Cross Country Snippets

Notes From the American Road

***Britney and I have been on the road since July 20, when we left home in coastal California. We’re now in New York State about 200 miles west of New York City. Next stop Portland, Maine and then Boston. This post is from a couple days ago. If you appreciate my work please consider going paid. Thank you to all my readers!

Snippet 1:

Then we forked off 15 N onto good ole I-70 East, which, like 80 and 90, runs most of the way across the nation. I’ve been on 70 before a couple times. Utah was spectacular. Massive red and orange natural arches, probably formed millions of years ago from retreating glaciers. Mormon country. Stark. Spare. Otherworldly (the word Britney used). Alien. Mars-like. Like a different planet. That deep, thick, layered red. Like dark clay. I loved the feeling of going east. Away from California; away from the familiar. Kerouac started east and went west; we did the opposite. And it’s fantastic. Mountains, arches, the wide-open expanse like parts of Wyoming, Montana, etc. The American Midwest.

This morning we got a late start but soon were burning through Utah like a badger in thin river mud. Gorgeous. Then we crossed into Colorado. Or “Colorady” as I referred to it in Kerouac-ese. (Silly, I know, but I can’t ever fully shake the man, the myth, the author, the literary icon.) Utah-like for a while, of course, and then green as can be, with steep mountains (some snow in the upper distance) and forest and those trees and jutting stone rock plateaus and all of it. The Rockies are here, just west of Denver/Boulder. We crossed the Green River and then the Colorado River. Rafters went down the thing which flowed opposite of the eastern direction we drove.

Pictures. Videos. Laughter. Many gas station/store stops for bathroom, gas-fills, etc.

B didn’t bring her debit card on the trip, only credit. My debit card has a fucked chip. Neither of us brought cash because we’re ridiculous. So no cash. Monday we’ll try to get cash using my debit card at a physical chase. Who knows where. We think tomorrow we’ll camp somewhere 7-8 hours east of here, and then likely stay in Chicago after that. Then Britney will have two full days left. Her initial plan was to do Portland, Maine. We’ll see. Steep run. Might not make it there. She’s ok with that. Journey not the destination, right?

Snippet 2:

Which brings me to the killer: expectations. My good ole friend, Expectations. What an overzealous asshole he is, this friend. He fucks you at every single goddamn turn. And yet it’s not his fault or his problem. It’s yours. Aka mine. The trip started out well but then got rough for me mostly because things didn’t go exactly the way I’d hoped they would. Hope: What a silly, delusional word! We couldn’t get cash: Didn’t expect that one! We haven’t camped once yet, despite saying we’d almost exclusively do that. It’s been hotter than Satan’s asshole. The car-shaking issue and B’s response to it at the very start was excruciatingly frustrating. We’ve been getting into dumb little arguments and snips.

People are obnoxious buttheads. Reading and writing and being alone is much, much safer. Fuck everyone and everything. I joined an AA meeting in the car on Bluetooth and the speaker sucked. I got off and we stopped for a bathroom and I tried to find a new meeting and B got annoyed due to time (as if we were in some kind of hurry!) so I said Forget It and no meeting. Then we pull over so she can drive and we can’t reconnect my blue tooth so…no meeting. And we got into it. All the while we’re passing gorgeous Colorado scenery on I-70 in the twisting narrow road through the green jagged mountains around Vail, etc.

And that’s the thing, man. Gratitude. I mean c’mon, dude. I’m 40 years old—still relatively young in the grand scheme of things. I’m engaged to be married to a beautiful woman I love. I found the eccentric, unusual beautiful soulmate I always wanted. She’s perfect for me. And I for her. We’re a match. Sometimes a jagged, bloody rough one, for sure. We’re both physically healthy. We have loving, if complex families. We’re going to Morocco after we get married in Oct. We’re moving to the Bay Area in a year (or somewhere else more intriguing). We’re right now on a cross-country American adventure, blazing our way across the nation like wild fucking Indians with nothing to stop us. She’ll fly home from wherever we get to on the 27th, and I have a full extra week to drive the car back, and I can totally extend the car a few days if I please. I have money in the bank. I have my mom. Dad is dead but shit: He had a damn fine life and he made it to almost 78 which is too young but still. It was a massive blessing to share that final two years with him. An absolute honor. And what else can you ask for than to love your father and be there for him and with him as/when he dies. And I do what I love. I was writing when my father died. Literally. At 4pm, June 2nd, 2023 I was downstairs writing (for maybe half an hour; we’d been sitting and watching him) and he was finally, at last, gone. At peace. Dead. My precious father. RIP.

I’ve been thinking of my dad on this trip. Throughout, here and there. I remembered the drive to Montana in the mid-90s when we stayed at that cabin, me and him and mom. I also remembered how Mom said they’d one day die (while I was on the floor at the foot of the bed, at night, in total darkness). She said it very gently, that one day they’d both die and eventually I myself would one day die. She probably doesn’t remember that. I remember it vividly, and I can still taste my salty tears as they flowed down my cheeks in silence. The Baja trips. Road trips with Dad.

Him sick and at the end, too, of course. The 23 month long journey. Cancer. Lord lord lord. My poor father. All the little letting-go things: The car, backpacking equipment, his job, his financial obligations, treatment, and finally his life. It’s so strange. Dad being seriously gone. Dead. No more. Only his spirit, ghost and memory live on, in our minds. We have his ashes in a container. His old clothes and meager possessions. But mostly it’s his memory. He left me, his 40-year-old son, never feeling like I ever fully knew the man who was my father. But having loved him, fully and totally. And that, my friend, is a blessing. Big time. I am the last Mohr. That would be a good title for something, maybe my memoir: THE LAST MOHR. I like it! I am it; there are no other Mohrs remaining.

Life is short, brutish and nasty; that’s what Hobbes said. Well, not so much anymore. Not in 2023 America, not for the vast majority of people. But it’s still hard. Being human. Being alive. We all die. We’re all bound for that existential chopping block. Camus and Sartre reminded us of that; Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky before them. (And Tolstoy.)

Snippet 3:

I find myself back at that “jumping off” place or that “Letting Go” place. Control doesn’t work. Expectations don’t work. Being a selfish asshole doesn’t work. Wanting everything to go “my way” or the way I think things “should be” doesn’t work. The only realistic thing that actually does work is: Letting go. Acceptance. Being with What Is. Allowing life to happen as it will, organically and naturally. Not needing people, places or things to be different than they are. Yes: Much easier said than done, Lord knows. But certainly possible; certainly doable. Britney can’t be forced or coerced or muscled into doing what I think she “should” do. Truth is she’ll do what she does because she is who she is. I have to accept her exactly as she is. This was one of my millions of black failures with my ex: I desperately wanted (it felt like needed) her to be different, to literally be someone else. I felt like, She’d be perfect…if she were someone else. Now, my ex and I, as I’ve said, were 100% not a fit. She’s married and by now has a few-month-old child. Good for her. I’m happy for her. She’s a fantastic human being and deserves total happiness. (As do I.)

Snippet 4:

It’s a sort of albatross, that incessant urge/compulsion/need. Ravaging. Destructive. Insane. Pulsating with problematic power. My point is: I think it’s time to let go of that constant need for control. It’s an obsession, an addiction. It’s never going to make me happy. It’s just a distraction, just like iPhones, sugar, TV, media/news, etc. The thing underneath it is a fear of death. Fear of rejection. Fear of loneliness. Fear of facing myself fully. Fear of letting go. Accepting Life as it is: Ephemeral; temporary; brief. Chasing the next pleasure, the next good feeling: Ultimately this is based on fear of love; fear of commitment; fear of truly living life. Being with someone. What did McCandless say before he died 25 miles into the Alaskan wilds in that bus? A life lived alone is not worth living. Exactly. A life lived alone is not worth living. We’re meant as humans to cohabitate. Course we’re also “meant” to procreate and have babies and raise them. But you don’t have to do everything everyone else does.