Underground Freeway--Day Three
Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Three
May 24, 2009
By Pi Kielty
Day Three started at 8 AM. Again, I slept well and long. The night air dropped below forty degrees fahrenheit, although I slept comfortable in my cocoon of warmth in the usual camping bed clothes, wrapped in a thick fleece blanket inside my nylon mummy bag. When I walked into the farm house, I woke Johann, who normally gets up and stays up at 5 AM. While the water boiled in the kettle for the coffee contraption, a forty or fifty year old three section metal tower, I packed camp over by the barn. Ursula woke at 9 AM as Johann and I drank coffee under the outside table canopy, on a fine spring morning, as the sun peaked through the high trees that grew around and up over the two story home, a slight as feathers coolish northeast wind not at all discomforting. When I pronounced Lil’ Casino packed and fit to leave, Ursula threatened me with her own hurt feelings if she and Johann and the dogs could not follow me up to fifty miles on my day’s journey to buy me breakfast. Not ever wanting to hurt her kind regards, and knowing my good friends’ sincere love for me, I accepted. Johann proclaimed her measure pure emotional “blackmail.”
Johann grabbed a map and they asked me to choose a morning direction. I chose the City of Falling Water, then I followed their Honda sport vehicle up here to a city-centered family breakfast restaurant, good and not “modern” like Saturday’s breakfast: The menu showed breakfast served all day, and listed no asparagus omelette. Instead, Johann and Ursula ordered fitting potato pancakes and I had french toast and ham.
When asked their “Question” to chronicle, Johann stuck to the theme of his Friday reminiscence of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I listened to his recap that night as I last heard the book on tape 18 years ago. Johann just wanted to chronicle: “What is six times seven?”
Ursula’s “Question,” which may prove a greater epiphany later in this journey or after, came out simply: “Will you spend the day in [the City of Falling Water]?” That seemed like her only concern about life in general this morning.
When time to leave, they gave me hugs and invited me back–tonight even–if it would convenience. They drove one way and I drove another. I placed a call and met Sir Thom and his 1 year-old son after their church service. Back at Sir Thom’s apartment, five blocks straight up from the breakfast place, I told him about my trip and the goal. He replied to stay as long as I needed and I said I accepted and would only stay one night. He has no yard for the tent, so the sofa will do just fine. When Sir Thom returned his child to the mother after Young Thom’s two day weekly visit, I took the camera, walked downtown and took footage on the way back up the hill. When I got back to my car parked across from Sir Thom’s four-plex, the guy on the front porch direct to my left asked, “What the hell you doing with the camera?” I told him, and I asked him if he had a “Question.”
“No,” he replied smiling, understanding my road trip. “I just was wondering what the camera was for.” The man, Brent, smiled again and decline to let me record what will be chronicled as his “Question.”
Mid-afternoon, Sir Thom and I invited over another of our spiritual path brothers. Deckard arrived about 5 PM on his way to his evening spiritual destination, as Sir Thom and I sat out on the front step waiting to go to ours. Sir Thom left and Deckard and I visited more until he dropped off where Sir Thom went. After the congrating up the hill, Sir Thom and I shopped for some dinner, and I added a few more things for the journey. For $19.18, I bought the following:
• Table onions (1 pack)
• Olive oil (1 bottle)
• Pork chops (2)
• Pears (2)
• Apples (2)
• Peanut Butter (1)
• Leaf lettuce (1)
• Green pepper (1)
• Potato salad (1 small tub)
(Note: From Friday mornings shopping, I forgot to add Coffee (1 small can), and a couple more pieces of fruit already listed; and another bag of tuna).
Before heading back to the apartment, Sir Thom drove me through the free zoo a couple blocks away. I made Sir Thom the dinner of pork chops, beans, potato salad, and over-saladed us by tossing a lettuce salad with chopped onions, and sliced green peppers and pears, served with ranch dressing. Later, Deckard came back from his congregating in My First Place, and the three of us laughed, visited, and had fellowship.
I asked Deckard what he wanted for his “Question.” He repeated what he said hours earlier, “There are a million questions to ask. Which one do you ask first?” Sir Thom, when I asked my friends if I could grab both their snapshots with the still camera, turned out in his computer chair, and laughing hard, inadvertently used up his “Question”: “Pi, this isn’t some shit when you’re going to do all this, with the cameras and computers, and stuff, and then go and blow your head off?”
Deckard and I laughed back as I reassured Sir Thom, “NO, no, this isn’t what its all about.”
Before leaving the property with Johann and Ursula this morning, Johann let me place a call to my parents, as I promised Mom and Dad that I would stay in touch. Getting the answering machine, they probably went to Mass, no doubt praying for me, since the word coming to me by email all says that they misunderstood my trip and why I left. That might also cause me to question my own “Question” when the final conclusion-time arrives. Later, in the early afternoon as I arrived here with Sir Thom and Young Thom, several emails awaited me on my laptop, wirelessed into Sir Thom’s network. My sister in Norway wrote me, asking me to call Mom and Dad, which I had done earlier, but also saying that she in a way understood what I was doing, and why, but not approving it except in an indirect manner. Lelia did tell me that no one knows the type of “torment” people with crossed- and re-wired brains like my kind endure. She told me to look for the answer where I already do. “None of us have ever walked in your shoes,” she said, referring to all my siblings. I find no satisfaction and no cause to gloat over my sister’s words. They humble me more than anything.
As a final part of this Day Three Underground Freeway note, my mentor/advisor, Sensii, who I thought would write a vocal, written ass-chewing, only said to take care of myself, and, like everyone else, call my parents. May be, as I begin to suspect, Day Three’s note review holds more clues to final “Question” I want to know. . .so I get a good enough answer.
Underground Freeway–Day Three
May 24, 2009
By Pi Kielty
Day Three started at 8 AM. Again, I slept well and long. The night air dropped below forty degrees fahrenheit, although I slept comfortable in my cocoon of warmth in the usual camping bed clothes, wrapped in a thick fleece blanket inside my nylon mummy bag. When I walked into the farm house, I woke Johann, who normally gets up and stays up at 5 AM. While the water boiled in the kettle for the coffee contraption, a forty or fifty year old three section metal tower, I packed camp over by the barn. Ursula woke at 9 AM as Johann and I drank coffee under the outside table canopy, on a fine spring morning, as the sun peaked through the high trees that grew around and up over the two story home, a slight as feathers coolish northeast wind not at all discomforting. When I pronounced Lil’ Casino packed and fit to leave, Ursula threatened me with her own hurt feelings if she and Johann and the dogs could not follow me up to fifty miles on my day’s journey to buy me breakfast. Not ever wanting to hurt her kind regards, and knowing my good friends’ sincere love for me, I accepted. Johann proclaimed her measure pure emotional “blackmail.”
Johann grabbed a map and they asked me to choose a morning direction. I chose the City of Falling Water, then I followed their Honda sport vehicle up here to a city-centered family breakfast restaurant, good and not “modern” like Saturday’s breakfast: The menu showed breakfast served all day, and listed no asparagus omelette. Instead, Johann and Ursula ordered fitting potato pancakes and I had french toast and ham.
When asked their “Question” to chronicle, Johann stuck to the theme of his Friday reminiscence of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I listened to his recap that night as I last heard the book on tape 18 years ago. Johann just wanted to chronicle: “What is six times seven?”
Ursula’s “Question,” which may prove a greater epiphany later in this journey or after, came out simply: “Will you spend the day in [the City of Falling Water]?” That seemed like her only concern about life in general this morning.
When time to leave, they gave me hugs and invited me back–tonight even–if it would convenience. They drove one way and I drove another. I placed a call and met Sir Thom and his 1 year-old son after their church service. Back at Sir Thom’s apartment, five blocks straight up from the breakfast place, I told him about my trip and the goal. He replied to stay as long as I needed and I said I accepted and would only stay one night. He has no yard for the tent, so the sofa will do just fine. When Sir Thom returned his child to the mother after Young Thom’s two day weekly visit, I took the camera, walked downtown and took footage on the way back up the hill. When I got back to my car parked across from Sir Thom’s four-plex, the guy on the front porch direct to my left asked, “What the hell you doing with the camera?” I told him, and I asked him if he had a “Question.”
“No,” he replied smiling, understanding my road trip. “I just was wondering what the camera was for.” The man, Brent, smiled again and decline to let me record what will be chronicled as his “Question.”
Mid-afternoon, Sir Thom and I invited over another of our spiritual path brothers. Deckard arrived about 5 PM on his way to his evening spiritual destination, as Sir Thom and I sat out on the front step waiting to go to ours. Sir Thom left and Deckard and I visited more until he dropped off where Sir Thom went. After the congrating up the hill, Sir Thom and I shopped for some dinner, and I added a few more things for the journey. For $19.18, I bought the following:
• Table onions (1 pack)
• Olive oil (1 bottle)
• Pork chops (2)
• Pears (2)
• Apples (2)
• Peanut Butter (1)
• Leaf lettuce (1)
• Green pepper (1)
• Potato salad (1 small tub)
(Note: From Friday mornings shopping, I forgot to add Coffee (1 small can), and a couple more pieces of fruit already listed; and another bag of tuna).
Before heading back to the apartment, Sir Thom drove me through the free zoo a couple blocks away. I made Sir Thom the dinner of pork chops, beans, potato salad, and over-saladed us by tossing a lettuce salad with chopped onions, and sliced green peppers and pears, served with ranch dressing. Later, Deckard came back from his congregating in My First Place, and the three of us laughed, visited, and had fellowship.
I asked Deckard what he wanted for his “Question.” He repeated what he said hours earlier, “There are a million questions to ask. Which one do you ask first?” Sir Thom, when I asked my friends if I could grab both their snapshots with the still camera, turned out in his computer chair, and laughing hard, inadvertently used up his “Question”: “Pi, this isn’t some shit when you’re going to do all this, with the cameras and computers, and stuff, and then go and blow your head off?”
Deckard and I laughed back as I reassured Sir Thom, “NO, no, this isn’t what its all about.”
Before leaving the property with Johann and Ursula this morning, Johann let me place a call to my parents, as I promised Mom and Dad that I would stay in touch. Getting the answering machine, they probably went to Mass, no doubt praying for me, since the word coming to me by email all says that they misunderstood my trip and why I left. That might also cause me to question my own “Question” when the final conclusion-time arrives. Later, in the early afternoon as I arrived here with Sir Thom and Young Thom, several emails awaited me on my laptop, wirelessed into Sir Thom’s network. My sister in Norway wrote me, asking me to call Mom and Dad, which I had done earlier, but also saying that she in a way understood what I was doing, and why, but not approving it except in an indirect manner. Lelia did tell me that no one knows the type of “torment” people with crossed- and re-wired brains like my kind endure. She told me to look for the answer where I already do. “None of us have ever walked in your shoes,” she said, referring to all my siblings. I find no satisfaction and no cause to gloat over my sister’s words. They humble me more than anything.
As a final part of this Day Three Underground Freeway note, my mentor/advisor, Sensii, who I thought would write a vocal, written ass-chewing, only said to take care of myself, and, like everyone else, call my parents. May be, as I begin to suspect, Day Three’s note review holds more clues to final “Question” I want to know. . .so I get a good enough answer.
posted by Scipio Cepicanus @ 6:26 PM
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