Reflections from Maine

On the Road:

Though more temperate along the coast, Maine is still a true northern land. The fogs roll heavily over sparse, hilly, granite plots from which farmers manage to extract what little bounty; instead, the sea is where the sustenance lies - it's life giving itself so that we may live alongside.
Life here moves slowly, matching the lazy lapping of the bayed in North Atlantic; here people know that the tides cannot be controlled, that the lobster will come to the box when it's hungry, and that the wind will take to the sail in due course. My only urgency came in the damp of dusk when the wind began to suck the warmth from the very depths of my marrow. But on a sunny August day when the mist is dried and all that permeates the air is the salty surf - there seems no more pleasant place on earth.

There is not the oppressive heat of the city: it's brick and concrete furnace fed by the cars and trains and bodies... the endless towers of glass magnifying the sun, burning us like ants under a menacing child's magnifying glass. here we do not suffocate in the underground highway - pressed against each other - pit to nose to mouth, drenched in our own and eachother's sweat.

WE shout of freedom and the air that doesn't choke, and every so often we break free and immerse ourselves in Green. But, it is not to last - like heroin fading from our veins, we begin to chaffe under the lack of ever-present stimulus. Blogs, TV, Google, Lights, texting and tweeting... and the all you can eat of media vomit, and the isle after isle of choice - no need to adapt and adjust, if there is a "need", it is filled. We need the movie, the club, the show, the clothes, the recognition, shameless flaunting of our emptiness. Because when we find ourselves too long in nature we become faced with ourselves - without the anaesthesia of constant bombardment of how we should think, what we should feel, what we should buy, who is our enemy, and how we can project instead of BE - we shut down and curl up in the corner.
We are scary upon first encounter. We discover our emptiness and depravity, the hidden truth that on average we have naught to offer ourselves, let alone some one else.
So we flee the Green and the clean and the pure, and re-immerse in the muck of falsehood.
"Act as if..." has become all we are; we show what we are not because we have ceased to struggle to make ourselves real.


On the Book:

I am starting to lean more and more toward short stories. I think I can capture the different generations and the diversity of experience more poignantly if I separate them, yet keep the theme and ideas. There is no need to tie lives that are truly disparate, no need to remove their message by blending it with others. If I can set forth the premise and introduce the stories and the theme, I can then treat them like the unique blooms they truly are.

First Days

Me: 165lbs; Gear: 200+lbs

On The Road:
Not much has changed since John Steinbeck took to the road in Travels With Charley: crossing the continent more than twice over seems unfathomable, and every person I have met has expressed their wish to journey on the open road. Though my own journey will bring me to the far reaches of almost every continent, I share Steinbeck's awe and concern with this vast and often untamed land. There are only a couple of countries bigger than the states, so for most people across the globe the idea of traveling in ones country, unless legally forbidden, is not met with trepidation. Equally, few countries on earth have the massive swaths of wilderness, striking and dangerous, like those that predominate the American West. Like Steinbeck, my first stop on the American leg of my journey is Maine, then Deer Island, NB, however, I have purposefully not read past his departure from home, so that I may discover this land for myself.
Note: I know we all have to forget at least one thing before we leave for a trip, long or short, but of all things to forget: my motorcycle jacket?! Thankfully there is UPS, a city somewhere along the way, and a cousin who cares whether I will freeze to death.

On The Book:
My efforts to begin my book are curbed with a constant back and forth about whether it should be a novel or a collection of stories.This in turn brings me back to what I think should be the purpose of this book. I want "others" to know about our unique generation, and for "us" I want there to be record and a source for commiseration, because though we share many similarities, assimilation has dispersed us and our story and our shared identity. There also comes a question of plot and character development: do i want self contained ideas and stories that relate the diversity and experience of more people and situations, or, do I want to dig deeper into a few characters and develop them over time and attempt to bring out our collective experience through them?
So far Maine has brought forth reflections on modern society and less on the aforementioned dilemma...

Foreword

I envision this blog as a medium to relate my own struggle of attempting to write a book and getting it published. And, as importantly, to document how a journey and the act of travel influences a person’s creativity and reflections that shape their writing.

My journey will begin by traversing 6,700 miles across Canada and the U.S. on my Honda Magna VF-750.
I will then make my way to Israel, Russia, France, Italy, Spain, England, Thailand, China, Japan, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and Brazil.

The book I’m writing is not about travel, or, specifically, not about my own travel at this time. The book will be a fiction, embedded in the history and development of my generation:
We are refugees from whom identity was severed along with our citizenship - tossed into limbo; and when we landed on the shores of freedom we were no closer to understanding our potential or what kind of blossoming we would experience. Our roots are very similar: going back dozens of generations there was only a handful of places where our forefathers lived, only a handful of professions they could hold… but as they are the stalks of flowers, wholly indistinguishable, we are the blossoms – with as many expressions as the number of us who sought the golden door.

About Me: coming in the next post!