Surreal Bounce (in search of creativity & madness) will resume in a couple of weeks, pending a plethora of reports in realtime from the road.
It starts with a cruise through meth lab central—Palmdale, Lancaster—and then full throttle to beautiful Barstow, gateway to the Mojave.
Usually, I’d barrel through this dusty desert town at high speed, cracking wiseass and channeling the first line of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
But on this occasion I peel off onto Main Street—what use to be a significant stretch of Route 66.
Now it’s a blur. Literally. A long smear of nondescript nondescriptness.
Even my iPhone camera refuses to register it as anything but a blur.
Still, I’m here with intent: to open myself to the universe.
And find meaning.
Even in Barstow.
The road leads to the old railroad station, once a vibrant crossroads, now a museum called Harvey House.
Forgotten railroad cars languish beneath the hot sun in what has become a ghost station.
There’s nobody here.
Not a clerk.
Not a hobo.
Back then, railroad brass hats reviled hobos, ran them off.
But here, now, hobos are glorified as “Knights of the Rails.”
Go figure.
But it warms me. Because ever since Halloween ‘57, I’ve been a hobo.
The message/meaning I came for appears on an old Santa Fe carriage:
Maybe I’m in trouble for something I scribed?
ChatGPT sets me straight: “It’s a perfect omen. Blunt. Stark. Almost confrontational. And exactly what a threshold spirit might say—half warning, half dare.”
Dare I venture onward?