The Train is a Bastard

You know, all this time I have spent talking about the places we went to, when the real amazing part of our journey was the Train. The train was our home when no one else would take us in. In all we traveled about ~8,995 miles (14,476 km) on the train. We took 14 different train trips. We met tons of interesting, uninteresting, weird and lovely people on the trains. Ate probably about 65 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in as much as 23 days. And Mark lost about half of what he brought with him.

When we were in PEI, at the Folksy open-mic night, an older gentleman got up and performed a song called "I like Trains." It became kind-of emblematic of our trip, not necessarily for deep, metaphysical value, but just because of the title. I found out the original song was written by a country-folk musician called Fred Eaglesmith. His version is much too serious, like he's having a hernia on his guitar. The white-moustached man at the folk bar performed it with gusto, the klondike baritone we had been seeking throughout our trip. So i found the song on iTunes and have combined it with some train footage. It's kind-of a corny song, but i added a special surprise at the end that just kicks it right back into gear! I hope you enjoy:



I’ll do my best to romanticize the train as much as I can now. You don’t realize the impressionable significance of riding on a train so long for so many days. It becomes a home, and what a strange home. It allows you to see the world passing by as landscape. Thoughts become little spectral tails that follow you around like the white spots that cover your sight when your brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, or like Windows Media Player Visualizer or something. It’s a mixture of boredom and fascination, being glued to the same seat but watching a forever changing theater. Your thoughts wander, the world becomes question after question after question:

Et l'avance perpétuelle du train
Tous les matins on met les montres à l'heure
Le train avance et le soleil retarde
Rien n'y fait, je'entends les cloches sonores
Les gros bourdon de Notre-Dame
La cloche aigrelete du Louvre quie sonna la Barthélémy
...
Le train tonne sur les plauqes tournantes
Le train roule
Un gramophone grasseye une marche tzigane
Et le monde, comme l'horloge du quartier juif de Prague, tourne éperdument à rebours

-Blaise Cendrars

After we left Montreal I wrote this poem about its permanent residents:

Pigeons are wonderful critics
unobtrusive and deliberate
sit there, flat asses on the heads of pioneers
imprint their shit like testimony,
apolitical indifference.

Pigeons, anarchic
deny a controlling
history with abject
insubordination;
free thought

Why laugh? Chew bread and digest
smother a poem from your bowels
on the canvas and screech like
a dumb bird. You won't get shot.

They won't shoot you.

Ah hell, he doesn't know any better.

This was written on the train.  Life came to pigeons while sitting on the train, i had time to think of it.  

My thoughts became globules of possibility. 

The strangers on the train, we were incubated in the same tank for as much as twelve hours at times, even full days at other times. People would come and go; there was seldom a conversationalist. Everyone is assumption with strangers on a train. That’s probably why Hitchcock assumed you could ask one to kill your wife if you kill his mother and the situation would just slide into assembly. Everyone has that criminal potential of being mysterious; although most people are probably boring, it’s still potential.

The name of the three day train from Toronto to Vancouver is The Canadian. While the train at this point was no stranger, we had met Deewight and Elaina in Portland, Maine. And also the train conductor in Sackville. But The Canadian was the first time that we were sentenced to the train, that it was institution as much as it was travel. We stretched our legs out, prepared the loaf of bread, the newly bought peanut butter and the unopened jelly, took out our thick skinned books and stared out the window longer than a lifespan.

It’s interesting to let assumptions penetrate you, while sitting docilely on the train. It’s easy to fall in love with a skinny girl, slumped over and staring out the window wistfully. Imagining her to be thinking of what she would do if forced to live in a meadow, or if she displaced her soul to a deer’s, would she still think of her boredom in the same manner. And then the question, what if she was a deer and this imagining of being a deer was a mild fascination scurrying through the deer’s consciousness—her whole life a dream. Or she was thinking about clothes or shopping. She was thinking about Hegel’s definition of consciousness: (The Immediate object [(Sense-certainty+perception) - negative self-consciousness] + itself; the object (the true essence)) (←this is one of the reading materials I took on the trip, that and Miranda July’s No One Belongs Here More Than You. Essentially the same book.)  She probably wasn't thinking about Hegel.  

Who knows what she’s thinking of? That’s the beauty! That’s why it is totally permittable to fall in love with her abstraction. She could be thinking anything. She could be the proverbial anonymous superhero that embodies Bruce Willis’ character in Unbreakable. That stranger on the train, why any one of them could be the invincible nobody. Oh, the beauty.

But then, The Canadian also offered an Observatory car. I should mention that a certain class of people pretty much dominates the observatory car. This is senior citizens with a penchant for outdoor clothing (i.e. fleeces). It was exciting being up there, what with the clamor. Mark much preferred the scenery with his camera close at hand. I think he took something like 2,000 photos from the observatory car alone. But these old people would jump with excitement, spring from their seats at the possibility of a moose or a bald eagle. They had aggressive arguments with one another, in the words of Mark, trying to “out-outdoors” one another:

“Well, I climbed a mountain.”

“Is that right? When I climbed mountains, I got halfway up one the size of K2.”

“But did you have a broken arm? Hah!”

The alpha-necessity of these old codgers was priceless. My favorite was a surly old Irish man who delighted us with a story: "A small boy comes to a pile of horse manure--starts digging.  ‘There's got to be a pony here somewhere,’ yells the boy.”

It’s interesting how much the train possesses you. You begin to think in terms of train. Mark had a wonderful idea for a story. A train is stopped in a field. There is a train conductor fidgeting with a control panel on the train. He gets on the intercom, says, “Ahoy, folks! If you’d direct your attention to the right side you can see a heeeeeeerd of buffalo…”

Everyone moves to the right side. The left window is replaced with a video screen of the same pasture, only this time there is a videorecorded loop featuring a herd of buffalo. The conductor says, “I’m sorry, on the left side, a heeeeeeeeerd of buffalo…”

Everyone goes to the left side, sees the herd of buffalo on the video screen. The right side is changed to a video screen of the pasture.

So they are only watching a tape of the train. We had conflicting ideas for how to end the scenario, though. In my version at this point, either the window panels make the train appear to be moving, so the conductor can go to sleep under the control panel. He sleeps there for a century as confused passengers think they are riding home, eternally never getting there. Or in Mark’s version, the video displays keep showing the train not moving, then the conductor takes them to their destination and they get off, confused that home is where a herd of buffalo are not.

Mind-blowing, eh?

In times of great boredom, to the point where it’s strenuous boredom, I begin to think of new properties, new ideas to maintain my own personal vision of life. For instance, her is a new physical law I made up:

The "Imprint Impact Theory"

-A force will have the most occupation at the center of a region, if the force is repeated on at the crest within the retreating wave pulse, thus quantifying the power of the force.  Impact grows in spot with additional force amplifying recycled energy. The image of a man hitting a pole so fast, he hits on the vibration. The vibration exponentially grows to the point when the metal can no longer sustain the impact and the locus of the compiled forces breaks the pole.

Something like this, but not exactly:

My fake theory is more like, if he was hitting the pole so fast in the same place, it cracks the pole.  Science fiction, baby!

Or I’ll begin to think in complete abstraction, separated lines that come to my head and make their own bit of poetic sense:

Misery: I say (to a jar of jelly), "If you weren't so sweet, i'd blow your fucking brains away."

I made some friends on the train in addition to just thinking ridiculously.  One guy was the man working the snack bar on the Canadian.  He had tons of little drawings hanging up at his post, which was about the size of a closet.  They were little cartoons he had drawn.  His name was Denis, and from here on, he shall be known as Denis the Animator.  

A lot of what he drew were cynical snapshots of ViaRail, like Far-Sides that dealt with the grueling monotony or corporate superficiality of the company.  They were corny, but were drawn with great potential.  One of them had an astronaut with a rocketship taking off in the background, a speech bubble says: "I lost my connection, thanks to VIA," har har.  Another had a row of humanoid VIA employees marching in unison with big, open eyes saying: "We are all the same."  He was probably miserable in his box, selling snacks and coffee.  He told me was between semesters of art school, which is great.  To the right is a cartoon he drew just for me!

Another guy i met on the City of New Orleans train was a environmental engineer who was doing some research to find the effects global warming has had on the wetlands. I tried to convince him that global warming was a farce, but he would hear none of it.  Didn't like creation theory too much either.  Well, buddy, you got some explaining to do when you meet your maker, aight?

Occasionally, I'd just spend hours in the dining car listening to people talk.  Sometimes new or old friends would convene there for an impossible amount of time.  One of my favorite characters was the man who told very mundane stories but sets them up like jokes.  He was great.  Every thing he said was rife with dramatic pause and punchline:  

So then Bob says to him, "if there's not whitefish on the menu, I quit"

So the other guy says "well, where's the whitefish?"
The cook says, "It's in the fridge."

Man, i love storytellers.  

I could listen to train attendants hovering around the bar in a general malaise all day, unmoved by the train wreck on television, “I quit smoking yesterday.” “Did you?” 

Other things i heard on the train: “I just did some coke fell into an air bubble” 

And on sugar alternatives, rats and sucralose: “it rotted their teeth long before it gave them cancer.” 

Then there were other things i just imagined:  

A guy, who was by himself, thinking he didn't win but he was far from defeated: “happy just being beta” A preserved man, when the bigger dog’s not in the room, he speaks!  

Or the man with tranquil patience, “he’s the kind of guy who appreciates that kind of boredom” Imagine a guy drilling a hole in his head on the side of a mountain.  

A diner in the middle of the Western provinces, or the midwest; a sign on the window says, “free tits with your coffee.”
“We’re just trying to get feelers,” says the manager.  

And the justification for a photographer's eating cheese (gelatin): “Taking a photograph isn’t even vegan!”



Another impressive train was the Empire Builder, from Portland to Chicago.  Intermittently throughout the ride, the conductor would come on board the lounge car and tell all the passengers stories about the places we were at.  It was called "The Empire Builder" because it was a train meant to implement the new side of the American Empire, the Midwest.  A capitalist named James Hill invested in the train's building to instill the economic magnitude of the upper side of the United States.  It did not blossom as he thought it would.  

He let us in on many of the mechanics of the train's flight, such as during christmas time, Federal Express will pay a million dollars to ensure that one train has priority over passenger trains.  Traveling at that time of year can take innumerable amounts of time (maybe that's an exaggeration) because of the paid hierarchy of busy trains trying to meet their deadline.  He also explained the use of wind-breaker poles in Montana.  The wind is propelled to heights of over 80 mph.  The train could be whisked right off its tracks.  Luckily, engineers exist and we roam the empire freely.  

Here's a poem i wrote about "Montana"

cars govern the landscape
rotting in the red sand
melding dust with their old fur
a cow tranquilly bites grass near-by
smelling the well of oil
pumpling like a pendulum
the sound of a ghost smothers the air
wanting more and more and more
more sky, more wind, more loneliness
the ready landscape, open like a blouse
begins to bloom corn, potatoes and wheat
to be processed in a plant near-by
where mechanics toggle noisy machines
and function.

It's hilarious! 

The people that we met on the the Empire Builder were an interesting bunch.  I particularly liked a single woman who was traveling with her child.  An older guy traveling with his daughter remarked that their kids were about the same age, so they became play-date partners.  It was easy to see that the man was hitting on the woman, pretty strongly.  Nevertheless, she refused to take the hint so casually.  She talked boldly, so loudly, and made no reservations about her views or her life.  It seemed she had been going through hard times, her husband dying and then losing her home.  I think she was on her way to Chicago to visit family.  She could not really afford these trips, but loved taking them.  She spoke eloquently about her decisions for the election and her hope that the economy would resurface and she could support herself again.  She seemed to have no ambition to be married again, just to support her son.  I thought she was beautiful.  

As we pulled across the Midwest a group of farmers crazy about heading to casino got on board and started drinking Keystone and Budweiser.  They were awesome.  It seemed they did this a couple times a year.  they would get hammered on the train, leap into a casino and burn what they got.  It sounded crazy.  In fact, every time we went over a bridge they all screamed together.  It was amazing.  

The group was in their mid-40s.  But they were traveling with an older couple in their 70s.  The older pair were school bus drivers.  They all knew each other because they were neighbors.  At one point, the older man pointed out the window and said, "This is where i hit the deer going over the railroad tracks.  It smashed the fender in an inch and bent the front frame; sent off some parts.  The deer completely scattered..."  Apparently he had been driving a lacrosse team to practice and was hot-tailing it at 70 mph, incidentally a normal routine.  "I had to go back the next day to collect all the parts."  I couldn't tell if he was referencing the deer or the car.  

A pretty young mother in Minnesota sat with us at one point, her small kid infatuated with Mark.  She told him to sing a song and he sang "Revolution" by the Beatles, knowing every word.  The mother was a very pretty girl, with fair, pale skin and dark red hair and lips.  She seemed sad, but contained.  She was smiling prettily.  Her son kept getting very close to Mark's face and staring at him, the way people stare at fish.  It freaked Mark out, but he was entranced.  The kid seemed to be magical.  And he barely knew words, but he knew the entirety of the Beatles' song.  It was scary.  

The Midwest is haunting and romantic.  I have to travel it again soon, another way.  Perhaps, i could bike across it! Here's another poem i wrote about the train:  

I live on nothing and its egg
I am a landscaper
i traverse theland in search of water
food and vice
I am a voyager for conversation
i look for queens in cake
for soldiers in the recluse
i look for atomic energy in balloons
i carry on because i must
i must live
i must not die
i must live
through thick tortures and starvation
you must realize
this world has such beauty
growing all over.

I also wrote this short story, as so many cowboys boarded the train and i wondered, could there be one that is still 200 years back in time.  (Although, this story is very obviously set in Texas.  Oh well): 

The Cowboy and the Ford
"Dammit, I told you we're stopping her."
"She's not a she, she's indiscriminate."
"You stop her, or i'll kill ya."
"Whoa, there."
"You heard me."
"What?"
"The knife."
"Whoa."
"Why ain't she stopping?'
"She's a car. I have to stop her."
"Well, stop her then, why don't you."
"She doesn't need to stop."
"I know nothing but what i know. And i know steeds that need water. You stop her or I'll kill ya."
"Alright, alright. I'll stop her."
They pull over to a Texaco. Bill goes in--"I'll have ten bucks on 2 and this package of Hostess cream pies."
"You better watch your friend there."
"Huh?"
"He's whipping your vehicle, there."
"Oh for the love of--"
"well, i never..."
"Dammit, I tells ya to drink so drink. I tell you to move girl, Move!"
Bill hands Wylie the keys.
"This'll get 'er moving."
"You're a sick man, Bill. But that's why i'll ride with ya."
Wylie walks to the gas tank, opens it and jams the keys in.
"Ha!" he yelps, "Done never boosted a steer in the rectum before. Feels pretty good."
Bill just kinda shakes his head.

I wrote this and thought, well, you've officially lost your mind.  It turns out, it's pretty awesome.  I also had this vision.  Take note, it's set in a train's dining car:

On the way to Morlock, a wizard is eating a bucket of fried chicken. The train steward asks him to stop, people are complaining. The wizard stops eating, sits down as withdrawn as a coma. Another wizard gets up, takes the chicken, speaks with his eyes. "I was the one who complained about the chicken!"
"I demand you put it down or pay the price!"
"Then let this unfold between you and I, Wizard!  A test of magic it will be!"

"So it shall!"

Also, inspired by the invisible chess game i saw in Toronto, i became affixed with the idea that invisible chess could be happening all over.  I mixed the imagery of the chess game with counter-culture rhetoric:

Invisible chess game

In America, the whole system is set up on weights of overconsumption. Moves knight to C6. We look for answers or cures in images or fascinations. Opponnet moves pawn at B4 twice forward. Obsessed with overdrive, we attempt to gesticulate the image. Moves pawn at B8 twice forward into some malignant representation, an innocuous anything. Opponent looks at blank table for a long time. Sugar, television, violent imagery, sports shows, pornography, video games. Opponent moves knight to C4. By creating a stimulus, we empower the mind to be active while our bodies remain dormant and lazy. Moves pawn at B5 one forward. It’s a compromise with our soul, to look like we’re engaged in a passion—when it’s nothing more than sports. Opponent moves up rook to C8. So eventually, eventually, we are so overpowered with dullness we lose sight of engagement—and find solace only in consuming moves Queen out to A4. Check. “What do you mean? It’s not checkmate.” “I said Check.” “You moved your pawn there. It’s Check.” “I never moved my pawn there. I move this one.” “To A4?” “To A3” “No, you didn’t.” “I did. You haven’t been watching.” “I’ve been keeping track, you haven’t.’ “Now you screwed up my whole concept of the board.” “I’ve still got it.” “So is that check?” “Yes it is!” 

The table before them is still bare. With their eyes, they’re still arguing.

And I'm also working on a story about vegetable eugenics.  The tale of the tomato as the proper fruit.

But we'll get to that nutso facto later.  

Probably the most impressive segment of the journey was The City of New Orleans Train, that goes from Chicago to New Orleans.  We met two amazing people on this train that pretty much just blew my mind for life.  

The first was an R&B singer going to Tennessee named Chad Dixson. He was a "spiritual singer," singing songs "for the ladies." He told me the story of how he found God, found Life. He was a reformed gangbanger. He told me about the incident when he was up for two weeks straight on cocaine, drinking hard liquor (Ian Jay?) and smoking so much weed it lost feeling. At one point, his heart stopped for 16 minutes. His neighbor saw his door open and came into his room. She called 911 and the ambulance took ten minutes to arrive.

"When I died, i wanted it. It felt good. It felt perfect. I walked into the bright light and never turned my head. God said 'no.'"

Twice he was going to be shot while being robbed of his dope. A gun to his head, the gun jammed. He pistol-whipped the first guy to near death. The second guy, he was prepared. Had his "cousins" lying in wait. They went to attack the guy, but he started shooting for real.

He had a scar on his arm from when he was stabbed. Another on his thumb form blocking a razor to his throat.

He regrets the past but looks more forward to the future. He realized, when he died, the mistakes he was making with his life and that God had chose him, had adorned with a gift: his voice. He told me, "Everyone on this earth has something they do well. Mine's my voice. I'm using that."

So when i met him, he was on tour. He was singing in four places in Tennessee, then Atlanta and flying to San Bernadino in California. He seemed to be exhausted from all the traveling he was doing.

For two years, he has been trying to get on American Idol. "I'm 29 next year. it's my last chance, this time."

Although, i've never found his information on line. I don't even know what his voice sounds like.



Mark had started a conversation with a man named Bill. An old man, 75 years young, lived that long without any medication of any kind: "Just rub the nerves on my wrist. It send the ends right out." When he did this motion, this rubbing the wrist, it felt like a stream of water was falling over the knees.

"Problem is people want to take a pill when they're in discomfort, but there's side effects. Effects heart, liver and kidneys. And you need all three. Pills is these people's downfall."

The man lived on the train. He exploited the same passes that we had bought, using his pension or social security or whatever to just buy train tickets. He owned a farm in the South, and he stocked up for week long train trips. He had a 2 gallon ice cream bucket filled with fresh-picked persimmons. They were small juicy fruits like plums, but tasted like caramel.

He had no teeth so everything he ate needed to be dissolvable. He ate the fruit he picked from his trees. He packed cookies and bread for sugar. And before he went on a trip, he took one of the chickens from his roost and minced it up, stuck it in an ice cream bucket. Unrefrigerated chicken for a week. Living like this for years, but he was spry as a dog.

He had owned his piece of land for 35 years. Saw his wife go from cancer. His daughters go from cancer. He didn't take pills, his immune system wasn't weakened. So now, he lived on the train and spent the in-between time maintaining his land so he could live from it. He even told me how "to separate the vine from the eyes of sweet potato, in order to let it grow separate so they'll last through winter."

His plot was divided up as so, 30 quarts peaches, 30 quarts pears, 20 quarts grapes, 10 quarts cherries. He canned food when it was in growth, sustained him throughout the year. He had a wizard's white beard and Robin Williams' top-of-cheek to top-of-cheek smile. When i first started talking to him has demanded, "Tell me a big one." I was stuck, unprepeared, searching my mind for medieval quests, but winding up with childhood exploits. He said, ah never-mind. And started telling me jokes that were corny as hell. "You know why politicians float? Because they're fulla hot air!" Then an old man cackle like i never imagined i'd hear in real life, giddy as a prospector and twice as excited. He was amazing.

He imparted maybe the most important words of the trip, "As long as you can make fun of yourself, you've got someone to rag on"

The train is a giant, cancerous body that overtakes the entire landscape. It is a chain pulled tight around the continent for fastening. But because it's there and because we're human, we'll use it. It allows us to see all the places it strangles, and it has the power to unite worlds, connect 10,000 miles in a mere few days. It is unspeakably lonely and its imagination is incredible. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg, what Mark and me saw, it's only the beginning. The beginning of the loneliness of the train:

The goldfish is dead this morning on the bottom
Of her world. The autumn sky is white.
The trees are coming apart in the cold rain
Loneliness gets closer and closer.
He drinks hot tea and sings off-key
This train ain’t a going-home train, this train,
This is not a going-home train, this train
This train ain’t a going-home train ‘cause
My home’s on a gone-away train. That train.

-Jack Gilbert

Toronto, The Wizard's Domain

It was a particularly odd time we arrived in Toronto. The city was much bigger than Ottawa. But it had that same commercial peculiarity. I had heard that Montreal was the cultural hub of Canada and Toronto was the commercial one. That they tried to make Toronto into the New York City of Canada, but the attempt would forever be a failure. As we got off the train, we were immediately pulled into a mob of charging meatheads on their way to the Thanksgiving Football spectacle. As Mark put it, a bunch of off-duty servicemen exclaiming, "I'm gonna eat a hot dog. Watch some football. Ah man, this is going to be AWEsome!"

One of our big regrets about Toronto is that we did not take any pictures. I had just run out of batteries and never found a place to get more batteries. So i kept seeing these amazing photo opportunities, things i really wanted to remember, but i have no pictures from Toronto. For instance, as we were walking with this mob of Football fans, we went through this tunnel. A man was playing guitar powered by a small amp. I remember clearly that the music he was playing was so clean with the acoustics of that tunnel. It sounded like we were being herded through dream territory, not in that mushy "dream" quasi-exquisite sense. I mean, truly ethereal, surreal. It was like suddenly being ripped from a city into a dark tunnel with a bunch of men who were talking about beer and hot dogs suddenly being silenced. And this guy was playing in the middle of the mob, taking quarters, but no one seemed to notice. Fuck, maybe it's better i don't have a picture. Something about it struck me as, well not sad, but enervating--like being physically drained.

As we emerged on the other side of the tunnel, the football mob split up with up with us and this beautiful dark-skinned girl approached us and asked, "Can i help you find anything?"

We thought it was sort of strange that a busy, public city street had a concierge, but she explained that she was working for some advocacy group and we didn't look like the mob, so she could only assume we were part of the group she was looking for. Plus, she saw our backpacks and noticed we were looking around, all lost like. She had a really friendly smile. We told her we were looking for the Spadina line and she pointed it out. We also asked her about nightlife and she told us of some bars. We asked her if she wanted to come meet us later, but she explained she was going to be guiding this group around all night. We told her she should take them to the bar, and she said she would try, with a flirtatious shaking of the head, as if to say, "oh, you kids." She gave a thick-toothed smile as we walked away and we felt good. It was like meeting a shepherd on the side of the mountain, she just pointed the way and we were on our merry way.

Mark commented on how dumb the architecture in Toronto was. He kept looking at the buildings and saying, "I can't even take a picture. It just looks so dumb." I guess it was dumb then.



For some odd reason, we decided to walk through Toronto as well. i guess it was Mark, that he just starts walking and you just have to follow. It's really interesting, because then you get to see that much more of the city. So that's how we found out that Toronto is a tall city with boring buildings and a huge homeless population that has thousands of embankments on its near-deserted Thanksgiving-vacant streets. I got to really like walking hanging out with Mark, because it is the most personal way to travel. I think it was Holderlin that walked across the entirety of Germany because he wanted to write a poem about every river. It's pretty fascinating to experience a place by continually walking. I remember when i was in Prague for a study abroad program which was only three weeks long. I stayed for three extra days and spent all my time walking around. I got to see a whole lot more that way, a whole mess of images. I sketched a lot in that time too. Mark had told me he in some leadership class he was determined to be some quiet bystander, a passive-aggressive leader. Not so aggressive that he intimidated others. Or so passive that he wasn't a leader. But he would remain quiet, complicit, until he saw something wrong, then he'd question, "Well, do you have a better idea?" And if the idea was stupid, he'd say, "that's stupid. You need to come up with something better." Through this kind of leadership, he was determined to be the one who had the most cooperative ideas. The center shape in the Venn Diagram, that's Mark. And that's why i was always following him around, i certainly didn't have a better idea.

We finally reached the Queen's Park at the University of Toronto where we called Tony for the first time to see where he lived. We actually didn't know where we were as we had just been walking around, but he informed us we were just a few blocks from his house! Then he gave some of the strangest directions i've ever had. "Do you see a horse statue, i mean a man on horse?" I said yes. "Go to the head of the statue and face the way that the horse is facing. There will be several paths. A north path, a west path, you want to take the northwesterly path. Take that for maybe 800 feet, then you want to turn left. Go down the street to Bloor, no Dundas, well, i forget the street. But look, what you want to do is take a left and head on the edge of the fence until you see the skyline through the trees, from there you'll look for a blinking red light at an intersection..." These may have been the most difficult instructions i'd ever received. I felt like I was on a scavenger hunt. I told him we got it, but then i realized i had not idea so I asked him again. "Alright, look, i'll find you. Start walking. Look for the guy in the wizard's cap." This sounded a bit odd, but what the hell.

After the directions that sounded like Olmec's guiding us through the hidden temple, i should have been surprised to see a dude with a big-ass wizard's hat with stars on it, looking like Mickey Mouse from Fantasia approach us. Tell us about the endless supply of alcohol and the thrice spiced ham and turkey he's prepared. The guy's a couchsurfing fanatic. He's been turned on to it since he quit his job in June, on the whim that he and this German stranger would bike from Toronto to Vancouver staying at stranger's houses the whole way. He had such a killer time, he stayed three extra weeks in Vancouver. When we arrived, we were in the midst of a couchsurfing bramble. Even friends from his Vancouver debacle had come to visit.

His roommate was a scratch-voiced Indian guy named Matt. He had a really extroverted sensibility, yelling out punchlines. He reminded me of a dude from Entourage, complete with popped collar. He was pretty hilarious though. He immediately set to telling us about his war with a nearby squirrel who chased him down every time he stepped outside alone. He was talking, "you know, usually they won't do anything. But this squirrel's mad. He's after me, man. When i'm out there alone, he stares right at me. it's like he knows just who i am. Then i have to run to my car just to get away. I don't know what that mother fucker's gonna do if he gets his hands on me." At the end of the story, we heard an acorn drop on the roof. A sign or a signal?



Tony had to get some last minute supplies for the festivities of the night and the only place open would be in nearby Chinatown. Mark and I opted to go as well, along with Jen-- a friend from Vancouver. Apparently, Toronto's Chinatown is renowned for being so busy you walk on heels as your heels are walked on. And even though it was the only place with open stores that day, it was not that busy. But it was busy enough. There were people all over the place. A guy was feeding pure sugar cane stalks into a grinder that made fresh pure sugar juice. I thought the irony was thick (me being in my anti-sugar crusade) to get the pure, uncut kinda stuff. Like a DEA agent saying, "well, if it's not cut, i gotta see what i'm up against, really" So i did it. And it was good for three sips then it was what you'd expect. Take two cups of refined sugar and two cups of water and suck it through a straw. I drank half the cup though. I thought i'd be in a coma.

We went into a crowded chinese market. As Tony and Jen split from Me and Mark to pick up supplies we just sort of walked around. I got some raw peanuts to eat on the train then Mark tapped me on the shoulder, "you've gotta see this." At the back of the store was a fresh seafood section. Everyone's seen the lobsters in the tank at a fancy grocery store. But there was also this big vat of live crabs. And women with tongs were picking up the crabs, inspecting them, then dropping the suckers back in the vat. I was reminded of the Quebec City conversation about animal treatment and the "holocaust" and i shuddered. As two chinese women bickered, dropped a crab back in its cage, it's leg dismembered, lost among squirming arms. There were probably a thousand crabs in the barrel. All i wanted to do was take a video so i wouldn't forget. So far, it's been hard not to remember.

Now, now. Fair reader. Don't take this as a pure abolishment of meat-eating. I am for principled meat-eating. So long as the animal is respected and "meat' is treated with integrity, i'll condone the ethics of the food chain. But that. THAT! was just unspeakable. I couldn't wrap my head around it. ANd people so casual about selection. It just seemed sociopathic. I don't get it sometimes, how empathy can be chosen. In a case like that, it seemed obvious, but i guess not. Sometimes, it doesn't matter if an arm falls off. It just happens. So it goes. Anyway, i bought those peanuts anyway. Every time i put one in my mouth i got sick to my stomach. I littered them from the moving train. A poor alms for the dying crabs in Toronto. So well...

Tony was still wearing his Merlin cap, so he was easy to spot. I offered to pay for his groceries to give thanks for the hospitality. Really, it wasn't a fair trade. As i was to find out later, he was going to lay it on us real thick with booze and food, more than could be imagined. Buying some orange juice and eggs just seemed facetious, but then, he didn't seem to mind.

We got back to the house as some people were showing up, Tony's co-worker or his cousin or something. I don't quite remember. But it was a couple. They brought these potatoes. "An old Irish recipe.' It was amazing. I don't know what he put in the mother fucker, fennel or something, but it made the mouth climb heights. I thought i'd lose it right then and there. I had to grip something. Well, not really. But they were good!

Another girl that was there was a quiet woman named Carla. She was wearing a top that more like a corset and accented her huge tits to the nth degree. Her eyes were like large snow peas and her skin was dark as a dress. She was a beautiful Mexican woman; i couldn't even talk to her.

The boys had been obsessing over the turkey, taking it out every thirty minutes or so to re-marinade thing and lamenting that they did not stuff it with a beer can to make that famous beer can chicken that every frat boy mythologizes. When they brought it out though, it looked spectacular. A real work of art. I don't even eat meat, but the sheer smell reminded me of every cut or piece i'd ever had. SO powerful, in fact, mark caved. It took much convincing on their part, but he fell into gear and took a few bites. Of the pork too. The pork had been darkened with some kind of brown sugar marinade that crystallized on the outside and made it seem tangy and burnt, as if it had been on an open fire. Hell, that looked good too. And according to everyone it was.

The platters set before us, an enormous buffet alotted giant slices of everything. There were potatoes, meat, salads, breads, beers, wines, liquors, pates, sauces, gravies, and vegetables like corn, sweet potatoes, green beans and beans too. I don't know what this means, but i had written it down on a piece of paper after the dinner. I was drunk, remember; i suppose it means there was a lot of food: "If tens of thousands of us had shown up, engorged until we burst into flames, combusted from exhaustion, eaten until explosion. Our bodies melting juices cover the food and more and more grows out, wax molds of fat colossus combat and began again hot enough to burn paper." Sounds like a surrealist nightmare. But the dinner was great.

When Tony's sister dropped by the entire atmosphere of the night changed. She was like no one i have ever met. Fierce, loud and filling. She filled the room with her presence. Stepped in and demanded, very quickly, each of our names to memorize. She made a quip about how impossible it was to remember names, then went one by one--as a schoolteacher--in order to get it right. She threw off her coat and made some comments about being starved, traffic, the weather, the day today, the footballers downtown. It was rockets firing off from her synapses, her mind exploding all geography at once. People were dumbfounded, no room to speak. Competition was impossible. It was all solved. She took it over.

She was a fascinating woman. Immediately engaging every single person at the table in individual interests. She addressed Carla calling her an absolutely beautiful Mexican woman. She mentioned she had made a series of feminist paintings about woman considered Oriental, from South America, Asia and Africa, exhibiting their beauty to their fullest potential. I believe she made arrangements to paint Carla at her next availability. This conversation led into a more in-depth conversation about sexuality. The most feminist conversation i'd ever witnessed. They all started talking aggressively, energetically about kink. It was interesting, beautiful. Apparently Jen was a slice from the scandalous kinky pie in whatever dungeon it was baked. She talked about lesbian adventures and videos and stuff. They all made mentions of S&M clubs. The wonder.

"You get this impression of it being dangerous, because it's all leather, but it's the safest environment ever. Everyone asking, 'Are you okay?' Carla began talking about her uniform, 3 inch high stilettos and corset-type things that were more exhibitive than her current garb. She made an exasperated expression, feigned disbelief, over how men will pay $5000 in one night, every week, to have someone walk on them in those shoes. She liked the dilettante look, a leather teddy with the tits cut out, "Everyone's got a fetish." She also liked salsa dancing.

Which prompted Ayesha, Tony's sister, to talk about the Portuguese club she danced at. "It was a pretentious club, a dress-up club. I don't like pretentious people, but i do like people who dress well and dance. Give me a few drinks. I'll be a diva." She talked about her recent experience, being asked to dance by a white guy at the club, looked tall and dumb. "It was like dancing with the stars. He had me twirling, twisting, spinning. It was the time of my life."

In order to engage everyone else, they began to talk about other things. One thing i found interesting was that Canada had begun issuing these government mandated health checks, to ensure its citizens remained in health. They gave tax benefits to those that followed through. That seemed to make a lot of sense, a system of positive reinforcement in order to sustain healthcare. Rather than punishing people with higher taxes for not going, they would give them tax breaks for going. It seemed socially progressive enough to socialize healthcare, but geez man, that's crazy awesome. Sorry for gettin' all Marxy on ya. It just seemed interesting.

But the conversation seemed to recede eventually back into feminine wiles.

"I like to be tied up."

"Girrrrrrrrrl"

To avert an orgasmic catastrophe for the Thanksgiving night, having woman erecting men to higher states of unmanageably arousing conversation; Tony decided to redirect the entire crew to the porch for drinks. Almost as soon as we did this, A British guy and a Russian girl showed up. They were Tony's friends, Alaina and Richard. They seemed splendidly nice and offered to get us stoned. Everyone took part but me. Then everyone was stoned and eating more meat. If this wasn't Bacchae then i don't know what fuck is. But it was fun. A rich night.

Alaina and Richard turned out to be splendid people. Alaina talked with the childish amusement of a wonderer, gesticulating with her hands when she spoke and covering her mouth when she laughed after various statements. Her boyfriend remained subdued in quiet reticence taking it all in, panged a bit by shyness but not bothered--an observer. She explained to me the amazing quality of couchsurfing, "It's making a move in consciousness now," she let her gaze slip to the ol' horizon glance, "It's a first step for people to be moving away from isolation and separateness and coming to realize all are one!" She practically yelled out. I hadn't realized what an amazing truth this was until that night. The hospitality we had received from strangers, pure, absolute strangers was revelatory. Everyone was so nice, so welcoming--and their was a whole world waiting to be so generous. Why be greedy when there's so much compassion. Her eyes spoke wonders.

As we all got drunker, Tony disappeared for a second. He came back into the room, for the first time, not donning the wizard's cap. "Turn off the music. Turn off the lights. I have to show everybody something." We complied. I immediately thought we would all be sodomized by infuriated trolls or munchkins. AH, a catch! but NO! He lit up some off these glowing plastic balls and put on this magnificent juggling display. It was very trippy, there's something about spinning colors then never fails to capture the appreciation of our focuses. An Israeli guy once said to me, "there are two things which people will never cease to be amazed by: fireworks and puppies." I think i found number three.

After the demonstration, Alaina begged Richard to show off some of his own juggling. I didn't participate in this, something he obviously did not want to do, until i learned he taught Tony! Then i was like, "Yeah, man. You kinda have to." he claimed to be able to do this trick, though i can't remember what it was called exactly i remember that we kept counting "ONE...TWO...THREE...FOUR" But then he kept messing it up and getting really frustrated because we were distracting him. Then his girlfriend would assure him it was alright and that we did not care, but the anticipation in her voice was vexing. It went on like that three or four times, to the point where he was yelling at her, "I DON'T WANT TO DO IT, OKAY." And she was convincing him, "You're doing great, don't worry about it. You're doing amazing." But he felt like she was condescending, like it was pity. Until that point, i had been doing the same thing as well. But i cut it out. Then the room was silent. The air was thick as sheets, really. He could feel it. We could feel it. We had shut up. He had to do it this time. And you know what, he fucking did it. It's funny, because for the "ONE...TWO....THREE.....FOUR" We were just nodding our heads, all in excitement. Could hear a mouse squeak, and all of us with gawking smiles, nodding until it just happened then we were covered in ecstasy. And he was just relieved to get off the stage. Though, you could tell, he enjoys the publicity. Even though a part of him hates it too.

In case you don't know what juggling is, it is awesome:



At that point, the night was winding down, but the meat was not even close to being done. Alaina and Richard left. Tony's sister had long gone along with Jen and Carla. Jen was minutes away from catching her flight back to Vancouver (which left at midnight for some reason--bad time to leave). Another one of Tony's roommates came back. He was a DJ and actually looked A LOT like DJ Shadow, which i thought interesting. I think his name was DJ Brian, or something boring like that, though.



We were invited to go out to this bar, so we did. It was strange, because i felt like we were scrutinized from the beginning. Something about DJ Brian's general take on us didn't sit right. It was also strange because the whole time we were at this bar, Matt and DJ Brian were playing an invisible game of chess. I couldn't tell if it was real, and they were so good that they had the elements of the chessboard memorized to the point where they didn't need pieces or a board, just finger movements to show what was happening. Or the more realistic hypothesis, they were doing it to be ironic and weird. Either situation is weird, but in one they're super-geniuses, in the other they're just kooky.

I really hit them the wrong way when i tried to explain my Dinosaur theory, about how the dinosaur bones that we take for granted as a prior species may have just been the scaffolding of the last generation of humanity's automobiles. And it's a never-ending cycle of apocalypse from global warming disasters from these automobiles that lead to a devastation where nothing but their shells remain. Then the next generation mythologizes the automobiles to the status of Dinosaur, mythological beast with a penchant for austerity. Of course, it's just an irony. It's all aesthetic. There's too much theme for it to be real History. But it's interesting. And these guys couldn't stand it. They kept on cutting me off, "What are you saying? Dinosaurs are automobiles. You can't ride a dinosaur." "There were no dinosaurs." "So they had cars, instead." Purposefully trying to jilt the idea. The thing is, they could see the irony, they just chose to ignore it. Ah well, fuck it.

At the end of the night, Tony told us a hilarious story, the content's of which i can not remember now.

We got up early the next morning, found a shop to buy some supplies for our three day journey into the vast abyss of Western Canada and were off. Like clockwork, waving Tony's wizard's hat to the wayside as we made our way for the cornfields of tomorrow. Goodbye.

Ottawa, the Houston of Canada

Ottawa appeared from the train a sprawled, do-nothing city. It seemed boring, with a few office buildings and not much else. Four-lane highways and all-you-can-eat ribs place that doubled as a karaoke bar. The sight seemed surreal, as Canada had not offered us anything languishing in the whole lazy America ethic until now. Here's a first observation (note the futuristic spin on architecture focused in on at the end):



What we didn't realize in our exhausted haze is that Ottawa is actually a very brilliant city, only the train station does not drop you off anywhere near it. It drops you off on the outskirts of town, so the train station is spaced among the corporate parks and neverending highway of a damned sun-stroked nowheresville. And because we are dumb, we decided not to take a bus to get into the city. Having walked so much of the trip already, it just seemed like a reasonable idea to walk until we found downtown Ottawa.

Wouldn't you know it! Ottawa turned out to be a gem. We hadn't made arrangements to find a couchsurfer in Ottawa, so we found the Old Jail Hostel. We asked a man outside of a methadone-clinic where the hostel was, and with unfailing Canadian kindness he walked us all the way over to the street where it was at. The downtown was not very much anything, it was a college park with a few office buildings, that's it. It was similar to Pittsburgh, sans the historic buildings and the Point. Though it did still have a jailhouse. Which is exactly where we were staying!:

Oh, it was just swell. The rooms were old jail-cells and there were brick walls 2 feet thick and giant metal doors you needed TWO keys to enter by. The girl at the front counter was a beautiful chubby cherub who was practicing her Gaelic when we arrived. I asked her what language she was speaking and she said it was Gaelic, not harshly, but the same way she would answer if i had asked her what color the green walls were or where her computer was and she's sitting right next to it. Then she said, "Why does everyone always think it's so weird i'm studying Gaelic." And i told her it's fascinating she's studying a dying language. "it's not dying," she said. "Oh," i said. So this is jail!

She told us about how interesting the Jail Hostel was, that old men would come in from time to time and ask to see a certain cell, then reveal later (as if they had been concealing it for great auspices, they way a magician reveals a hidden trinket) that they were once prisoners in this very jail. I suppose they expected the reaction to be one of amazement, but i think the girls found it creepy. Though, i suppose it does offer a certain mystique, like finding out someone was murdered or conceived in your rented apartment's bedroom. Surprise!


We went walking around Ottawa and found some extremely elaborate fantastic buildings. Parliament is there, as it is Canada's capital. Suddenly the Houston of the North didn't look so bad. It looked more stately than we had first encountered it. There were big green fields in front of Parliament where people were picknicking and families were waiting in line to climb up the clocktower and spit off it, i guess.

The architecture of the city is pretty phenomenal. The art museum was very glassy. Here's what it looks like with a giant spider in front of it:



The cool thing about old cities is they have statues everywhere. And pigeons are always crapping on the statues. And it makes our legends look like douchebags. And if you can look at a legend and think of him as a douchebag, it's a lot like standing in front of a crowd when your supposed to be making a speech and imagining everyone in their underwear. It sort of debases the greatness. So i feel sublime in these historic cities, seeing horsemen and judging by the foothold of the horse if the man died in battle, if he was in battle, or if he was just "noble." But all that is inconsequential to the amount of shit on his head. (there's a very nice photo of one of these ottawa statues on Mark's blog http://train.ography.org)

To give you an impression of the tiredness we were feeling from Montreal and the trains thus far, here is a short clip from our day at the Regal Houston. I believe I am singing James Brown's "This is a Man's World" and Mark is singing James Taylor's "Carolina in my Mind" only in the voice of a dialtone:



To be honest, not much happened in Ottawa. We were pretty dead tired. We ended up eating at an Indian Buffet, though we had no idea how much it cost. We got the buffet and each a beer. The bill came out to $40. Mark flipped his lid. I hadn't seen outrage like that since i was charged $5 for a Budweiser in San Francisco. Five dollars! Five fucking dollars for a Budweiser! What the fuck is that! Anyway, he was less than pleased. The food was decent, but that was pretty exorbitant. We made plans to sabotage the buffet with plastic spiders we didn't have or escape the check by the ol' putting-a-dollar-bill-on-tab routine, but decided that was just plain wrong. So we relished in extravagance instead! Hurrah for psychological melding!

Not wanting to spend any more money, as we had resorted to a hostel and just paid a mad sum to those Indian Buffet pirates, we just walked the Boardwalk for the rest of the evening. Much of this involved my patiently waiting for Mark to take pictures of something in the dark with his shutter opened for several small days in order to allow the image to impress. This process would usually be a good fifteen minutes of waiting around, which i took advantage of by really focusing on some ideas or specific landscapes we were at. That kind of slowing down, rather than booming through sights as most tourists do, allowed me to appreciate a lot of the atmosphere certain locales offered. The highway in Prince Edward Island and the architecture of Chicago and here, the boardwalk along the Rideau River. You don't know the value of quiet spaces because you hear your footsteps, but when you're stopped, you can hear that silence. It's mystifying at times, especially at times of exhaustion. So just to focus on that was a heavy clarity. It allowed the river to do just what it meant to do: pass time.

When we got back to the Hostel, a lot of the inmates were making Thanksgiving dinner as it was Thanksgiving eve and much of there was much merriment to go around. I got tired of telling people the story of what we were doing: Got a rail pass, going across the country, couchsurfing, looking for the Pittsburgh of Canada, bla bla bla. I made the mistake of making up a story about our travels to see if it would be more interesting. I told our cellmate Mark and I were brothers who had inherited a shitload of money from our wealthy, batty old grandfather before he died. His last words were, "I don't know where it is, but you must find it." And so we were on a quest to find "it." The guy lost interest or realized it was a joke or thought i was just psychopathic and predictable before i got to finish the story, explaining to him that the "it" was in us all along. But i guess i would have jumped the gun on that cliche anyway. And who wants that hokey hollywood bullshit on their thanksgiving plate anyway.

After that, i felt alienated from the Hostel crowd, because i had truly made a fool of myself. I kicked myself all night for not making the story more believable. But as we discussed it, Mark assured me that alien sabotage and assassination conspiracies would have supplemented the blase elements of the story just fine.

I might also mention that we had no place to stay in Toronto either. Doting on how lame the night became in Ottawa, we hoped surely that someone would accept our extremely ill-timed Thanksgiving plea for a host. And wouldn't you know it, the holiday spirit came alive. In a message titled "Why Couchsurfing rules":

Hey Jason,

You and your friend are welcome to crash at my place
tomorrow. I have a couch for 1 and a floor for
another. CS rules because you will be coming to my
house on the day of our Thanksgiving party. We will
eat and drink very well tomorrow!

Tony

It was like a blessing. Very definitely the best possible situation. But we'll get to that...