Voyage 9

Luckily, John and I hiked up a nice mountain to get a view of the town. I needed the exercise, because, although my legs were recovering from the excessive hiking in the Adirondacks, their continual disuse made my body and mind feel foggy and unconnected.

John and I got ribs from a shack near his dorm where an old black man who cut Martin Luther King Jr.'s hair served us moldy white bread. The ribs were good. Mine were a little dry. Not crazy about the mold. I'm glad John pointed it out to me. The rib place was also strange because there were all these pictures of black calvarymen and cowboys. I guess that's how things go in the West.

At night, John and I went to this function called "Drunk Poet's Society," affectionately called by one of his roommates, "DPS".

The meeting was cute: it was a bunch of literary nerdy types who were really nice and drunk and read poems that were earnest and confused. I might have like it better if I was a freshman in college, but maybe not. I was also afraid the older poets in Philadelphia grew up in environments like this, where their art work was uncritical though super-earnest. I wish more environments like "Drunk Poet's Society" exist, because although the poetry could be better, better poetry could grow from environments like these.

The next morning I woke up super early, ate at the IHOP, and left town for California. I knew I had eleven hours of straight driving left. This photo of a car had a parrot in it in the IHOP parking lot.