Airborne Again! Now back in the air. Another flight. Looking down from space at that Now much higher, looking down likely at that stretch of coast where Radioman. How oft have I said this in the decade hence? But here Thoreau on the road, the road of LIFE. We did it. Radioman helped So what if Duke fucked with us at every turn of the wrench, boiling -RSM
October 3, 2002 
special place where Thompson in the sixties roared his Vincent Black
Shadow at treacherous speeds along the coastal concrete veins of
Flower-in-yer-Hairville, San Fran, the white surf line of Pacific
wonder and beauty cutting its clear line, a line in the sand, a carved
confession of love in some cliff-side eucalyptus tree where two lovers
once embraced by the sea & took a moment to immortalize that love.
some bastard newspaper magnet and lonely maggot maniac built a castle
from blood money and left behind some stupid sled or child's wagon
named Rosebud. Never been there. Can't really say. I'm sure it's
stunning. Beauty from greed. I think also of Nepente, that magical
restaurant lounge teetering over the seething sea. There at the bar
sits Henry Miller's daughter and who knows who else, maybe even
Radioman, that whacked out big-hearted road dog who a decade ago hopped
in Duke and road backseat, his waning 50-something hair flip-flapping
in the wind and his hand on the radio, that shitty little monophonic
squawk box that at best played tapes but for all my lapses of memory,
shit, maybe only radio waves.
goes, once more: Radioman, Radioman, wherefore art thou, Radioman? His
real name... Jesus! I can't even remember his real name. Steve
something. Have it written down somewhere I'm sure. Suffice to say
Radioman gave me one of my first glimpses into the free-fall
possibilities of life on the road. He showed me that IT CAN BE DONE,
that a couple of crazies with a whacked out car and a handful of
benign-tho-certainly-dissenting ragweed Zines to hawk could make it,
could keep the beast going, heading north, singing into the open wind
and salt air of a roofless gonzo car cruising the coast, coursing,
banking softly through endless Big Sur curves, but shooting also,
shooting straight at the heart of history, of written and recorded
fantasmagorical marrow-sucking internal combustion.
show me the way. And now the beast, the great gonzo machine is much
bigger than all of us, bigger than Duke the Art Car, bigger than all
the love poured into Him and thus radiating out. As I quoted Dan
Ackroyd to Cricket two weeks ago, "We're on a mission from God."
over, over heating, spilling out oil faster than i could pour it in.
The car made it half way, and half way ain't bad in this life. But the
Captain is still at the helm, still behest of a pocketful of golden
tickets and hellbent on getting THERE, wherever there is. The mission,
I realize (and with no small amount of help from my newfound Cricket)
is still a mission from God. It is a mission of love, love
irrespective of any particular religion. Just LOVE. To live it. To
write about it (for that is all this poet knows how to do), and, in the
words of Lord Buckley, "To STOMP ON THE TERRA," to leave heartsized
footprints in the sands of time and to go to our graves smiling from
ear to ear, from sea to shining sea.
Write Me!
