Two weeks past, I went on a hiking trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota to get a little inspo for a short story I want to write. And then I went to a young people’s AA conference.
The hiking trip was good, but it was a little bit soured by an argument that I incurred. All I will say is that my opinion of who I think was culpable for what happened over Thanksgiving has changed (See “Our Fucked-Up Families Parts I-V”)…
Our “Fucked-Up Families”, written nearly a year past, and was my first attempt at modernized journalism as an adult. My first “novel” certainly draws tactics from Gonzo Journalism1 and elements of Auto Fiction – which some could argue comes from Tom Wolfe’s New Journalism.
Hunter Thompson was about my age when he wrote his first book that I read over the summer, titled Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga. It was decent, and I wish I had given it a proper review. It might still happen. But it is best to review a book while it is fresh in your mind.
However, Journalism is a really interesting form of writing, which I really do enjoy writing, but it has very different requirements than poetry and fiction. Specifically, the story existing in a general sense, living the part, but most importantly, it being written while fresh.
I finished Spoon in the Road about 18 months after I walked to New York City. However, I wrote most the book the day and the following month after I got home from my adventure. And I was lucky enough to capture a good deal of what happened on my bike trip across America in Carolina, Colorado, California, but…I think I ended up finishing that book about 2 years after the adventure, so I’m sure I lost a lot of the story to burn holes in my memory.
Journalism and whatever this form of Fiction is that I sometimes catch myself writing, is best written when the iron is hot. If you wait too long, you end up digesting a lot of your ideas, and by that time, your opinion on the subject has changed, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but always with the inclination that it is somehow less important than it was.
So, God Willing, I will be able to take a few more trips in my lifetime and write about how they are great sentiments about the country and humanity – and either fictionalize them, or just as good, report them…on time.
Because I did see a very strange and terrible intersection of humanity on my trip, but I didn’t write it quick enough for you to know.
I saw a man just as brainwashed blue as the red ones are. I have coined the term Blue Chewed as an addition to the phrase Red Pilled2.
I think the worst part about that is that I would have agreed with him my whole life, but I didn’t really embrace democratic values by the end of the conversation. I think that old, traditional ideas are good, but they are only as useful as they apply to a modern circumstance. And new ideas can be very bad, too. But people usually come up with new ideas to change old ones that aren’t working. And then they go back to the old ideas.
All I learned is that some people care more about being right than doing the work to think hard enough to learn a new perspective. You ought to be able to articulate your points and argument because, in my opinion, the end goal of an argument is to change how you or the other person thinks, and if that is not achieved, then you might as well be two dogs just barking at each other.
Pretty Landscape in Western North Dakota, though. And I didn’t really get what I was looking for on the trip for my story. I got some blanket statements about what the towns are like, but I should have made it clearer that I wanted to see the towns of North Dakota just as much as the land. So, I also have some issues explaining myself sometimes.
Anyways, The International Young People’s Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous: Well, it was held in Minneapolis…
I really don’t want to sound like an old puss, but at 28 years old, I’m not exactly looking to “party” in the way I did when I was 18 – 22. When I got sober, I told myself, “The Party is Over.” I still have a lot of fun, I just don’t want to have that type of fun anymore. And hey, some people do, and will long into their lives, and it is fun, but it’s just not my aim.
Was it fun? It had its moments. But I’m an introverted, pretentious poet. So, raves at 2 in the morning, and essentially hot-boxing a hotel while everyone is jolted on energy drinks, isn’t really what I’m looking for out of life. I really hate to say this, but I actually went there more excited to hear some spiritual advice from people with experience in recovery, but I left kinda worried I caught something else.
We got to go ride roller coasters at the Mall of America at night. And everybody was in good spirits, and I’m not here to criticize it. It just isn’t what I’m looking for, but that isn’t always bad. The old French etymology of the word adventure is Aventura, meaning “chance, accident, occurrence, event.”
So I could benefit from doing things I don’t always expect to enjoy. I might surprise myself. Because it’s all starting to look pretty familiar. So, if I end up writing something, I hope it is something I haven’t said or done before, and I hope to write it while it is still relevant to me, just as much as the world.
I think that Hunter S. Thompson is the Velvet Underground of writing; he has inspired more writers to become writers than anyone in the modern age.
Red-Pilled – cause (someone) to have their perspective dramatically transformed, especially by introducing them to a new and typically disturbing understanding of the true nature of a particular situation. Also, usually has conservative values tied in with it.
Ben Bonkoske 