January 14, 1961, Tucson, Arizona
« I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility. (...) Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road. (...) Live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry ».
It's both exhilarating and terrifying, to leave with absolutely no belongings, for an unknown time, on an itinerary where only the first milestones have been mapped out. Perhaps it's a very concrete parable of what existence is all about, mine anyway. For someone with anxiety, it's an automatic letting go, a disconnection of the brain that takes place as soon as the first kilometer is crossed. I don't know where all this will lead us, but I'm sure - certain - that I'm loving it.
We finally departed on January 12, around midday, on a whim of Klaus's, who decided it was time to 'Run the World'. In less than twenty minutes, the bus was packed with fabrics, bangs, hair and suede boots. Everyone crowded into the leather seats and cushions, and Tim took the wheel for the first shift. "Get on the Bus!" many shouted, and I quickly realized it would be a rallying word. It's certainly one of Destiny's Child's lesser-known singles, but it'll stick with us for a long time. Klaus naturally named the bus "Priscilla" - yes, like the 'Queen of the desert'", and I think everyone already calls 'her' like that.
Urban landscapes gradually gave way to those of the Texas plains, wide skies over crops and ranchlands. Fort Worth, Abilene, Odessa, Van Horn... The road stretched endlessly to the horizon, amid songs, laughter and nonsensical conversations. As the land became more arid and the ground rugged, a few smokes rose above the cushions, no doubt to euphorize hearts in front of the dawning desert. Klaus wouldn't take even the slightest whiff, no matter how hard they insisted. It's still not my thing either. I don't think it ever will be.
Klaus's little amphatic introduction on my arrival had a virtue I didn't expect. Nobody here is surprised to see me teleporting here and there, especially not Kitty, who seems to associate me with some kind of prodigy of the same species as her dear protégé. Most of them simply don't say anything, some recite a Veda to my dismay, but I'm certainly not the strange beast I was once labelled back in school. I feel a kind of liberation, as if I can at last be myself. I don't know if Klaus planned this, but I'm grateful to him for it.
The Children don't judge your color or your accent. They don't care about your height, your glasses, your curls or your fat. They embrace your attractions and respect your reservations. They don't care if you love one person, three or a hundred. They are an oasis in a time even more difficult than the era we come from. Klaus likes to say that among them, 'our true colors are shining through'. Cyndi Lauper would probably like that.
We took our time and reached El Paso in two days, stopping often. We made quite an impression in a roadside store retailing a whole hodgepodge of Western-style clothing, fabrics, hides, local art and useless souvenirs. I ogled at a wood and bone necklace, and it only took one minute for Klaus to buy me three. Having money tends to thrill him, no doubt. Unlike most of the Children, who prefer to live penniless and trade one item or another for a service rendered or a bit of tobacco. After trying on every cowboy hat in stock and annoying the manager, he finally decided it didn't match his bandhgala.
A few more hours took us to park Priscilla on the heights of Tucson, above a desert tapestry where reminiscences of the old West entwine with a nascent form of modernity. Here, the evening sky is the color of tangerines, against which the cactus grow like black sentinels. Even the dust seems beautiful, at this hour when the warm breeze lifts the scent of mesquites. Klaus gets lyrical at times. I can feel how much joy this adventure gives him, and it's even with a smile, sometimes, that he fiddles with his dog-tags on his fingertips. It's a rebirth, yes, I guess it's fair to call it that.
I'm thinking of keeping up this travel diary. I think I'm discovering a taste for it.
January 17, 1961, Baja-Norte, Mexico
« The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars ».
Sleeping on a bus is no picnic. The small school pick-up seats are neck-breaking, and the air quickly becomes saturated with the smell and sound of all those people. The Children don't seem to mind: everyone sleeps in a heap. Sing in a heap. Eats in heaps. Loves in a heap. Collective promiscuity isn't something that I'm attracted to, and - whatever Klaus says - neither is he. I'm getting used to sleeping on the roof, even if it's colder at night than you'd think. At least you can see the stars, and listening to the 'Holy Wanderer' name the constellations after kitchen utensils inevitably lulls me to sleep. Back in The City, amidst the urban lights, we couldn't see that many.
Another day took us across the border at Nogales, and through the ochre hues of the Sonoran desert on narrower highways lined with agaves and succulents. I keep opening my eyes to Mexico's small towns, to the daily life I glimpse there from just a fish taco or a hibiscus agua fresca. Even before I saw it, I guessed from the food that we were approaching the Gulf of California. How long had it been since I'd seen such briny, salty landscapes? Through Priscilla's thick windows, I saw for the first time the shallow waters where the great blue herons land. The tapestry of sand dunes in infinite shades. And the Colorado Delta, as far as the eye can see, weaving the horizon with sandy furrows.
Jill finished 'On the Road' and lent it to me. Kerouac never really liked hippies, those who politicized his work, anyway. But his words clearly resonate with our journey, and although I don't like books that much, I find myself reading some quotes again and again. Klaus has already read it three times in rehab, and I'm sure that it contributed to his decision to buy Priscilla. He reads the local newspapers in castilian, especially the obituaries, to get a better understanding of the kind of ghosts he encounters on our Mexican nights. Lots of fishermen caught in nets, farmers gored by their oxen, miners burieda alive and occasional bullet-riddled bastards. Nothing he couldn't repel. Once again, the dead tell us many stories about the living we come across.
Yesterday, we enjoyed a river branch so that most could wash. I say 'most', because a few don't even bother. Keechie, for instance, smells like an old bald pony. Klaus had to tell him he 'only wanted to see him bathing in the purple rain' before he deigned to immerse himself, still wearing the salaryman suit he never takes off. I'd have imagined I'd mind bathing like that along with everyone, amid rocks and pebbles. And to think I hated swimming in high school, and the bathroom door at Hargreeves Mansion that wouldn't close. But let's face it, after five days of this life, you don't give a shit about 'showing your lotus' to everybody, and nobody's going to judge you about anything anyway. Once again, Klaus is the only one who minds. You can laugh if you like: he's capable of living practically naked all the time, but would only show 'it' to them furtively in the event of a 'unification'.
We restocked the food containers with rice, corn and beans, all paid by Kitty's hand. We negotiated some fresh fruits, including delicious mameys and condensed milk cakes. A local old lady befriended us and treated us to a delicious menudo. Much tastier, no doubt, than the one I used to buy on the corner of Argyle street to take to Klaus on hangover days, in a time lost both in the past and the future. We smiled at it like two idiots, and nobody understood why. Tonight, on the beach at San Juan de los Lagos, we crafted absurd necklaces from starfishes that we just painted gold. Priscilla is full of sand, so sleeping will once again be an ordeal. Tomorrow, we shall head for Pinta Prieta.
January 21, 1961, Baja-Sur, Mexico
« But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see? »
Tim managed to get us a ferry slot to take Priscilla from La Paz to Topolobampo on the 'mainland': the first available, and the last before a month. This is our first temporal obligation, our first mandatory deadline since our departure, for us who are already used to living out of time. Lloyd, who has taken over the wheel from Tim, is driving fast on the roads lined with sparse vegetation and solitary trees - certainly too fast - for the Dodge bus's engine to cope with.
Jill started reading "Howl and Other Poems", a collection Allen wrote a few years ago, a copy of which he always carries around with him. She's an intelligent girl, who took a beneficial distance when her parents forced her into Berkeley. Her conversation is pleasant when she stops idolizing Klaus for two seconds. She's realized that - with me anyway - devotion doesn't work. She keeps calling me 'White Lotus', which makes me sigh, but after all Bạch Liên is indeed my name, and it's literally inked on me. I laugh so hard at the way Ben looks at her. If only she knew.
I discovered that she loved soil, flowers and vegetables, and that she had tended her parents' garden and patch for a long time. She mentioned that despite its desert-like appearance, Baja is home to some three thousand species of plants, hundreds of which only exist here. I'm interested in her know-how, and have entrusted her with the secret of the satchel of seeds left in the safe at Kitty's Mansion.
And so we headed South, from Baja-Norte to Baja-Sur, across vast stretches of desert casting their ochre shades into the turquoise sea. I've come to understand that the populations here are concentrated in the border areas to the north, and in ports such as La Paz, which we're now reaching. We see very few human beings on our way. And when Priscilla broke down this morning, it took all my power and effort to get her to a rare service station in the middle of nowhere.
Beneath his bushy bulk of hair, and even though at least four of the other Children wear the same, Lloyd isn't like the others. He makes no secret that he's not going to stay forever. That he's here to roam around one last time, before taking over the family electronics store. He's not really into Klaus's ditties. I even wonder if he might have sensed that they weren't Klaus's own words, because he just smiles when he prattles on and doesn't contradict him. During the two hours we spent waiting for the mechanic to resuscitate our Priscilla, he questioned the power I used to keep this engine alive through energy, to get us here. With quiet tact, no disgust, no outrageous admiration either. Just an intrigued benevolence that made me smile. I don't have many answers for him. Once again: I don't know why I can do this either.
Tim and Allen bought their first mushrooms on the port of La Paz, marvelling at what looked like very ordinary fungi to outsiders. They paid a hefty price for them, but hope to harvest their own in the heights of Cuernavaca. They distributed them sparingly to those who wished to try them, according to Tim's skilful dosages, which he recorded in a small notebook. I wonder what he'll mention in his future Harvard paper, but no doubt the Destiny's Children will have served science with joy... An hour and a half later, they saw reality distorted into colorful swirls. The other ferry passengers attributed it to seasickness, and Klaus told them it was a collective allergy to iodine. Him, though, wasn't even tempted, which is amazing to me. The Children praise his purity of body, I could choke on it.
Without needing to take anything, I had a strange dream, again. I don't know why I'm reporting it here. A shootout in front of Stadler's, Tipman's and Cecilio's, over there in Dallas. I hate those three racist bastards, that's a fact, but I wouldn't wish it on them either. What was the target? Five. Don't ask me why. The images were clear, vivid, as if I'd experienced them myself. I woke up to them again, suddenly, on the ferry bench: even Klaus noticed. In the past, the only nightmares were his own. Now I'm a bit worried that he'll have to be the one singing for me.
However, it didn't take much to make me forget. The reflections of the sun glinting on the sea, the roar of the boat, like a nomadic trance, the mountainous horizons in the twilight, more verdant beyond Topolobampo. It is said that whales sometimes accompany the Gulf crossings here. We didn't see any, but I'm as delighted by the thought, just as I am by the colorful fishermen's houses. We are now reaching the mainland, and will be heading for Chihuahua.
On the leather seats and cushions, it's said that - maybe - we'll go to Costa Rica, Panama. 'All the way to Rio', says Klaus, although I don't know if he's fully aware of the journey it'd take to get there. I smile, I dream, I tremble. I think Lloyd and I will have many more opportunities to revive Priscilla.
Notes:
Writing this chapter was a journey in itself. I've always felt that the Destiny's Children's peregrinations deserved a spin-off. One chapter won't be enough; we've still got a long way to go aboard Priscilla. The Children are really hippies already, for sure. And happy are the queers who landed among them.
It's an opportunity to discuss how one can (bear to) live in such a community, twenty of them crowded into a small bus. To address issues as prosaic as sleep and hygiene. It amuses me to suggest that Klaus never really liked it, which is quite clear between the lines in 1963. And without Kitty... they wouldn't even eat.
I think it's easy enough to pinpoint the Baja flashback scene from the series within this chapter. In it, you see Lloyd driving down the road at top speed. But obviously (because of the vegetation), this scene wasn't really shot in Baja California.
In recent years, Kerouac's work (from which the quotes here are taken) has fallen into the public domain. As Rin says, he had a critical eye for the way his work had inspired the hippie movement. If you'd like to read 'On the Road', it's now available for free just about everywhere.
See you soon on the road!
Any comment will make my day!