy.

I didn’t know what I would do with him when I got home. Prop him on a shelf somewhere, maybe, as a subtle reminder that The Trip happened. As a gentle nudge into memory, wherever I happened to end up in future.

But alas.

For when I slipped on my bag this morning, and checked for my little buddy, as usual, he was but mist. Gone from my...bottle holder. I panicked, checked all over for him. Scoured my entire room. Nothing.

Sir Captain Lt. Hincty Brinkley, Esq. was fucking gone.

Gone 

gone

fucking gone.

The bastards--this world!

Alas.

I’m sorry, buddy. I’m really sorry. I let you down. First my pictures, now you. All gone. All wasted. Tis a cruel world, old friend. I miss you. I’m sorry. 

Come back to me. Please. Or at least let me know you’re safe in the great bottle holder thing in the sky. Some kind of sign. Anything. 

Please.

Alas.

RIP, Sir Lt. Hincty Brinkley. Your life was short but sweet. I’ll miss you.

(Whitefish, MT)

[rebustein94-blog]

Tumwater Canyon

Somewhere between

the yogurt 

and the beer

it struck me that 

I really love walking through grocery stores in towns I don’t live in. 

Wow do I love it.

Like entering

another world

close to ours

but not quite the same

where products are all

vaguely familiar

but totally alien.

And then

what really struck me

was how you could just walk

into any of them

from anywhere.

Into any neighborhood

and any world

from any other one.

In fact

if you had the time

you could walk from

the Stop and Shop in Poughkeepsie, NY

all the way to the Safeway in Leavenworth, WA.

Hell

I could walk

from New Orleans

to Canada.

Pretty much everywhere

around here

is freaking walkable. 

Which I think is astounding

and 

tragically

easily forgotten. 

***

Taking the train from Seattle to Leavenworth, you pass by so much gorgeous countryside and forest and mountains that it breaks your heart. I thought I would cry after gazing out the window at the ninth or so raging streambed we passed over, so precarious on those old wooden bridges. It’s like being on another planet, filled with gnarly, lichen-covered trees and mist. Stuffed with glowing white and blue mountains and rolling green farms. The sun warm against the steely-colored rock and snow, hazing up out of the horizon.

I wanted to swallow the whole thing. It was so perfect and quiet and wonderful. I went a little mad on the train just looking at it, actually. Wanted to beat my palms against the window and howl. Strip naked and just roll around in the majesty of it.

If everything was bigger in Texas, I didn’t notice. Here, the trees are miles tall. They’ve got pinecones the size of your fist. Sharp, too. You pick one up and it stings your fingers. They pound against your roof at night like the very sky is punching your shingles. It would have maybe helped to know that before I lay anxiously in bed, gaping at the ceiling and calling, “Hello?”

Klam-boom. 

“Is anyone there?!”

Slam-clash.

“Oh God! I said, is anyone there?!”

The answer is no, of course. Nobody is here in Leavenworth, WA. 

Except the host-lady of the AirBnb I’m staying in. Every time I see her, she beams at me. In fact, she beams so hard the force of it throws her head back. Jolts her hand into the air and whirs it around in a wild, excited wave. She greeted me when I arrived and made sure I had everything I needed. Then clapped her hands, bowed, and said, “Blessings.”

That, and the strange noises at night, and I was pretty much ready to be butchered by a cult. 

But, no. She’s just really nice. She really did wish me good blessings. In fact, everyone around here is nice.

It was creepy at first, not gonna lie. I thought they were brainwashed or something. I mean, of course I did. I’m from New York. Who’s just nice like that? I figured, how could everyone just be going about their business and be so happy? Be so content?

The answer is obvious. They just are content. They’re peaceful and they realize they’re fine.

Because the mountains have been around for millions of years, so whatever BS is happening today is only happening today. 

Seems to be more or less the attitude.

Plus you could be taken out by a pinecone any second so why bother?

***

Down the road from the Safeway is Dan’s Food Mart, which is small and has carpet floors. Carpet floors! I’ve never seen that in a grocery store. Have you?? Holy Hell, this is why I love going to other grocery stores. You really see people’s daily lives in ways you wouldn’t otherwise. I spent several minutes just walking around, feeling the purple-ish blue carpet massage the bottoms of my feet and going, “Wow.”

And that’s when the part about everything being walkable struck me.

If everything was bigger in Texas, I didn’t notice. Because everything is massive in Washington, and nobody says a word about it. They don’t have to.

Which raises some interesting questions about Texas, honestly.

(Leavenworth, WA)

[rebustein94-blog]

Let’s All Raise A Glass to P.J. Malone

I only spent two nights in Seattle. My first night, I wandered around the neighborhood I was staying in, on Capitol Hill. Saw all the nice bars, coffee shops, the crowds of hipsters and punks. I went into a pinball arcade/bar and played around for a while. Listening to the metallic churning and whirring from the machines around me, and the surge of the people drinking IPAs at the bar.

The part of the city I was in was filled with fancy houses and mansions and giant, pink blooming trees. It was sunset when I was wandering that first night, and everything was beautiful golden-yellow, so I was content to just saunter along for a while. Looking up at all the lives behind gates. Every so often turning to gaze across at the downtown skyline. At the mountains and the Needle, of course. Just letting my mind float around in the cool breeze of the northwest sun as it faded away.

My mind was really somewhere else when I walked through the smell of a campfire. Whatever I had been thinking about (can’t remember now), it was slammed out of me by that smell. I stumbled, jerked my head back. I stopped there on the sidewalk, looked around. Sniffed the air. Hard. Great gulps of smoky, woody stench. I tried to swallow all of it.  Snorfling big lungfuls of sticky air because there is nothing on God’s Green Earth that I love more than the smell of a campfire.

But I couldn’t find the source. 

I turned in complete, idiotic circles. No smoke anywhere. No people lounging on back porches. No sound of laughter or melting marshmallows. The fences too high to see the backyards. To see whatever fire pits might be hiding around there.

The neighborhood seemed utterly quiet and desolate. I felt abruptly and entirely alone. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was probably because campfires are all about community. About safety and togetherness. Gathering together in a shared warmth to push back the unknown of the night. And there I was, on the outside. 

And thinking about that made me realize something else-- that smell hadn’t made me think of anything. It didn’t shoot me back to a specific childhood memory or a single good day somewhere in the back of my mind. No musings or reminiscences. Nothing came up. No connections. Just the simple thought, “Wow, I love that smell.” 

And that made me feel kind of worse. Feeling like there was nothing visceral there. Nothing strong enough to be attached to like that. I mean, that’s the thing, right? You smell a particular smell and it sends you somewhere? The olfactory or whatever? Bringing up whatever rosebud you’ve got stored away? Accessing deep, secretive parts of your brain? Right?

So where the hell were mine?

I stood on the curb for a few minutes, wondering. Wondering why I hadn’t gone back to anything. Or if I maybe felt like there was nothing specific to go back to. Which, of course, is bullshit because writing this now I can think of dozens of things. Dozens of campfires shared and days loved. So that’s really not it.

But there on the curb, alone, in that split second when the smell swallowed me... I don’t know.

***

Further up the hill was the cemetery. Supposedly, it was where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried, so I wanted to check it out. The thing slopes up a big rise, heading up towards the setting sun. If you stand at the top, you can look down on more of the city, rolling out into valleys and hills, forever and ever in that golden-green glow of the end of the day.

I passed by a grave where somebody had left three vases of flowers. The largest had toppled over, spilling its bouquet onto the ground. I felt something grind inside of me. Some fist turning inside my chest. I knelt and righted the vase, putting the flowers back where they belonged. I walked away quickly, feeling spooked. Not at the grave, but at myself.

I ran into a family that was trying to find the Lees as well, so we banded together and just Googled it. Took us about thirty seconds.

“God,” said the mom, shaking her head. “We’ve been out here for twenty minutes! How did we miss it!?”

The gravesite is pretty nice, actually. There’s a bench you can sit on, and there’s stuff all over the graves. Flowers, oranges, scraps of paper and things. The headstones shine like new. Slicked-up marble and gold lettering. Really nice. Really loved. And now, this family clambering all over it. Me sitting by myself on the bench.

Then I noticed, off to the side, a much smaller and older grave. It was tucked halfway under a bush, and was completely overshadowed by the spectacle of the Lees. It belonged to a guy named P.J. Malone, who lived for about forty years back in the mid-1800s. Whoever that was.

I pointed at it. “I feel bad for this guy.”

The family noticed the grave then, too, and laughed. 

“Yeah,” said the mom. “Nobody’s leaving flowers for P.J. Malone! Come on, kids. You got your selfies.”

The family ambled away. The mom, dad, and their two kids piling into a beat-up minivan. I continued to sit and stare and P.J. Malone.

Granted, the guy probably did have people to leave him flowers. He probably had plenty of family members and friends who loved him and would come to visit, back in the day. But standing there in 2017, the contrast was so stark. The faded old lonely headstone, and the warm glory of the worshiped right next to it. Standing there in 2017, in the sunset, in a city in which I knew no one, the contrast was clear: You’re either a Lee or you’re a Malone. You’re either remembered or you’re not. You’ve either got yourself a nice campfire or...

Something.

The battered old minivan drove away and the hill was silent. Eventually, I left, too. I took a different route back down the hill, not wanting to pass the smell again by myself.

(Seattle, WA)

[rebustein94-blog]

History

It’s a small thought but I’ve been meaning to write about it since San Antonio. I’m in Portland now, at a bed and breakfast desk in the corner of the room, where you can feel the grey green morning outside, and the rain, humming through the windows, all calm and quiet.

So anyway, I guess it’s time to jot this down. Make it would stop buzzing around my skull.

***

One of the main things you’re supposed to do in San Antonio is see The Alamo. Everybody sees The Alamo. You have to remember to see The Alamo. 

The thing was about a half-hour walk from the place I was staying. So I figured I would saunter along in its general direction, and look for food along the way. It being lunch time and all. I pulled out my phone and did a simple search for nearby places to eat. I found a restaurant down the block that looked decent. But there was a small line of warning-orange text under its hours of operation on my screen that read, “Cesar Chavez Day might affect these hours.”

Cesar Chavez Day? Never heard of it.

Genuinely. Not a bell rung. 

As far as I could remember (and I reached far), I didn’t know what that day was. What exactly it was supposed to commemorate or who was celebrating it. Nobody was in the streets dancing. There weren’t any signs for Cesar Chavez Day sales events. No nothing. The only evidence I saw of the holiday was that little orange line of text. And it popped up under half a dozen or so other places I Googled. All of which I actually walked by, and all of which were open. Completely unaffected by the day. As was everyone around me, it seemed.

Those open places were all too expensive, though, so I ended up at this joint on the River Walk, drinking a margarita, crunching on chips and salsa. As I sat there, watching all the tourists amble by, I realized I didn’t really have a good grasp on what The Alamo actually was. I knew it was the site of some battle that was bravely fought and bravely lost. I knew we were supposed to remember it as this shining beacon of hope for those times when the odds are mountainous against you. Remember The Alamo, because they knew they would lose and they fought anyway.

But what battle? Why fought? Who dead? When lost?

There were bees circling my margarita at that point. There wasn’t much left of it. Just some dregs at the bottom. But nevertheless, they flickered around the salt of the rim. One landed and teetered on the very lip of the glass, sucking at the salt. After a few minutes, he fell into the swamp at the bottom. He stirred once, and was still, suspended in the murky, alcoholic water. As he died, the other bees vanished. Scared, maybe. If bees feel fear.

When I finally arrived at The damn Alamo, it was much simpler than I expected. Just a stucco building and some gardens beyond. You didn’t even have to pay to get in.

They were selling self-guided audio tours for seven bucks. I didn’t feel like I needed one, and didn’t feel like spending the money. So I just went inside.

Inside, there are several plaques and signs describing the men who died at The Alamo. I was surprised to see Davy Crockett and James Bowie had been there. Two American legends, both dying for a cause that I barely grasped. Something about the Texas Revolution. Something about liberty. Something noble.

I tried reading all the signs and things but honestly, so many of them were about the same thing that it was hard to follow the actual history. So many of them were just lists of the bravely dead. So many described The Alamo as an amazing example of American willpower, stubbornness and gusto. But kind of failed to explain why.

Eventually, it came together, in pieces across several different displays scattered throughout the entire place, that The Alamo had been a Spanish mission. The Mexican government, led by President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, had been treating people pretty cruelly. In an ostensibly unrelated event, the government gave The Alamo folk a cannon to protect themselves against attacks from Native Americans. Failing to mention, I’m sure, how ineffective a cannon is against a band of skilled warriors. But when the Texas Revolution went into full swing, the government asked for the cannon back. The Alamo replied, “Fuck off” and made a flag that picture the controversial cannon and read, “Come and take it”.

To which the President General said, “Hey, you got it.”

He sent an excessive number of troops to shut them down, supposedly seeing them as a symbol for the revolution. A mockingjay, so to speak. And if they could be stopped, anybody could. So it was important to shut them down. Hence the battle. And the death.

But nobody really talks about that. None of the tourists were interested in that. There were a bunch of them sitting around this one pavilion as a brief history talk began. One guy, ignoring it, called his wife to see where she was. Another family just left. A bunch of school kids giggled through the whole talk. I was the only one listening.

On the flip side, there was an unlabeled diorama in the gift shop, completely encircled by crowds. It was incredibly well-detailed. Hundreds of little figures. Fake smoke and blood and horses everywhere. 

People liked that, for sure. Lots of oohing and aahing and faces pressed up against the glass, turning the sky of the model a cloudy, foggy white.

The Alamo was so proud to have Davy Crockett and James Bowie among their names. And that’s totally understandable. But despite the dozens of plaques honoring them and the other men that had been there, there’s only one plaque that talks about how Bowie actually died. He had been in bed. Didn’t fight at all. The enemy broke into his chambers and bayonetted him, staked him to the mattress. And Davy Crockett might have surrendered and been executed after the battle, which is a lot less honorable than dying during it. But that part’s a little foggier.

And nobody seems to remember that, anyway.

***

When I left The Alamo, I wandered over to the Tower of the Americas, and walked down the River Walk some more. It was nearing dinner, so I pulled out my phone again. The nearest restaurant was, in fact, right next to me. But again, the warning: “Cesar Chavez Day might affect these hours.”

I looked up. The place was wide open.

“Goddamn,” I thought. “Cesar Chavez Day doesn’t affect anything.”

A long series of clown-colored tour boats, filled with people from other cities and other parts of the world, slowly made their way down the river next to me. Cameras pointing and flashing in every direction as I walked on, trying to ignore them.

(Portland, OR)

[rebustein94-blog]

The Unlimited John

I woke up feeling good. The day was bright and the heat was soft instead of boiling. My Lyft driver was a guy fresh from Iraq, who moved to New Orleans a year ago after making friends with an army guy from there. There’s a lesson in there somewhere but I’m not entirely sure what it is. Anyway, he was hopeful and he loved America and his new American wife, so it was all good.

The Amtrak line from New Orleans to L.A. is called the Sunset Limited. I’m not sure if that means there’s a limited number of sunsets or if the sunset only lasts so long so you should appreciate it while it’s there, or what, but there you go. 

In any case, I was feeling good enough and content enough as the train peeled away from the station to be thinking about dumb shit like all that. Had I been more anxious or hollow-feeling, as I was a few days ago, I would have had darker things eating at me. But no. I was free to wander aimlessly through weird alleyways of boredom.

In ancient Rome, did people follow the lives of gladiators like we follow football players today? If a gladiator had surgery on his ACL, would that be news? 

A woman with a slow, forgetful tone came onto the speakers and announced the name of the line and the fact that there was no smoking anywhere onboard. She announced the names of some of the crew and the conductor. 

And then she sighed. “And, uh... The cafe car is being operated by John. So he calls it... It’s...it’s John’s Place. The cafe car is John’s Place.”

With that, she vanished. 

“Weird,” thought I.

I had no goddamn idea. 

***

This Midwestern canter pops up over the speakers: “Hello ladies and genties. John here, from the cafe car. You can call it John’s Place. We’ve got the best crew here on the Sunset Limited. But they’re all sick today, so you’ve got the second best. Well, actually they’re sick, too. But we’ve got some okay people today.”

An old stick of a man across from me threw back his head and literally slapped his knee. “Oho! That’s good!” He shook his head out the window, smiling. “Geez.”

John went on: “I’m kidding. Look, folks, if you need any breakfast items like donuts or muffins or coffee, come on down to me. If you want to get weird and have pizza and a gin and tonic for breakfast, I’ve got that, too. Heck, I’ve even got Skittles!”

John proceeded to announce everything that happened on that train. One would think it might be the conductor or one of the crew, not the cafe guy. One would be wrong. John owned that train. I don’t know if the crew loved him and allowed him to do it or if they just quietly hated him as he elbowed his way onto the PA as often as possible. However it was, John was God. He announced stops. He announced when we were crossing state lines. He told us when he was going on his lunch break. He told us when he was back. He told us it had started to rain, as if we couldn’t see. He told us when the rain stopped. 

He even announced the time of day.

“It’s three o’clock,” John trilled. “If you could go for a mid-afternoon snack like a bag of chips or a cookie, come on down to John’s Place. You might want to do it before we hit Houston because they clear me out, you know. They’re downright ravenous and eat everything in sight. I once got bitten on the arm.”

Stickman slapped his knee again. “He did not.”

As if hearing him, John said, “I may have exaggerated that story a bit.”

“I’ll say!”

“But they do eat. So come on down and have a bite before the bites disappear.”

I thought this would get annoying. I thought I would start to hate John and his open embrace of being alive in a cramped, windowless cafe car for a living. Wow, was I wrong. I started looking forward to John’s voice with the might of a teenage fangirl. Every visit to his Place left me bashful and shifty-footed.

“Oh, hi,” I’d say, studying the floor.

“What can I get ya?” he’d beam. He was just this wizened man with thick, round glasses and a blue uniform. So humble. So beautiful. 

“Just a sandwich. I don’t know. Like, whatever you want. It’s cool.” Shrugging.

Around four o’clock, John crackled into the air. I perked up, excited. 

“Ladies and genties,” he sang. “It’s time for your entertainment. I bet you didn’t know that was included on your ticket, did ya?”

I had to physically stop myself from shouting, “No, sir!”

“Well, it is, ladies and genties. In fact...it...is time...for...”

Christ, the suspense! I leaned forward in my seat, like it would get me there faster. 

“...your stupid joke of the day!”

Holy hell. I could not have been more thrilled.

“Why didn’t the two skeletons fight each other?” Pause. “Give up? They didn’t have the guts.”

I snorted and shook with private mirth. Stickman frowned at the window. 

“Hah?” he said.

“Ready for another one? What were the venomous snake’s last words?”

Boy, was I stumped. 

“Give up? The venomous snake’s last words were, ‘Darn, I just bit my tongue.’”

Oh, that was a bit of a thinker. But when I got it, I laughed again. John was a downright genius. 

Stickman screwed up his face in disdain. He got off at the next stop, and I truly believe he left early just due to the disappointment. 

By the time I got off, I was, of course, sad to see John go. He had made my day a better one, which I think I really needed. He’s still out there, though, which is a comforting thought. Telling his jokes and working the rails. On and on. 

Maybe one day we’ll meet again. But again, I still don’t know the meaning of the name Sunset Limited. So maybe our time together is at a total end. Maybe it was brief but bright affair before the darkness. 

Which is okay. John couldn’t make a sandwich to save his life.

(Houston, TX)

[rebustein94-blog]

From Me Online and Lying In Bed to You, Too Easily (A Poem)

I think

the problem now

is that writing

is meant 

as a shout in the void

in the hopes 

that some part of you

or your life

or what you see

or feel

or think

or die for

is heard

and echoed back.

The need is affirmation

and the drive is recognition

because the mirror

keeps playing the same show

and your brain 

the same song

so you need to make sure

that some other skull 

out there 

is at least 

tuned to the same station

or maybe you can write

well enough

to try to tune one in to yours

if they’re out there

spewing Wrong.

But with the internet and all

it’s just so easy

to shout 

in all the wrong ways

and way too quickly

and it’s way too easy

to be heard

and to feel

the sweet release of connection--

that, “Hey, good, yeah, 

alright,

I’m here and I did it,

okay”--

of being a human

in an entire world 

of other humans

when really

you didn’t do anything

to feel better

or connected

or alive

or affirmed

or whatever

except click

or Like

or comment

and really

writing would have been

a much better 

and more productive way

to feel less out of breath.

So I mean really then

why write at all

when you can just go

online?

(El Paso, TX)

[rebustein94-blog]

Ballyhoo

When they started making movies out of all of his books, John Steinbeck found himself suddenly rich and being recognized on the street. He called it all “ballyhoo” and said it made him tired. Getting recognized in the street made him sick to his stomach. 

So you have to wonder what he’d think of Salinas today, where a good number of streets and stores are named after him and the characters from his books. Where Steinbeck has become something more than an idol and slightly short of a god. Where the people are stuck in the borderline bizarre idealization of a man long dead. Where things he barely touched are revered.

You’ve got the National Steinbeck Center, where even the shortest passages from his books are celebrated in a series of expensive and interactive exhibits. Like that part of The Red Pony where Jody does his chores? A whole room where you, too, can do Jody’s chores. The curtains Mrs. Malloy buys in one chapter of Cannery Row are given their own room, too. There’s an entire row of hats that characters from Of Mice and Men probably wore, a replica of the freight car in which Adam shipped his cabbage in East of Eden, Steinbeck’s trailer from his Travels With Charley. Things like that. 

Then you’ve got the actual Steinbeck home. 

I knew it was a restaurant and a historic site, but I expected that ratio to be far less in favor of the restaurant part. I expected it to be a kind of decent but also kind of hokey eatery attached to the museum, which would be the rest of the house.

Nope. The entire first floor of the house is the restaurant. And you can’t go upstairs.

As soon as I walked inside, blinking off the daylight, I was surrounded by old women in floral aprons. They grinned at me. Piano music tinkled out of unseen speakers.

“Hello,” one woman cooed. “Are you joining us today for lunch?”

“Sure,” I said, unsure. 

She led me through a pristine room with thin little tables and bright wallpaper to a seat by the corner. She left me an adorably sized little drink menu and a promise that she’d be right back. When I ordered coffee, it came in a glass mug so delicate, I thought it would crack just by existing. Everything was so delicate, I felt like the smallest movement could shatter the whole place. Including the only other customers there, who were just three more old women. But without the aprons. 

The clatter my spoon made in the glass as I stirred sugar into my coffee was deafening in the warmth and poise and pervasive piano music of the old house.

The woman who brought my food asked if I had planned to hear any of the history of the place.

“Yeah,” I said. “Can I take a tour, or...?”

“Well, I can give you a little history as you eat.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.”

She folded her hands curtly over her stomach and began. “This is all the original wallpaper and woodwork. Over at that landing is where John Steinbeck’s sister was married...”

I awkwardly ate my soup as she stood literal inches away and explained the intricacies of the house. I didn’t know how to react really, so I just kept staring at her as she talked. Nodding appreciatively. Eating my soup. It all felt so decadent. And the history she was telling me was so precise. Much like the town itself, she seemed to cling to every Steinbeck thing she could.

“That in the corner is the frame from the bed he was born in,” she said proudly. 

“Neat?”

“Those portraits in the corner are of John’s parents. They used to be on opposite sides. They were switched a while ago because John’s father is looking off to the side, and he was always looking at his wife, so he had to placed so that he could look at her. And they’ve been that way ever since.”

“Swell,” I offered. 

“His manuscript notes from The Pearl.”

“Great?”

“His mother’s writing desk.”  

“Gee.”

“The feather of a bird that once passed over a field he saw one time from far away through the window of a train.”

“Neato.”

There was a woman sitting in her apron by the stairs knitting the entire time I was there. Come to think of it, she was probably an animatronic. The other ladies padded around her almost soundlessly on the deep carpet, their aprons swishing. When I tried to pay,my friend with all the history gave me back my change, which I had intended as her tip.

“Oh, we’re volunteers,” the woman explained. “We don’t take tips. But we do take donations.”

“Consider it a donation, then,” I said.

She tittered and bowed and dumped the cash in a big vase over by the kitting woman.

 It was all so immaculate. Like the entire house was submerged in water or frozen in glass. Every little crook and cranny of Steinbeck’s life scooped out and examined and on display. Except not even examined, really. Just adored, because he was adored. 

And for what? Right? I mean, right? Isn’t it kind of scary? Isn’t it over the top? Don’t you have to wonder what Steinbeck himself would say about it all?

In the gift shop, they had these really nice pencils. The shtick with the pencils was that they were the brand Steinbeck used. Which is why the shop could charge twenty-five bucks for a pack of twelve. The apron working in the shop made me try one. Of course, it wrote very smoothly. Of course, it was a very nice pencil. But I set it back on the table all the same, not interested.

“Isn’t that smooth?” she asked.

“It is,” I said. I moved away from the table.

“Don’t you want to buy one? They’re the ones He used.”

“Right,” I said. “But they’re not the ones I use.”

She frowned. Clearly didn’t get it. 

But that’s alright. To each their own, I guess. Unless your own is somebody else. Then I really feel like it’s just plain weird.

(Salinas, CA)

[rebustein94-blog]

Kafkaesque

So I needed to ship off my defective phone. I had gotten the new one sent to me after the original crapped out, and things were generally going pretty well. Texas was very sunny and very alive. Birds everywhere, yammering at each other in these other-worldly voices. Geckos darting around all over the place. I had gotten more cash, too, and my shoes were more or less maintaining their level of grime. New Orleans was a memory. 

I used said new phone to navigate my way to the post office downtown to ship away the old one. When you arrive at your destination, Google Maps typically gives you a few details about your trip, including a review out of five stars of your destination. This makes sense for most places, like restaurants or hotels or even movie theaters and whatnot. But the post office? Why would you need to review a post office? And furthermore, why were the reviews for this particular one so bad? Like, bad. Like 1.5 stars bad.

I stood outside my destination for a moment, wondering if I was looking at the door to my doom. It just looked like a normal post office. Drab interior. Little blue and white eagle logo. So what 1.5-star madness lurked within? Curious, I opened the list of reviews. Wow, people hated this place. Just freaking loathed it. People wrote things like, “Very bad customer service” and “After all that, I’d be surprised if they mailed my package at all” and “Never coming back EVER.” One guy even wrote, “If you like bee stings and quicksand, you’ll enjoy this shithole.” Which I’m not entirely sure makes sense, but what can you do. 

“Gosh,” I thought. “People really dislike the United States Postal Service. I wonder why.”

That was before I met Priscilla.

***

They should give out a yearly award for hating your job. They should rank you on hatefulness of the job itself, dealing with people, the menial tasks involved. Every unique category of dreary loathsomeness. And they should give Priscilla a ten in each of those. She should win this award every year.

The woman sagged and pouted all over. Her hair was a mop of thick, golden curls that spun around her head like steel wool. Her lips were these big catfishy things and the voice that came out of them was mud. Thick, slow. Made you feel gross to your very core. She rarely made eye contact. Always staring down.

She was alone behind the counters and I watched her deal with three or four people before me. She didn’t understand any of them. Just clearly didn’t get why they were. One guy was buying stamps. She jerked her head back at his request, grimacing.

“How many?” she asked. 

“Um. A roll?”

“Sstt.”

Everything she did was marked by a series of annoyed sounds. She’d type something into her computer with her long, plastic tiger-striped nails, blink at the screen and go, “Ach pff.” Like she couldn’t comprehend why anything bothered. Why was the computer on? Why did the receipt machine keep printing? Everything a disappointing child. 

When it was my turn, I handed her my little cardboard box. It wasn’t taped shut, because I didn’t have tape in my AirBnb. She gave the box a withering stare. Slowly, she lifted a flap and peered inside.

“You gotta tape this,” she told me. I want to say her voice oozed disdain or something like that, because that’s a much more common and understandable phrase. But honestly, her voice vomited disdain across the counter at me.

As cheerfully as possible, I explained that I was staying in a hotel and they didn’t have tape. “So I was hoping I could just tape it up here!”

“Usually we can’t do that,” she said. 

“I know, and usually I would do it myself, of course, but I’m travelling, you know. So. Otherwise it’s ready to go.”

She spent several moments turning the box over and around until she saw the label. Only after she stared at it for a while did she ask, “You put the label on there already?”

“Um. Yes.” 

Clearly. 

“And you want us to ship it?”

“Um... Yes?”

Clearly?

“Hegh. Fft.” Priscilla leaned down and took a packing tape dispenser from under the counter. She reached it up as if to hand it to me. So I reached for it. And she arced her hand down to place it on the counter, leaving me hanging.

“Whatever you can get off there,” she said, like the thing had been broken for years.

I went off to the side and taped up my box. While I did, this guy came up to her with a bunch of forms. I finished, and stood patiently, trying my hardest not to look like I was waiting. 

“I might take a while,” the guy said. “You can finish with him first, if you want.” He gestured to me. 

“It’s okay,” I told him. “You’re already up there.”

Priscilla ignored this entire exchange. She was staring at the top form like it was a piece of hate mail addressed directly to her. 

“Ech,” she said. “Nnfg.” She typed something into the computer. Frowned at the form. Typed one key. Frowned at the form. Jerked back like it bit her. “Tss.” One more key. Another frown. 

The guy and I glanced at each other, knowing full well we had just stumbled into a personal Hell. 

It took her ten minutes to finish whatever it was the forms needed her to do. She kept referring back to the top sheet like it was constantly changing. Constantly catching her off-guard. She would look at it, go, “What?” and then do the same thing again thirty seconds later. 

Finally, she handed him a key. 

“I’m giving you that because I don’t have...” She couldn’t even be bothered to finish the thought. She stared at the floor. Handed him the forms back, and the key. 

“That’s fine!” the guy said quickly. He took the forms and the key and bolted. 

As she took my box (which, presumably, she just threw away), I noticed Priscilla’s nametag for the first time. It’s how I learned her name, and it’s also how I saw the little sticker there. A faded but still smiling cartoon rainbow. Curling at the edges, the way old stickers do. 

How it got there, of course, is a mystery. Why it was there. Even who put it there. Was it even hers? Part of me hopes that there’s an image somewhere, lost in memory, of a young Priscilla, with her new job and new nametag. She’s so proud. So shy. She decorates herself just a little. Not too flashy. Not too embarrassing. Just one simple little rainbow. A splash of color for her new digs. Somehow, the rainbow just...faded over time. Somehow, the 1.5-star reviews poured in and she sagged further and further. Whether the reviews happened before the sagging or because of it, I don’t know. 

But part of me also hopes that Priscilla was as grumpy and gleeless when she arrived. That some psychotically upbeat boss forced the sticker upon her. That as it laminated itself to her nametag, she dreamed a thousand deaths for her superior. Just as she did for me. Just as she would for all time, sitting alone in the post office until the trumpet sounds and we all go home. 

Part of me doesn’t want to think of either option.  

Because, really, I don’t know which is worse.

Anyway, I felt so bad I gave her five stars.

(Houston, TX)

[rebustein94-blog]

Are Animals Ever Polite?

So I’ve been watching a lot of nature lately. It’s Spring, right, so a lot of it is watching birds court each other. Pigeons waving their tails. Puffing up their necks and strutting around. All the women birds flying away and the men chasing after. 

I watched a spider in El Paso try to catch flies for, like, half an hour. It would bob its front legs and the fly would watch, stunned. The spider would walk backwards and around and the fly would really go, What the balls. But every time the spider thought he had him fully hypbotized, and pounced, the fly zipped away. And he had to start all over. 

There are more turtles in Santa Barbara than nature knows what to do with, I think. One spent the better part of an hour trying to climb rocks and sliding back into the water. Swim to another rock. Try again. Slide back down. Again. 

This one pond is filled with the dark, creeping, golden shadows of koi. I stood at the edge and let one approach. Or beckoned it, maybe, simply by standing there. We stared at each for a while. When the fish realized I had nothing to offer it–no food, no guidance, no courtship– it glided away. I felt very attached to that fish then. Very on the level with the way it thought.

You and me both, fish. Right? 

Except when a fish does that, it’s just being a fish. I do that and I’m being an asshole. 

What a world. 

(Santa Barbara, CA)

[rebustein94-blog]

The Fall(s): A Poem

What is the deal with

freaking waterfalls.

Everybody loves

freaking waterfalls.

We get married under them.

Flock to them from across the globe.

Spend weeks of our lives

scouring the earth

for this one 

or that one

and the dumb hiking trails all around them

and nobody talks

about

why.

Which is ironic, 

I think,

although ironic isn’t really the word.

But then again

if I had

the word

I would just write

that

instead of an entire poem.

Wouldn’t I.

Anyway.

Why waterfalls?

There is something

very human

in them--

both beautiful

and fucking terrible

and nobody is talking about it.

Over millions of years

the force of the water

cuts through solid stone and

carves great wounds in the 

surface of the world.

Chasms and canyons

and valleys and gorges

and other shit.

That’s where falls come from, 

you know.

Which is really something.

Honestly.

That’s some true

stubborn

inspiration 

right there. 

Keep trying,

give it enough time,

persevere,

and all that,

and even you

can cut through solid rock.

Wow.

But the terrible thing

is that it is also

millions of years

of wreckage.

The water destroys as it goes

breaking down layer upon layer of stone

and forcing its unthinking

stupid way

through solid rock--

I mean solid fucking rock, for God’s sake--

across the planet

towards a goal

that nobody has defined

or explained

but somehow the water

continues to believe 

is out there.

Always pushing

always breaking

always moving.

Or maybe it just does it

to see how far it can go

or much it can break.

Just to see, you know.

Which is also,

like I said,

very human. 

I think both aspects are admirable.

I just want to know why 

people are getting married 

under something 

that is also

a symbol 

for destruction.

***

I wrote a draft of this poem at the base of a patch of falls in Tallulah Gorge in Georgia. After, I hiked further up the trail along the gorge. A great dam loomed suddenly against the horizon. The dam was built many decades ago, to help create power for Atlanta, ninety miles south, as human civilization down there continued to stubbornly push and prod its slow way forward. This man-made thing significantly lowered the water pressure of the great destructive falls through the gorge, and probably says a lot more about irony than my poem does.

Or maybe it’s inspirational, too.

God. Who knows. 

(Toccoa, GA)

[rebustein94-blog]

What Muse Wakes You Up At 3 AM?

Coming back into my San Antonio hotel room yesterday, I tripped over a menu for a pizza joint. I kind of glanced at it and then threw it away because I’ve been in hundreds of hotels and seen hundreds of pizza menus slipped under doors.  

This morning, I had a story rejected from a kind of medium-big-time magazine, which is okay and almost expected. But it’s also terrible because it’s the tenth or so rejection I’ve had this month. And it isn’t like losing a football match or having your looks rejected by someone you want to go out with or coming in fourth at the Olympics. It isn’t that you’re not pretty enough or you haven’t trained your body enough or worked out as hard as someone else. It doesn’t feel that simple. It’s the feeling that a piece of a deeper you isn’t wanted by someone. It is that a chunk of your mind and your being was seen and sent back by someone who Knows Better. Which is just a really bad feeling that I feel like only artists understand.

And then I’m sitting in the hotel room chair, reading, and there’s this rustle by the door. I look up. I watch as this slip of paper shoves its way through the crack between the jamb and the door. It slides up and down as the shover on the other side tries to squeeze it through. Finally, they do and it flutters to the floor. I get up and grab the paper. Another menu for a different pizza joint. And I think, God. How many pizza joints are there out in the world and who has to go around slipping these things through cracks, In The Hope That?

I almost can’t throw the thing away. Just thinking of that ghoul on the other side of the door, in the heat and the traffic. The people who own the pizza places. Who stand over their sauces and sweat. Knead their dough and listen to the radio and hope for customers. Hope that eaters choose their joint over the others. Hope that they somehow manage to make their special recipe more attractive than Tony’s down the block because fuck Tony, have you even tried my grandmother’s pesto recipe? No? Then how do you know? 

I think about the paper-shover coming back to the restaurant, feet tired, and maybe nobody is eating there at all so the bell over the door clangs loud in the empty when he comes, and the sweating person behind the counter with the sauce and the dream says, “You dump em all?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Of course!”

“Well, Christ! That was over two hundred menus! Where is everybody!?” With just the slightest crack at the end there, where a deep well bubbles over towards the eyes for just a moment.

This image. The possible truth of it is so tragic, it freezes me for several moments.

Unfortunately, pizza does not fit my needs at this time. I appreciate the chance to consider it, though, and hope they will think of me for future meals. I wish them the best of luck in placing their menus elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Sam, Eater-in-Chief

And I threw the menu away.

(San Antonio, TX)

[rebustein94-blog]

Cost o’ Livin

The first guy caught me outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church, right across from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site. This is in Atlanta. He was this old, big-eyed man with a stained jacket. He had a halting way of speaking, where every few words he needed to stop and allow the sentence to buffer a little before continuing.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Can I...bother you...?”

“What’s up?”

“...for just...”

“Oh.” I had thought that was the whole question.

“...seventy-five cents?”

“Oh, sure, man.”

“I’m just...trying...to get home.”

“Yeah, of course.”

I did something really stupid then, which was to pull out my whole wallet.

“I don’t have seventy-five cents,” I told him. “But I can give you a dollar. Is that cool?”

“Yes. That’s...”

“Alright, cool.”

“...fine.”

“Alrighty.”

My cash was folded up in such a way that I had to unwrap the singles from the twenties. So he could see that I had well over sixty dollars on me. Which was so stupid of me. As I worked a one loose from the mess, of course I thought, “This is so stupid of me. What am I thinking?”

What I was thinking was that I was in front of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and I was helping someone.

I handed him the dollar. He thanked me. I quickly pocketed my wallet and walked away, making sure none of my limbs had magically vanished. Again, I thought, “That was so stupid. Come on, Sam. You know better.”

Much later, I went for a walk around the neighborhood I was staying in. My apartment was inside a gated community, so it was all safe. But outside was more of a toss-up. The whole place was a hodgepodge of different houses. Really nice ones next to weedy yards and warped boards. Then, I came around a corner and bam there was this cafe right there. 

Honestly, that’s the great thing about traveling across the country slowly. By car or train or even walking. Things just burst out of the horizon suddenly, like a time-lapse scene of flowers over months of spring. You take a plane anywhere and it’s like emerging from a cryo-sleep filled with recycled fart-air into a land both distant and shocking. Atlanta, for example. I was driving there and wham its towers and peaks shot up out of the hills in seconds. A plane would have ruined that magic and that wonder. Planes have more of a thunk and you’re there, and you kind of almost forget where “there” is. 

Anyway, here was this cafe. 

“Well, chill,” thought I. “I could go for a sit in a cafe.”

I didn’t have my notebook or my reading book on me, so I thought I’d just pop my head in. If it looked nice, I’d maybe skip back to the apartment to grab my stuff and sit there for a while. Get a beer. Listen to the local news. Places like that always have greasy plastic tables and the local news on a TV hanging from the wall. It’s the universality of that that appeals to me.

Before I reached the door, though, the second guy came up to me, descending from the outer wall of the cafe. This was a young man in a hoodie. His eyebrows were stapled up in this constant look of surprise. He spoke quickly and quietly.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said.

“What’s up, man?” I said this without stopping. A cafe is not a church.

“Can I bother you for seventy cents?”

“Seventy?”

“Yeah. I’m just trying to get home.”

“Sorry, man. I don’t have any money.”

Without a word, he swooped away from me, spiraling back towards the wall, where I guessed he’d keep leaning until the next guy showed up. 

I walked around the parking lot in a big circle, thinking, “Actually, forget this place”, and turned myself back towards home.

On the way back, I passed a dilapidated daycare. Washed-out wooden clippings of Bert, Ernie, the Cookie Monster, and Spongebob (of all things) were tacked to its walls. Cardboard up in the windows. Empty, except a light was on. I fully expected someone to come out as I went by. To tell me they just wanted to get home, and ask for sixty-five cents.

 Nobody did.

But I did get to watch the passing of a pick-up truck with a massive branch stuck into its rear bumper, scraping along the asphalt for several feet behind it. 

There’s bits all over the ground here from cars like that. Wires and tubes and glass and bent plastic. 

Everybody just wants to get home.

Did you know that, on their wedding night, MLK, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, had to stay in the back room of a funeral parlor because there was no room for them in the whites-only inns?

Isn’t that crazy?

I think that’s crazy.

Especially because I had exactly seventy-six cents in my pocket and all I had to do to get home was walk through a gate.

(Atlanta, GA)

[rebustein94-blog]

Clean Shoes

Yeah, I know. But I let it happen because the funny thing is I was just thinking about how dirty my shoes were. For a couple days, actually, I had been looking down at the bastards and thinking, “You bastards. Look at you. All grimed-up.”

And obviously they didn’t have anything to say for themselves. 

The bastards. 

I had very mixed feelings about my dirty shoes. For one thing, there was a thick line of white sludge along their tops and sides, from Manassas, where I had been trudging through snow all the time. There were big splotches of bright brown mud from Toccoa. Dust from Gainesville. Filthy white gum from Atlanta. More dust from New Orleans.

The mess of the journey, all mapped out. 

And that’s what I liked about it. That stark white line and the mud and all told a story that only I could interpret. But at least anybody else could look at it and go, “You been places.”

I been places.

But I had really been feeling low the last day or two. My shoelaces snapped as I was putting on the dirty bastards and that felt like an ill omen of many kinds. My phone, in the middle of a text, went, “Actually, myeh,” and died suddenly. I had to buy a new one, the thing was so screwed. I had booked a swamp tour and they never listed me on their pickup sheet so I had to reschedule to a later one. The kid I “tutor” got his report card this week, so I texted his mother to ask how he did. His grades went down in both reading and writing, which nobody saw coming. He had been doing so well! It all added up. 

Things really hit a head when I was walking down the street, talking on my phone. Just gabbing. Not a care. Suddenly, a soft “Excuse me” wandered up the street. I whirled around to see what it was and what it was was a woman on a bicycle. Coming right at me. I didn’t have time to react before she hurtled around me and almost into a pole. She paused, stared at the sky. 

“Fuck!” she cried. I figured it couldn’t have been serious because she was smoking a cigarette and the cigarette stayed in her mouth. But I said sorry anyway and she pedaled off. A guy pedaled after her, also smoking. 

A ways down the street, I stopped dead. The woman was sitting on the pavement. Her leg was stretched out before her. Her head back in pain. The guy had one hand on her knee, the other just hovering in the air by his head.

“Oops,” I thought, and “Shit” and turned down a side street. I planned to avoid them altogether, lest they shout, “YOU!” and come at me. I walked for what felt like a long time down this side street. Feeling like I had gone far enough, I turned back-- and almost ran right into them. Luckily they didn’t see me, so I spun about and went further up the other street. I never saw them again, but felt bad about it all day.

What I felt bad about specifically was the whirling motion I had done. Because some crazy secret part of me, which was actually all of me, strongly believed that in doing so, I had whipped my negative energy at her. I was a dark vortex. In my swirling, I had hurled a black wind her way and it hurt her leg just as much as I had been hurt. Just as much as I had been feeling hollowed-out by all the little and medium things happening to me.

So I used that as I made my vow to feel better about things.

And now we’re getting to the part where the shoes get clean.

***

It was night and I hadn’t eaten. I wandered for a long time down a lot of streets. I was hungry, looking for food. What I found was music popping out of the very ground. Bands on every corner, in every joint. But none of them were jazz and I considered them all a waste of time. Because I had heard so much about Orleans and Jazz and why listen if it wasn’t The Thing? 

But then. 

A small, linoleum and old wood place on the corner. Four men on stage. All in suits. All narrow-eyed and crooked. Finally. A band playing The Jazz. Everyone in there, at all the little tables, was over fifty. The young were in other places, other bars, behind windows, listening wrong. Gazing outwards at things on the street that just weren’t It. But here we had a catfish-looking guy in a newsboy cap on the drums. He pointed with his sticks at the others, and they careened into their own movements. They all wore suits. The trumpet-player did his thing. The pianist: a skinny guy named Big Al. The tuba: a big guy named Lil Ernie.

I leaned in the doorway and Listened for a very long time. They played up and down. All over the place. All the audience in awe that it was happening. You could feel it. A different decade. A guy crept up to the stage with his trombone. The drummer pointed to him and he took off, joining them. 

I couldn’t believe it.

A table opened up. I could have pounced on it but I didn’t. Too nervous. Too shy. I just kept leaning in the doorway. Kept watching the table as it remained empty. Waiting. Just on the other side of the doorjamb. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go in. I was just too damn nervous.

And then I realized.

“This is everything,” I thought. “I lean in the doorway. Always the door, eyeing the table. Halfway through. And I’m in New Orleans to go through.”

But I never did.

The set ended and the band dispersed. 

I peeled myself off the wall and ambled away. I wondered what I had done and what I would do now and if it mattered at all because I hadn’t gone in.

I hadn’t gone in when I was in New Orleans to become the guy who goes through the door.

So now the shoes.

***

“Sir, sir!” A man swung himself into my path. “How you doin’ sir? Those are some nice shoes, sir.”

“Thanks!” 

“I bet I can guess the exact place--the state and town--you got them shoes.”

“Alright.”

I smelled the scam a mile away. But I needed to see where it went. Because I hadn’t gone through. It just mattered a lot, is all.

“Okay?” the guy said. He raised his fist. “A gentleman’s bump.”

We bumped fists. A fat man slowly eating pizza appeared on the edge of this scene. He watched.

“Okay, okay,” said my guy. He had gold teeth and eyes that didn’t sync up and always aimed over my shoulder. “Alright, I will guess the exact place you got those shoes. You ain’t from around here.”

“No.”

I knew I was doomed.

“Okay, okay. Now. You know where you got those shoes? Don’t tell me. Keep it to yoself. But if I guess right, you tell me?”

“Sure.”

“Alright, alright. Sir. I can tell you. You got those shoes on yo feet!” He clapped his hands. “You got them on yo mothafuckin’ feet in the city of New Orleans in Louisiana. And now you get them shined.”

He produced a bottle from thin air and spurted goop onto my shoes. He swatted at them with a rag. I just watched and smiled stupidly, saying, “Oh!”

“You got these shoes on yo feet, sir!” He laughed as he worked. Cleaned them right up. All the dirt, all the sludge. Gone. 

Suddenly, the fat man was at my side. He spoke at a snail’s pace. “He played you, son.”

I gazed at him with this dumb wonder stuck on my mug. “Yeah, but wasn’t it great?”

The shine guy stood. “That’ll be twenty for the shine, sir.”

“And I was the judge,” said the pizza man. “So twenty for the bet. He got you.”

The shoe guy laughed again. He leaned into me, right up against my face. “Welcome to New Orleans, man.”

I looked down. My shoes looked almost new. 

Feeling awestruck and wonderful and stupid and hungry and lobotomized and asleep and happy and upset, I paid the guy twenty bucks. He swiped the bill from my hand and vanished.

The pizza man remained. “Twenty for the bet.”

“I’ve only got these two ones.”

He took the last of my cash, rolled his eyes, and sauntered off.

I bought myself a drink with my debit card and meandered back to the hotel.

New Orleans had cleaned me the fuck out. My wallet, my phone, my soul. My shoes. My whole journey and selfhood up to that point had been spat out of existence. Sucked out of me with a grin, a wave of the hat and the blare of a trumpet. 

I had been feeling low but I hadn’t gotten It yet. I hadn’t really hit refresh, because of all the things I was lugging around with me. Spinning this way and that. Vortexing, you know. Tugging myself down. And sticking myself on doorjambs. Instead of through them. 

Listen. I know it was dumb. But I paid the twenty dollars because it’s one thing to look down at your shoes and go, “You’re dirty but you’re familiar and I love you.” It’s another thing to just have some clean fucking shoes. 

(New Orleans, LA)

[rebustein94-blog]

Ain’t That America

There’s a long wooden staircase leading all the way up to the top of Amicalola Falls in Georgia. About halfway there, stuck up underneath the beams of a landing, is the skeleton of an old car. The chrome bumper still shines. The rest is all rust. Roots and bushes jam their way through the roof and the empty windows. The thing must have been there long before they built the stairs. Must have been there for decades. And they just built over it for some reason. There are signs all along the path, explaining things about the landscape. Birds, lizards, the falls themselves. The kind of rock found there. 

But not the car. 

Later in the day, my GPS takes me through a poor town that wound its way around the mountains in one long, twisting road. Little houses dot the endless trees and grass just as often as broken-down barns and gas stations and shacks. All the same color, all the same smell. An old, obese woman trots out of her house as I go by, decked out in Wonder Woman pajamas. Cape and all. She skips to the mailbox with this lobotomized smile on her face. Eyes on the mountains. And then she’s gone, behind me and around the bend. 

Over the next hill, a massive black bag of garbage lies in the middle of the road. In front of me, three or four cars swerve slowly around it. Not a one stops and moves the bag, including me. We probably should have. But we don’t want to interfere with the dark, strange magic of the road. The bag is there for a reason. And touching it would be to admit that we don’t know what it is.

Touching it would be messing with the people who came before. 

In Toccoa, they have a military museum. An exhaustive collection of stuff from WWII crammed into a warehouse. The most impressive thing is from Aldbourne, England and it’s an entire goddamn stable. They shipped the thing to Georgia in the early 2000s. It’s here now to commemorate the war, the men, and the names, which the men who stayed in the stable before D-Day carved into the wood there. You can still see them. 

The need to mark. 

Ain’t that America.

Also on display, in a nice glass case, are two mummified rats that they found in the walls of the stable. But I’m not sure what to say about that. 

So.

In 1977, there was a flood in Toccoa that killed 39 people and injured 60 more. There is a large plaque commemorating them. It notes that reconstruction is still ongoing after the flood, and is written almost like an apology. As if they’re apologizing for not being able to full reconstruct the dead. 

Ain’t that America. 

You go further along the bends and snaps of that poor-town road where the trash bag looms and you hit a patch of the world, or of memory, that all looks vaguely familiar and dim and smells like the sticky sweet tang of red Kool-Aid. There, I followed signs for a yard sale down a long hill. The sale ended up being in the shadows of a big garage. When I parked, three old men lurched out of their chairs, all holding bottles of beer. As I looked at their junk, they rocked back and forth violently on their heels. Watching me. I could feel them willing me to buy. Could feel how much it mattered, and the power of it shook me until I left, which I did as quickly as I could. Because it’s not the money. It’s the stuff that’s important. 

It’s knowing somebody wants your stuff. 

Ain’t that America. 

Up along the stairs at Amicalola Falls, there is a series of carvings on the railings. Deep grooves in the soft wood. The same hand urges you to “Keep going!” and “Don’t give up!” all the way to the top

“You’re almost there!”

“You can do it!”

On and on until, panting, you reach the summit, and wonder what the hell there is to see at the top of a waterfall, looking down, that you can’t see better from below. 

The thing that struck me most about the Aldbourne stable is that the names carved there are no different from the carvings along the railings at the falls. I don’t know why this shocked me so much. I guess I just expected them to look different somehow. Like graffiti has changed since the forties. Like handwriting was different then. But why would I think that? A mark is a mark is a mark.

In every national park in the country, there is at least one sign that urges visitors not to leave anything behind. 

Which I think is great.

And, clearly, un-American. 

(Gainesville, GA)

[rebustein94-blog]

An Ode to My Dog

You fucking piece of garbage.

Why don’t you ever get up

or do something new.

All you do

is bark

and fart

and sleep

and spend all day on your ass.

You lazy sack of shit.

Fine

look at me with those sad eyes

that say,

“Why don’t you get a job?”

Fuck you, you dog.

Go piss on a tree.

And yet I often find myself wondering

if you could talk, what would you say?

“Hello,” I’d offer. “How are you?”

“My life is a series of random encounters from which I am unable to derive any meaning or purpose. People come and go, food is eaten and shat out. The sun rises. The moon rises. There is no ultimate design, fate and ambition are miserable delusions, and nothing is significant. My days are an eternity of boredom and wasted air. I stare endlessly out the window, awaiting the sweet caress of death’s hand.”

“For sure, me too.”

My dog really gets me.

(Poughkeepsie, NY)