# Raging Bird of Youth (Part 2)



## Raging Bird (Oct 29, 2009)

I'm posting Chapter 2 of the zine I'm working on because a few people liked the crappy first one. This one is like that, except with less substance and more run-on sentences - you'll hate it as much as I do! Maybe I'll post some pics of the Rio Grande line when I get my camera developed, to divert attention from this godawful piece of garbage!!


There was no next step, so I went to New York; go big or go home, they say. 

New York is defined completely by the tragedy of human irrelevance; people suffer from it more acutely here than anywhere else on Earth. The good people are beter and the bad people are worse, because there's only the ones who found some kind of love and the ones condemned to lovelessness, searching every club and every dive bar and every personal ad for a distraction from the crushing scale of 19 million uncaring strangers. I believe in the personal economy of love, that everyone either finds self-worth in the right places or looks for it in the wrong ones, and New York is the world capital of back doors and quick fixes for the one, eternal human quest; the capital of wealth, ego, and power. 

I walked at night for miles and miles, suddenly obsessed with fame for the first time, more alone and farther from love than I've ever been. I was caught in a world alone, but someday, against all odds, everyone would know about me and I wouldn't be homeless, because the struggle and sadness were all a dream. I would write my story, start a band, do whatever it took to find adulation and attention, the closest things to love that anyone can understand in a world of alienation. I felt like a real New Yorker, hoping against hope, believing for one night in the cult of the American Dream, in the possibility of ever feeling self-worth without getting close to anyone else, in the possibility of finding some perverse freedom. 

The next day I walked for miles, from Governor's Island to Central Park, up to Riverside and back through Buschwick, taking solace in all the strangers who just didn't care anymore, everyone spilling mustard on their shirts and not bothering to wipe it up, the morbidly obese shamelessly gorging themselves in public, all the "fuck you"s to the uncaring masses. A man in a Chuckee Cheese costume got off the subway smoking a cigarette and looking pissed, and I felt a strange kinship. 

Everything was huge, done up like any other city at 150%. Tompkins swarmed with travelers and vagrants; junkies shot up in the park at 3 pm while hundreds of scumfucks fought, fucked, drank, and screamed in the streets, blocking traffic and ignoring cops. I found some peace in the Freedom Tunnel and the Cloisters, but still resolves to get out as fast as possible. 

I made it to Chicago in one 24 hour hell ride, grinding my teeth and talking to myself in 2 voices that each expressed a different side of my personality. I was never asleep but never awake, I thought it was a dream. I floated passively through a stranger world without questioning the things around me, I screamed through the woods at 70mph in a steel cage, and it felt enough like a nightmare that I couldn't believe it when the train stopped 1000 miles away, unleashing me on Lake Michigan. 

Wicker Park was a marvel of the New Urbanism; hipsters shopped and homebums slept and the fountain ran late into the night. I came across a gang of Mexican punks on their way back from a Misfits show; they were all illegal immigrants whose trainhopping careers had begun with crossing the border at age 3. We smoked a blunt behind a 7-11 until a girl walked up with neon shoes and westward ambitions, and that was how I met Ashley. We called Matt and tore across town to the Wllow Springs yard, jumping on a westbound doublestack right as the sun set, finally safe. 

Alone in the well, I sang Philip Glass songs and watched the Great Plains turn to desert. The Southwest came on gradually; the Earth glowed red, the grass grew sparse, and the hills turned to rock; the whole world turned alien and flamboyant, slow and deliberate as a deep breath or summer sex, late at night when there's nothing to wake up for. 

Amarillo welcomed us with lightning and storm, keeping us on the move looking frantically for shelter. The rain came in sideways and we hid beneath an overpass until the water level hit 2 feet and we fled to a carport; private property gave way to the economy of need and survival, the way farms turn to battlefields. I swore to God we would get out that night, we struggled against common sense and fate was against us, the story of our lives had already been written and we were fighting to change the plot. Every train came at the wrong moment, the rain picked up, and we finally gave in to spending the night.
The next day we met Rabbit and Stray Cat Julie, a 40 year old tramp and the democratically elected Queen of American Hobos. They took us to a free meal at a mission where the preacher raved about divine timing and accepting the flow of when things are meant to happen, and I remembered everything I'd forgotten about travel. Later in the day, a schizophrenic Puerto Rican walked up to me at a bus stop and gave me a diamond earring because I "looked like I believe in miracles", muttering "I think it's real..." before wandering away.

We all had our own super power; Ashley could go into any restaurant and get free food, Julie got us rides in truck beds at every gas station, I made money with strange signs like "TRYING TO BUY SOME MUSCLE MILK", and Rabbit knew all the weird catch-out spots that weren't in the Crew Change. We rode out with a case of Texas Busch on a party-porch grainer and flew towards Denver all night, making out while the Sun set on a thousand miles of cotton and heat lightning, all around us. 

We made plans liberally because nothing ever worked out. We would all pitch in for a van and tear ass to the Border; Ashley could teach us Spanish on the way, and we'd pursue lucrative schemes once we got there. Ashley was going to Mexico anyway and someone had to take care of her, so I was in, but a week later she was arrested at Tramp Fest and taken away. Matt went back to Iowa and Julie went North, so I rode the Rio Grande to Oakland, there was nothing else to do. 

2 Mountain Ranges, 3 Deserts, and a Salt Lake later, I arrived in San Francisco, which was different, but still reminiscent of New York. Again, I felt lost in a sea of ambition and I despaired thinking of a way to find value in an uncaring society. I crossed the Bay to stay at the Hell House, an ancient squat with 35 people filling every corner and closet and hallway. Everything was labeled "Property of Dick Cheney", which I thought was a joke until I met Dick Cheney, a 50 year old homeless man who wandered around the house accusing me of touching things and muttering things like "Sorry's not going to bring the neighbors back to life now, is it Fred Flintstone?"

Thursday night was Fight Night and we boxed in the streets until morning while the neighbors took camera phone pictures and cheered from the windows. I spent the week talking about Gurdjieff and John Waters with a transexual named Bridget and an italian girl named Rachel, and dumpstering under the full moon with girl Chris and her roommate. It was a waystation for 30 people at once and we were all some kind of refugee trying to find a place to fit in in a world of chaos and change. Still, things were trashier now and I was sick of the junkies at people's park, the street losers who'd drank away their interest in exploration, in a new city of wingnuts and history. I missed Ashley, the last person I'd known with a good head on her shoulders. She was the antidote to bitter, scumfuck cynicism, the cure for the common traveler, and I knew I had to leave. 

Quiet cities have always made me uncomfortable; I set out to find life, and life comes from bombast and swagger, breaking free from all constraints and screaming to the world that you'll never die, because for 80 years, nobody's going to prove you wrong. David left to bike back to DC and I rode out to the desert alone, after doing acid in the Haight, realizing I would die in Virginia, and accepting it on the spot.


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## Ivy (Oct 29, 2009)

In NYC, even with so many people crowded together, it can still be the loneliest place in world.

Once again, I quite enjoyed your story.


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## Raging Bird (Nov 5, 2009)

yo thanks ivy. Discovering the connection between big cities, social alienation, and ambitious yuppies was sort of a theme of the past few months, made me miss Richmond more than anything lol


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## wartomods (Nov 22, 2009)

I like to read your crap


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