The, The Writing into the Abyss

 My mother's flowers sit dead on a table in a space that is a dinning room for another life. Another person Living a life. The flowers have sat there since May unable to move or be adjusted, stagnant in space and time just a lingering joke of what life was and is. Death all around and money eating up energy and time the toil taking toil after toil. People's lives worth living, worth dying, worth loss. Worthless in a world measuring worth.

The dog harness sits empty in the exact place it has lived vacant of life since October. Only remnants  of memories remain of the friend that only loved me. The devotion gone. The personality erased. The dreams of change and hope for adventure imagined something eerie and nauseous. Time now measured by coffee made, poured, ground into fragments of reality. 

My balance faltering. My mind blurry and and fogged with genetic faults. My inability to find joy or loose joy or have a concept of joy, all while demanding joy from others. The jesters of life all around trying and hoping and loving to spread the the sweet ignorance of contentment. How much? How much do we need? What is need in a world with only cares of productivity.

Accepting failure creates growth while knowing the darkness of defeat should make you stronger. Stronger for what? Stronger for whom? Not willing or having energy to be stronger. Every moment an intense concentration to look and feel like I once did. The draining fatigue of the understanding that my mind and body are betraying me. I know the exterior of the disease. The false movements, the irrational displays of the mind, the need to laugh at odd times. To know the inner workings in my own body while hiding the reality in plain sight of others is a failure. I don't want to make them sad. This my lot, my false battle into the downward display of incompetence. My long stride into the forgotten woods where I will decay and be no longer. No flowers left on an unlived table in a soundless room no loss of personality or adventures imagined just sweet nothingness.

Equity Out The Window

 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is located in a beautiful mountain town in Ashland, OR. The town used to be somewhat of a hippy sanctuary with new age thought and ramshackle art all over town. There are hints of its past, but mostly it is a town full of millionaires and billionaires. The rental cost is on on par with LA and New York. There is very little housing available. I live in a cute trailer park actually just out side of town. Enough so that I do not get to vote for the Mayor of the town. 

So how can a theater located amongst such socio-economic disparity claim to be fighting for equity? There is a phrase on the West coast you will hear "manifest". Most of the folks are paid well at the theater that work in production with much need for wardrobe and backstage folks to get a pay increase across the board with inflation going up and the cost of living being such a burden. 

I have strong thoughts on sharing my wage in a work space along with my knowledge and being a fighter for equity in that space. I feel as a human it is important to insure that work load and responsibility are a reflection of pay. Yesterday all of the people under the same job title as me told each other our pay rates and there is no equity.

No Equity, the person with the highest pay rate carries the lightest load and only works four days a week while getting paid around $4 dollars more that the least paid person in the room. The second highest paid person said they did not negotiate their pay but just was assign a rate and assumed everyone was making the same money. The next tier of pay two people get the same amount myself and a coworker that has been working there longer than anyone else in the room. The fifth person doesn't even have the proper title and has more skill than I do in a variety specialties. They get paid the least.

I want to be clear that I am not mad about the amount of money I make as I am not a capitalist. I am mad about the inconsistency and seemingly lack of clarity of why folks make different rates. It is emblematic of bad management from the core. I am sad because I thought the company was moving into a more just working style. I am also not mad that folks make more than I do, I just want it to make sense.

Please make it make sense.... 

A Step into the Future

 Well it has been a while with a pandemic of never ending proportions. I have to pay my dues for being allowed into the middle class for a year. I moved into a sweet vintage trailer (1964 New Moon) on the edge of town in Ashland, OR. I was working at the what I considered to be the top of my field painting and dying costumes for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I had a great year from September 2018 till March 2020. I made the most amount of money in my life and did the most amount of traveling. I was flying high on the hog.

In November of 2018 I went to Thailand and saw a beautiful country and beautiful people. I should have just stayed there! I drove across the country to get the dogs to Ashland. The vastness of the dessert and wildness of Wyoming, so awesome. My wonderful friend drove back with me and we stopped in Santa Fe and saw a 365 degree sunset. We also stopped in San Fransisco and I had the best cressant of my life. 

I learned so much my first year as the only painter/dyer at OSF. I used a large format vinyl cutter and mastered the airbrush, did some screen printing and designed fabric digitally to be printed. So much that I had only touched on in the past of my theater work. I was just starting to really feel in control of my work environment when all of theater was shuttered in March of 2020. I went from $24 an hour to $29 and hour with in a month of working after I realized that the company had hired me to do all of the work and there was no else to learn from. I was doing the job description for the higher paying position (When I applied I thought I was applying for the lead painting and dying position as there where two positions listed in their website.) The job descriptions where unclear and of course the pay amounts where not listed and I was douped. I hate not being in Union and having to fight for yourself all of the time....but here we are?Sweet, Sweet America...

  

The Home Hunt in Ashland

I moved across the country to look for housing for a month? Thank goodness my job is not too crazy right now because there is no way I would have time to look for a place and work. Here is my housing response to a guy that teaches green building. Also this house needs a ton of construction and I would have at least one roommate. This shit is crazy. all I want is to be able to bring my dogs and do a bit of gardening. People abuse power all the time in their own special ways.

I think it is also illegal to ask these question in regards to housing.

To be considered for the property please share three paragraphs about 

1) your experience and interest in construction

2) your interest and experience in agriculture

3) your thoughts about climate insecurity and your ideas to build resilience.

1. I have experience through going to art school and building my own frames for screen printing with a wood shop. I have experience with plumbing and car mechanics through growing up poor and needing to figure things out. I am mechanically inclined though I honestly lack on sight construction skills I do not know how to construct or read blueprints. I have hung doors and helped put in some water pipes into friend’s houses. I am not a contractor or a construction worker, but I am a problem solver I also think it is fun to build things. I have assembled and rehabbed many old looms that are most built with Ash a hardwood. I know a little bit and have a lot of room for growth.

2. I grew up in southern Illinois with a garden that my Mom planted every year. As a children we would go a pick the vegetable for dinner. So I have always know that a pickle is a cucumber because my family fermented, juice and canned. My parents bought a plot of land with a small house on it and created their catholic hippy utopia. All 11 of us were vegetarian for a while and we all knew about alternative medicine and health practices. I was not raised with health insurance. My dad sought out local honey and the same juicer on your counter in the house I also own. (Champion)

My knowledge is based more in gardening than agriculture. Small scale. I have no idea how a tractor works nor do I think mono-cropping is a good idea. I know people that have farms in the Midwest both organic urban farm and crazy dairy farms for corporate. The human experience is a hard one and people try the best they can at good in the ways they know how. My friends husband the Dairy farmer still worries about his cows and loves them but  I think the practice is wrong and the supply and demand chains have a gross corporate structure. The structure is gross not the individual.

I can plant and grow things and I can fail and try again the next year in a different spot with more or less sun.

As an adult I have gardened for the past 5 years as access to land has only been available at that time. I planted two fruit trees a sour cherry and an apricot from dwarf trees. I planted carrots, turnips, tomatoes of all sorts, radishes, zucchini, okra, greens of all sorts my favorite being mustard.I can plant and grow things and I can fail and try again the next year in a different spot with more or less sun. I can figure out which plants like each other and which one deter witch bugs from eating them. I know there are smarter better ways to plant and grow food that is both sustainable and beautiful. I love the idea of an edible landscape. Because blueberry bushes are very attractive plants.

I will attempt to address my ideas or climate change and food insecurity: Climate change is directed and exactly cause by humans on this planet. Climate change make many things horrible. Weather patterns have become more unpredictable hence more forest fires in southern OR/Northern CA. More tornadoes in the midwest Joplin MO. More scary Hurricanes for anyone living by an ocean and the earth is about 75% water.. It doesn’t matter where you live climate change affects everyone by changing food grow seasons which impacts markets and humans food needs as well as their pocket books. It is all fantastically connected.

I don't know what the global solution looks like though global action is what is needed. China is going through their industrial revolution which equals tons of pollution. The United states did the same nasty thing. There is a trash dump on fire just north of St. Louis that is heading towards Nuclear waste. People that bought houses there were not told about the nuclear waste that is being spread via waterways and I think is most likely in the MIssissippi. Also, I have notice that the worst climate crime are always made where the poorest people live. it is a big socio-economic puzzle that leads to me concluding that much of the worlds problems were instinctually formed through greed.

Well, that is about all the doom and gloom I care to share on that subject: Fixing the problem is beyond me as an individual. I do not have enough idealism to believe that I personally will make much of a difference to the earth or humanity as a whole. But I do believe in small community and creating your own personal paradise and fighting for what is right. I have been to so many protest on the streets of St. Louis I could not even count them all.  Ashland is a much different place than I am used to but I would love to continue to preserve the fights that have already been won for agriculture in this area. Climate insecurity is something of our generation We will need to be ever adaptive in order to cope with the on going changes.

PS Sorry for the novel. I clearly have too much time on my hands

Bridget

 

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Summer Breeze

Just a hot day in WI summer, not to be compared with a hot day in St. Louis. The sun is sharp but the air has a sweet coolness in it.  Lovely to feel the vitamin D flowing through my skin.
I want to write something sweet that communicates the love I have for this place and time. A theater in the woods and people working so hard to to bring it all together. The magic friendliness and openness that I have never seen anywhere else.  Is the source hidden in the beautiful landscape or was it transplanted here but vigilant individuals that are more than self serving workers in a machine.
Maybe it is the extra oxygen in the air that wipes away the tired beat down feeling that I normally feel. Perhaps it is a supportive and highly functioning group of friends.
Friendship and proximity are key features for a lovely 7 weeks in Spring Green WI.

Look at that hair, But that straw is disgusting.

Have you heard the Boss/ Bruce what was happening on the Grateful Dead tour. Tell me about your tattoos. trying so hard to get some action this Sunday night in Ashland, OR. This cynical lady now lives here. How do I acclimate to what seems like a no problem simple town?

The poor are transient white people mostly in their youth... how do I feel knowing that things are harder elsewhere? I am not the person to say get a job but you look like a white male to me? All of the world is made for you to prosper.I can dig it if you don't want to but the thick reality is that I have no pity in this situation right now. I live in Oregon. I did this to myself. I just wanted health insurance and mostly full time work. Though you all know I have no love for the 40 hour work week.
I need to find my people here. I know it will take a while nothing happens as quickly as we would like. Wish me luck 

Free Beer

Orange Sweater, Merino Wool, Lands End                                                              ( Fancy)

Green and Aqua Dress, Cotton Polyester Blend, Handmade from Vintage Pattern (Poor Lady)

Black Cherry Faux Corduroy Leggings, Lands End (Oooh Expensive)

Large blue cotton undies, From the 6 pack, Target (Utilitarian)

Slightly Lacy Black Underwire Bra, Ordered Online Brand Unknown ( Boobs too big for stores)

Nice Hiking Socks Cotton Polyester Blend, Made in South Korea (Clearly a gift and Strange)

Hiking Boots, Brown, Ahnu
 (Girl thought she had money for a second even signed up as a member of REI)

*I go to the Lands end warehouse sale of returned products every year.
*I guess I had enough time to make a dress from a pattern a friend gave me one time.
*I am not sure if these are legging or pants or loungewear for old woman while playing Bingo
*These socks are really nice and I love them
*I had to start buying the big underware my bits were falling out of the other kind. I am not sure when my body went through the Change.

Today is the day I left the house and should not have quickly noting my inability to fit in with young professionals. A meeting about art and tech....

Enter building and find where free beer is located. Wishing to be blind to find the beer. I need the Beer....Lost in a sea of grey well kempt smiling..networking...faces.  The beer is a lose. The path leads me back to my car and my clownish unmatched self . Run and never be seen again. Drive away, the terror that almost ate me through the promise of a free beer.

Rich, Whitewashed piles of shit,This is offensive

I am actually amazed this country made it through the civil war at all and did not completely eat itself with greed and hate. I am surprised the North won . The south and the slavery and the economic greed of hurting people for the gain of the few rich seems to be the desired need of this America I live in. Fund the rich while the concrete crumbles and the poor are bled out with rising sales taxes. Lets get regressive and feel good about it by pretending the community wanted it. Lets put community in the name of action and try to trick the poor once more in to believing gentrification is good for them and diversity comes in all forms. We need the neighbors that can afford 1,200 a month for an apartment.. aren't we inclusive... lets not leave out the median earner of 55,00 a year they need a place to stay too. The persecuted median wage earner has a hard time.

Riding my bike through the city streets of St. Louis and knowing without any doubt that the poverty and racism has been meticulously dictated and lovingly condoned by elected officials makes me sick but there is literally nothing I can do about it. Small groups of enraged neighbors can make hundreds of calls but people who have never known poverty will still have all the power to decide what progress look like. Progress looks white too rich, too white

Well, it looks like a white pile of white rich shit exploding over an otherwise lovely neighborhood. How is this white subway tile or these white light fixtures or this white flooring or these white painted walls. Well it is all whitewashed

Whitewashed politics, Whitewashed society pretending in progress together as they underfund the pavement from under their own feet.

A building is built where nothing was needed so a politician could get a child's badge for doing something false first. Community is a false word when used to represent only the people that have the luxury of going to meetings. Those people don't have real jobs but are cute little tokens of society that have deemed their opinions to be the best and most important of all the smiling white dudes.


This is offensive                 

I Don't Have Faith and I Don"t Need Your Levi's

I just want a little more than survived.

The government cheese came and the canned peanut butter, the consistency of the inside of a peanut butter cup, tasted really good. I even enjoyed the canned pork stuff with the awesome graphic of a pig on the can.  The donuts from St. Vincent De Paul's food pantry were stale and occasionally we would get an entire stale sheet cake, so good. We never had snacks. We were not the poor family with Tommy Hilfiger polo tops and red tag Levi jeans. We were for real. There was not a loss of priorities it was just basic desperation . There was actual pride in the words when my lovely mother said we had survived and a sense of thankfulness that could only be possible through faith.

I don't have faith and I don't need your Levi's.
 I never have considered god to be compassionate and I have a great sense of style that never needed societies markings of a name brand.  I little ego and a lacking in faith goes a long way I guess after all I survived.


There were barrels of broken toys for Christmas...don"t give broken trash to the poor they don't want it and do not have the means to get rid of it once they have it and which leads to the stereotype of poor folks being lazy slobs surrounded by trash. Just guess where all that garbage came from and guess who's car is broken and who doesn't know how to recycle or trash said broken objects. If something no longer has value then it no longer has value and is not magically useful by someone that has less money. If anything it is harder to maintain an object and more expensive it is made poorly or already broken. rehabbing and refurbishing are for the rich really poor folks should only have the best as they do not have the money to maintain crappy goods. Unfortunately, quality is hard to find and impossible to afford.

$15 is better than $12

Starting a new job is hard and the facts are simple $15 per hour is better than $12. Actually "better" is the wrong word. Humane is the correct word. Unfortunately and, much to my dismay and hope for humanity, the amount of money a person makes directly effects how people are valued. Life and living is not a simple protected beauty pageant. People's wealth is worn on their external and internal selves in a way of capital decay.

Missing teeth: I am positive that no one wants to have oral pain or teeth pulled due to not being able to afford a filling. Money is the reason people are missing teeth. It is not cool or fun to be disfigured. People are judged by their smiles.
Disease, cancer, death occurs too soon for impoverished and marginalized folks. Poor people have death marketed to them. Cigarettes and Cheetos

I have been trying to stay at the $15 or better wage for quite a while now and it is next to impossible.  The minimum wage is a joke in this country and the amount of money you want to pay people is a great descriptor of how you view humanity and human worth on a whole. So next time you are in a job interview, just know that the company may or may not be viable but they should not be able to take you through the dirt with them.

Khaki making my ass look that way.

Tight wrong flesh fabric clinging to my thck thighs.
Workin'
Shit this shirt looks bad,
Like a powdered donut all lumpy but blue

Hot grime creepin' out the cement
Flesh clouds of condensation
Why this sticky?
Moist money, need me some gloves

Working for Millionaires

Working for narcisist that pay you so little that ideas about poverty and your personal health permeate your every action.  Putting gas in my car is a financial nessicity but buying fresh vegetables instead of cheaper microwave food is a simple cost analysis done in the isle of every grocery store for every single person making under 35,000 a year.  Making it to the next paycheck is just going to be easier if I get the the frozen nasty.  Every food choice is a health choice while the rich folks I work for subsidizes the soda machine to increase diabetes they fail to pay a living wage.  I think encouraging soda drinking would come after your employees ability to buy real groceries.

BUT I WORK FOR DOCTORS.

I ain't young no more

Making of friends is a joke and I ain't gonna have no children so the party seems like I am faking it,
Maybe I just don't want to fake it.
Human kind will continue despite my constant internal rant against bringing more life into this world.
It is all a selfish thing.... Selfish to think a baby in the genetic likes of you is important,,,
Selfish for me to want my time and not be willing to change diapers and feel guilty

Humanity will continue we are animals after all.  The primal needs to thrust at one another will always over power the rational thinking of failing economics and starvation around the corner. The human genetic pull is important for survival.


When times get tough get to loving.


As you are loving I will be hunkering down trying to figure out what to do with a life that has no real meaning without a love for humanity.  I have created my own emotional paradox, A person has to have some attachment to the young in order to have any hope at all even within their own life span.  I need the youth to have more compassion and hope than I do for my own well being and the cycle of selfishness continues.


My own personal selfishness.


What is a woman to do that is missing the baby clock.  There is not enough sorrow in my life or wanting for humanity, just another mundane existence.  Trying to create as an artist is a funny joke who needs more stuff? The Big Lots shelves are full of rugs why weave any more.  The thrift stores are packed with clothing. There is no need to pretend like fashion is not just being recycled again. When you feel young but the cellulite grows like nasty pockets attached to your thighs.  And the eyes of others are averted, appropriately.  You have become a nasty thing.


Red faced and swelling at the seams.

I, i, me and my

To walk through the world will an ounce of certainty.  I am coming to terms with the idea of my recent introversion is really just insecurity.... So strange to be lost in your own person and feel so confused when attempting decision.  Really simple ideas of choice devide me from my past self and future self.

Should I stop by the river on my way home or just go and take a nap.  Is this what it means to be an adult when we all the sudden finding choice between joy and restlessness.  I have felt old but happy with my almost no risk life.  Not sure what to do when strangers say hello/the walls are too built up and friendliness seems so hard.  It is easier to hide in my new found introversion of myself.  It is all such a terrible lie.

It is so hard not to be a walking lie.  My instincts seem so flawed like being lost in a brown paper bag of myself.  Oh so self absorbed.

It Is Wrong To Be An Artist

The ego swells and spits like the hot molten lava of the sun.  There are demands and no trust in another's handy work.  The hot lava must swallow the project whole.  The entirety of the essence of the idea must be owned completely with no room for compromise from other view points.  The Designer's vision is intergalactic in nature and thus part of everything...there is no suggestion that is not already owned by the designer's vision as the atoms of space are all the same.  The designer is a God.

There is no room for friends just a network of benefit from being in the shadow of the Designer.  Like the planets sole sucking from the sun's glorious rays over their valleys and mountains; all the beauty they have given to them from being in the network of proximity of the sun's gravitational pull.  Thus the lack of choice.  As the designer is God and thus beauty is only allowed through its alignment with the Designers end mission or gravitational pull.

Your ideas are not your own but given through the gravitational suggestion from the ultimate designer.  It is a cause and effect and the the designer dictates your participation.  Throw away your knowledge as an artist and play the political game of admiration towards the dictator of beauty.
-The Designer

That Bus--Not So Scary West of Denver

The face tattoos are plentiful and friendly.
 What happens when all we think of people changes. I became the  bigoted product of my environment. I found the single man that makes me feel like the worst person. The smells in Kansas and the fowl treatment of passengers had little to no effect on me and now the truth of my character slaps me in the face.  I forgot the one rule....Be  nice.
 His name is Mark and I first saw him in Merced, CA.  He must have gotten on the bus at that stop because he seemed to evolve out of the fog in the night.

I was starving as the Grey Hound did not stop for food for 9 hours on my way to Portland from LA.  I got to my transfer spot in Sacramento, CA and headed straight to the grill man.  He informed me with his large mustache and balding head that the grill was down for the night and he was only willing to make deep fried chicken strips and french fries.  I did choose honey mustard and ranch as my dipping choices.
The grill man with no grill.  I could have committed murder for a hamburger but a little chicken would do.

There was a long line behind me so after dropping my large bag in line for the bus I found a seat at a table that held a pile of papers and someone's ID card that had an American flag on it.  I guessed that I would shortly be joined by someone at my table of thick blue wire.  They came in hot and loud.  Mark was professing his battles and shrapnel stories while accepting God all at once.  "God loves infantry men" He was speaking to his buddy that was also once a military man or a follower of God. It was hard to tell.  Mark's face tattoo and loudness I had miss judged immediately.

I avoided eye contact, as any well train Midwesterner that has spent any time in any city would do.  It is funny when a person is rude from conditioning of a hard past.  I did not grow up in the west of Denver, CO climate. I am judgmental  and thus miss out on the good stories in life.  I sat there for a time trying not to seem too eager to leave though my fight or flight instinct was running high.  I wanted to seem cool and collected while starving inside a Greyhound terminal waiting for my flavorless fried grease sticks.  The grill man motioned to me as he had gotten no one's name for their orders.  His motioning happened amongst a line of other hungry passengers; he was a fabulous one man machine.
I happily sat at a new table with a older African American man. I guess I could not handle the idea of Mark asking me about either presented subject, God or War.  My chicken and fries tasted just of hot grease and as I ate I slowly realized that the man I was sitting with might not have eaten in days.  When he told me my food looked good I quickly realized the situation.  I wish I had realized sooner I could have given him more food.  If someone tells you food looks good, that is clearly nasty, they are even hungrier than you.  He was a grandpa traveling to Oregon for the first time to see his grand child.  Times are tough and this country does not take care of the elderly.

On in to the Beauty of a snowy Mountain

That little sweet driver man got us there.  We clapped as we entered the blue stripped buss-port.  Luckily one of  the passengers knew where the grey Hound Station was because our driver's phone had died and no one on the buss that had a working cell phone wanted to let him borrow it for the GPS.  Times are tricky and dreams run high on the Grey hound. Folks tell tales on opening bars in New York City and paying crazy amounts in rent and gentrification.  The poor, we know the plot of the cities and the plans of constant growth that do not include us.

Most folks do not volunteer the information of why they are traveling and others obviously embellish the truth to fit their American Dream. Some are traveling  salesmen while quickly transitioning to manual laborers to different audience.  Heading to San Fransisco from no where that can be mentioned and claiming to have been part of every community that we travel through. Sounds so lovely to me to be part of any community that I let the lie linger in the air as I focus further into my book.

I made my first coffee at the Grey Hound Station in Denver. I mostly wanted to sleep last night and now I want to soak it all in the beautiful peeks and valley of the Rocky Mountains. I honestly can not imagine a more lovely experience that what I am currently enduring.  Wispy little trees littering the mountain side.  Inside of a fresh new buss with a plug for all the technology and I think people cannot be so loud faced with the infinite beauty of mountains. Knowing that we are all part of it and feeling the weight of the great puffy clouds above the mountain peaks how can you be in hurry when we are lucky enough to view this vision.

Pulling into Vail, CO with smell of break dust..and the site of mountain cottages. This view validates the TV watchers idea of Colorado. Thin people going up and down ski lifts and thrusting themselves of lofty mountain tops.  This place must be constant vacation.  How can one be lucky enough to have this be their stop off the Grey Hound. What a culture shock.

When drivers change for the worse

Well, Salina Kansas seemed like a nice stop.  We were mostly on time until the old bus could not properly lift the gentle man in the wheel chair.  He was almost though the door when it became clear that the devise would not work properly and if we could manage to get him on we might not be so lucky in getting him off...which would really be horrible as the ride so far had been so stinky.  I am not sure how that man was getting to his destination but it was not gonna happen on our buss.

The wheel chair incident set us back 40 minutes and I guess the jolly good driver did not clearly inform the next stop of the situation.  Hays, KS we stopped in a dark parking lot I could not tell if there was a quick stop or a laundromat for the parking lot but it was certainly rural and needed a buss out.  A nice Asian man was to be the substitute driver as the intended driver had not yet shown up and most of the folks on the buss had connections to make in Denver, CO. We later learned that the new driver had never driven to CO before and had only been working with the buss line for two weeks...Oh and did not have a route slip for all the stops and was using his phone navigation to guide to our destination. I was appreciative of his courage but some how the majority of the rest of the buss were very huffy about the situation.

I found out as we drove into the night that my new seat companion was a Grandma that makes the buss trip twice a month from Denver to spend time with some  grand babies that live in Wichita.  She was a lovely woman I'm guessing in her 50's but could have easily been older.  She worn three coats in April in Kansas.  The outer layer coat was a lovely faux leopard fur coat with matching fez style hat. It was nice to be sitting by a lady of her own fashion.  A very sweet woman who has a low tolerance for the back of the buss hootin' and hollerin'. I was devoted to my book and successful at blocking out the loudness and disrespect.

I had over heard two other ladies that were on voyages to visit grand children. I had not expected the Grey Hound to actually be a considered form of transport for older woman travelling alone.  The Grey hound seems to be the mostly traveled by independent passengers waiting for the seat mates and hoping for the best.  I have mostly been lucky so far on the seat mates only one person I wished could have smelled a little nicer.  Soon I will also wish that I smelt a little nicer though as I will be on the buss for over two days with no shower and steadily fermenting in a steal box...yum

Smells like cinnamon apple candies in here.

This stop is much nicer than my original boarding location in St. Louis, MO.  I am basing my assessment on smell alone and have not looked up from my tiny screen that I am currently reaching out to you on.  This building is a triangle as the last location was a mere hallway of glowing primary colors.  The windows of the Grey Hound station in MO where oddly childish as a way of teaching its riders the fundamentals of color theory through distorted light. I sat there waiting for my boarding opportunity with wafting smells of old pet piss soaked carpet.  There was of coarse no carpet in site.

I began hearing tales of a greater buss,  a new kind with wifi and electrical plugs for our phones.  The bus I was on was all that I had expected so I felt no lust for the unknown.  Though I am hopeful that I may encounter the mystical blue Grey hound buss during a leg of my voyage.  I guess folks that were traveling from Indianapolis had a taste of luxury and were very unhappy to board the crap bus of the 90's.  I personally was shocked to find out that Grey Hound the poor person transport would bother updating until things were actually broken....The world can surprise.

It does smell almost lovely in here as the bathroom situation from the metal tube I have been placed in for the last 4 hours was fresh with human fecal matter that escaped each time the bathroom door opened, which was all too frequent.  I find it a wise curtesy to wait to use the bathroom during the stop for which there are plenty.  I think it took 45 minutes before the bathroom was was deflowered up on my first boarding. I am now in Salina KS and the bathroom is going to be cleaned before we get back on.  

Hearding back on the bus was not so bad with the same driver a jolly large african american man with a really great way of dealing with the screamers at the back of the buss.  I think for a driver to make it work they really have to be quite cool and laid back and perhaps turn a deaf ear to the complete and utter nonsense that can happen when people can not charge their electronics.  I am very thankful for the technology that everyone has....It gives us all a little privacy in a cramped world.

My Time Cost Less

I want to meet this country in all of its' glory.....  I am hopping on the Grey Hound  April 3, 2014 and heading to LA.  I am guessing most people taking the Grey Hound across country are not doing it for the sake of the ride but my trip is intended for that purpose.

I am a lucky lady and have friends that I can stay with to shower and visit with over my 11 day voyage to LA---Portland---Seattle---St. Louis.  I hope this trip is the beginning of inspiration on several fronts.  I am hoping through tolerance that I gain an appreciation for the under thought of poor traveling through the night to jobs or to find their place of home with family.  I am also desperately seeking acceptance among the people that I feel I belong.

I have had three different people offer to help me buy a plane ticket out to LA for my friend's wedding which makes me 100% luckier than the majority of the people that will be on that bus for the 40 hours it takes to get to Los Angelas.  But honestly, I can not afford the $400+ it cost to fly on a plane to California and as a low income earner I have more time than money. My time cost less than other people's time.  (I do not make much per hour)

Thus the Journey.....