Here I am at sweet sara's, sleeping on her quilt pattern pillow case. I drove from durham yesterday, after breakfast with matt and kaye at foster's, an old tractor repair place turned downhome yuppy (as kaye put it) bakery/eatery/rawhoney seller place, where people sit for hours watching the cars go by on the highway, refilling their coffees, giving in to the crumbcake and cookies, lunching on wraps with balsamic vinegar dressing, just how erica likes it. i wish i'd known about it earlier, because i was pretty married to hanging out on ninth street the whole time i was in durham. before i left, matt gave me a copy of the sacred harp song book, and copied song samples for me--oh i luv it (there are four parts though so i've gotta find some other people who like it too), calling down the rat gods. sara's gone for the day and night and i'm feeling really good about chilling out in the sun, going over to the crum, where for some reason there were two huge septa trucks and repair men out at midnight, maybe to philly.
I dropped alison in georgetown after her boyfriend confusedly directed us around dc over her cell. her voice totally changed when she talked to him on the phone--got a little higher and quieter, and she seemed kind of shy, like she didn't want to disturb him. 'hi michael. oh it's fine, we'll figure it out.' and i was thinking can't he get us some actual directions off the internet or something and can't she just speak to him normally. but then when i met him, instant forgiveness, because he was definitely dreamy, as alison would say, and they both looked really happy, and right away he's touching her arm, but before they hug, he tries as best he can (not very well) to direct me back to the freeway and offers his internet, but i didn't feel like parking. i wanted to be outside in the beautiful day, to swim, and sleep outside! sadly...drove along washington parkway, which i'd like to explore more, to 495 and an hour of traffic connecting to 95N. I was really tired, window rolled all the way down, blasting elliot smith (allison forgot her cd), pulp. For awhile when driving earlier, alison and i both had our windows way down creating an open current through the car, david byrne, dense green trees, talk and breathing, and i had the driving feeling like being shot from a slingshot and zooming and floating straight on with surround vision. Not so much later. I kept looking for state park signs, stopped at maryland welcome center, and figured susquehanna state park was the closest camping. didn't get off the freeway for suquehanna though until 9 because of the traffic and another detour. i wish it had been lighter for that 1/2 hour drive out to the campground, cuz even in the dark twilight and headlights i could tell the area was beautiful. i could hear the river and saw the dark shiny glassiness of water at night. after going so far on this dirt road i realized i only had $8 of cash on me, and i really didn't feel like putting up a tent. plus i wanted to fall asleep looking up at the stars. so pretty close to the campground i saw a place to pull off in this field, knowing it was probably not allowed but hoping no one would notice. i had just gotten in my sleeping bag, and looked up at the dark no-city-light sky with lots of stars, and thought, yes, this is just what i want to be doing right now, when i saw flashing lights. a young ranger asked me all these questions about where i was going, what i was doing, and said i could sleep in the campground but not there. of course, the campground cost $20, and not only didn't i have that much with me, i also just didn't want to pay it when all i wanted to do was lay my sleeping bag down on some ground any old where and enjoy the night. i have this reaction sometimes when i can't do something i really want to do--i start thinking about why exactly i can't do what i want to do, all the rationale for and against said activity. the forbidden fruit syndrome. well, this train of thought got me more and more disgruntled with society, feeling really keenly how regulated all the land here and our activities are by our economic system, rules and regulations enforced unquestioningly by people whose job it is to do so, making it impersonal for them. and then i got to thinking of neta pulvermacher's statement 'being an atheist, i don't think there are any rules.' in one sense, in 'reality,' there are no rules, nothing unchanging or true for all time, and in the other 'come on and deal with how things are' sense, there are tons of rules, one being you can only sleep in designated places that you've paid for or someone else has paid for and you're their guest, and most of the time we're so good at living within all these rules that we barely feel them. i guess that's why historically alot of minority religious groups who do feel keenly the rules of the dominant society have gone to wilderness areas, so they can live according to their own rules. and alison told me of a german guy with a botanical sanctuary in southern india where she lived for a bit, growing orchids and endangered plants, without electricity, eating dinner in the middle of the night by the light of gaslamps, walking around without underwear in a sarong. yeah i guess you can still get your own space on the earth if you've got money. it struck me how much my state of mind after this chain of events and thinking was different from hours earlier when i had felt quite at peace with the world with a sense of freedom driving my car on a relatively open road. and yeah, i do think and feel that freedom, a sense of spaciousness, boundlessness, eternity, the wide open exploration of living, emptiness, 'the hallelujah place' (as bill t. jones calls it) whatever you want to call it, comes from inside, and isn't squelched by economic and political systems, but rather by peoples' attitudes towards these systems. i can feel how that change comes on in the pattern of thought i just described. how the disgruntledness with society, if compounded and depending on the person, could turn in to a big 'fuck you' to society, and anger-fueled activism and/or violence. tryin to understand. anyways, i ended up driving the rest of the way, arriving at the barn at midnight, just as sara was getting back from seeing some bollywood movie in philly. now i'm listening to dylan, a fitting accompaniment i think to such thoughts.
posted by Liza 20.7.03