WHITHER GOEST THOU, AMERICA, IN THY SHINY CAR IN THE NIGHT?

As I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, ….. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America

I travel with my best companion; my loved my best companion, somewhere in the United States of America.

AMERICA

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I say: This is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

You say: Is it?

We park the car (Olive green Jeep, 2014, registration plate: DIVA – Land of Enchantment; made, or maybe born, in the USA) in the main road of Durango (Colorado). I watch a man; he is over sixty and has he has long white hair tied with a leather thong, a white horse tail stretches down his back, as far as a wide black belt, the buckle, a death head insignia. He walks towards a Harley Davidson (made, or maybe born, in the USA; the man and the motorbike). The man has a limp (made in Vietnam) despite his wearing especially made built up brown shoes that he bought in Wal-Mart, (Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States, it employs almost five times as many people as IBM. Hooray for Sam Walton, the biggest job creator in the galaxy. But he doesn’t pay much; he pays less than a nickel and more than a dime). The man, who may be sixty, has no right arm, it is missing (made in Vietnam).

You say: Dissatisfaction; can it be bought (in Wal-Mart)?

Behind the mask of total absolute choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other.

We stare at the right sleeve of the white haired pony tailed man’s blue checked shirt, it flickers in the humidity; he does not wear prosthesis

You say: Wal-Mart does not sell prosthesis anymore; they ran out a long time ago.

I say: He has made his sleeve a memorial; memorials are sexy, disfigurement also.

The man stretches out his left arm and with his left hand he reaches into a black leather pouch that hangs from the black leather seat of the motorbike, (Registration plate: TEXAS JE– KE, the Lone Star State, Veteran of Vietnam). On his T shirt (made in China by chinky slit eyed yellow people who earn less than the workers of Wal-Mart) are the words: LAND OF THE FREE BECAUSE WE ARE BRAVE.

I say: A spectacle, do I stare at a spectacle, an art work? Shall I stare passively, or is this rude? Is anything authentic?

You say: No.

AMERICA

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In Beauty all day long through the returning seasons may I walk … In old age wandering on a trail of Beauty, living again may I walk …. It is finished in beauty

I say: This is a brave piece of a continent, land, country, the cracked sky is free; freedom. I could die for freedom, but this freedom is expensive (the free are rich and the dollar rolls on high, the highest peak of a Rocky Mountain vision).

You say: But the sky is not bought, it is cracked through by scudding rain clouds, freedom is on the highway, disbelieved and ingested, murdered and spat out, a brave purple heart.

I am getting so far out one day I won’t come back at all

Brave is a word printed on a T shirt.

When the prairies are on fire you see bison surrounded by the fire; you see them run and try to hide themselves so that they will not burn.

 

AMERICA

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Durango, a brand, a car, a motorbike, Coca-Cola, give happiness a chance, buy Coke, love life, buy Coke.

Isn’t it true that you start your life a sweet child, believing in everything under your father’s roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, (and cannot buy Coca-Cola) and with the visage of a gruesome, grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

Durango is an American town.

Louis L’Amour stayed in a room at the Strater hotel.

I say: Is this the same room that we stay in?

Here he wrote his violent heroic cowboys and some heroic Red Indians, their skin is red, in appearance, not from the sun or booze or anger, at a desk percolated in history and he slept in clean white cotton sheets.

Take your cotton picking hands off me.

We walk down the wide staircase. In the ersatz wooden bar where the absinthe is not green but a pink cocktail I sit and watch a group of senior citizens from Palm Springs California buy their happiness from the outlaw rebel; the green fairy is so very wicked, but a pink one will do, a pink one will do.

I say: So what is this green fairy and why derange the senses?

You say: Oh howdy, a pink one will do. Remember that a man’s character is his fate; no it’s the pink one that does it.

And so all, drooling the stupid and begging faith recite their infinite complaints to Jesus who dreams on high, yellowed by the livid stained glass window, far from bad scrawny men and from the wicked paunchy ones (who remained at home in California as the payments on the condo are high, just too fucking high).

I say: Look outside. I know the land is free, the sky is free; geology, knows no time, it knows billions; millions, many years. Time is geologic, events that make the earth and life. I am small, an ephemeral part of a momentary encounter (if only in Durango).

You say: The only borders the land knows are rivers so it is free, rivers change course with time, they move in the years of billions, the silent gagged years that are witnesses to mountains and people and canyons and children.

I say: The future, are their borders in the future too?

The complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels ….

WHO KILLED ME?

The girl boy child on the billboard screams.

AMERICA

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I say: You, yes you. Look at the map in the map book, (MAP STUDIO, 2014, San Diego, California), you are in the land of the free, I am in the land of the free. But there are borders out there, drawn on the pages. Are borders permeable; changeable in years as mountains are changeable? Do they speak of desire and loss, as mountains and clouds do, or are they lines, crooked and straight, that indicate zero, no difference in me and you and rivers and canyons for difference is not recognised, a line is a line, a border is controlled? What is freedom that has a border?

You say: Where is Mexico?

I say: I am desperate, desperation is the raw material of drastic change and I am afraid of change.

You say: This map comforts me; I am not desperate, lost, lost in the unfamiliar. I can read a line, and the line cannot be erased, there is no alternative route. Take the Interstate 220, the line will stay printed on the page of the map until the map is torn and frayed, and even then there is a new map on the shelf at the Wal-Mart store that stretches alongside the road for a mile.

(Due to its base in the bible belt, as this part of America is known, Wal-Mart styles its service to churchgoing customers, it stocks only clean versions of hip-hop CDs and places plastic covers over suggestive magazines; it also sells many Christian books, such as ‘How to Live a Purpose-Driven Life’. This earns the company over one billion dollars a year).

I touch your hand. I feel the heat of a breathing skin.

I say: Look at the map, the lines do not connect people and space, warmth and compassion is not shown or questioned, the lines constrict all possibility except to urge me to drive forward. There is no alternative to the line. Where will I go? Will you come with me?

You say: I am afraid to escape these pages, can I leave what I know, what is behind me?

I say: Borders are things that people do, not geology, people make order out of disorder, create recognisable territories, and so lines are drawn. Do not be afraid.

You say: But I am captured within the bordered space.

I say: So then what is free; only the land has nothing left to lose?

And the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars …

A very big motor car drives by, a grey Chrysler pitted with white spots (registration plate: HOUSTON BRONCOS, 255 WXR, TEXAS, the Lone Star State), the radio is blaring Home is where the Heart is. It drives past an almost pink Ford pickup that lies beside the road. The Ford has no engine (and no registration plates) underneath its open bonnet. It is not owned. The steel of the pink door is rotten. Two black and white crows sit in on the edge of the broken glass that once was a window; they sit very still for any movement may disturb what they watch, or they may, if they are not careful and do not sit still, cut a slender passerine foot on a jagged edge. They stare inside this physical degradation, a faded pink wreck. In front of the birds is an abandoned steering wheel, it is bent backwards, almost touching the dashboard, there are no longer any dials, they are smashed and broken and stolen. But the crows do not care; nature is careless, care-less, they watch a chipmunk that is trapped between the fragmented window and the inoperative air conditioner and in the long drawn out heat he struggles and sweats.

I say: Cars are expendable commodities; dissatisfaction is a commodity, as are chipmunks. They are cheap and easy to replace, nearly vermin, or possibly they are difficult to remove, and so they stay, a visceral connection to the wreckage that is somewhere, parked on the side of the road, forever waiting a rusty exculpation for water will flow over the steel and slowly wear it away, rust the movement of progress.

You say: And the crows will wait, wait until the chipmunk no longer has the strength to carry on his struggle, then they will take it in turns to peck out his eyes.

If I had a green Automobile I’d go find my old companion in his house on the western ocean, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! The windshield’s full of tears, rain wets our naked breasts, we kneel together in the shade …

AMERICA

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I hold your hand, I stroke the soft skin. The brown marks that are made by the sun stain your fingers. I look at your arms, they too are stained, and they are sinewy. I feel a light pulse move in your wrist for you are alive.

I say: The map, it is arterial red on a flat surface, three dimensions is two, blood is the colour of red roads, roads allow movement, a march in time to military musical movement, easy marching allows the marcher to come upon his prey quickly, overwhelm him by surprise; roads are powerful and power is healthy, power is fear and fear is obedience.

You say: The line that is the outline of the states is purple. Purple equals’ victory, the victor moves quickly along the red lines, victorious despite the war outside, despite the war at home.

The war on drugs, is there a real enemy, well make one up, make a spectacular enemy, it scares, sends dread into the marrow of American bones.

I say: The victor is never vanquished. The victim is more powerful than his murderer; he is a reminder, a remainder. And look, within these purple lines are yellow dotted lines, what are hey, Red Indian Reservations (or is it Native American)?

You say: What is yellow, Burnt Mountain Sun? Is he a coward?

I say: The map is someone’s interpretation, can it be my interpretation? A flat representation of a three dimensional reality, it is always a translation.

I look at the map, and then I look outside the enclosed car at the yellowed land that becomes orange as the sun stretches across the red rock face.

I say: I know that translations are invested with hopes and dreams, fears and assumptions; maps speak not of the land, but of desires and intentions; the needs of their makers (and me their audience). But the map does not foretell the fate of the chipmunk, the desire of the crow; the map does not know why the wrecked out car is abandoned on the side of the road, or who drove it somewhere else.

I close the map book and look outside between the yellow lines.

You stroke my cheek and bend your head towards my lips.

You say: Who is there?

AMERICA

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Are not women and children more timid than men? The Cherokee warriors are not afraid but have you never heard of Sand creek? You, you are soldiers, and you look the same as those who butchered the women and children there.

We drive a across map.

We stop at a sign post on which the words indicate that I am at the corner of four states; Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, a red and blue flag dotted with stars flies above it. I count the number of stars, there are fifty, fifty stars are fifty states, fifty national states, make up the whole.

I say: What nation is a part of this whole?

You say: Who drives its passion, its compassion?

I say: I am afraid? I must pray, in my simplicity.

I must pray on my knees to the one who in his heaven laughs at the sound of the nails those ignoble executioners drove into your living flesh.

You say: Let’s drive for hell, and storm the fifty heavenly stars.

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge sun burning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, pass here and go on, you’re on the road to heaven. …. Rattlesnake Bill lived here or Broken-mouth Annie holed up here for years.

AMERICA

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We are in Utah.

Joseph Smith heard the words from Moroni, the angel of God. Moroni, with his yellow gold wings spoke of Jesus in America; his teachings are contained in a collection of antiquated writings engraved on gilded plates. These are words written by ancient prophets.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, the same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.

And so was given the words that Jesus, one thousand years before he was born in Palestine, was here where I am.

I say: Jesus walked across the land we drive through, this land.

You say: Yes, and then after many adventures and miracles, after he was crucified and after his resurrection from the dead, he returned here

Jesus died for somebodies sins but not mine.

I say: Where is he now Blue Sky (Mary)?

AMERICA

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You lean forward and taste the beads of sweat that gather around my neck. I smell your perfumed body.

You say: Salty. Water, it is a collection of molecules, CO2, make a bomb, little boy kills, breathe in this watery substance.

I say: Water shatters mirrors, makes the future disappear. I am alive for I breathe (oxygen in, carbon dioxide out, in and out, in and out).

You say: Water has force, the force moves a mountain, the force destroys a mountain, a people, boiling water burns, and hot air is un-breathable. Water shapes the land; it is the diluter that tears the mountains down, slowly, it reduces time to an attenuated atom.

(Colorado geology: The combined effect of uplifted mountains, torrential flooding from glaciers melting after the Ice Age, and the erosion of the plains has influenced the rivers ability to carve rock out of the canyon and deposit its load of silt, sand and gravel onto the foothills and plains below. Precambrian rocks formed from molten magma that cooled miles within the crust of the earth.)

I say: Before I travelled this road, this red line between the purple lines, were the mountains elevated? Had the rains, oceans and gigantic ice cubes already left their impressions on the rocks?

You say: What do I remember of this memory?

We stop for breakfast in Winslow Arizona.

I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see take it easy, take it easy don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.

In this town I notice that taunts are visible, regret is thrown at freedom, dissatisfaction, there is no freedom, only shame and hope.

You say: Hope is an angel flying backwards into history.

I’ve got seven women on my mind Four that wanna own me Two that wanna stone me One says she’s a friend of mine

The Eagles made the town famous with this song, now I am here for a photograph. Standing on the corner I pose for a photograph.

Click.

You say: Now you know that you were really here, your place in Winslow Arizona is verified, captured.

I say: I can (and will) produce and distribute my memories, but memories, these memories, they will be forgotten. Will you forget them?

I look around. There is a statue of a cowboy on the corner, he is dressed in red and blue, there are stars on his cowboy hat and his boots are made of rattlesnake skin.

You say: Stand there, stand next to that man who is made in the USA. Hold his hand to show you care.

We are hungry.

Inside Darlene’s Diner, the iconography of a diner, red and blue and white cowboy hats line the walls and a picture of Donald Trump smiles in the window. The coffee, in a large pot, boils on the stove, strong coffee, tough coffee. Two fat men in heeled tan cowboy boots, and one fat woman in a purple jacket with a fringe, eat peach cobbler at the bar. One of the fat men swallows the last mouthful of yellow peach and white cream, he looks at his boots, he looks at his stomach as it rides over his belt, he raises his arm and calls, ‘howdy’, to the slim Mexican server who has dark and troubled eyes.

The slim server brings him another cobbler (blueberry this time).

I say: I wonder if that young Mexican is able to climb over a wall?

Shiny, rattlesnake skin.

I order hash browns and eggs over easy.

Dar is tough, like her coffee, come on, baby, don’t say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me, she looms over me as she pours it, her eager breasts heave at the thought of another customer.

Dar is popular; Dar’s Diner is popular.

She turns to a rack behind her and grabs a T shirt DARS DINER, only $12. Dar poses for a photograph, she thrusts the T shirt forward, she does not say cheese, she says buy (a $12 memorial).

I say: Who is Dar; a name in my diary, part of a collection of photographs?

You say: Aah, she has bleach blonde hair and a permanent smile, bought teeth whitened by new and exciting toothpaste, zero cavities. Yes, there she is, standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

We finish eating and walk outside. Up and down the main street, there is only one street, are recreational vehicles, long retirement homes for long lives.

You say: Age needs space; idleness is vilified so all over this land people move.

I say: It is a long vehicle that, once life is completed, will stand next to the road, a wreck, disintegrating in the watery clouds. The buildings of made of clapboard, will they blow over in a moment?

You say: Nothing is permanent; all is ephemeral, a theme park, fashionable today gone tomorrow.

I take a photograph standing on the corner, best to do this, I am here, and tomorrow, where will I be, where will this corner be, I may no longer be?

Lighten up while you still can don’t even try to understand just find a place to make your stand and take it easy well, I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.

AMERICA

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We drive further into the land, Navajo territory. I look at the map that is on the seat next to you, there is no name between the yellow lines.

You say: What’s in a name? This is America, we are all Americans, an Indian has no name, he is a Lone Bear, a Black Kettle.

I say: The sickness of death smells and it is in the air. This is my place, I am the winner, I win in the casino, the bank is my prize.

And then the time changes, the green glow of the GPS (buy the Global Positioning System for in coordination with the Network Time Protocol it can be used to synchronize timekeeping systems across the globe) on the dashboard of the Jeep reads that it is an hour earlier than it was a minute ago.

I say: The Navajo have autonomy; the power to change time has been given to them. They know time, the time that it took for the stars to burn out, only this was long ago, stupid to change the time, grasp time for the sun will rise and the sun will set. Time remembers, the days and the nights, the winters and the spring.

There is a building ahead. A painted picture of a Native American, an Indian, with buzzard feathers in his hair, bison skin around his legs and a loud howling cry emanating from his mouth, beckons me into the bar and casino. The picture Indian holds a beer and smiles; drunkenly. An old man, his long black hair streaked in grey, comes towards me and asks for a dollar, his eyes yawn.

I am defeated, he says, so help me now to rest.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

I turn; he is a shadow, a blur, an unrepeatable memory.

They were great, grave Indians and they were the source of mankind and the fathers of it. And they knew this when we passed, ostensibly self-important moneybag Americans on a lark in their land; they knew who was the father and who was the son of antique life on earth, and made no comment.

I say: The Navajo Indians came into contact with the white invaders in Santa Fe.

You say: Is that the red adobe town where Jane Fonda has a home gym and Cormac McCarthy sits in the square in cowboy boots and writes of the price of Indian scalps and pretty horses?

How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

I say: Before this Santa Fe was Mexican, the Americans and the Mexicans lived side by side, never speaking for they spoke different words. Where they acrimonious words? The word of God can be confusing in Spanish. Was there a wall that stood between them?

You say: Who was who in this melange, who could be the Arch Bishop, are you a Catholic? And the Navajo? They did not know the name Jesus so they had no religion, no God, where did they build a homestead, nowhere, their homes were tents, removable, just a shadow stain on the sand.

I say: The Americans persuaded the Navajo to enter into a treaty; four hundred soldiers encouraged the Navajo to keep to the terms of the treaty, they had no land.

It was the fearing time.

You say: We are all afraid?

Every bit of this land is sacred … every hill every valley and every plain, every woods has been sanctified by some glorious or horrible event in the past. … when the children of your children will suppose themselves alone in the fields, in the ships, in the silent forests or on the roads they will not be alone at all … At night when all sound has died away in the streets of your villages and when you think that they are empty they will swarm with the host of those who once lived there, faithful to that sublime site. The white man will never be alone.

I say: How do you eradicate a people?

You say:  Erase their memory.

I say: Ghosts walk the in the canyon.

You say: We have forgotten for a ghost has no memory.

A wild turkey buzzard flies high in the sky. It is smaller than a vulture, bigger than the drumming of a humming bird’s wings. I catch him in my camera lens, I will own him forever, and then he flies away.

The old Native American stares at me.

I was defeated and now I am poor, help me feed myself and my children and my grandchildren.

I do not catch him in my camera lens, he is already owned.

Kit Carson conducted an expedition into Navajo land. He made them surrender, they were bloodthirsty. As only a few Navajo submitted he applied a scorched earth crusade, fire and destruction swept through Navajo land – killing. And then, just before they starved, they began to walk; they walked for three hundred miles to Fort Sumner in New Mexico.

I say: To walk is to make progress, it is a parting cry, anger is needed. This walk was a walk of pain, of shame, the pain of being made to walk and of not remaining where you should be, in the land that you know and is yours.

You say: To walk this walk is not a matter of staying; it is being buried, alive.

Most of the Navajo now live on a reservation; they are not confined in this space, they are merely detained by yellow dotted lines on a map.

AMERICA

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I say: Listen, the American military removed more than 1500 Apache from the Rio Verde. The young and the old, men and women, then walked more than one hundred and eighty miles through the winter to get to an Indian Agency at San Carlos.

You say: Many died.

I say: The Apache were then imprisoned there for twenty five years. A few hundred Apache tried to return to where they once lived, but at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona they were defeated. American troops forced Geronimo to surrender for if he did not, neither he, nor those left in his tribe, would remain alive.

You say: Will it be unkind to compare a reservation to a bantustan? Apartheid (South Africa) was a unique social system designed to remove a barbaric people from the invaders civilisation; a reservation is designed not to eradicate but to protect, to keep what has been stolen safe.

I say: No this is America, it will not be kind; it will be unfair for a reservation is a tourist attraction, a bantustan is an historical aberration.

He fell into a trance and saw the Great Spirit among the spirits of the dead. … The dead will return, the white men will leave, swept away by a tremendous wind; the houses, the cattle, the property of the white men will remain in Indian hands. The buffalo will return. Disease, poverty and death will cease.

I stare at the yellow borders.

I look outside the window.

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.

The map that I hold has an author; someone has truthfully drawn the red roads, painted the purple borders. But the man in the picture on the wall of the casino, who cries out Bravely, did not draw it, he is drawn in. The lined space is flat, the earth is flat, nothing takes place in these lines, in this space all the action has already happened, it has been given in advance by those who draw the lines. I close the map book, I do not want to erase the routes of the people who walked, lived and battled in the space I drive in. The paper has no history.

Why is it that the Apaches wait to die – that they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the hills and plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apache were once a great nation; they are now but few, and because of this they want to die and so carry their lives on their finger nails.

AMERICA

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In the grey light a Dodge (registration plate: COLORADO W 456, Grand Canyon State) passes a bright tanned Lincoln (registration plate: UTAH Z335YU, Life Elevated), the radio is blaring Home means Arizona, but the sun does not shine over the desert, there is a cold relentlessness circling. But it is a gentle rain; it sweeps across the time zones in the crushing never expanding countryside.

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.

A plum coloured old pickup truck (registration plate: OKLAHOMA, Native America, 20-46T) driven by a fat white woman, from the radio the sound of O Fair New Mexico. She is driving much faster than the speed limit and passes the tanned Lincoln. Howdy, she calls, fuck you. I’m for Donald.

I drive in borrowed time in this borrowed world and tremble as the hunted tremble.

As the Dodge passes us its tin radio spews out the news of the world, American Public Radio, Jo-Beth here. I close my ears for at any moment the sounds will tear into screams, gunfire and explosions, I do not want to hear the sound of institutions quietly, efficiently, unstoppably at work, slipping chemical waste into the landscape, readying weapons for new wars.

I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

AMERICA

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