Notes From the Road: Boston

Rolling along the tracks somewhere on the golden Montana plains…

It was great to get out of Boston, it was too much for me anyway–all those colossal gray-steel and glass towers protruding into the sky trying to reach God.  Boston was and overwhelming experience, an intense storm of sensory explosions and realizations; a constant and very physical struggle for survival.  It’s nearly impossible to make much sense out of the whole thing, it was a strange dream or vision that I struggled to comprehend; a fleeting moment that produced such awe and might… and then it escaped.  I woke up one morning on a train and all that remained was crumbs and disorientation.

Our train rolled onward towards golden eternal sunset skies that drifted ever-arching all the way to the edge of the world.  As I woke up from a light wavy sleep I arrived at a rather sudden and forceful realization regarding the working man and how they are dead…  It hit me as soon as the sun grew reddish-orange.  It became hard to think.  I was surrounded by all these people thinking too much; grimacing and straining and suffering in the immense void of existence; years of suffering and determination were scrawled and etched into their calloused skin like raw iron.  I turned and looked westward out the window in horror.

The thing is…I’ve seen more life in the eyes of the lost and wandering bum-saints of city streets than I have in the eyes of my townsfolk back home and across blue America, where you can sit and watch in the early morning light of dawn, or late evenings at gas stations as the blue collar working hands of America drone in and out with sagging limbs and dull eyes, completely lost in their lifelessness. I’ve found that even the most beaten down and hopeless of souls have a certain shimmer in their tired eyes. Its as if they hold a lost sacred wisdom under their rags like old Chinese yogi’s living in mountain caves writing haikus. If you look hard enough, you can see within those sad-holy eyes the everlasting spark of life, sitting like a lost star.