Before the Winter Comes

D.Cam’s voice woke me up the other morning. I swore at him. Mornings are hectic things on the Paper Trail and I respond to them bitterly. There are some attributes of the military lifestyle which I hope never wash clean and one of them is a natural distaste for waking up.

Within an hour we were leaving Boston to the sound of Arcade Fire’s new album blasting in our new Rescue Chopper. She’s a giant van painted forest green. There is ample room for the whole gang and we can smoke inside which makes these long trips that cucial bit more tolerable.

Margie chit chatted, D.Cam played the sober face, Matotters giggled and blurted out important business information while I fixed a thousand mile stare on the eight bit fire burning up the New England forests and steadied my anxieties against their natural and plausible volatile reaction to the realities of another few months on the road. Hush little brain. Everything is going to be ok. Just look at the pretty colors.

Life is beautiful now, but soon everything here will be covered in snow and it will be painful days for all the poor people of the north. I must stay in the South. My bones feel tired to think about taking on the discomfort of another winter above the North/South divide. Operation Snowbird must be a success.

We stopped in some God forsaken New York town called Poughkeepsie to but a trailer for our mobile paper making command facility. It was a family operation of blatantly Italian decent. The guys that ran the joint were notably hostile despite the fact that we’d come to throw money at them in large quantities for a trailer. I felt like I had to apologize for being there on account of business. Apparently they haven’t heard about the recession. They kept insisting that we were in a band. They went as far as to tell us that we looked like bandits. I swelled with pride.

We finalized our deal with these gentleman and we were on our way with trailer in tow. It is a nice trailer.

D.Cam fretted the entire evening about the performance of the van, dead sure that the shimmy we felt above the speed of sixty was some deadliner fault. After all of his tuned in listening he came to the conclusion that the entire back end was fucked. I still think that he is crazy.

We stayed at a friend of the CPP. His name is Matty C. He went to school with JT back in the day. JT’s been through a lot in his life. I wonder what all of that stuff must have looked like from a friends perspective.

I had a crashing headache from smoking too many cigarettes and not drinking enough water so I passed out early . I didn’t wake up until noon today. Everyone was gone. I was alone in the house with the bottles of whiskey. I stayed in bed and stared at them with the blanket pulled up around my eyes. Go away ye devil.

They finally came home to save me from an early start but they only saved me for so long as it was pay day so my first act of business was to buy a gallon of Irish Cream to keep around the van.

Don’t judge me. I’m still functional.

The rest of the day was a silent blur of red fading into yellow and back again. My head was swallowed in the vibrance. The time and the miles passed by so quickly that I barely noticed them at all.

We’ve arrived at Tom’s place.

Tom is the wizard of the CPP who makes all of our internet things move. I have heard about him and his magics for years throughout all of the tours though I have never seen his face or spoken to him. We haven’t even met in the electronic domain. I am glad this has been remedied. He is every bit as pleasant as he was made out to be. His plants are wonderful and they bear evidence of having been loved and doted over which is a testament to the goodness of a person, or so I do believe. Margie is baking some fancy meal for us, a long cry from the usual meat and potatoes of our road routine. Normally I would have insisted on cooking but she is convinced that I am a misogynist so I am letting her cook dinner to add evidence to her claim. I like to stoke fires to further misdirect people when they’re trying to figure out who I am.

This week I’ll be screen printing at the local universities paper and print shop up here in Canton New York.