We're in the Brother's Room, in the mansion, with the key, holdin it down, yeah, we're invited...

Portland has been an unexpected "getaway" spot, and had it been expected, I might have better prepared myself.

What I've gotten used to is the introduction, the hyper-stylized conversation where we meet and angle our way into each other's lives like time is on the loose. Funny MO when you find yourself in a big, empty, climate-controlled house with a hot tub, trampoline, and two sweet pitbulls for a week. Leanne and I have been living off of food-bank garbage and bike rides on our borrowed Peugeot road and BMX bikes. Luckily we've made a few good friends outside of this house, or else we might bore ourselves to death with the internet and scattered Kerouac and motorcycle books about the place. It's a beautiful thing to watch Leanne read "Dharma Bums" and look up every once in a while and cite the parallels to our adventure. Skagit County, gondolas, sharing wine with common folks. Nothing pivotal, it's just the fabric.

We made friends with the 20th and Alberta crowd, this collection of ramblers who sit on the sidewalk and bullshit all day. This man Shorty has me remembering all those old men I've met on the sidewalk in the past who carry their wisdom on their sleeve. Like this man I once met on Venice Beach who had carved a giant sand mermaid with his one-inch pinky nail. His mouth was rotten but his soul was so firmly intact inside that decrepit body, and he spoke of his death as if it were tomorrow, welcoming it with every sip of vodka. I think of Venice Beach, I think of that bohemia it's been depicted as in words and pictures, I think of bohemia and it's appeal versus it's reality. Terminology charmed commodity. It's more of an elated feeling of sinking. Shorty, though, he's hell-bent on his room in the world as an angel, a man, and a philosopher of astrological persuasion. Drunk like a fox.

We're taking a ride on Monday to Northern California, on which we'll be stopping in Ashland, Oregon on the tip of free chocolate and nut butters. It's getting cold in Portland and I'm ready to go South.

Dog Walkin'

Leanne with Shorty

Food-bank instant mashed potatoes

Train Photos

To all you who thought I would die within a month of leaving St Louis,

No one was born in Portland

Harvesting hops for our friend Paul in Portland

I am really happy to see that my extended family has been reading this blog, especially those of you who I have not seen in many years.


.........words

His mother died of stomach cancer nine years ago
and he still recalls
when she said "thank you,"
"thank you" cause he loved her after
all the shit he put her through.
and today he speaks of right and wrong and how to live with love ----
He speaks it drunk and cackles
and falls over in his lawn chair.

Heaven IS a Place on Earth

Brad at Finney Farm


It turns out, it's very difficult for me to write about my time spent in Skagit County, Washington. I have to ask myself why, and here's the deduction.

I have not seen that many stars in my entire life.
I have not been in such a beautiful place in all my life.
I have never eaten better food.
I have never met so many kids-on-the-level in one place.
Off-the-grid living has never been so directly illustrated to me, and I am overwhelmed with new knowledge.
Honestly educated children is a relatively new concept for me, and meeting kids who are so vastly developed for their age blew me away.
Second-storey greenhouse on bus.
Small town gossip!

We were able to stay on Finney Farm for a week and a half by an agreement to a work exchange, where we worked on projects for and with the farm/ers for at least four hours a day in exchange for food and housing. During our time spent there, work included berry killing and picking, raking, demolishing an old cabin frame, socializing at knitting circles :), and then a day trip to Feral Farm, where we helped out with the construction of a cord-wood sauna. Cord-wood is a pretty beautiful example of unconventional construction, and Matt of Feral Farm mentioned that he likes to explore projects that can not be commodified. The wood used in the project had to be dried for three years before installed into the wall.

While Finney Farm utilizes a lot of sustainable rural practices such as outhouses and wood-stove heating, Feral Farm is completely off the grid, running power off of a solar generator and collecting water by way of a well. Alongside the sauna being built there will be a laundry room supplied by a rain water catchment system.

The community of Skagit County was pretty wonderful to meet up with. Everyone we met was an absolute sweetheart and total freaks and dorks about their lifestyles. Loved it.
So now we're in Portland, we've been here for a day and ALREADY we've made it to a dance party with a fun DJ and walked ourselves into serious leg pains.

Izzy by the Sauna


Leanne's Birthday at a swing in the middle of the forest


Violet and Myself


Birthday cake for breakfast with Demeter


Demolishing a cabin for materials


Leanne


Jennie calls it "rural dumpster diving," picking fruit and mint at an abandoned homestead


Skagit River on Feral Farm


Cordwood building


Gettin out of town

The Hour of Questionalble Descent

We are at Finney Farm in Skagit County, Washington. The stretch of highway that Finney falls on is about 25 percent anarchist rural community, with Feral Farm, River Farm, and many stragglers singlin' out by the creek. Here at Finney, we've been doing half a days work for stay in the community house and food. We have the whole community house to ourselves, minus dinner time, when all the households on the land come and cook up basically the best food Leanne or I have ever eaten, every night. Oh my god.

Soooo we've been picking blueberries and blackberries, and separating the blackberry growth from the blueberry growth to prevent takeover. I'd say I've eaten about 1000 berries these past three days.


Now that we're up to speed, let me brief you on our last few days in Seattle. We moved into the backyard of Firebreathing Kangaroo for the time of it, and from day one at the place began a bender not soon to be forgotten, but certainly to be censored, considering my family and the kids at CAMP all read this blog... But to structure your imaginations, I'll share a bit of it.

It all started around 2pm on friday when I met some young busking punks outside of Left Bank Books, the oldest anarchist bookstore in the northern hemisphere, so this kid Bubbles tells me. They got 5 bucks and bought some tall cans and shared. We were eventually given 24 pbrs (no kidding?), I drank some, and promptly got a little tipsy and decided to find my way back to FBK. There, I meet Dave Salad, who became Leanne and my best friend in Seattle. He was, in fact, our essential "sugar daddy," making the agreement that so long as we would stay up and hang out with him, he'd make sure we were in food and beer. Friday night, about 15 of us sat around a bonfire listening to the Endurance Voyage on audio tape until we all passed out in our respective places. Saturday, five of us woke at 9am (some of us unwillingly, to Dave Salad in a Davey Crockett hat blasting Born in the USA and dancing around the geodesic dome). I learned that I had slept through a dude coming into the tent and strangling one of it's inhabitants, only to be bit on the face an hour and a half later, and successively get his lights punched out. It was over a girl. We all stumbled to the bar for pitchers, discovering that morning is cold and that we were all in need of naps to cure our hangovers. So some of us napped, I didn't, and thus, Saturday was a blur. It was pretty much a porch and gas station day, and I know that it ended in the dome listening to Born in the USA. Apparently, we all made it pretty far that day. Suuuuunnnndddaaaayyyy was a hangover. I woke up and went into the house for water and found one of the regular "can guys" (can collectors, you know, for money) in the living room, which had been completely turned upside-down the night before and was covered in beer-dirt. For the day, I resolutely hid up high in a tree and thought about the last 40 hours of my life. Pieced em together. Waited for the day to end. Monday I listened to Dan's records the whole day in his bedroom, which had such old favorites as The Wipers, Rites of Spring, and The Sonics. And then the today's goods of Under Pressure and Brain Handle. I stayed there the whole day. And I slept there. I quit the dome two nights in cause of Dave Salad's tendency for waking up early.

SO we got up to Concrete, Washington, here we are, calmed down and eating berries.


I have to break it down here and tell ya'll who are out there and able - these are the best days of my life. I want you to be a part of it. Join me some how. Call me, write me, hop a train and meet me in in fucking San Francisco already. Who needs money when you have guidance and each other to work with instead of work for.
I realized the other day that every turn I make feels like a quote out of a Jawbreaker song. So I'm gonna post the lyrics here of one I was singing today while brushing off spiders in the blueberries... ("Save Your Generation" from Dear You)

I have a present: it is the present. You have to
learn to find it within you. If you can learn to love
it, you just might like it. You can't live without
it. There's a million open windows. I'm passing these
open windows. There is plenty to criticize. It gets
so easy to narrow these eyes. But these eyes will
stay wide. I will stay young. Young and dumb inside.
I have just begun to forget my lines. If you could
save yourself, you could save us all. Go on living,
prove us wrong. Your leap of faith could be a
well-timed smile. Survival never goes out of style. I
have a message: save your generation. We're killing
each other by sleeping in. Finnegan, begin again.
This one can be won. One can become two. Two can pick
and choose. You could be the first. You have to learn
to learn from your mistakes. You can afford to lose a
little face. The things you break, some can't be
replaced. A simple rule: every day be sure you wake.

0n a last note, love to the loves of St. Louis who I've been living off this week - Mama, Bub, Jake, Patrice, Lyndsey, Rose, Peat, Patrick, Ralph, and Joe of the Steins. I trust you all in what we're doing in life.

And Dave Salad, we's gonna be friends for a long time to come. See ya in Santa Cruz.

Going Academic

First off, we're still in Seattle. It's good here.

Second, I have some problems that I need answers to, and I'm looking towards anyone who's academically-minded to just talk to me about these subjects:

The comparative history of service value in light of economic environment
The storage and distribution of information (macro-perspectively)
The function of inflated currency, in our society and in global society

See, my brain won't stop thinking these days, and it's because I'm too involved in my trip to be able to process the experiences I have in a way that is useful. I almost had a breakdown in Capitol Hill, trying to think through these things, until these two delightful homeless folks, Jim and Rebecca, shared their whiskey with Leanne and me, which calmed my brain right down. I have been writing professors at the University of Washington to try to get some conversation... So, if you know some economics professor or someone interested in these things, send 'em my way.

Here's some pictures of the way we are in Seattle.

Johnny

Flower diving with the local ladies

On the "we love you kurt" bench outside of kurt cobain's house

Kiwi Tree

Asher

Modeling our new pants we found on a trash can

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

My last few adventures in Minneaplis were... watching trains with Train Doc, and hopping a fence into the state fair and observing the horrifyingly consumptive crowd eating their cheese curds and ice cream, all the while disgusting them by eating their leftover cheese curds and ice cream. It was a greasy day and a lot of it was spent in the shade of trees.

We left Minneapolis Tuesday night, after spending about thirty hours in the Midway yard. We caught the high line with the intention of getting off in Whitefish, Montana for some camping and fresh air. However, plan changed when I woke in North Dakota after an 8-hour sleep to find that our food bag had been sucked under the train, leaving behind a tin of black currants and a jar of peanut butter. We opted to go to a city to find some food (though I am now informed that there is a food bank right near the Whitefish crew change). Hauser, Idaho is the closest stop to Spokane, our closest city option, so we got off there and hitched into town.

Spokane seemed extremely clean, happy, and healthy from the vantage point at "pig-out in the park" at Riverview Park downtown. That was an experience not far from the Minneapolis State Fair. It turns out Spokane is not that well off. We wound up staying in a women's homeless shelter after being informed that staying outside was a notoriously unsafe option for women in that town. We went to Hope House, juxtaposed most casually across the street from the plasma center, and right down from the men's shelter, Catholic Charities. Waiting for the shelter to open, you can imagine we made plenty of passer-by friends. We made sure there would be enough room for everyone before we decided to stay at Hope House, and were happy to hear that it is funded almost completely by private catholic sources. We took showers, put on our fresh nightgowns and robes, given a pair of clean socks and fed dinner. Lights out at eleven and I fell right to sleep. In the morning we were given breakfast and coffee. My favorite person at the shelter, Sharon, was this rough, large-framed woman who stared down the obnoxiously loud morning supervisor and somewhere along the morning I remember her saying "whoever messes with coffee in it's natural state should be shot." She said this to the supervisor who may have served us decaf. Loved her.

We decided to take our best non-sketch ride out of Spokane, towards Seattle, which wound up taking five hours. We got a ride from a mother and daughter, Trish and Nicole, whose music taste included The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Devo, Morrissey, and Adolescents. Most of our four-hour drive was spent listening to the Cure. They showed us the Columbia River Gorge, Snoqualmie Falls (where there are lots of antique rail cars that are amazing to see), and a spot where part of Twin Peaks was filmed. We liked them so much, honestly it couldn't have been a more enjoyable ride.

So, now we've been in Seattle, Washington for nineteen hours, and since arriving I have enjoyed food and beverages at the Haphazard House, as well as a serenade from a brass band practicing in the back yard and an hours long pass-the-instrument style living room performance. Tin Tree Factory (Johnny & co) played last and played his song about Adhamh Roland, which got my sentimentality rolling and I teared up.


Minnesota State Fair




Back Alley Bike Circle Pit/Keg Party (Minneapolis)


North Dakota along the high line


Waiting on a ride out of Spokane


Fruit Stop along 90



Leanne, Nichole, Me, Trish


Awesome Detour