"You are brave, son, and I'm proud of you. But life is easier for cowards"

[quote: William Vollmann ; video: Bukowski's The Man With the Beautiful Eyes]

I'm getting used to these departures. Either I leave or they leave, and the map gradually becomes scattered pushpins, and circuitous routes of waiting debauchery and thrift-store couches across this makeshift homeland. Our generation, more than any other, is poised to make the wind our home.

My good friend Dale is in New York City now, going to school to be one of our finest journalists. I try to forget that it was nearly my next stop on this pilgrimage. That if I'd done things slightly different, the two us would be, right now, drunk on some nocturnal rooftop making promises at the wedge of moon we can make out between skyscrapers. Carving out some niche in the lurching mythology of that city fantastic. I suppose I simply have a different desert, a disparate mirage teasing me through the skips and the trudge.

I learned things from young Eisinger. I learned secrets about this city I now inhabit; I learned the value of art, and how you can make it the sole aegis of your life; I learned that the world belongs to those with a tolerance for risk; I learned that naivete is simply a lack of awareness and it can be remedied a thousand ways; I learned that in our weakness is where we hide what is vulnerable and beautiful in us; I learned that vision has no time for the world; I learned the stupidity of half-measures; relearned the wisdom of excess. I remembered that, like Kerouac, the only ones for me are the mad ones. And again my tribe is populated by those that might do anything, those that rebel by celebrating, by snickering at the controls. And I learned things about writing, Dale being perhaps the single most versed individual of my work, its strongest advocate and its most incisive critic. Every piece I cobble together has some fragment of him in it, and I daresay it always will.

Those still in the city of trees lament him leaving, to a point. Dale owned this place, as much as he wanted sometimes not to. But he's got something pretty major going on, and how could we possibly expect him to sit still? But he'll be missed: through him I met so many of the people that I now consider friends here and I had virtually all of the balls-out, cackling nights I've had in Boise. I'll miss occasionally waking up on his couch, I'll miss narrowly escaping intervention by the authorities, and flying around town on our bikes, the unpredictability and intellectual rigor of our conversations, I'll miss the various capers I probably shouldn't mention. Good times, bro. Hope to see you before long.

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"A ram chased my friend in a dream"

(quote: Detroit graffitio, video: Tobacco ft. Aesop Rock - Dirt)

Tried to keep some tabs on the gamut over the last week. Utterly failed: overwhelmed. That initial flinch at seeing Michigan more scarred than last time, more self-possessed, more chaotic. My parents hunkered down waiting for the wave of violence and despair promised by the local news. Northern Michigan gradually abandoning like the eventual crash is some slow gangrene. Hiking out to the pristine dunecoast of Lake Michigan, like some metaphoric backdrop for a scene in which sand represents the discomfort of freedom. The year's shiniest day picked as though from a hat. Nothing but laughing and drinking and talking and building fires and tromping through the woods for days. I missed You this year, you should come for the next one.

A day of rest after slap-happy driving home on virtually no sleep, a sweaty mosquito-harried hike with our trash and our fuzziness. Breakfast in a diner decorated like a commercial for Dwight Eisenhower. Michigan construction barrels in every nook and cranny, slow-poke retirees in their pick-ups for miles. Back in the city, a glimpse of a community garden flourishing within earshot of 8 Mile.

The next day meeting up with one of the people I'd hoped would make New Detroitland (a surprise early return from the jungles of Bolivia) filling out the entire roster of the Commonwealth house from way back when. Driving crosstown to wander through the Packard Plant; maybe 14 city-blocks of obsolescence. In two hours covering almost none of it. So much history, but you walk it best as some kind of sculpture. A billion cubic feet. Materials: rust-rotted machinery, leaden glass in splintering frames, coxial cable festooned like vines, trucks teetering in fourth floor windows, concrete shafts gangly with broken elevators, solariums knee-deep in a generation's trash, a cot in the middle of floor soiled with whatever and decorated with fresh flower petals, patient pillars waiting and waiting, wood gone to dirt with dandelions unfurling, tires and boats and bicycles and cinderblocks and toys. And on and on and on. Trying to describe it in 500 words like putting Infinite Jest on the head of a pin.

The trip ending like it always ends when you go home, in one way or another. A little push in this direction, a little pull backwards in that one, farewell embraces befitting, a little Gonzo exit, and enough sleep and memories built up in my head to put me to sleep for the rest of the day. Waking up at a burrito table six hours later, pulling through my gambles by the skin of my teeth, thinking all of it may have been a dream. I miss all of my Detroit people, the ones I saw and the ones I didn't get to. When you leave, these relationships are supposed to diminish; but mine seem to have only condensed themselves into smaller and denser packages.

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