I AM A PASSENGER; I RIDE AND I RIDE... Taking Pleasure in Life's Simplicity Beats the Alternative

NEAR THE OHIO-INDIANA BORDER (ZP) -- The crispness of autumn roars through the cab, the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" rattles away in the speakers.

I turn up the volume, light a cigarette, and floor the accelerator for no reason whatsoever.

There's just something about an empty stretch of country road, something mischievous and devilish that spurns all men in automobiles to behave like your average teenager.

Especially when that man's just passed to only cop he's seen for ten miles.

The iPod, through some metaphysical link, reads my mind, telepathic biometrics. The original Generation X version of the classic "Dancing with Myself," twists my lips into a Billy Idol sneer as I bang the beat out on the steering wheel.

Asphalt eats away rubber beneath the pickup's frame. The cracked windshield - the one I've been meaning to fix since, oh, 2004 - shimmers in the bleak grayed sun.

I'm a country road devil, Satan fucking the wives of speed law legislators, the baron of blacktop flying the Badass flag at 70 miles per hour.

Cigarette smoke swirls like a dragon's hellish fart. The harvested cornfields and plowed under soy plants blur into a sea of browns and yellows.

Me time.

Just a Hoosier-Buckeye bound Don Quixote with a slab of plastic and a Ford filling in for Sancho Panza. For miles and miles, just melting horizon and the likes of Iggy Pop belting out songs like "The Passenger," bands like Biohazard bleating out covers of Sabbath's "War Pigs," Eric B. and Rakim spinning and commanding that I refuse to sweat the technique.

I catch my reflection in the rear-view mirror and feel handsome, free, cavalier.

I'm a killer. A goddamn bandito, a highwayman, a motherfucking gunslinger for hire who'll skullfuck an angel with a Louisville goddamn Slugger just for the thrill of it.

I laugh as I talk to the mirror. I'm well-aware that, for a badass gunslinger wannabe, I've got a stomach full of herbal tea and tofu - not exactly a Wyatt Earp style feast.

But the heart's full of adrenaline, brain firing on all machismo cylinders. The asphalt whines beneath the tires of a late-model pickup.

All alone. With just the road and some tunes.

Jesus Fucking Christ, what a ride.

C'est la motherfucking vie.

- # # # -

COSMOPOLITAN STRANGERS: Globally Conscious Childhood Development, Without Ever Leaving the Country, Leads to Seriously Un-American Americans

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's easy to tune out the rest of the world, in a - let's be honest here - rather isolated rural college community surrounded by the college-aged children of some of the wealthiest, most culturally sheltered Americans ten months out of the year.

Within the Oxford Bubble, hell, it's easy to tune out the fact that the median family income for the average Local U. student is estimated to be between three and four times that of the surrounding community, to ignore the economic and societal divides, the extreme wealth in the face of some very impoverished people...

Well, for some people it's easy. For me? Not so much, really.

A simple tour of the campus at three in the morning on a rather frigid Saturday had turned into a rather heated debate.

Personally, I blame the amount of booze we'd both consumed earlier in the night, the lovely bottle of Jack Daniels we were sharing to chase away the Hair of the Dog as we walked.

"Serious, J. - are you sure you're even a fucking American?" The Visitor said. "You don't have cable, don't know who [some pop star] is. AND NO CANDY. And working in this fucking Lalaland... I swear I'd shoot myself..."

Pfft. Struggling actors. Not only do they use me for a floor to crash on, but they just love picking arguments when they're out of work. Something about building up future emotional reserves for casting calls...

"Why do you say that?"

I was still laughing at the fact that it was the fact that I don't have cable television, nor knew who some apparently famous reality television guy was, that set her off.

"Because you don't act American. Not even like Eurotrash wannabes. What the fuck are you?"

* * * *

So here's the deal. I may BE, by birthright, an American, a citizen of the good ol' United States. But I've never really fit into my own country's culture.

In fact, during my formative years, I was relatively sheltered from it, tucked away in a remote corner of the country, surrounded by equally naturalized citizens who didn't exactly fit in, either.

But while I may have grown up isolated on a small family farm in rural Virginia, I was never sheltered from the world. In fact, if there was anything I can be accused of having been sheltered from, it'd be from the culture and customs of Mainstream America.

My father's parents - who technically owned 80 percent of the place - weren't exactly what most folks would associate with a Hillbilly-Cajun union. They'd spent four decades as diplomatic globetrotters, hitting every continent but Antarctica. After spending almost their entire adult lives in mostly developing countries, they really never seemed comfortable in retirement with the often frivolous, shallow culture of the Consumerist Patriotic Motherland.

Yes, I grew up in an isolation tank so much smaller than the societal bubble that surrounds my current home. But I was never sheltered from the greater world - my cosmopolitan kinfolk made sure my sister and I would grow up to be global citizens, without the crushing burden of Post-Industrial United States they themselves didn't fit into perfectly.

I learned to read on a steady diet of newspapers and foreign policy journals, English translations of some of the world's greatest writers, even NATO and United Nations documents. I had toys, sure, but often they were secondary to the 170-acre playground filled with barns to explore, ponds to swim and fish in, fruit trees to climb.

Growing up in the heyday of reckless greed and glut that was Mainstream 1980s America, my sister and I were probably two of the least American children in the country. We learned more about our own country's culture in the same way first-generation immigrant children learn it - in public school classrooms, through making friends with those for whom the culture was natural, through television and radio.

Imagine, if you will, being a man who though born in the United States and having never been off the North American continent, who grew up basically a foreigner in his own land, who matriculated within a culture as a child and teen but who never really was taught to look at it as his own culture.

In all honesty, it's made for some often uncomfortable, heh, assimilation issues for both my sister and myself, growing up surrounded by people who'd spent more time outside of their own country than in it. But, overall, I can't imagine it any other way, and I think I'm a better person for it...

Look at it this way. A retired high-ranking intelligence official once told me that I'd been given one of the greatest gifts any kid in the United States can receive: the freedom to be my own American without my own country's boundaries, cultural pollution, or baggage, to start with a clean slate.

My dad and his brother were given the same amazing gift by my grandparents - while their countrymen were obsessing over the Beatles and Elvis, they were climbing the Pyramids of Giza. While their peers here stateside were obsessing over Cowboys-and-Indians movies, they were running into Big Duke Wayne himself in five-star hotels after being evacuated from war zones.

Of course, well, I'm also a bit of a fuck-up, so I added quite a bit of my own baggage and the slate dirtied up fairly quick...

But, well, for every fuck-up in life, I can honestly say I did it to myself. The violence, the drug abuse, the hoodlum tendencies to gain street cred, the slackertude and solitude, even the occasional dive into either easy women, psychotic women, or, well, sometimes the occasional wife or gangbanger's old lady.

Without a net or a scapegoat.

Hell, I can't even blame the wicked metal, punk, and rap music I discovered as a teenager, the subversive literature I still read, or the fact that the closest thing to an abusive moment in my childhood came in the form of being required to watch the nightly news...

* * * *

I tried my best to explain, well, where I think the origins of my supposed American Un-Americanisms lie, how growing up in a secluded environment surrounded more by global culture than my own country's culture essentially made me a de facto Military Brat without the moving from base to base, country to country...

Sadly, I was fairly drunk by the time we made it back to my place, and my childhood tale ended up coming out a lot more rambling and long-winded than this writing.

"That's hella fucked up... so basically..." The Visitor laughed, throwing herself down on her sleeping bag on the living room floor, "... You were fucked up by your fam and you're still fucked up... but in a good way?!?"

I poured coffee into the auto-drip, flipped the switch, emptied out the rest of the bottle in the kitchen sink. (I don't keep booze in the house - and I don't like backwash liquor shots, either.) When I turned the corner, The Visitor was digging through my movie collection for a DVD to sober up to.

"Dude, you have no chick movies. This is why you're single."

"I dunno..." I reached over her shoulder and grabbed a film out of my Classics section. "How about this? The Italian chick sent it to me last year-"

" - Still single because you're nice to fucking ex-girlfriends, too."

"LOVERS. Or flings. Let's be classy here. Anyway, read the back of the case..."

Bertolucci's classic. The Conformist. Sex, death and a Fascist State.

The Visitor fell asleep 20 minutes into the film - subtitles, dammit. And too complex, I guess. No CGI, no overly choreographed action scenes, lots of talk.

I watched the film, sipped coffee, and waited for the sunrise. And afterwards, I put an indie rap mixtape playlist on repeat on the netbook, puked, had another cup of joe and a fried egg, and passed out myself.

A perfectly normal all-nighter for me.

I like being a fucking weird Un-American American.

- # # # -

NEW MOONS & PALE ASSES: On Being Comfortable & Uncivilized, Meditating Naked, Alone, in The Woods

Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.

- JULIAN OF NORWICH
Fourteenth century English mystic

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's a rare thing, anymore, for a supposedly civilized man in a supposedly civilized society - in the world's only remaining, albeit collapsing, "superpower," as it is - to find himself drawn to a remote spot in a wood for no purposeful reason, other than to to sit and meditate in silence in a weed-filled, secluded meadow in the so-called witching hours.

Completely naked, no less, beneath a very dark new moon, alone in the darkness with nothing but the sounds of critters in the surrounding grass, a whispering breeze, and my own heartbeat to keep my bare ass company.

Needless to say, obviously, I'm not the kind of civilized man of cultural superpower leisure one expects to find naked in the woods, meditating and pacing my breath down to an almost melodious purr.

Hey, I do my own thing. And the tendency to spontaneously strip naked in a field is, well, one of my many quirks. Sue me.

Bloggers and technocrats can't be into that weird metaphysical shit, you're probably saying right now. This is the 21st century! We have Wiis to make us fit, WOW tourneys to make us magical, and streaming audio sermons and e-book bibles to help us find faith...

Trust me when I say that some of those primitive things we've given up to build our civilizations are often the ones that, well, bring us the most peace. And the more we lose touch with things like our bodies, with nature, with our spiritual bond with this here plane of existence, the less peace we will know, our children and grandchildren will know.

It takes some getting used to in our Brave New World Order built upon junk ownership and 24-hour information - the embracing of momentary solitude as a fleeting eternity, the touch of your normally cloth-covered flesh intermingling with dandelions and scratchy twigs and even ants, the whole "Trying to feel at one with the world" thing often left to New Age self-help gurus to make a profit off of at air-conditioned retreats and cult meetings down at the mega-chain bookstore.

I'm sure, well, I'm being judged right now. And I don't care.

Seriously, when was the last time you were so naked and alone, so vulnerable and exposed, and yet felt completely comfortable with it?

* * * *

Throughout the mythology and folklore of much of the ancient world, it was the darkest phase of the lunar cycle that was often seen as the more powerful and benevolent than the full moon, a time for healing and fasting and, yes, even prayers and thanksgivings.

Hell, there's a reason all of our supernatural occult thrillers involving werewolves and teen vampires, zombies and demons, often center around the full moon. Our ancient forebears used to share those same legends, sans cinematography, CGI, or good screen-writing, around their hearths and campfires - for some odd reason, they usually associated the full moon's light with mischief and evil.

The NEW moon lore, however, often gets overlooked. Doesn't make for a good movie or trashy romance novel. Stories involving pale, illuminated demons make for better suspense than, oh, say stories that often involve good omens, faith, and solitude.

Which, well, for guys like me, tends to be a good thing.

Can you imagine if, like with full moons, the same Ohio woods I've learned to disappear into on certain nights, for meditation and contemplation, were suddenly filled with goth kids playing at witchcraft, pale-ass hipsters covered in glitter and opining undead, bloodsucking heartthrobs, or hordes of crop-circle crazy housewives and spinsters in search of Divine Mother Earth crap they read about in some poorly written ecofeminist manifesto?

* * * *

I've meditated, alone, all over this country. And this rather uncivilized ritual is, of course, not limited to mere new moons, nudity, or even the mere absence of other people.

In California, beneath a live oak in an old, abandoned cemetery, overlooking a gorgeous series of box canyons and vineyards. In Wyoming, there was this sea of the most gorgeous golden grain right before a late summer storm I came upon after covering a Legion baseball game - I felt the whole universe burst upon my chest like a mortar. Virginia, well, I had this spot on the farm near the train tracks.

One of the best moments, ever, was in Denver, smack dab in the middle of Larimer Square, at four in the morning, right as snow was starting to fall. Of course, sure, I was clothed in below-freezing weather, and of course, the place was crawling with the usual homeless folk digging for scraps in the trash bins. But, oh, how beautifully still and tranquil a city such as Denver becomes as snow falls.

There's been motel rooms in Mississippi, dark, empty truckstops in Arizona, beaches in Florida, dust-choked tamale stands in southwestern Texas near the Rio Grande. Once, in a crowded art gallery opening. Another time while pulling barbed wire to repair a section of fence, perfect transendental moments at rodeos, in barber shops, even while playing chess with a Buddhist monk.

Meditation requires no ritual, no spontaneous nudity. There is no right or wrong way to do it. The magic of life is that it just keeps happening, like shit. It takes effort to slow down the self long enough to catch that beautiful alchemy in the act.

* * * *

So, well, what do I get out of vanishing into the bush, on a lark, out of stripping naked beneath a long-ignored new moon?

In all honesty, I couldn't tell you. The way that can be spoken or written, according to Lao Tzu, cannot be the way. If I put words to the few moments of calm, those moments would cease to have meaning.

- # # # -

WHAT'S SO LONELY ABOUT SPENDING A THANKSGIVING ALONE, ANYWAY?!?: Of Cioppino Over Turkey, Long Hikes, Solitude, and Movie Dates with Oneself

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm not a Thanksgiving guy. Haven't been for some time.

The simple truth of it is, well, I quit looking at the holiday as anything more than a day off long ago because, well, when your family has spent so many years spread out all over one gigantic continent, it ceases to hold any other importance.

Back on the ol' family farm, back when I was a kid, the day meant something: mornings full of deer and squirrel hunting, afternoon meals with every second- and third-cousin within 200 miles, afternoon football games in the apple grove. But I'm no longer a kid, the farm's long gone, and the bastard we sold it to cut down the grove to make room for his Arabians...

My family, for the most part, quit celebrating the holiday a few years ago. My mother, in fact, had a monumental revelation: she's never liked spending all day cooking while everyone else lounges around, doing nothing and waiting to gorge.

This year, she and my father went to Denny's. Gotta love 24-7 roadside dining. Instead of some overblown feast, they went on a short vacation, just the two of them.

As for me, well, dating a few members of indigenous tribal organizations over the years, and a few foreigners to this country curious about why Americans drape themselves in ancient English Puritanism in the guise of Native American feast, probably hasn't helped, either.

* * * *

I do give thanks on Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong here.

I just prefer spending the day doing my own thing, alone.

This year, for instance, for my feast, I went for a culinary form of gratitude to the numerous immigrants who helped build this country, who've helped feed the world by coming to this often hostile land to raise fruit of the chaff and vine, pull fish from our coasts, and who helped better diversify America for the better - as opposed to those pesky religious nuts near Plymouth Rock, who came here to conquer for a damning White God as British exiles.

Rather than turkey - not being able to eat beef, well, turkey's already a staple of my diet - I went with a meal more fitting to a John Steinbeck novel than to a Cotton Mather sermon. Cioppino, a seafood stew originally developed by Italian fishermen along the wharves of 1800s San Francisco, seemed way more satisfying and spectacularly American to me than the usual dead bird and stuffing.

I put the seafood, broth, and veggies on to simmer over low heat shortly after breakfast, turned on the stereo, and cleaned the kitchen table to the sounds of The Knux and Positive K.

Trust me. My spending a family holiday in solitude is a good thing. Spares folks the embarrassment of having to watch me attempt to dance in a bathrobe.

* * * *

People often ask me if I ever, well, just shut up. I do, offline, tend to talk a lot. But in truth, I can go days without saying anything to another human being, without speaking a word. And I'm one of those people who revels in days like that, the solitude, the alone time...

Hell, I'm a loner.

While the immigrant stew simmered, I went for a seven-mile hike, watched all sorts of wonderful subtitles - for - my - uniligual - ass films I'd been meaning to see for years (from Srđan Dragojević's Bosnian War classic, Lepa Sela Lepo Gore, to Volker Schlöndorff's exploration of Nazism, Der Unhold, to Bruno Barreto's Brazilian political thriller, O Que É Isso, Companheiro?), before, finally, dining in workout sweats, in perfect, contemplative silence whilst reading last month's Harper's Magazine.

Completely alone.

Reminded me of those chilly November mornings as a kid on the farm, sitting in a tree stand, shotgun in hand, meditating on all sorts of adolescent things (mostly girls) and listening for the sounds of broken twigs and crunching leaves.

It was a perfect Thanksgiving, really.

At least by my standards.

- EPILOGUE -

"How do you do it?" she asked. "How the hell do you cope with being alone on Thanksgiving?"

This was her first holiday away from her family and, despite spending Turkey Day with a friend's family, she felt so horribly, miserably alone. She couldn't afford the plane ticket home, couldn't afford to miss what could be the biggest opportunity of her life.

Her first big photo shoot in two years, scheduled the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Fate is sometimes nothing more than a tiny plate of food during someone else's feast. Not that she needs to lose weight.

"Well," I typed back, "I kinda like the peace and quiet. Life's too hectic not to have some downtime from the world."

"You're one of the strangest people I've ever met, you know that? It's kinda cute but, dude, hella freaky sometimes to read about."

She told me she still had my cell number in her phone, that she'd been trying to call me all day. It was then that I realized that, yes, indeed my phone was off and there were quite a few missed calls logged in the damnable thing.

Without missing a beat, I cleared my throat and waited for an incoming call. I guess I am a strange dude - for a moment I'm actually annoyed that a hot (chica, you know you are) fashion model is bothering my solitude, wanting to call and chat and have somebody other than her roommate's cat to keep her company...

"Happy Thanksgiving, Jason! Haha, thought you wouldn't really answer."

Call me an asshole, but I almost didn't.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Of the Global Economic Collapse, Mexican Revolutionaries, Insomniac Ponderings, And Making Out with a Stranger

"Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas."

- Gen. Emiliano Zapata,
Mexican Revolutionary Hero,
Wearer of "Cowboy Stuff"

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's three o'clock in the morning.

And I'm neither drunk nor sober.

I'm simply enjoying a cold November storm, in fact, a lovely late night stroll through the rain, my gray Stetson sagging beneath the weight of a thousand cold water droplets.

Smoke from my thirtieth Marlboro of the day forms wispy plumes around the brim, water seeps down my jeans into my boots, the baptismal waters of a man deep in thought liberating the soul as Ariat heels clickclack down miles of sidewalk.

Good God Almighty! I say to myself, eyes closed, leaning against a telephone pole, There's just nothing quite as liberating as a man's thoughts, alone, in the rain.

Personal freedom, just like money, seems to be in short supply these days.

* * * *

I'm thinking, for some odd reason, about a different approaching storm - the shit blizzard of a failing global economy that, yep, my country's elite and their backroom financiers have unleashed, a Pandora's Box full of sub-prime demons, bailout monied monsters, and reckless, destructive capitalist devils of all shapes and sizes.

And, for some reason, General Zapata popped into my waterlogged head, a ghost from some long ago learned history, ¡Tierra y Libertad! now less of a rallying cry and more of a ominous echo against the bad debts of the Gringo Nation.

Hey, these things happen, market collapses. Especially when things like consumption as status and not of function has been encouraged for more than two decades...

Well, goddamn, you've gotta quit reading so much, dude.

Yeah. Head like a slingshot, really. Put the right pebble in, pull back, and release. It's self-loading.

* * * *

Suddenly, from nowhere, they're upon me. Two very drunk women, bundled in Northface jackets and impromptu rain gear, stagger out of the shadows from a side street, their heels clicking away an off-key collegiate chant.

"Ooooh. It's a cowboy!" One girl says.

"Ah.... ah... A CUTE cowboy!" The second girl says, too drunk to realize that the cute cowboy is right in front of her.

I stop, tip my hat, smile. A welcome disruption.

Some things, well, are just too damned depressing to dwell on for too long. And I don't know of a single straight guy or lesbian who doesn't appreciate being called cute by two mysterious, albiet drunken, hot women in skirts at three in the morning, either.

"Mr. Cowboy, I love your BOOTS! I, like, love, ohmygosh, cowboy stuff!" The first girl says.

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

The second girl bums a cigarette and begins what I call the Wasted Girl Play - the attempt to indicate, through wobbly eyes meant to be seductive, the convienient throwing of dead weight meant to be a casual arm around the waist, that, if I'm willing...

"I LOVE cowboys! When I was in Texas once... And I hooked up with a cowboy. I like... reVERSE COWWWgirl...."

The first woman, by the look on her face, is both the more sober one and the one most embarrassed. I laugh and discreetly slide out of the way-too-desperate girl's grasp. The first woman, too, bums a cigarette.

" We're kinda fucked up, sorry," The first woman says.

"It's okay. Happens. So's the world, if fact."

Again, I laugh. Another welcome distraction.

* * * *

The first woman and I chat - turns out she's been sobering up for hours as her now babbling friend had been getting more and more wasted - for a bit, over cigarettes, as the second woman rambles on, in fact, to the same telephone I'd been holding up before I'd surrendered it to her.

Also turns out that her father just found out he's being downsized after Christmas - hefty early retirement buyout from the sounds of it. He's been with the same firm since before she was born and, well, he's already put her on notice not to expect as much help with college expenses as she'd like.

So, she explains, she figured she'd better go out and get drunk with her whore of a roommate before the real world kicks her family in the ass.

* * * *

"Um, this is kinda silly, but can I try it on?" The first girl asks.

"Try what on?"

"Your hat. Looks Mexican or something. Like gunslinger, you know?"

I take off the hat, start to plop the soaking wet thing atop her head. And then, well, I don't know if it was the soaking wet hair, or the way her shivering skin shuddered beneath a cold street light, but I asked for something in exchange since I'd be giving up my shelter from the storm...

She didn't even hesitate. I guess, well, either I'm a good salesman or it was merely a good deal worth taking advantage of, when the money's getting tight.

And by kissing a stranger, yes, by even embracing and turning a peck into an impromptu make-out session, we were able to both share warmth and the brim of an old Stetson in the middle of a November rain. A hot mouth and a warm body beats shivering in the cold alone.

Drunk Girl No. 2? As the telephone pole proved to be too sober for her, she fell to her knees just in time to puke up all sorts of foul stuff, including what looked like semen.

Right in front of an ATM machine, down the street from a real estate office.

Land and liberty, General Zapata's fighters used to chant. There are, of course, still other things in life that are free, are open to better negotiation and barter and open free market exchange than our countrysides and our freedoms.

And yes, it is better to live and die on one's feet, even in the rain, than it is to live on one's knees spitting up a stomachful of vodka and jism.

Even in hard times, a fair trade in an open, honest marketplace, where each party uses the other for something in exchange for something, beats the alternative.

* * * *

Hey, chicks dig the hat. And the "cowboy stuff."

What more is there to say, really?

Really wish I'd bothered to catch the woman's name. Or to have given her mine.

That's a market where I'd consider investing again.

- # # # -

CALIFORNIA CONFESSIONAL: EXTRA! Librarian Visits Magazine Photo Shoot, Kidnaps Model with Loaded Wine Bottle, Mocks Stupid Celebrity Worship!

When I die, my epitaph should read: 'She paid the bills.' That's the story of my private life.

- GLORIA SWANSON

SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA (ZP) -- "Liza" (not her real name) brushes aside her rather over-the-top, every - negative - stereotype - imaginable, flaming queen of a make-up artist/stylist with a shrug of her shoulders and a quick hand gesture.

The stylist doesn't even look up. He stops momentarily, rolls his eyes. He tells his canvas that, well, he just needs to finish her eyes and he'll leave us alone.

I offer a handshake; he declines.

"Oh my gosh! I'm being rude!" Liza says. " ______, this is Jason, the guy from Ohio with the web site I was telling you about. Jason, this is ______, the one man on this planet who can make me look gorgeous in ten minutes or less."

The stylist's been buzzing about her like a starving mosquito for a good thirty minutes, ever since the guy who met me at the front gate - a BIG guy - escorted me first to the set to watch the end of the shoot, then past the lights, the diffusers, cords, the crew, through the house, and into the impromptu dressing room.

Liza and I have, up until this point, been making small-talk, catching up. And suddenly, it hits me like a two-by-four to the testicles.

* * * *

Ya know, Queen Skeeter here's sure been taking his sweet-ass time with the skin toner, I say to myself. And look at those eyes! He's trying to look like he's NOT paying attention to every word...

Like the parasitic insect he reminds me of, he's waiting for his bloody treat, some juicy morsel of free-flowing information.

And he's not looking to feast upon stories of my drunken debauchery at my sister's wedding last weekend, either.

* * * *

Information gleaned from eavesdropped conversations, you see, happens to be an important commodity in certain entertainment industries, the gray market sustenance of the set jockey and the shoot servant and other hangers-on, a veritable free lunch full of "a source close to..." payoffs.

Don't believe me? Well, run down to the goddamn grocery store and pick up a copy of whatever gutter-born literary syphilis the print infotainment rags are pushing to the Desperate Fucking Housewives demographic these days. Where do you think they get those juicy stories, the train wreck tales of drug abuse and break-ups and baby-mama matras, anyway?

And what's a nosy stylist, to me? He won't be getting anything of importance from me or my conversation, not one tabloid meal ticket. What good are the details of some boring ol' librarian's love life in Oxford Fucking Ohio to him? Who gives a shit about funny college town quotations, or thinks the terms Chachball, Snake Brother, or Fruitcake Sex have a price tag on the infotainment market?

Not only is the Zenformation Professional a collection of tales full of vague true stories, anonymous protagonists and antagonists, but the site's author, in person, really lives up to his Man of Fucking Mystery reputation. It's part of the inside joke of it all, really - and a safety net of common courtesy for all parties involved.

And Liza knows this game better than I do, obviously - hell, it goes with the territory.

There's a time for discretion. And there's a time for open conversation.

* * * *

Queen Skeeter finally gets the idea and makes his way towards the door. He doesn't even acknowledge my existence as he leaves because he finally figured out that I'm not famous, I'm not part of the entourage of anybody famous, and, well, I'm too quiet and polite to be an agent or talent rep.

"I'm gonna get some Fiji and a bagel, girl. If you need anything, you just text me. I'll be RIGHT in the next room."

And with that, without so much as an acknowledgment that there was another honest-to-God human being in the tiny guest room, the Gayest Gnat sashayed his skinny-jeaned ass right out the door.

Who the fuck would ever want to waste time text-messaging somebody in the next room, a mere fifteen steps, crank of a door knob, and a holler away?

How can anyone enjoy what bit of success they have in an environment where the envious simply wait for a slip-up or faux-pas upon which to crucify that success for profit?

Jesus Fucking Christ.

* * * *

So here I am, a guest on a photo shoot, complete with closed-door, behind-the-scenes access to the photog's target, trapped between a very annoying stylist and a camera crew, with a very BIG dude right outside waiting to walk me back out to the Jeep.

And I'm just some guy, seriously, she knows only through a friend of a friend of an ex's former publicist (head hurt yet?), a few emails and online chats, a quick lunch in Pismo Beach last summer - and from a frigging blog.

She's the one who came up with the whole "Why don't you bring that Gonzo web self to the shoot and we'll grab lunch afterwards?" idea.

And I guess I should be filling this dispatch with all sorts of juicy details. Things like the magazine that was flipping the bill for the shoot, the rather brutal stylings of the rather brilliant photographer, even the uncensored name of Liza herself - after all, some of you on the other side of the Electronic Fourth Wall probably would recognize her instantly and the rest would simply use a search engine to fill in the void.

And I could tell you all about her break-ups and relationship mistakes, how she feels she has to force herself to eat in public, her newfound love of the Los Angeles Dodgers and loathing of the Boston Celtics. I could write all about those, too, in gory detail.

But do you know what was on my mind, the whole time, once the door was closed?

The same random-ass, unassuming things that go through my mind when I write about anybody else. You know, the sorts of batshit ideas that go through my mind when I'm helping aspiring schoolteachers write educational stories in the basement of an Ohio bar, or when I'm trying to sort out the remnants of a fling, or...

* * * *

"Chica, tell you what," I tell my somewhat well-known host once Queen Skeeter was gone, "Let's skip the fine dining shit, go grab some turkey sammiches at this market I know up in Templeton, drive down a dirt road and kill off a bottle of wine I got rolling around in the back of the Jeep."

Liza's eyes lit up. I remembered the important parts, you see - the paranoia at eating in public, the fact that last time we met for lunch she ended up being so afraid that she'd recognize somebody or get recognized. And she's, well, still a bit of a good ol' fashioned country tomboy at heart...

"Hmmm."

"Hmmm? As in yes?"

"I dunno. I read your blog, you know."

"Yeah, and so do people I know and work with in Oxford."

I wasn't thinking celebrity. I could give a shit, really - modeling's a job, just like any other job. I wasn't thinking about Queenie or about the BIG guy waiting to escort me back through the Gates of Tartarus for the Slovenly and Unfashionable.

And, no, I wasn't trying to get laid, either. Though, well, Christian Lazo's 2005 Petite Sirah is probably the closest thing to a goddamn aphrodisiac this side of a plate of raw oysters on the Central Coast.

I don't really plan ahead. I'm a live-in-the-moment kinda guy in my personal life, most of the time.

Wanna know what I really found to write about on a photo shoot, with no-holds-barred access to a, OMG, professional model?

You know, it must really suck to be stuck around gossipwhores and egomaniacs all fucking day. How can anybody grow in a world like this without some open sky, room to breathe...

...It's downright suffocating...

Wait! Heh, I've gots some good wine past the gates...

- EPILOGUE -

It's hard, you know, to type a draft of a blog post into a laptop - into somebody else's wireless-broadband enabled laptop, mind you - while lounging beneath a live oak, distracted by a stellar view of the Santa Lucia Range.

It's damned near impossible to write anything, too, with a third of a bottle of leftover wedding wine and a turkey pesto sandwich nuzzled in one's stomach, with a car radio whispering Tejano Top 40 music into a hot breeze...

Liza and another chick, this kid who she'd met at her hotel a few nights prior, were picking - poaching, actually - not-yet-ripe grapes from a vineyard nearby.

The world felt good. Fit like a warm glove on a snowy morning. And the soul, yep, was at peace but, alas, the brain was a goner.

I saved the draft, closed the laptop.

Dude, you're the only guy for miles. You've got two hot women - one, a professional model and the other, a clerk at some boutique - at play in fields of fruit and vine. You're buzzed, fed just right, and ya got a stressed-out chick to get out and be the Girl Next Door, not just play one at a casting call or in a head shot.

Enjoy it first. And then write about it. What'd that dude in Cincinnati call you last year? The "Chillebrity Librarian Blogger?"

Well then, chill, goddammit. Ya gotta be back at the folks' place for supper in a few hours.

Everybody needs a break from the everyday routine. And it usually helps to practice what one preaches, too.

- # # # -

BEATING THE KOBAYASHI MARUS* OF ONE'S SOUL: Of Twenty Miles Beneath My Feet and a Hobo's Spirit Inside my Chest

OHIO-INDIANA BORDER (ZP) -- It's amazing the sorts of things that just pop into your head beneath a scorching noonday sun, as one backpacks down the open road, with a rig full of water and books and not much else.

Memories. Daydreams. Tall tales, old ghost stories, even mathematical equations and answerless philosophies.

That's the true beauty of long hikes alone - the solitude of strolling that country road to nowhere, the liberating simplicity of conquering that overgrown deer trail or bike path.

Put twenty miles beneath your feet, and your mind will create for itself a mosaic of thought, painted to the beat of crunching footsteps and to the songs of summertime insects.

As I hit the state line I stopped. I laughed and mumbled something unimportant, put my hands on my hips, with one foot in Ohio and the other in Indiana.

My legs ached, my shoulders and back sunburnt, sweat dripping from every pore.

Glorious.

* * * *

A whiff of honeysuckle blows past my nostrils, and, suddenly, I'm thinking about the farm where I grew up, about skinny-dipping with my sister and cousins in ponds and those long afternoons napping beneath my grandmother's pecan trees...

... And those chirping noonday crickets in the fields full of soybeans and field corn! Alfalfa! Yes! There it is, in that field right over there!...

And Jesus H. Buddha! What about that idiotic summer adventure back in Virginia, when a buddy of mine and I decided to hop a moving Norfolk-Southern boxcar.

We'd planned on riding that train all the way to wherever its rails took us. We made it to Meherrin, one town over, before it stopped and we ran like scared puppies as the brakeman hollered at us...

We wanted to be ten-year-old hobos. And we rode the rails a whopping ten minutes as liberated men.

* * * *

And a hint of pine, intertwined with the fragrance of a thousand and one wildflowers, reminds me of sharing a night (and an abandoned barn) in Big Sur, California, in 1999, with that First Nations backpacker from just north of Vancouver, the first woman I was with after my second engagement failed...

...How I wish, some days, that she'd at least waited until I awoke to say goodbye. I can't even remember her name, but I still remember her scent, like that of the sweetest earth turned into brown flesh...

I really have gone through quite a few women in my time on this planet. As someone recently put it, I go through flings like some fashion-savvy women go through shoes. 'Tis true. And I make no apologies for it, really. It's my nature to just drift about, from pine forests and wildflower fields, and I generally treat the idea of relationships much the same.

But there are still many forests and many flowers in this world...

* * * *

"HEY! ARE-YOU-SURE you don't wanna a ride, son?"

An old farmer pulled up beside me in an equally old pickup, ten minutes after I'd turned off Contreras Pike onto Brookville Road. I hadn't even heard him creeping along behind me in that old, noisy tank of a farm truck. So lost in thought, so embraced by the tranquil solitude of my mind's own mosaic of memory.

I smiled and thanked him for the offer, explained that I was hiking away a Saturday afternoon.

"Well, it's a hot one. S'posed to be in the upper nineties. Sure ya don't wanna ride? Take ya back to Oxford..."

"Nah. It's all good. But thanks for the offer."

And it was just that. All good.

The groin tear didn't bother me, for the first time in almost a year. Even the remaining gristle that comprises my left knee's ACL and MCL held up as if it were still as whole as it was before 2002.

That tiny fleck of stainless steel knife embedded in my hip? Neurological silence. Even the last throes of Mononucleosis-fueled lethargy seemed to have been finally beaten into normal dormancy.

No pain. And nary a cloud in the sky, to my skin's dismay.

All good. As in Holy fucking shit! it's great to be alive!

* * * *

I strolled into West College Corner, Indiana, a mere nine miles, by foot, from my apartment building's stoop, about 45 minutes later. As I crossed the railroad tracks, again I thought of that aborted attempt at being a teenage hobo and laughed to myself.

Too bad I missed the train. Indianapolis is wonderful this time of year... a lot further than Meherrin...

Nine miles. Roughly halfway through my journey. I'd end up hiking more than 2o miles before the sun set on another Saturday.

Life's just good sometimes. And solitude is a divine gift.

* * * *

Country roads and long strides through my nation!
How I've missed you, great Old American Solitude!
A year since I've sought your peaceful counsel,
Since you've caressed my thoughts as wildly
As that burning sun across my naked chest.

A year too long, for men of the road,
Injury and illness be a damnable curse.

- Poetic Fragment, Yours Truly

- # # # -

* For Alexander "Sandy" Courage (1919-2008), Robert Justman (1926-2008), and Joseph Pevney (1911-2008). Those guys inspired whole generations to boldly hike where no man may have hiked before.

SAVAGE STEW AND AMBROSE BIERCE FROM ACROSS CYBERSPACE: More Baseball, Yakking Cats, and How Communication Technologies Shape the World

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- She said she was just bored.

I'd wondered about the text message she'd sent, one of about five from the infamous 323 Area Code Thursday morning, a strange Happy Turkey Day!!! Gobble-Gobble, Jason! :P sent at exactly 4:48 a.m. Pacific Time - arriving here instantly, in Ohio, just after breakfast.

Bored outta my skull. If you're still alone today call me.

Bored in the City of fucking Angels, right smack dab in the middle of striking Hollywood and fire-riddled Malibu, a freeway away from Pasadena and an afternoon train from Santa Barbara.

Her boyfriend had flown back to his parents' house for the holiday, back to the rugged confines of the western Rockies. Her own family was on the road, somewhere, plans made long before an unavoidable work stoppage shut down Tinseltown.

A nice brunch in Beverly Hills would be her only holiday feast, with a girlfriend and an out-of-work set painter.

* * * *

It's funny how Americans like to pretend that the third Thursday in November somehow means something to the rest of the goddamn planet, how we pretend for a day that the Pilgrims and Native Americans really did get along in peace, liked watching football, and traded guns for corn until the advent of shopping malls 400 year later.

Chatting online earlier in the week, my texting actor managed to make Los Angeles sound like the loneliest ghost town in America on Thanksgiving, as if the city would shut down like some rural Wyoming village of a few dozen people.

Very melodramatic, but, well, she's in the drama business...

* * * *

I'd planned on spending the day by myself, reading and watching movies. I turned down several offers to dine with other people's families, in fact, to enjoy the solitude.

I even cooked myself a monstrous pot of turkey sausage stew, put some Calexico on the stereo and settled on a collection of Ambrose Bierce stories while the Limas and kidney beans melted into the meat, fresh sage, onion, and dill weed.

Calexico gave way to some documentary on public television as the stew reduced, public television beget dinner and a DVD, dinner beget dishes to the soothing sounds of Wendy O. Williams, NOFX, and Bad Religion. I cleaned up the stove and countertops to the tune of the Warren Zevon's "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner"....

Just chillin'. Thursday, I was just thankful to be alive, alone, and without any sort of drama in my life. And I just chilled away an entire day, happy as a clam.

Just as I finished rereading the Bierce's anti-war classic, "Chickamauga," she sent yet another series of texts - again, bored in L.A. after brunch and already halfway through everything stored on her TiVo. Reading the last message, an apology for bothering me, I finally got around to at least beginning to make those follow-up holiday calls I'd been putting off all day.

Starting with the first text of the day, I called back a poor, not-so-starving actor trapped out in the 323, a thespian with nothing better to do on a Thanksgiving in Los Angeles than to subtly hint at the fact that she'd like to chat with a certain librarian/blogger/loner in Oxford Fucking Ohio...

* * * *

We spent the first two and a half hours talking mostly about baseball.

Yes, baseball. Off-season stuff.

Joe Torre, the new Dodgers skipper. Do the Chavez Ravine boys stand a chance, now that L.A. has once again stolen something from old Gotham, a Bronx manager to accessorize their former Brooklyn ballclub? And of another Joe, Cincinnati's Joe Nuxhall... did I get any feedback from the local Reds fans? Did anybody in Oxford Fucking Ohio say anything about it?

Besides being bored, she wanted to verify that, yep, the Zenformation Professional Jason was indeed the same Ohio Jason who'd finally sent his number - discreetly - through a mutual offline acquaintance. And to say she was shocked that we'd met once, at a Central Coast bistro a few years back, through that same acquaintance, would be an understatement.

"You know, dude, you go on these mini-rants where I have no clue what the hell you're talking about. You sound a lot like I imagined you to sound, like you write...

"...And I can tell you used to be in radio. You should try XM or something."

I tried to be entertaining, tried to be a good conversationalist. I've been slipping a bit, having spent a good portion of the last two months in serious dental agony, unable to even speak clearly without slurring or drooling for two weeks.

But, for the most part, I listened. When you're not accustomed to solitude, being alone on a silly holiday can make anybody feel as if they're the last human being on the planet - it's easy to forget things like telephones and the Internet when one is down on themselves.

And, yes, And she just wanted someone, anyone, to talk to her, like an real human being and not some - ugh! - girl from TV! One of her cats has been ill, hakking and yakking up scores of hairballs. Some creepy hippie at the organic market where she shops followed her to her car and almost got pepper-sprayed for insisting that the Burning Man must be followed, at all costs.

She needs a new stylist, one who doesn't yap like a chihuahua about customers behind their backs. And her new Hybrid car doesn't sound right...

And her sick cat ... he yakked up something... while she was driving the I-405 freeway ... in the passenger seat... Oh God, the smell...

* * * *

Only non-relative I talked to all Thanksgiving Day, not counting an interview, via Skype, for a very un-librarian job in Glasgow, Scotland, at just past 2:30 p.m. GMT and an unscheduled online chat with an ex living just outside of Paris.

Hell, my sister was in Southern California herself when I called, my parents six hours up the coast, and my grandmother, back in Virginia and once again able to drive after her near-fatal accident, was making her way through Downtown Richmond traffic to dine with her boyfriend's kinfolk.

Small world, really. Damned thing just keeps shrinking like a wet sweater in a hot dryer.

But at least through our ability to adapt to our situations, to adopt and explore new technologies, and to look inside of ourselves, into our own abilities to share our experiences and to listen to the experiences of others, we're never really that alone in this brave new world.

Thanks to all the changes in our global information infrastructure over the last hundred years, we've witnessed changes so dynamic that the very fabric of humanity has become intertwined with the crackling pulses of electrified airwaves and the miles of cable beneath our feet. Not for everyone yet, sure. But for hundreds of millions of people, the greatest experiment in information-sharing the world has ever seen has already become a way of life.

Rarely are we ever as alone as we feel. When we feel the walls closing in, when we feel abandoned, when a solitary holiday seems like a prison sentence, there's almost always a good book waiting to be read, a community park open, a mountain to climb, a film to watch, or -

- Or somebody to talk to when you're just bored, even if they're on the other side of the world.

We should all be thankful for that.

- # # # -