Go! Biscuit! Go!

Summer begins in...3...2...1...

It took longer than expected to clean out the house, put everything in storage. We didn't take into account all the little items, the nickels and dimes and hangers and loose shirts just laying around. We vacummed the edges (did I even spell that right?). Dust and spiders flew up in the bag. I pictured them swirling about in the darkness. The black void. Ghastly.

We took the Buddha from our back yard. Our garden friend. And the lady that had propped open the front door on those long, sweaty July days. I wanted to touch it all. I wanted to feel it all. It was just like that. Something to feel.

Needed to remember. It's hard. Have to write everything down or I forget sometimes. So busy looking ahead I forget what it's like - how life used to be defined for me.

I am writing it down, writing it all down. I'm supposed to. It's important that we do this and make it happen.

It's funny. I never want to stop travelling. Why would anyone ever want to stop? Some people might think I'm aimless, but what if my aim is to travel? Then aren't I doing what I want?

Boom. Chink. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.Chugga.

We are all there is. The Marvelettes. Driving to Vegas, there are billboards on either side of us, proclaiming the wonders ahead. Alcohol! Gambling! Girls! And twinkling lights! An oasis of them - lights, I mean. Or girls. It really depends.

The billboards are the most colorful things along the road. And then, dry bushes and earth. Mountains high up, dry. Calico.

Once we tried to go to the ghost town on the way to Vegas, but they were charging ten bucks to get in and it seemed silly. We were saving our money for blackjack, so we turned the car around, got back on the freeway. I put my nose to the window, my face pressed against the glass, and watched the billboards as we passed them: The Marvelettes! YERMO!

It was all so foreign. The letters were forming words I knew nothing about. Words that looked like they shouldn't be on billboards at all, like we were entering fairy tale land. A jewish cross on the horizon. Minneola. Early Man Site (I wondered if he was made of toothpicks or clay - like the ones in the museums). Oh, and then there were the powerlines. There's something about driving cross country. If I tell you, you promise not to run? It was Sunday so the cars coming back into LA were backed up. It was like a parking lot on the other side of the divide. I was happy we weren't going in that direction. We kept our eyes ahead, bugs were glued to the windshield. They were committing suicide against the glass. 1, 2, 3 squish.

Drink up, baby. I said I was sad that the ghost town was now charging, but my boy said Vegas had enough ghosts for the whole of California, maybe even all of the west coast too. I believed him. I was in the business of ghosts. Or rather, I liked to think I was. I had moved to Los Angeles to see if Marilyn and James Dean wold ever be kind enough to speak to me, you know, from the other side of the divide. I was hoping that they'd maybe whisper a few words to me if I sat in enough bars mixing my drink with my little pink straw. It seemed like something I could see myself doing. Just sitting there mulling the classy kind of way.

Trailers on the right side of the road. And a sign for Rigo's Tacos. Shacks of places. Strange, like we knew any better. Oh, and the world' biggest thermometer. That's important, too.

I ask him, I'm like, what if you just got lost out there, you know, in the mountains. What if you just got lost? And he's like, it's quite a ways, it's quite a ways. I believe him, I do. Has to be. All those rocks and sand.

A lot of the buildings in Vegas, they stopped working on them, so they just finished the outside, but you can't come in. You can't come in. So, it looks like a real building where people are living and gambling, but in truth, it's just an empty shell. We are driving through the lights now. We're just...driving.

Passing through Vegas. THEhotel. You think you know someone. Don't ask, just go. We are the world. We are...Mandalay Bay. There's something so artificial about it all. And then there's the idea, like, oh yeah, we could do this, we could be here. And there's all this stuff. We are listening to Amon Tobin.

Driving through Vegas, she had a thought. Human beings were truly parasites. Just feeding off the earth, building an oasis in the middle of nowhere. Where it gets to be 100-something degrees. Poor Biscuit. That's what we named our Chevy. BISCUIT. GO BISCUIT GO!

We've got such a long way, you know? But it's all about the journey isn't it?

Hell yeah. :)