Have Penitentiary Will Travel

After I got rid of everything I owned, I sent a single small box home to my mother. Inside of it was everything I thought important enough to keep and in a way remember. Love letters from Chuck Palahniuk and women who had grown to know me. Photos of us kissing, strife, my life working in the motorcycle industry, the three years I spent on Warped Tour. Manuscripts I had written, original catalogues from my clothing company, masters of the four albums I released, notes, lyrics, and more notes. A sheriff’s badge, a Freemason belt buckle, my missing teeth, and a birth certificate I assumed to be mine.

In this box there was some room and I put more things from my trip thru the world. Sunglasses from a wedding in LasVegas, a bracelet from a girl I almost married in Peru. A small can of salted nuts from a childhood friends reception in Tucson. A slingshot engraved with a detailed account of my psychedelic trip on ayahuasca in the Amazon. I put the socks I was wearing when I almost died trying to cross the Antarctic and last I laid a photo of Ben and I at the top of the high Andes. I wished my brother well and did the holy trinity the way I had learned it in Colombia but perfected its kiss in Portland.

What I had originally gone in the box for I did not find. I was looking for a mailing address so I could send a letter I had already written. 1 of 5 letters actually. The address wasn’t a pretty one. I knew it read Nebraska State Penitentiary, marked with the inmate number of one of my oldest friends, who was doing a 40 year bid for things it wasn’t up to me to forgive him for. So I did not judge instead I sent him books before I left Portland on astral projection. I imagined that is what I might want if I were locked up in a cage fighting for scraps from the drain.

I battled with my letters trying to decide how much I should tell him in them. What would seem like boasting, what was boasting, what would let him live vicariously, and what was vital to the vicariousness. In the end I decided to tell him nothing I had said before to anyone. All the stories that had been kept just for me to know, to give him an account of all my secret strengths, to tell him the things that I had saved because they would only get watered down in the repeating of them. I knew he had no choice but to keep them safe, so I selfishly gushed.

As I dug for the address that I could not find, I found something else that I had forgotten. I found that I had accomplished much that I did not give myself credit for, that I had put in more work than I had remembered. That this small box was a time capsule of hundreds of memories, heartaches, and hard won triumphs. That beautiful women had loved me and beasts had become my kin. By the time I got to the bottom drawing only dust under my fingernails I knew that the mailing address was no longer important. It had never been in this box, it had always been with me. It was the part of me who was exactly the kind of man to pick up and head to Nebraska, deliver these last letters myself. Post office for a pair of legs, tears for gasoline stamps, hands balled in fists, envelopes. 

Chapter 19: Mouthful of rattle.

Here I am outside of San Carlos Mexico on the same beach where I first had sex 15 years ago. I don’t have to wonder how I could have ended up here. I know that it makes perfect sense. Everything is coming around, this cycle is rinsing out. The world knows I wont backtrack so it brings me around instead, when I was pacing that was never a necessity to make a circle. I changed things by never checking my shoulders. 

When I left Portland the first time it went like this:

Release EP, quit jobs, leave lady, bender, Jupiter Hotel, LA, Tucson, Silver City, Austin, Mexico, Colombia.

When I came and left this time:

Bender, Las Vegas, Jupiter Hotel, Mexico, get lady, Tucson, Silver City, get job, Austin, Record EP, ?.  

We are entering a moment of singularity and I happened to get in deep enough to be riding away on some of the same strides as history itself, even if it is just my own personal one. I have survived not crushed beneath. A gift, see, I’ve been lined up on the offside team waiting for the rules to change most my life, and now here we go. This whole thing is about to flip. I was just capsized on a kayak in the Ocean with no life jacket two days ago, and that’s no joke or turn of phrase, I wasn’t even on an adventure that day, or any days before today. I was just looking for something that I needed to be very far away, so I went to the ends of the earth to find it. I Came all the way over to the other side of where this first began, and now The Thick looks more like a thicket and I can start to shape this thing.

I have learned a few very important lessons in my travels, more than learned them though, I have learned how to employ them.

1. Timing is a skill that dumb people call luck. Hone it.

2. Do everything you can before the door closes and don’t go in a second before you have to.

3. Be so fucking bold that you are the only thing you are afraid of.

4. Plan, even if you never use it, Plot a way to all your ends.
5. Get the most result for every action.

So now I will crouch down here in Mexico for another week with my shears and make a monster out of these blueprints. The bottom line is this whole place is made out of the same fabric and you have to fuck with it, if you want it to fuck with you, and you do want it. There is no leaving it alone anymore anyway. We're in.

Room 233

I’m sitting in room 233 of the Jupiter Hotel; I didn’t mean to come to America, I am not sure how I ended up in Portland. I took a turn. I closed my eyes and asked for a direction. I opened them and I was forgiven. The map is not the territory. When I understand that I can see all things with more clarity. I traveled up the backside of the world thru Canada to get to Las Vegas. I left my brother by a waterfall in northern Argentina. I miss him. When people tell me that they love me, my natural response is to tell them that I am them. I believe that.

 30 hours on a plane and 4 days later I am here. My arms slept in the wedding bed of one of my best friends on his wedding night at the top of the Palms. My body is still making music on the streets of Buenos Aires.  My mind is consumed with thinking about someone. I don’t think I wanted to come here because I was afraid to see the people and things I loved. I was not sure if my reason for being here was a justified one. I was afraid that my heart might burst, gush out and flood the streets where I spent my best years. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have learned enough about myself to return in the good graces of my city. My fears are still with me but maybe they are more than fears…maybe they are feelings. I think that might change things. When I think they are feelings I become less afraid.

In the aftermath of an earthquake all things are fair. In the face of a walking disaster all the manuals give way to panic. Only experience survives. I have experienced so much but learned so little. Does that make me ok in the face of this earthquake where the manuals and information do not matter? Can I make the right choice then and only then? Never before.

I was in a cave in Peru on a psychoactive drug in the middle of a thunderstorm and a shaman told me that my soul was conceived on a distant planet in the mind of an animal that looks indescribable. Even if that is true I am still gonna head down to New Mexico and help the woman that conceived my body finish building her house. Someone teach me to be beautiful for the first time again. Somewhere there is a photograph of me that explains some things about me, if you find it remember them and tell me in a letter someday when I am old. 

Conversations From The Thick

     “What do you see when you look at the world Ben? Would you describe the color of the clouds as dangerous, do you think the ground looks haunted and wet, huh? Sometimes I don’t think we see the same thing, sometimes I think I am all alone out here, in a totally different place from you, from everyone. How can you look at me right now and not see the noose around my fucking neck? The rope just hanging there.”
     I pull a cigarette out from the front pocket of my pea-coat and accuse him with it. He lights it like a memory, like a reflex for all the times we’ve tumbled, won, and drowned. The rain doesn’t move it thickens, collects those beads that remind us of the hard work we’ve put in for out whole lives, all the sweat. We whisper urgently, caught between a growl and a groan. A howl that escapes and gets lost, like we are. Like things thrown in the sea.

     “I see a storm when I look outside Raf, I see the rope but I got the knife. I see a way out of this shit, if we get in this cab and make two right decisions we can win. We’re the hungriest we’ve ever been in our entire lives, right here, right now. There’s no way were not gonna eat tonight, you know what I mean brother? I can see you. I swear."
     We are the two big fish in this picture. I am the one with my back turned.

What Chapter

This city smells like someone’s been fucking inside a McDonalds wrapper, these streets are cleaned by goose-stepping garbage-men, kicking plastic in every direction. The architecture is faux colonial, the gates are glass and honey. The boy is home. Burn the tires, let a gypsy find solace in some smoke. Queen some coats, wolves with pomade  in their hair, sipping on moonshine, sipping on the memory of that last call, last kiss. Kill the lights, kill the coke. How did we write the future in song and then get surprised by the way it ended?

She drags him across the dance floor like a rag doll, he submits like a struck dog. He pushes her back with his weight propelling him, shoulders driving her into the ground. Burying her, eyes closed imagining trespass. Stomping each other with every step. Tango, tumultuous sad dance made from the pumping systematic loss of blood. From heartbreak and hard drugs. Who can dance it well that has not been fucked and fucked over? No one. No virgins here. If there were who would want them. El Capitol, El Captain. Buenos Aires. My man, dressed in black again and again. Do the laundry kid.

 With champagne in one hand, wine in the other, a mouth with a pain killer cut up under the lip, bus seat kicked to 90 degrees, we enter. Finally ready for vacation, finally ready to enjoy the destruction we’ve caused. 6 months later, its time to relax. First night in, I see Ally Stone in a bathroom against six men in the Falkland Island war revisited. I’m just here to do the dishes. This is a great man, above war so I don’t think he needs to get his hands soiled in this, he just puts em in the soil. Get me. We all need a witness. I’m just here to do the dishes. Repeat. Repeat this.

“Don’t rub me to close. Why you got names like a snake. I don’t know how long you’ve worked here but I’ve worked here longer. If I pulled my dick out it wouldn’t be more awkward, if you introduced me to a congressman I ‘d ask him for a light.”

Ally says this to no one in particular and everyone in general as we enter the pub. Exit the rules and progress. Here we come full circle. Fear, I’m back. Missed you too.

There’s a puma outside licking the air, rubbing ass against the tent. I get up to drink from the river where he drank and see if I can still taste him. There’s an arctic fox playing with his girlfriend I move closer to see if I can chase her, skirts are skirts, on and off paper. Milkshake makers.

Fin Del Mundo, we’ve made it thru the entire continent to the southern most tip of the earth. Glaciers as big as some countries, which ones, I wont google. The hardest trip of my life. The most rewarding time facing death, in a total white out storm with gale-force winds beating me into the ice, my frostbite giving way to hypothermia, a hike of 97 Kilometers, costing me my knees. Ben saved my life when all I could see was glacier and no hope. My brain began to systematically shut off function. All I could think was I don’t wanna die with my pants down, and though I could not see the Peruvian Army shorts I wore, could not feel the limbs I was told I owned, could not know my high-top Nikes from the ice. They said I was naked. My body shaking like pistols in her hand. Mind still stuck on that hand. Lost 700 at the casino that week, but not that hand.

He chiseled ice from me, put life back in me, asked nothing but a humorous line to know I was alive. Some debts are just lifestyles. Round we go, owing each other everything.

You wanna hear I miss you but don’t wanna hear I am coming for you. How should I show up? In shackles or riding motorcycles, with love or hate in my heart? Knowing I scare you makes me afraid.

           She didn’t wait for me, hadn’t spent billions of years shaking off glaciers like dog water in anticipation of me. She never thought of me while throwing temper tantrum gale-force winds, her avalanches were without reproach for my absence, her boulders were not tossed down the sides of her face demanding I be there, yes, I knew she cared little if I climbed her but still I imagined she wanted me, like a lover, I forgot my past fires swept beneath the hearth, I should have remembered that she might also move to kill me, with direct orders. Its good to see you again. Campanero. Another mountain climbed just to see where we stand.

Interlude: Few Were We

Few were we, the wanderers, the lone, seekers of obscure fist-fights. Nomads who navigated entire continents disregarding all the maps that came before, knowing those could only lead down the path of another mans heart. Gypsy lovers of the broken branch, archers with our arrows drawn lit to guide the way. Desiring only to see with fresh eyes, intuitions filthy with experience, hides ruff, paws damp beneath the calluses, drunk on moonshine, teeth full with gristle. Few were we, who had gone to the ends of the earth only to tumble suspiciously down the deep ravines and hungry precipices. Our falling bodies clearing dust, thorn, and path, where even fewer still would leap willingly, with purpose. Not as guides but as battle hymns, singsong odes to great men, the campfire ghosts we honor. Few were we, so few not a single one of us could escape the sheet of loneliness that draped our wind-worn shoulders and raw eroded faces. That same sheet that kept our legs tangled in half slumber thru cold winter beatings. So few were we, a single glance from a stranger need not discern our sadness, we wore it with unmistakable identity like thieves of wine. We carried with us always the look of the hunted even while we tracked the great beast. We sang only the songs of the damned, the blues, the wild open storm we called home, lover, and adversary. We loved true, having one condition, that we would always leave, always return someday hiding strange gifts as better men.  Pulling foreign coin from behind the ears of our children. Grown in the eyes of the land, forged under the weight of her beauty. We died at dawn, stabbed thru the heart with elk antlers, thru the lungs with spades, thru the livers with thick oak barrel spinters, wearing only the names of our brothers. Need not bury us with our treasure; once the ashes scatter we are traveling her round legs once more. Let the funeral pyres burn and the great sea captains return to guide the tides again. Let the earth shake and rattle and kick the Rock'n'Roll back into the boots. The course is set for war, smile for it. Rush to it, leave your belongings behind. One kiss from her is worth more than all your life, absolves you of all you consider your debt. You need only to climb something very high, voyage steps to the edge with eyes closed and take a deep breath to see it. Hunker down low on your haunches between blades of desert grass and run to taste it. Lean and bury your face in the vineyard grapes, source of vagrant elation, to smell it. But you must leave, to be with it. It travels far and swings wide. So tell me goodbye, dear girl, dear campanero, like I tell you.  

-R. Vigilantics

            

Chapter 18: From Condors to Doctors

            I reached into my pockets to find them holding little less than enough for another glass of whiskey if the bartender favored me, I told him the best story I had on me and put the rest of what I had in front of me. A few soles short. He threw a little shine on me as the closing lights went up and my glass filled amber brown and sticky one more time. It was 5 in the morning and I was tired, the rest of my cash along with my backpack was locked away in a dingy room on the other side of the city. Everyone I knew was a day in front of me. I decided to stay on in Cusco another night alone and wait for Halloween to die down.

            I posted up outside the hostel across the street and threw rocks until the guard got distracted, then I slipped by him and grabbed the first empty bed I could find.

            I woke to find myself in the women’s dorm and girls in towels surrounded me with a playful curiosity. One of them immediately remembered me from Colombia and they all welcomed me to breakfast, told me I smelt like booze and offered to dress me up for Halloween. I declined the wardrobe but took em up on the eggs and marijuana. Despite my small protests the night ended well with my face painted like a lion, it felt good to participate again. It’s been years since I’ve dressed up. I stayed out till my bus left at 7AM. Forgetting to wash off the make-up, or not caring, I can’t remember which. I entered my 10-hour ride full of mariachi music and the same damn Adam Sandler movie. I probably look like I make more sense down here this way. A more tangible circus act covered in tattoos with a lions head.

            I show up in Puno to meet up with Ben, Chad, Elizabeth, get off the bus and realizing what a shit-hole the place is, I just get back on and leave. I see Lake Titicaca from the window and don’t feel like I’m missing much but Disneyland style reed islands, frustration, and Bolivia, which I want to go to but refuse to get the vaccines for.

            In Arequipa I can feel Peru coming to a close. This will be my last stop here before I enter Chile, I am excited to go again and long only for Colombia now and her. Although Arequipa reminds me of home as all deserts do. I can smell the sage, feel the cacti, rub the dirt into my pores, close my eyes and imagine the land where I was born with ease. Homesick remedies have to be creative these days.

            I go again to see the doctor here. Where he has me diagnose myself and then gives me medication according to what I think is wrong with me. He tells his assistant to have me pull my pants down and lie ass up on the table and then he comes in and asks me what the fuck I am doing with my pants off. We laugh about it and talk bout bad US movies and tattoos. As the girl at the reception begins to print me my bill he pats me on the back and says this one is on the house. Best hospital experience ever. He still doesn’t fix me. The sides of my legs feel like they have a million ants fighting and dying in them.

            Me and Ben take a taxi out so some local bullfight where two bulls are encouraged to battle each other by having their handlers grab their balls, finger their asses, and excite them in other such old school fashions. The betting system is you yell out a bet and another man takes it or raises it. The first bull to walk away looses. We end up with the old school papas who run this place and I earn their respect by picking the bulls better than they do. I try to trade my I-phone for the most amazing bolo tie I have ever seen and am laughed at, its on a golden rope with a pre-incan coin and I will find my own if it’s the death of me. Treasure has killed many men.  They take us past the gates and introduce us to the refs, the bull owners, the champions. In the middle of the winners circle in the middle of the ring we get prestige placement, hold trophies and are bought drinks.

            The fights come to an end and we hitch a ride in the dark in the back of a deep-dish truck with one of the bulls out to a bar in the barrio where we drink with the prizewinners from the night until everything and everyone feels good and celebrated. Walking back into town we stumble upon a punk rock show with only four people in attendance. Finally I can dance. We bounce the place off the walls and make the band feel like they are better than the Ramones. In the moment it’s true.

            In the morning we pack our bags for a three-day excursion to hike Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. Excitement runs. I love condors and they fly so close here. The canyon doesn’t disappoint me. The condors don’t leave me. A little oasis lies at the bottom for us to rest and make spears. The vastness of this place dwarfs even the biggest story. On the third day I hike the entirety out of  the canyon from the bottom without stopping once. I am proud of myself for this, I know my will is strong for this.

            Another 24-hour bus ride and now I am in Chile. We rent a car and Chad drives us out to one of the best observatories in South America. I can see distant nebulas that no longer exist anymore and shooting stars plainly fire blind every few minutes. I have seen some of the details of these other galaxies in my ayahuasca ceremony, and know things about their positions I didn’t recognize I knew before. I can locate the Andromeda Galaxy with a blindfold on. We keep driving another 5 hours south to the Capitol city of Santiago, a riot is taking place as we enter…police are firing water cannons and tear gas, several walls have been knocked over and most of the public building are covered in graffiti all of the statues are being held hostage. I like it here. The parks are full at night and the people seem to be constantly up to activities. I’ve been here three days all full of soap-box derbies, hells angels tattoo conventions, rude-boy festivals, car shows.  My days in South America now lie severely numbered, after the new year I will go to Amsterdam, two months after that I will be riding a motorcycle from LA to New Orleans with Josh Mills…I hope to get a return flight to Colombia though. I hope between here and there I find it. It’s almost time to put out a new record. I can feel it, but I can’t quite see it. I know it has to be good and I can’t settle. I never do but I tend to rush things. Maybe between all the 20 hour bus rides, bad Spanish, and blank stares…I have learned enough patience to make it work.

The Colombian government has a bounty out on a herd of Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippos. They don’t care what happens to them, they just want them gone. I pull my hat down a little lower and think about the possibilities.

Signing out from the thick my campaneros,

R. Vigilantics