"It means what it says"

(quote: Samuel Beckett , Video: Trailer for Vice's Travel Guide to Liberia)



Traveling more for work these days. Long pre-dawn drives. And it's almost worth it to see the sun come up over flat southern Idaho while you race toward it at 92 mph and ambient electronica is beamed into your gleaming rental car from space. And it's almost worth it to stand out in the ice and listen to semis go farting by and fumble with numb fingers for tools or buttons on the keyboard. And it's almost worth it to drive around weird old railroad towns bumping Jay Electronica and looking for a place to smoke. And it's almost worth it to be the strange man alone in a booth that you would have pondered endlessly as a child. Worth it to overhear a conversation at the bar and note that the overweight middle-aged women with real estate agent poise and her broken-English boyfriend are talking about the same things that you've uttered in recent weeks: "Oaxaca is a fun word to say","It seems like everyone has read Three Cups of Tea but me",and "after the winter solstice, it only gets better." Worth it when you hear a woman say she's from Michigan and it takes a few moments before you realize that matters--not that I forget.
Spending tonight in Pocatello, Idaho where the prettiest girl in town walks into bars with the only guy that tried. And the railroad could have never imagined what the freeway would do for business. And men who own tire stores are famous. And others with weeding rings foist themselves upon hotel-bar-comedy nights and try to find the humor in losing their job. Rolling in at dusk you can watch the sun set orange on the rock factory's plume.





The book is really close. Behind schedule, but for mostly good reasons. April? Somewheres around then after the 'other-than-actual-writing' dust settles.