Stairway to Heaven- Joshua Tree Trip report part 1 of 2

  Stairway to Heaven- Joshua tree trip report part I of 2

What is an experience of the desert?  Does it involve art? No. Terror? No.  Heightened consciousness? No.  Does it involve drugs, and death, and drama? Yes.  I wanted to go to the Desert to see the stars but it was so much more than that.  I know that I would have great conversations with my family, possibly a few meals.  Maybe I’d get a connection to nature, and enjoy other people’s  connection to nature.  I had a pocket full of cigarettes a head full of dreams, a wallet full of dollars, and my suitcase full of clothes, and money is paper, so I suppose I found spirituality in the desert if you could call that Devil’s play spirituality.  Would I connect with my family?  That remains to be seen.  

Tuesday 

After a loathsome flight from Providence to Baltimore to San Diego, which involved a declension into primitive subhuman manners,  we arrived in San Diego at 11:00 PM.  Back home there was a lurid cyclone of rain, snow, icy grounds and hurricane force winds.  The simplest things were impossible.  In the snow and ice a few days ago, I was getting into my car.  I had to scrape the slush off of my window and my shoes got soaked. When I got into the car to go the windshield wipers wouldn’t move.  They didn’t work, so I got out of the car and  tried to get the scraper from the back right seat.  When I was grabbing the scraper the car started moving in reverse.  I had to dive through the median and hit the brake pedal with my hand.   I put the car in park and narrowly avoided an accident.

My cousin Layla picked us up. She is a buxom and very Italian oriented  girl.  A capable woman with abundant curves, genial enough in her capacity as an Italian hostess, but feminine in her disposition.  She lives with her husband, Martin, in Oceanside.  He is a tall caucasoid model of humanity, but not a Jew.  He works at Trader Joe’s  which is totally respectable.  He is versed in film, cooking, guitar, and nerdy goyish literature.  I have to tell him “I’m a Jew, I’m not interested in 14th century history.”   Layla dropped us off at our airbnb.  The bed was so comfy I fell asleep right away and dreamed happy thoughts.  

Wednesday

When I woke up the next morning I was over the moon (or the continental United States) about the balmy 75 degree weather, and I stood on the astroturf lawn and smoked Luckies and soaked up the sun.  There were palm trees and birds and little lizards.

Wednesday

The next day was Wednesday, and Layla  took us on a tour of of Oceanside.  We went to some vintage stores, and it was no San Francisco.  I bought a cool trucker hat that said “take it easy” on it in an orange and a green background.  We enjoyed the weather and Layla gave me a few pairs of sweat pants and a couple long sleeve shirts that Martin was getting rid of for some reason.

Thursday

My cousin Krissy, more about her later, wanted me to walk to the daycare with her and her two and a half year old toddler.  I used the bathroom to wash my hands, for no other good reason.  When she told me that one of the kids had peed all over the bathroom I freaked out.  Why? Why? I rang my hands.  Gloominess, despondency, why did I second-guess myself.  It was a slap to my balls.  I tried to contain the trip.  Anyway, Krissy took us out for a tour of her town Vista.  Credit where credit’s due, it had a certain character, although the character was that of a strung out junkie.  Sorry Krissy.  First we stopped at a bead shop, but it was painfully unsexy.  I yelled to them from the doorway that I was going to the yellow deli.  The yellow deli is a kind of Jewish deli meets offbeat Californian restaurant.   Through a yellow stucco archway, into a yellow brick enclosed brown floored tile patio with art on the walls.  The tiles underneath my feet were warm.   I drank a matte lemonade and waited for my mother, father, and cousin.  I was still annoyed at Krissy for not warning me abut the pissed bathroom, but I remained composed.  Up the winding wooden stairs there was a yerba matte lounge with ottomans and lounges with carpeting and blankets, but it turned me off a little, because there wasn’t enough eclectic coordination in the decoration.  Krissy and my parents showed up and I had a reuben, it was a fine example of a reuben sandwich, I had to admit. After we ate, Krissy told us that the restaurant was owned by a cult.

  Krissy Bayern rings in at about 5 feet tall.  When she was a baby she would cling to me incessantly, she loved too much.  She stopped growing at age 12.  I have a small head but she has a smaller one, but her acumen is without compare.  She took it to heart to make this vacation as comfortable as possible for me.  She could plan out the Easter uprising or the queen’s funeral.

Krissy is married to Rocky Bayern. Rocky is a manly Jewish guy.  A big guy.   He is originally from Montreal, a Canadian Jew.  I think my grandmother fell in love with him because he resembled the Jewish boy in the movie “Lies my father told me.”  I think he has a thing for young Asian girls, because he’s married to Krissy and he has been to Japan a couple of times and it’s his favorite place.  I mentioned that they would be a good Japanese couple; Krissy in a kimono and Reuben in a two piece black suit and a black tie, living in a cubicle apartment in a skyscraper in Tokyo.  This made Rocky laugh, the only time I have ever made him chortle at all.

That night, over vegetarian beef bulgogi, My mother dropped a line to my father.   She had conjunctivitis and was also sick.   This would be a huge test for my dad, and everyone else for that matter.   We had planned a two day galavant to Joshua Tree National Park.  Our whole trip was put in jeopardy, everything was hanging in the balance.  

Our chance to experience nature, where we would stay in cabins, take pictures, eat well, and talk about movies,  was slowly drifting into oblivion.  My Dad had to really pull it together.  My mother had a viral infection that they couldn’t diagnose or treat.  It was highly contagious .  To my father’s credit he kept sleeping with her and eventually caught what she had.  My cousin Layla had lupus which would render her immunocompromised. 

After we got her “diagnosis” my father moved quickly and called the airline and rebooked our flight to Saturday, when we were supposed to be leaving  for the desert.  I was unhappy but beholden to my mother.  I went to sleep in that oh so cozy bed, and when I woke up my Dad was on the phone to the airlines.  There was a new plan.   “There’s a new plan.”  He said.  My mother would stay at Krissy and Rocky's house, and the rest of us would go to the park.  I did a fist pump when I heard it, a trip to pristine Joshua Tree national park, and plus I bought a bunch of clothes for it with Krissy and my dad.

Even better, the next morning before we left we all got into a circle with Debbie, and she said that she would drive my mother to Joshua tree, and she could come.  There was jubilation.  That my mom could go was great, as we were a complete family.

So we got into three shiny SUV’s and set off for the trees.  I drove shotgun with Rocky and Krissy.  The baby was in the car, a charming little ray of sunshine.  Krissy asked me for music suggestions, so I put on Skye boat song, and then Wellerman, and then the child poo-poo’d total eclipse of the heart, along with some others.  Apparently Mull of Kintyre was not cool enough for the baby.  Along the course of the ride Rocky became, in my eyes, Hunter S. Thompson, his driving was so  so virtuoso.  If he was an actor he could play the Duke. We had to make a couple of bathroom stops for the baby, and my Germ phobia had a little demonstration.  Rolling into Joshua tree I was seduced by the tattoo shops which I had a craving to make use of, and the artsy little strip with stores like Beatnik Cafe, Ricochet Vintage wear, and The Art Queen.  Krissy said that whoever saw the first Joshua tree would get a high five, and I said that I wouldn’t high five her anyway. When we arrived at the restaurant I was standing outside the Subaru wishing to be in the desert with my soul, when a tanned hippie with a black t-shirt and dark hair and a scraggly beard walked up and asked for water.  We didn’t have water, but we had ice, Krissy offered.  

“Please don’t give him ice” I thought, knowing that the doling of the ice would be unsanitary.  In frustration I went inside the cafe that we were going to.  Krissy actually came up with a brilliant solution to the ice situation by pouring most of the bag into the cooler, and then giving him the rest, avoiding contamination.  We had tried to order by phone from the restaurant we were going to, the others had arrived earlier, but it didn’t work, and plus they didn’t have the Portobello burger that I wanted or the breakfast.  So we waited almost ten minutes for the waitress, and when she came, she touched me on the shoulder and said “ What do you want sweetie?”  

    Beatniks like me live for moments like this, and I ordered a Dr pepper and then, a minute later a BLT and a cup of lentil and curry soup.  The Dr. Pepper was shockingly delicious, it tasted like it had been brewed in a barrel out back, sweet and silky with more carbonation on the the top than the bottom.  I told the waitress and she said that sometimes they just get it right.  Martin tried it and confirmed that it was good.   The restaurant food continued to be unimpressive, as the BLT was not that good.

I went out to score some booze.  The local hippies followed me like black flies on a rotting carcass as I checked the Bottle Store, and then Mike’s liquor, and back to the Bottle Store.  I told the salesman that I was  looking for some tequila.  “Do you have any Aniejo?” I said.  I had been researching tequila a little bit.  I was also looking for mezcal, anything to bring me closer to the desert.  One of the bottles was $68, which I thought was prohibitive.  I wanted to buy an expensive bottle but not that expensive.  A couple bottles of mezcal caught my eye.   They were Hutch bottles with raised lettering and a wire stopper. It looked like Desert worthy booze.    My family had kept telling me that they hardly drink, so the $25 dollar flask was perfect. The salesman was a fine old fashion businessman with a a broad blue brick cowboy hat and a sophisticated gaze.  His name was Mitty. He was the type of guy that would get into pistol duels and survive.  “My name is Schlepper” I told him.  “Have a good day, Schlepper,” he said, dripping with old time machismo.  I loved the way he said my name and wished me on my way, and I tipped my Stetson cap and he tipped me his ten gallon, baby blue.  “The good old days the honest man.” The Killers.

The Booze Recalled what Jim Morrison might have drank.  It was 90 proof.  My fam and I walked up the main drag to the Art Queen market.  A tall thin hipster danced with us down the street.  He was wearing Carhatrt. We went to a vibrant art market.  The Art Queen market was a kaleidoscope of adorable art stalls and vintage stores.  In retrospect, I had arrived in heaven, and the stores were all closed, because these stalls didn’t operate on a capitalist system, they ran on that fuel we call art.  On this trip I truly came to understand the filthiness attached to possessions.  The more wealth you have the more filth gets on it.  Dirt is universal, wealth is not.  So I had crossed into another realm, the realm of the  desert, and my soul had temporarily achieved liftoff.

There was a crochet museum inside of a van but the creepy dolls and kitschy colors turned me off.  I took a look in though, and saw a red and white monkey, and a bunch of other dolls.  The rest of my party enjoyed it thoroughly.  I bought a bracelet and talked with the lady in the alien tent.  I thought she would be a freak, but in fact she was an aficionado.  I was worried about getting sucked into a rabbit hole, but I sparked up a conversation. I had a picture of  a manifestation of a flying saucer that I took with my phone.  I believe that Alien sightings, be they of mantids or flying saucers, are real to an extent.  I believe that they are manifestations, oddities that trick the eyes and the imagination.

I wish I had spent more time looking around but I was attracted to the Joshua Tree hospitality van.  I went in and told the assignee that I had only been in town for an hour and I already loved it.  He gave me a sticker and a warm hippie welcome.  I penetrated through thick  vibes into a tiny bookshop called Space Cowboy, expecting they would have a magpie collection of paperbacks and sci fi novels that the vacuous proprietor had collected.   Said proprietor was slight and bookish with a dark pointy kempt beard and a small canvas brimmed hat, also blue like Mitty but more of a dark navy.  It looked very European, almost like a Greek fisherman’s cap, but more similar to  Polish solidarity .  It would have been at home at Timothy Leary's camp.  I wondered about the parties that the counter boy had been to and the acid he had taken.  

  I hit him with my usual question, does he have any copies of Naked Lunch.  He did!  He had a whole section of Burroughs, with a Naked Lunch.  It was a new copy, and I decided I didn’t want to use up packing space for such an expensive copy.  He also had Junky, and a couple of other books, but I don’t collect Junky.  We struck up a cautious conversation.

We started talking about Jack Kerouac and “The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks,” an early collaboration between Burroughs and Kerouac about the crime that came to be known as the beat murder.  We agreed that Kerouac and Burroughs were just beginning to develop their styles, and at that early stage Kerouac was a far more natural and powerful writer,  and that after  that they started taking heroin and  Jack Kerouac lost a little bit of his natural style, and Burroughs found his voice in writing.  When I looked around a little I found lots of books that I loved.  He directed me to the poetry section and I picked up an obscure book of poetry.  I always seem to pick up poetry books that have sculpted stanzas, and they strike me as being very naturalistic.  I looked for Kerouac, because he’s my favorite poet, but there was none.  I asked him if he had any recommendations for poetry and he flicked through the patina’d books with his small librarian fingers.  He handed me a Lorca.  “This is good.”  He said.  I took a look but  I don’t like romantic Spanish poets, they are too bourgeois.   Then he took out Howl, by Alan Ginsberg.  He said “I’m sure you’ve read this one.”  I had but I needed a copy.  Somehow I had managed not to have a copy , amazing!  The coup de gras was a copy of Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood”. With “under “ worn off the spine.  Dylan Thomas is the greatest Welsh writer who has ever lived, such a pure form of life. Thomas affects me like very strong booze.  Hot going down, and frees my inhibitions.  I even get a hangover the next day from it.  Most important is his voice.  The most dulcet voice in poetry.  He has a brilliant vocabulary and lots of old English and Welsh words.  As a writer I’m insanely jealous of him.

    We talked a little about making the pilgrimage to Kerouac’s grave.  I had been there in 2013, and I was made a believer.  Playing my freak card and setting a transcription from Mexico City Blues was one of the most powerful experiences in my adult life.  I gave him my blog address and walked  out with my books.  He gave me a distant look.  Then I got a call that the family was meeting at the exit/entrance, so I walked over.  We reunited, they had been in the crochet museum, and little Krissy gave me a stone mushroom pendant, white with black spots, and I put it on my Danish chain with Mijelnor so as not to lose it.  I never put any alien charms on my chain, for fear of a bad effect on my physiognomy, but I was quite grateful.  Krissy was very generous giving me the pendant, but later I might have wondered whether it was a good idea, did it confuse my  mind and make me more prone to accidents, later causing me to mess up when packing.  So much went wrong and now I am sitting here on the plane figuratively nibbling my fingernails and wishing for some kind of substantial relief.  “When I got home” I thought “I would buy a new chain for the mushroom.”