Two Rides

It wasn’t all that long ago that I was riding in the box of a pickup truck that was moving in a southerly direction, barrelling down the Number 4 Highway from Hat Yai (หาดใหญ่ ) toward the boarder of Malaysia.

And it wasn’t long after that that I was standing on a lengthy ribbon of road outside Kuala Lumpur, facing north, my thumb out, my rucksack a slump of blue nylon and webbing on my back, trying my best to look like a suitable companion for the short ride back into Thailand.

Why all this back and forth? Visas. Girls. You know, the usual.

In poorer countries one has little trouble hitchhiking. In El Salvador you don’t even need thumbs. Just stand on the road-shoulder and smile. First automobile to come’ll grow a brown limb from the window and wave, bidding you to board. Sissy Hankshaw eat your heart out.

Malaysia is somewhere within the inky divide of being a ‘first’ and ‘third’ world country. I guess that makes it a ‘second.’ (What I mean by ‘first’ and ‘third’ is ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’; if one can in fact call ‘developed’ countries such things.) I guess Malaysia is ‘developing’ then. And this is clearly illustrated by the length of time it takes to hitch a lift. It’s no El Salvador. But it’s no U. S. of A. either. Right in the middle. Takes about twenty minutes.


An Aside

In that twenty minutes one can observe the two types of tress that Malaysia has to offer: Palm and rubber. Not nice palm trees like one would imagine on the beach. Those are coconut palms, cocos nucifera. No, the palms that are grown en mass in Malaysia are elaeis guineensis. These are oil palm trees used for palm oil. The world’s most widely ingested (but obviously not consumed) oil. They stand across the highway from the rubber trees, both in perfectly aligned columns and rows. Like two armies squaring off. One’ll wonder for a minute what happened to all the other types of trees, the ones that just grow by themselves. One may remember reading something about the rainforest in Malaysia and how it’s pretty well fucked, and one could possibly observe how militarily arranged trees don’t really resemble that movie Fern Gully one watched when one was a child. One would maybe even recall a line in Maureen N. McLane’s poem as published in the New Yorker: “A park’s a way to keep what’s gone enclosed forever.”

No parks on the highway. Too bad.

So then a red pickup stops and I run up to it, all happy like. Twenty minutes are up. The driver is not going to Thailand, but he’s going half way so I ride along. We get to talking. He tells me that he’s one in a very small community from Siam, ancestrally from Thailand that is, but living in Malaysia. He’s a Buddhist and he just had to stop and pick me up out of the compassion that pours from his heart. I tell him I’m a Buddhist too, and I just had to stand on the road shoulder as a means for him to exercise his compassion.

We laughed.

But sooner than I would have liked we reach the turn off for his temple. He let me out and we say goodbye and there I am again on the roadside.

Twenty minutes later a Volkswagen sedan stops. Music blaring. Windows down. Both the driver and shotgun seats are occupied so I get in the back.

This is when the madness starts.

Without even a motion to turn down the dance music the driver starts yelling at me. Screaming really. All I can make out is “Yeah Baby. That’s right.”
The car leaps forward and in what can only me measured in halves of seconds, we are, the speedometer informs me as I look over the shoulder of the driver, at our cruising speed of 160km/h.
All the windows are rolled down and a great rush of wind expands and blows through the automobile. We pass every other vehicle on the road.
The music plays.
I take a minute to look around the car. The floor of the back seat is wet. The bottoms of my Vans are cleaned from the soggy carpet.
In the trunk, directly behind me, the subwoofer sends 6/4 vibrations through the car, reverberating bone marrow seems to not bother the driver or his companion, who, at this point, materializes a Sherlock Holmes pipe and begins packing the bowl with what looks like Oolong tea leaves.
“Yeah Baby, Where you from?”
I lean forward so I can yell into his ear, the only way communication is possible.
“Canada,” I say.
“Canada? Well fuck you baby.”
Alright then.
The new vantage point afforded to me by my communicative forward lean, allows me to see the steering column of the Volkswagen. And from the steering column of the Volkswagen there pours a mess of wires every colour of the rainbow.
The driver says something to his companion in Malay and I lean back and push the power window button but nothing happiness. This is when I see little nuggets of glass in the seam where the window should be. A few of these bits lay on the soggy carpet, looking like diamonds on a jewellers display mat.
“Where you guys going,” I yell.
“We going to Chaing Mai, Baby, you wanna come? We make you come.”
“Na, I’m good, I’ve been to Chiang Mai.”
“You should come again, Baby.”
A sweet aroma comes from the Sherlock Holmes pipe.
The bass beats, jingling the bits of glass on the floor.
“You guys crossing the boarder then yeah?”
“Oh yeah, baby, we never do that before.”
“You have your papers?”
“We don’t need papers baby, we just go’in.”

With the incredible speed maintained by this rather marry pair of bandits, we find the boarder crossing approaching before the diver can even take his own haul of Holmes’ herb, and parking the car in the duty free lot, he turns the Volkswagen off at exactly the same time that I open the door. I can hear him still yelling, about smoke and Chiang Mai and how I should look him up if I’m ever around. But my legs are striding long and sure, and from over my shoulder I yell “Thanks for the lift, Baby.”

So this is Work

It wasn’t a mistake.
I went for the interview. I got the job. (amazing, I know)
Took two buses to get there.
Showed up for work (most days)
Paid me twelve bucks an hour.
Said I was a “grocery picker.”
Learned to drive a “machine.” (that’s what warehouse folk call power-jacks)
Learned to use the machine to move "skids". (that’s what warehouse folk call pallets)
Got purdy damn good at it too.

Learned to read the bin numbers and load product onto the skids. Stacked hundreds of cases. Filled orders for hospitals, for halfway homes; for retirement communities filled with oldfolk’s tired bones.
Filled orders for the Chinese restaurant.
And the hotel on Belmont, where some kid-singer named Bieber once stayed, some kind of wunderkind debutant.
Filled orders for the cafeteria in Beaver Lodge Elementary.
Filled orders for Stony Mountain Penitentiary.

Told myself: “after four paychecks… I’m gone.”

I used to have hair growing out of my knuckles.
I used to have only calluses on my fingers from pick’in ma gee-tar.
Used to run my hand over a girl’s skin and she say “ummmm, I love your touch.”
Now they flinch and say something about sandpaper.

Loading those damn skids. Fifty cases of flour. Twenty of Coke-a-Cola. Forty cases of Gatorade, fifty more of Sunny D. Stack’em up. Higher, higher.
Kraft Dinner, sugar cubes, soda pop, jiffy lube.
Build that skid!
Fill that order!
All I’ma do’in is supporting people’s junk food habits!
Gotta build’em square else the shippers’ll get all up in your grill, say shit like: “that whole fuck’in load gonna fall outt-of-the truck you don’t build’em skids right.”

I start call’in in sick.
Make’in shit up really.
Only had a week or so to go. But I say, the hell with it.
And so I heads out, down to the honky-tonk on Main St. See great song writing heroes sing songs about quitting jobs and the hobo’in life and I get drink-drank-drunk and then with the stagger-and-jags I get frost-bite on ma nose while waiting for the bus in 36 below.
And when I get on home I draft this letter and send it off to the warehouse via email:

MGMT

Thursday last, after seeing my family GP for what was a bad flu, I was informed, following some tests, that my white blood cell count is normal and that no one really knows what comes after death.

Yesterday (Monday) my request to see an oncologist was denied and further testing was deemed ‘void of reason’.

Something outside though, something cold and beautiful (but unpleasant), continually reminds me of the warm blooded nature of my mammalian existence, and is certainly the source of my illness. And though I have grown a substantial beard as a ‘winter’s coat’ for this harsh Winnipeg climate, it is proving to be insufficient cause for me to remain.

I’m forced then, to depart for the Central American isthmus until such time that the wind ceases to carry with it, the knife edge of winter.

With regard to my employment at the warehouse, I know that hard work makes the man, however, the mind of this man, I feel, will be unable to focus on the tasks of grocery picking, as most days, it is elsewhere.

I hope you do not find this letter recalcitrant. It is simply one of resignation.

Thank you for the opportunity that you have given me, and for the valuable workplace training.


Yours, respectfully,

Sean C. Allingham

Hobo'in At Home

So I joined this website. You know… the one where you can have travelers come and sleep on your couch. Or in my case, because I lack a couch of any kind, surf the sofas of others. My kinda website. So I sent out some requests to crash. But it was Christmas and everyone was away for the holidays. And no one got back to me.

Bummer.

But on one lovely girl’s profile I see that her house has a facebook page. I check it out. Seems like a nice, communal, hippie sort of joint. My kinda joint. So, like, I write down the address.

I go. I went. Had a ride I couldn’t pass up.
My mother.

She drops me downtown. Cute little city, Saskatoon. I’m seeing the sights, you know; the river, the bridges, cafes, coffee after coffee, Broadway, bookstores, that kinda thing. My kinda thing.

So I got ma sea-bag over ma shoulder, walking the streets, wandered into an old fire-hall turned bar. (no pole, bummer) I have a pint, start leaning on the table like the other drunks, writing haiku in my moleskine, unlike the other drunks, when the petitest gal walks up, points at ma sea-bag in the corner and says in a charming French lilt, “Are you travelling?”

So she and her mate are driving across the grand country of Canada and they too, belong to this website, and they too, have had no luck finding a place to stay. Seems everyone with an open door policy in this little Toontown is away.

So we drink.

We get along. Splendidly
Ah, the French.

I tell them I got the address for this house. Just a shot in the dark, but shit, beats sleep’in in their car. (got Christmas lights strung all through it, real road tripp’in car.) My kinda car.

Yeah, we went to the house. We knocked. No answer. All the lights were out. Dark, dark house. Dark, dark street.

So we just start knocking on doors.
Rejections mostly.

“Merry Christmas, but…no”

Got the address for the Salvation Army shelter, but no girls allowed. French or not.

Then, the house, that dark, dark house, lights up, isn’t so dark anymore.

Door opens. Dude named River: “Sure people crash here all-the-time.”

And so the rest is all wine and cheese and late night dancing and guitar songs and stupid youtube clips and laughter.

And yeah… There ya go, eh?

seven eleven

my father once asked me why there are locks
on the doors of the seven elevens of the world,
if they are open twenty-four hours a day
seven days a week.

I told him I didn't know.

how could an eight year old boy know that it is seven eleven's
policy to lock its doors after an armed robbery,
in order to take a complete inventory?

to an eight year old boy of my generation,
seven eleven meant upper-deck hockey cards,
crispy crunch bars and punisher comics.
and lets not forget slurpees,
seven eleven’s trademark beverage.

when I asked my father why it is called
seven eleven, he told me that,
when he was an eight year old boy,
seven eleven meant candies that cost a penny,
soda cans with the old pull-tab top,
and milk in glass bottles.

he said that in the days of one cent candies
and pull-tabs and milk in glass bottles,
convenience meant that one could purchase
these items from early in the morning, to late at night.
from 7am to 11pm.
someone being awake at two in the morning
and in need of such commodities
wasn’t even a concept in the minds of the store’s management,
or anyone else for that matter.

‘the only people awake at that hour
are heathens and homeless,’
said the post-sixties conservative
government skeleton.

but as shiny gadgets got smaller,
cars got bigger,
hockey card collecting
and comic book reading
gave way to the pure nintendo kingdom,
seven eleven ceased to be just that.


it became 24-7.
a… we-never-close-
come-any-time
type of place.
a ubiquitous commodity,
found conveniently, in every developed country,
and in far greater numbers in the under developed ones.


I walked into a 7-11 the other day
and after a brief, but thorough peruse
I could find nothing I wanted.
I guess it struck me rather suddenly;
hockey cards and comic books
and even milk, are all for children.
apart from beer, liquor and cigarettes
(which can be bought anywhere at
anytime by anyone with half a brain)
everything in 7-11 is for children.
children work there and children shop there.
and children spend the billions
that the corporation rakes in each year.

our children
will have children.
who will grow out of seven eleven.
and they, in turn,
will have children that will love it.

in some first literary glances…

I came to notice
that actually knowing
where a poet came from,
and with whom he/she associated with
was of vital importance,
if one did in fact,
want to understand the poet's writing.

personally,
my first glance
was in the beats.
I have long since pronounced
that word as if it were
permanently in italics.

knowing who was writing what,
(and when, and in what city,
at what time,
when which rebellion
of conformity
was being fantasized/actualized,
which numbing tick
was currently
on the face
of civilization’s sickly clock),
is almost, if not of equal significance,
to the poems themselves.

I learned that this knowledge,
(not found in their writings but in their existence in time),
coincides with profound necessity, to
the reading of the writer in question.

When I eventually
came to read Blake,
he was spewing Milton, and Isaiah
and giving the former devilish identification,
that of which,
I failed to identify with.

It was then that I read
Harold Bloom telling me
that, “to first understand Blake,
one must first understand how
Blake read the Bible and Milton.”

How did it feel?

Well I guess it felt
something like throwing
a rucksack on my back,
and watching the
lengthy skies
fade to orange over the badlands,
and like ejecting my thumb
from hand,
and seeing who wants
to help me get
to where I’m going.

welcome

welcome to this,
the last hope of recovery.

don’t worry,
you can't lose your voice
if you never had one.
and by the way,
the lozenges don’t work.

things will be simple here,
and things will be untidy.

things will surly reveal themselves
as time goes on,
in what time does best...
move along.

my mind wanders off,
like a mind wandering off—
and it appears that you’ve
come along for a wander.

there are no rules here,
no annoying video messages
or ladies in pink polyester
uniforms showing you how to
buckle your seatbelt.
there are no advertisements,
or camera-phones, or spying eyes
or ice-cream cones; only some
healthy letter strokes that I hope
could one day come back like Underwoods,
backwood frontiers,
and gramophones.

this ride is only dangerous,
if danger is your will;
it certainly is mine.

but, the hard part is over,
you're here,
and you have only
yourself to blame.
welcome.