if i ever come through mississippi again (i say “if” because, after today, i may never come through, at least jackson, that is) i’d like to bring someone to the Down Home Cafe. this truck stop is a little slice of a former small-town side-of-the-highway america, circa 1960. a buffet with all kinds of southern cooking, from fried chicken to okra, blackeyed peas to green beans & ham. cornbread and sweet (sweet!) tea. this place calms my mind after an enitre day sitting in the sun. i hitched one ride, from one side of jackson to the other, and after about 10 am didn’t get a ride until 5. i can’t tell if it was the waiting that drove me crazy or the hot sun with all it’s radiating uv rays. or maybe the fifty pound pack. mostly–i think–it was the *thousands* of vehicles that passed me by, an endless stream of steel and plastic. i didn’t think a person could stand with an outstretched arm for seven hours while so much traffic flowed by. i waved, smiled, held signs. nothing. i think i could wait that long on a highway with no traffic, a car or two every hour. the chances are thin. but i’ve learned that in jackson, no one like to look at a solitary hitchhiker, sometimes flailing desperately for a ride up the road.

i spent the night on a construction site, dirt and concrete pipe surrounding me. i slept well. no rain. and in the morning i met only southbound truckers fueling their trucks at the station. a couple hours drove me to the exit ramp and i grabbed my first ride across town, getting me away from the tangled i55/i20 intersection. now on the north side of jackson, i hiked up the on-ramp, jumped on the interstate and held up my sign: memphis. no luck. the sun cooked at high noon. i walked a bit. nothing but empty skies and hot sun. even on on-ramps, i met fancy cars and blank stares. i guessed i was near a mall and walked on. my rides usually come from young folks, contruction workers, mexicans, or truckers. occasionally i get a ride from a woman, a fancy car, or a chartered bus, but here: nobody. the psychological impact of everyone–thousands of vehicles–passing you by leads to a certain lost hope in humanity. i don’t ask for charity, just a ride up the road in an empty seat or bed of a pickup truck. after four hours, i started yelling at every pickup. i walked some more. six hours: i wrote “help” on the backside of my sign. nope. even the state trooper didn’t pull over; three times he passed me. finally, after seven hours–i don’t remember if i was standing or sitting, but i pulled the sign away from my face to block the sun’s rays–a red ford pickup truck rolled right up to my feet. i threw by pack in the bed (surprised i had the strength to lift if over the side) and hopped in. turns out the male driver thought i was a women (he didn’t have his glasses), but he decided to give me a lift anyway after i got in the truck. i write now in no rush ready to come to terms with my situation: on the road with no guarentee, a heavy pack, and no sunscreen. i’ve got time though. i just lost my faith in humanity for a moment, i guess.

VIOLET, LA. the weather is getting cooler again in the south. i sleep in a small one-story house on guerra street. the walls are partially covered to make a few bedrooms, the ceiling is open. the floor, bare concrete. i have lived on this plot of land since april, camping at first, now sleeping on a queen-size mattress. we are still without electricity and that seems alright with all of us. in april it was spark and i, now there’s seven of us who call it home, cots creaking, kitten playing in the middle of the night. a new volunteer told me tonight about an email he had received from  someone who i met in april, a group leader with a universilist unitarian assemblage; he knew all about be, he said, from this email message. it seemed he was comparing the two, the person he knew through words and the person standing in front of him. that’s funny, i said. was the message detailed? he said she said i was levelheaded and one to really help begin important work with the community. her name is wendy, i don’t really remember exactly who shi is from my foggy memory, and it’s intruiging to hear she developed such a positive impression of my work from one week volunteering at HOPE. but i do remember being extreamly motivated and steadily confident during that period at HOPE. it was in the month of april, a moment of transition for our organization (moving out of the church and into a community building temporarily donated to us), and an opportunity for me to step up to coordinating things at HOPE and being key in the organization itself. i’m glad to have made a good impression. even more so, i’m glad i’m still here today.

VIOLET, LA. it’s something interesting to be in the path of a madman. a con with psycotic destructive tendencies. a person (who will remain unnamed) has sent me away from HOPE, his wish was to drive me crazy and see me go. i saved him some effort, and myself the frustration of letting him take my happiness, so i left voluntarily. i refuse to work with or around him, or even to talk to him.

i moved myself to Emergency Communities (EC), a relief organization running a kitchen inside of Camp Hope (which has nothing to do with our H.O.P.E.). i’m in transition, and am thinking about working full time to occupy my time away from HOPE until i leave for the north in october. i need the money anyway, and simultaniously i may fulfill my daydreams of being a deckhand on a mississippi river barge. with october comes travels to maine and vermont and some excitement in new york city. ideally things will have calmed down at HOPE by november. i wish i could care about the outcome and well being of this unnamed person stated above, but i don’t anymore and it’s no longer my place to try. i have to let go of this one.

EC is nice, a getaway from my usual routine. sleeping alone on a mat, no close friends, simple, routine work. sweeping floors, washing dishes. perhaps this getaway is what i need anyway to quiet my mind, lose some responsibility over HOPE, regain a sense of myself.

so i went back just now and read my first entry into this journal [note: written journal, not this blog]. and i thought, at the end of my reading, that i should add my thoughts on civilization and how i’ve been inspired by reading the first few pages of derik jenson’s book, endgame.

Henry, the book’s owner, and i talked about endgame’s preface. Henry bought the book at the (literally) underground bookstore in minneapolis–mayday books, i think it’s called. we sat on my friends porch above a falafel shop on cedar avenue and talked. we joked that if you agree with derik’s twenty points stated in the preface–describing concisely just how civilization itself is, by character, unsustainable–then there’s no point in reading the whole book. you can just stop right there and tell everyone you’ve read the book because you already agree with the author.

the realization of civilization’s self-destructive nature makes me a bit depressed. but then again, it just confirms all the thoughts and questions i’ve had about the past, present, and future of organized human existance. it’s destructive by character and our lives are and always have been a speeding downward spiral. with every wonderful thing we experience or observe, there are two or more horrible things behind it, or even plainly right there to see. we are failing and always will be, buisness as usual.