Crazy Cloud Travels with Charley

OUTSIDE OF BOOMTOWN, BOOK SHORT,

STEINBECK AND CHARLEY, OLD COMPANIONS

SINCE HIGH SCHOOL, CHARMS IN THE MOTHERSHIP

With me since I was 16, a decade with Crazy Cloud,

slow it to breath and breathing.

Quixote's horse, Rocinante, dressed in Dodge Ram

silver, old leather. Steinbeck more of a father

than the others, more difficult for this. Unrecognized

but not unknown. We do not take a trip,

a trip takes us. Descending from fame,

its own anonymity, bumdom, he calls it,

...the bum must relax. He can't see

cities of homeless descending with him,

I had not heard the speech of America--

you wouldn't know it now. So it was
I determined to look again, to rediscover

this monster land...I had to go alone

and I had to be self-contained. That

thread, Charlie, the French poodle

from Paris, on his way to getting lost.

Saving water in the mothership.

Karen, my navigating companion

since before birth. Steinbeck's

10,000 miles and 34 states, not recognized

once. Karen shows me images of an artist

who claims her images from dreams,

working in fabric, We are wrapped

in cloth from birth to death, can

we be any closer? Big winds

out of Reno towards Carson City,

Mothership rocking, and my hands

weary from holding the wheel. Text

arriving from Mammoth, Big storm

coming in. Did you fix the curtain?

Karen asks. Travels with Charley and Karen.

Mammoth Mountain is a series

of lava domes formed 60,000 years ago,

still creating dangerous gas. Steinbeck

recreates 1961 in Charley, reads

William Shirer's Third Reich the same year

I do at 15. He reads Joseph Addison,

sentences like this: I have found

many readers more interested in what I wear

than what I think. For every million

cell phones recycled, 772 pounds of silver,

75 pounds of gold recovered in our time.

False scarcity the mantra of politicians.

Steinbeck hangs a bucket on a rope

to wash his clothes in Rocinante.

No Manzanar visitor's center for Steinbeck.

Or Tule Segregation Camp terrorizing sensibility.

The map to rehabilitation a study in horror.

Washing dishes thinking of my carbon footprint.

Steinbeck is 58 with Charley. I'm 72.

He makes fun of hunters and guns.

You can do that, then. Best story

in the book, explores Spanish

verb, vacilar, present participle,

vacilante--a false cognate. He's

been listening, not vacillating at all.

"If one has been vacilando,

he is going somewhere but doesn't care

if he gets there." Tears of the moon,

teasing the young teacher.

Play now, play next,

let rhythm make us free.

Put your manos in the sky

Venimos a vacilar.

Steinbeck finishes in Texas, New Orleans.

Myth. Reality. Roots. Lost.

Bravado and humility. Who are we?

Earlier in Sauk Center with Sinclair Lewis,

my first American hero. He knows Red,

drinks with him. My grandma and I

stop in 1964, driving my red

Austin Healey Sprite eyes full of tears.

Steinbeck's greatest wisdom, I did not know.--

I neglected my country too long. Believe me,

his country didn't wait. He writes,

We know so little of our  own geography.

You got that right, John. You listened

everywhere, and myth wipes out the facts.

That's prophecy, and you're on it.

Jim Bodeen

6 March--28 March 2018