Cross Country 1996

In the late summer of 1996 my good friend Meg and I headed east from LA. I had returned from Bali and she was returning to New York.

"I've fallen in love." Meg was a tall ex-model.

"Sounds good to me." She and I were strictly friends. Her car was a Studebaker Hawk. It was very cool.

Friends and family gave Meg a going-away party. She had no intentions on coming back to LA. I was just passing through same as I always did in Southern California.

We left LA at 4am on a strangely heavily traveled freeway.

By dawn we were in the desert.

Meg liked driving the Hawk. It was her car.

We gave Las Vegas a miss and continued onto Zion Canyon.

There was nothing like it back in the East.

I walked into the canyon. The water was low. Meg took photos of me.

That night we stayed on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We didn't need a reservation. The room had twin beds. We fell asleep fast. It had been a long day.

In the morning I posed as 'the thinker' on a rock.

At noon we passed the Vermillion Cliffs. Francisco Coronado's expedition had explored this valley in the 1500s. It was getting hot and there was no water in sight.

The Hawk was running good. Meg drove it fast. She was deeply in love and wanted to see her man. His name was Chris.

That night we neared Kayenta, Arizona, capitol of the Navaho nation. The windblown town looked like Mars 100 years after a failed terra-forming experiment. Meg wanted to stop at the hotel. I said that we could a room nearer Monument Valley. I was wrong. Everything was booked for miles.

After dinner and then slept in the car. There was only one blanket. The temperature dropped into the 50s. I woke in the middle of the night and got out of the Studebaker.

There were a million stars overhead and I went back to the car, happy to be alive. Meg was less happy. She liked sleeping in a bed.

The next day we stopped at the Ananazi ruins. The inhabitants had abandoned the cliffside city a century before Coronado's coming. Now there were only tourists.

Then we headed into the Rockies. Something was wrong with the Hawk's carborator. A mechanic fixed it in Durango. Meg called Chris. They spoke on the phone for a long time.

"I wish we were on the highway."

"We'll be on one as soon as we're out of the mountains."

"Tomorrow."

I didn't lie.

"Yes."

The next day we reached the Great Plains. Meg's foot was heavy on the accelerator. "No stops."

"Only for food and gas." I fought for photos on the back roads.

Meg wanted to see the Studebaker Museum. It was on our way.

I convinced her to skip it, but we swam in Lake Michigan. America would get small after the Great Lakes.

We had no reason to stop in Detroit and continued across Ontario to Niagara Falls. We would have kept driving, except the Studebaker had a flat. The mechanic told us to wait in the diner. Meg entered first.

The patrons had never seen someone like her and followed her every steps, as her flipflops slapped against the floor on her way to the Ladies room. We slept that night on the Canadian side of the Falls.

We were close to New York.

The Studebaker had done its job. We arrived in Soho in the evening. Chris met us at Lucky Strike. He took one look at me and figured the worst. He was wrong. Meg and I were just friends, but the two were in love and I left the restaurant to go to my apartment on East Tenth Street.

Sometimes I called it home and that night was one of them.

A PAINTER PAINTING A PICTURE by Peter Nolan Smith

Hitchhiking was the only way to travel between Boston and Montreal in the early 1970s. The trip was a scenic 400 miles on I-89 slanting across New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Champlain then north into Quebec.

On one trip in August of 1971 a longhair driving a van said that he needed money for gas.

I gave him $5.

He took me from Lebanon to St. Albans with Jethro Tull on the 8-track When I got out of the car, the longhair handed me a horse choker pill an inch long.

"It's LSD." The hippie flashed a peace sign and his iris wavered in size. "Very strong. Take it with friends and don't look in a mirror."

"I know better than that." I had once stared at my shimmering reflection for hours on Orange Sunshine.

"Thanks for the gas."

A gallon was 35 cents. $5 was good for a week's driving.

I flashed him the peace sign and stood on the interstate's shoulder. The next ride took me to the border. Canadian immigration officer asked for a driver's license. Mine was valid and the man saluted my entrance into his country.

Two hours later I was drinking beer with my New Zealand friends at Winston Churchill Pub. My Irish friends were playing a gig off St. Catherine. Afterward a night of Celtic revels several French girls came home to Benny's apartment on Barat Street. I showed them the LSD pill.

"On fait."

"Bonne idee." My French wasn't good, but the night wore a velvet darkness. A bootleg version of Pink Floyd's MEDDLE was on the Denon turntable. I divided the powdered pill into sections.

1/3 for the four girls.

1/3 for my three friends.

1/3 for me.

One hour.

Nothing.

Jefferson Airplane's AFTER BATHING AT BAXTERS.

A flash of light warbled from the corner of my eyes, as the girls danced with POO NEIL. My friends held the album cover in their hands and we chanted, "A painter painting a picture of a painter painting a picture of a painter painting...."

The LP art shrank into a microscopic sub-universe of time and space with each descending layer funnier than the last.

Dawn broke on the St. Lawrence with stars melting into the sky.

We chanted, "A painter painting a picture of a painter painting a picture of a painter painting...." one last time and returned home for sleep.

I slept with a girl named Cheree, whose flesh was soft as still air. Our unsleeping eyes were dilated to coal pits. She spoke French, no English, but chanted with an Irish accent, "A painter painting a picture of a painter painting a picture of a painter painting...." until the words drifted into a mutter and her skin turned to feathers.

It took me a long time to come down.

Cheree was my parachute.

She gave me a soft landing.

No crash.

"A painter painting a picture of a painter painting a picture of a painter painting...."

I'm glad that my mind remembered Cheree's name.

And after this many years I'm glad that I remember my name too.

That LSD was strong as shit.

Vraiment.

CAVE ANATIS by Peter Nolan Smith

I spent the summer of 2008 on Palm Beach care-taking a haunted mansion and a crackhead Airedale for Johnny Zombie. The months of June, July, and August were very off-season, as the ultra-rich fled the fabled island for less muggy climes in France, Italy, and Maine.

The house off Ocean Avenue was a big change from my previous place of residence, Pattaya, Thailand. I also living alone instead of dividing my time between two women; my ex-wife #1 and our daughter and my pregnant girlfriend Mam. Pom Pom was a good companion. She only barked at other dogs. The snarls were saved for strangers.

I phoned Thailand everyday and sent money to both women once a week. It was not enough, for you don't get paid much to take care of a crazy dog, even if it was on the most wanted list of Palm Beach county for mauling poodles.

My friend Lisa had arranged this job.

She was a single mom. This status didn't score any sympathy for my situation.

Every day she criticized my lack of decision.

"You'll have to make a choice one day."

"But not today." Thailand was 9000 miles away.

"Why not?" This rationale was unacceptable to her code of ethics.

"I barely have enough money for a cheap 1.5 liter of wine let alone a round trip ticket to Bangkok." I did my best to not tell her 'hoop bargh' or shut up in Thai, but she was relentless.

One afternoon we rode over to the Thailand grocery on Dixie Highway to pick up Thai food. Lisa mentioned to the owner that I had lived in Thailand. The woman asked where and I told her Chainat and Jomtien.

"Why two places?"

"Because he has two wives." Lisa answered the question for me.

"You are very Thai. Who you love #1? Mia noi?"

"She's not my mia noi, but I love Mam." My admission was easy since my wife had done many bad things over our six years together. I was no saint, but her sins were forgivable without being forgettable.

"Should he tell #1 about #2?" Lisa thought now she had an ally.

"Tell for what? For hurt two people. No way. Better to say nothing." Boon was in her 50s. She had lived in America over thirty years. Her family was from Ban Nok same as both my wives and she understood country ways.

"If he tell wife #1 she angry and maybe cut off his penis."

"Cut off his penis?" Lisa crunched up her face like she hadn't heard right.

"Yes, Thai lady not want man have sex with other lady. She cut off penis and feed to ducks."

"Why ducks?"

"Because unlike pig, duck eat everything. Better you say nothing." She looked at me, as if to say never tell the truth until you have to. "Not telling truth not same telling lie. No one get hurt. Not him. too."

It was sound advice, but after the birth of my son Fenway the lie was not a viable path.

Upon returning to Thailand I told my ex-wife about Mam and Fenway.

"I already know. I not stupid same Kwaii." Buffaloes are considered stupider than farangs by Thais.

That night I slept in the other bed as I had since my ex-wife left me for another man.

I don't think she would cut off my penis and feed it to the ducks.

She knows I love my daughter.

But it's always better to play it safe with a woman from Bannok, so fellow farangs 'cave anatis' which is Latin for 'beware of the duck'.

Like Boon said, "They eat everything.

Watermelon In The Summer

Watermelon is best in the summer. The fruit spread from Southern Africa and was cultivated along the Nile River during the 12th Dynasty. It was good then and it's good now.

THE WORDS OF A CHILD by Peter Nolan Smith

"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius"

These words were sung by the cast of HAIR in 1969, a year marked by Altamont and the inauguration of Richard M Nixon.

Aquarius swiftly became an unattainable dream state for the hippies, unless you were high of LSD and millions of us dropped acid to touch the sky.

On the Fourth of July 1971 my friends John Gilmour, Tommy Jordan, Mark McLaughin and I celebrated psychedelic holiday in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We were driving down from Montreal after scoring LSD from a French-Canadian hash dealer. The backroads were safer and I drove my VW Beetle through the Green Mountains to cross the Connecticut River into New Hampshire.

We were 18 and the Rolling Stones' BROWN SUGAR was #1 on the radio, but we were listening to the Jefferson Airplane's AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER'S.

It was good for our heads, for the four of us dropped the acid in Berlin and the Orange Sunshine peaked on the road up to Mount Washington. Tuckerman's Ravine gleamed with the snow under the peerless blue sky.

I parked the Bug by the Saco River. We wandered in a daze and heard the mountain stream rushing over glacial rocks to speak a primordial language. Our teenage ears listened to its teachings and we obeyed the command to submerge our bodies in the torrent's lecture. Our communion with LSD immuned our flesh from the frigid winter melt. Time melted faster than butter in the sun.

"Speak, river, speak." John was all ears.

John Gilmour elbowed me.

The boy looked harmless.

“What you want, kid?” John was a stickler for keeping crowds small while on LSD.

" Why are you were sitting in the water?

"To hear it speak." Tommie answered without hesitation. He was the most spiritual of us. Tommie was a high school hockey star. On ice his skating was almost holy.

The eleven year-old stuck a finger in the river.

"I don't near nothing but the water."

We cocked our ears to the current.

The boy in the shorts was right. It was only water.

"And it's cold."

"Yes, it is cold."

We stood up with goose-bumped skin. The release from the river was a rush.

“Come out of the river.” The young boy motioned for us to come to him.

"Whatever you say.” Tommie Jordan chattered through this teeth.

Mark’s skin was death white and I shivered like I had been pulled from the Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic. The four of us looked at each other. This boy had saved us from hypothermia. His coming here was no accident.

"It's Jesus." John whispered with his retinae gapping open to 11.

"Jesus." I might have been a non-believer, but I flashed on the 12 year-old Messiah in the Temple. The boy was about his age.

Before we could pose the right questions, a teenage girl in a tube top hurried from the underbrush. Her hot pants hung off her skinny ass.

"Jay Jay, get over here."

"I wasn't doing nothing."

"What I tell you about speaking to strangers." She grabbed out for her brother.

“I wanted to know why they were sitting in the river.” Our prophet attempted to escape her clutches.

“Why? Because they’re stupid hippies.”

"Stupid hippies." I felt enlgihtened.

"Fucked up on LSD too." She seized Jay Jay by the ear and our ‘Jesus’ squealed in defeat, as she dragged her brother back to the main road.

"Don't take him away." John scrambled over the glacial rocks.

"Let him go." Mark sat in the water.

"But he's____"

"He's just a kid we thought was Jesus. Listen."

The river had resumed its music. Its song were never played on the radio. We sang its lyrics until our throats were parched dry as the summer grass. Drinking the river was a sacrament and we came down under the pine trees. The moon floated a universe of nova stars. It was a good trip.

LSD fell out of favor in the 70s. The drug was too heavy for the times and the police hunted down the dealers. The lack of quality guaranteed bad trips, which was exactly what the Law wanted to suppress such a powerful medicine, although most recently the psychedelic and 'shrooms' has been reborn to combat depression and addiction as well as opening the doors of perception.

Experimenters are intrigued by the hallucinogen's effects on the human brain to experience revelations, especially with the long-term influence on the taker's sense of well-being. Federal officials have approved further research into psychedelics, but are very careful to skirt the outrage of the Right, for they feel the only real epiphanies come from contact with god and even an atheist like myself know how that on LSD>

Especially while listening to the Jefferson Airplane's AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER'S.

HAVE A GREAT 4TH OF JULY

To hear that LP please go to the following URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25RAkXpQwnA

Installations of Jocko Weyland

Fire Extinguisher Empty office Stacked chairs Jocko Weyland homage to Marcel Duchamps at Tucson's MOCA 2012

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To win, space, or show.