I was a twister of anxiety and the medicine on Friday morning, standing at the Greyhound terminal with no confirmation code and a half ounce of the same medicine I was twisted on stowed in my banjo case wearing my linen jacket, looking too damn fancy to be a drug dealer. Chicago bound.
It took cell phones and email accounts and all kinds of business to get that code but finally I was sitting on the bus, bolt upright, staring out the window at how much Michigan has grown since the last time I was on that nasty 94, eating pieces of lunch meat and thinking.
The bus disgorged chaotically as always on Harrison and I walked the short leg over to Greek Town where I was checking in to the hostel for the IVAW midwest strategy retreat. Brother Bird was parked in the middle of the road when I got there. Some biker and a big macho greek dude were fighting. It was sticky hot. Brother Bird and I unloaded all our shit unto the side walk.
This was it. We were ready. Another weekend of PTSD. Bring it on.
We checked in and got our big luxurious room. I took my medicine on the roof looking towards downtown. Over the next twelve hours a continuous train of Midwestern veterans came through the door. A mellow, lanky fellow name of Will was the first to show. Got in on the train from Kansas. Sergio burst through the door a little after Will so we started to drinking and smoking.
A couple of dirty hippies drove up in a car and came in, said they were from Arkansas. They proceeded to get into the shower together, all three of them. Said it’d been a long trip. Couldn’t help but notice that the gentleman had brought another banjo.
When they got out of the shower we got to playing the banjo and then this crazy laid back dude from Columbus comes in and says his names Ash and he’s got a banjo too so the three of us are sitting there pickin and grinnin and the hippy girls are dancing around and we’re all so full of medicine and booze that that night was pretty near perfect.
I stayed up drinking and talking to Nate about making paper until about six oclock in the morning. I was going to pull an all nighter. I kept reminding everyone that I had promised to feed my friends cats. I was going to take the train and feed them before breakfast… but that never happened. I passed out after smoking a joint in the sunrise.
The next day we woke up and cooked breakfast together. My stomach was too crazy from the night before. The whole day I was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and that was pretty much it.
We sat in the grass and we talked about what it was we were trying to do here in the Midwest as veterans and anti-war organizers and we filled a bunch of really big pieces of paper with our ideas and our hopes and we talked about things like strategy and history. I got pretty bored so I wandered back to my banjo and the half eaten kiesh that was in the fridge in the room.
Everybody rolled into the apartment a few hours later and there was the beer and the medicine and all of that chatter. We were all having a good time. I talked with some guy, can’t remember his name now, for a long time about religion. I love talking about Christianity. I like the stories, I like the characters, I like Lucifer the best.
The next day we were all stone cold whooped. We wrote some poetry on the campus and at one time I looked down and my clumsy ass had left half an ounce of weed sitting right out on the grass. Careless.
I led a roadmarch down to the bean in Milllenium Park which gave me a seething acid hole in my stomach from all of the planning and the changes and the stress of leadership but then, by 3, there we were, down by the bean with cigarettes and food and the sun and this little old man who told us not to sit on the table but Mikey Apples wanted to sit on the bench anyway.
We split again and met back up in Wicker Park and then all of those goodbyes, waiting like band-aids, just got ripped off all at the same time and we were all individuals again. I was heading to Indiana in a car with Vinny because I’d lost my return ticket in the haze. We had to turn around because I forgot the M-16 as well.
When we got to the outlaw shack we smoked until we were stupid. That weekend had been about as crazy as they get and Vinny said that when he got there he could tell by the crazy look in my eye that it had been wild and when he saw everybody else he knew that he’d missed most of a real spectacle. We pushed this this to it’s limits on booze and grass and caffiene, soaking as much comfort out of our community as we could before we all went back to being islands in this culture desert where the apocolypse is growing inside of an egg in Detroit.
The next day was our beloved holiday, the twentieth of April, and how we celebrated. Vinny and I went antique shopping. Vinny found what was obviously some dopers drug box and took great joy in opening it’s lid and pointing at the mirror to me. He meant to indicate that we could do blow off of it. He looked at me like he wondered if I got it. Of course I got it. So did the lady who was ringing us up who now stared at us like we were sticking her up. I laughed. We were too stoned to do anything.
WDF came down and we all had a nice time making a big meaty dinner and eating it. By the end of the night I was on my haunches on the kitchen floor, ravenously eating a rib like some feral and insane monkey.
We took off the next morning and The Flower did all the driving all the way back up to the zoo. I went down to the paper studio as soon as we got in and started making sheets. My first batch was as fucked up and useless as my brain had become over the weekend. I could see that I’d have to rebuild my studio mentality.
Went back to it today and I made some beautiful, huge sheets.
There’s a lot of unwinding that I need to do.
-Otis
The Paper Trail 