Jan Carson's Blog, page 24

Postcard Stories – New York

14th October 2014 – Kristen Curry

“The German Minimalist, or perhaps Nouveau Realist, Otto Piene places a square canvas on a wooden frame approximately one foot above his head. The canvas faces downwards forming a flat roof over the artist’s head. Piene lights four candles on a tray and moves the flames in a perfect, uncompromising circle around the canvas edge. What remains after the incident looks like the end of all time.”

15th October 2014 – Catherine Carson

“New York city is an iceberg. Approximately one third of its weight looms just below the sidewalk. In the overground world skyscrapers scrape the clouds and custard yellow cabs shuffle and settle like abacus beads, arranging themselves neatly around each stoplight. People function and most everything speeds. Occasionally the sadness underfoot leaks out in white steam plumes and footless pigeons, in spine-broke umbrellas and aged ladies offering plastic pearls for the swap of your shoes.”

16th October 2014 – Tim Martin

“Despite its size and the unarguable influence it has had on the development of American music- both classical and contemporary- trying to find Carnegie Hall is like looking for an ice cube in the rain. She tucks herself into the crevice of a Wells Fargo ATM machine to consult her maps, refuses to ask a local, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” for fear of walking into her own tired punchline, comes away empty-eyed and exhausted.”

17th October 2014 – Gabriel DeRose

“I was going to throw my copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” off the Staten Island Ferry, hoping it would float up the Hudson and find you, two beats behind me, in some mid-sized American city, driving. But I slept in and the ferry was late and the Hudson, it transpires, connects the Atlantic to nothing in particular, and I hadn’t finished with Steinbeck and thought you deserved so much more.”

Postcard Stories – Baltimore

11th October 2014 – Sam Moles

“Everything is louder in Baltimore. The people on street corners hold their cell phone six inches from their faces and yell at their relatives in DC and Boston. The birds congregating by the aquarium are a tropical rainforest, amplified. Even the silence, sandwiched between sirens and speeding cars, seems louder and more insistent than an ordinary city silence.”

11th October 2014 – Joy Dickinson

“Having misplaced her way home she is forced to lift her eyes from the sidewalk and the signs casually competing for her attention and follow instead those futuristic skyscrapers. Tracing a route from the glum grey harbour, up the hill to her hotel via the peaks and laminated pitches of the Baltimore skyline, she thinks of Hansel and also Gretel, and the bad, bad problems which befall those who never look up.”

11th October 2014 – Zosia Kuczynska

“The chamber of wonders at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland contains a wall-mounted alligator, a tiger rug, (currently masquerading as a curtain), butterflies, bugs and sundry flying beasts, two suits of armour, pistols, (both modern and historic), books, paintings, seashells, figurines of various deities and a full set of Japanese tourists in pristine condition, smiling as they capture the wonder on their very modern smartphones.”

11th October 2014 – Deborah McIlwrath

 “This is Jim. He’s with the competition,” says the man in the Argyll sweater.

 Jim is American.

Everyone else at the table is that very particular breed of Englishman, abroad. They are drinking piss-coloured beer in pint glasses, watching regular football on a flat screen TV.

Jim positions himself on the far side of the table where he can watch the American football without drawing too much attention to himself. He would very much like a whisky sour. He orders, “a pint of whatever they’re having.”

Postcard Stories – Washington DC

8th October 2014 – Oliver Griffiths

“The elephant who was fond of watermelon was also fond of other more pedestrian foods: peanuts, cheese and Greek yogurt to name but a few. Watermelons, however, remained his first choice snack every time he visited the grocery store. Without fingers or knives and, taking into consideration that ever-present trunk, the challenge of consuming something so large and inconsiderate, was a pleasure in and of itself.”

9th October 2014 – Susan Fischer

“Thirty two of forty three American presidents kept dogs, as pets, at the White House. The other eleven, who were either cold-hearted, or allergic, felt the pressure to conform and occasionally rode horses or watched birds, careful to ensure these moments were captured on camera.”

10th October 2014 – John Om

“At night when the tourists put their click, click, clicking cameras back into their pockets and leave the Lincoln Memorial for dinner at the Hard Rock Café and other chain staples, Abraham Lincoln rises slowly from his throne and, keeping to the shadowy edges of the Mall, takes his daily constitutional, coaxing the weariness out of his marbled joints.”

Postcard Stories – Nashville

4th October 2014 – Jill Hamill

“Each Fall the Osage Orange tree succumbs to the demands of gravity and allows it seed to drop upon the lanes and hallowed lawns of Vanderbilt University. These fruit are not like common American fruits found at the grocery store. They are green as cartoon caterpillars, solid and sized as an average baseball. At least one student per year, lingering beneath the branches, will be killed by the impact of a falling Osage Orange. Another handful of students, having experienced the benevolent rush of a near miss, will stare at these incongruous items as they collect by the cafeteria, and question their own sense of belonging in such a well-ordered place.”

5th October 2014 – Stephen Sexton

“The year that Nashville flooded, breaching the five hundred year floodline and rising to engulf the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, hundreds and thousands of acoustic guitars, suddenly loosed from their stands and handmade cabinets, floated down the swollen Cumberland and far out to sea, forming rafts and, later, unintentional islands, bound together with the melodies and sixth generation songs of the Smokey Mountains.”

7th October 2014 – Chris Lindsay

“When they first began the refurbishment of the Ryman Auditorium, original home of the Grand Ole Opry, every piece of chewing gum ever chewed and wedged surreptitiously to the underside of a pew was preserved as a memorial to all those braced and booted regular folk who kept the Opry ringing through its formative years. Once collected in a display case the gum formed a man-sized was; a pink white ghost of the good old days, still humming with the sunshine smell of double mint and juicy fruit.”

Postcard Stories – Minneapolis

1st October 2014 – Becca Farmer

“The very spot where Robert Allan Zimmerman first slipped his home town skin and stepped on stage as Bob Dylan is now a parking lot, caught between target and Subway Sandwiches. Everyday dozens of students and business professionals walk unsuspecting across this parking lot in pursuit of turkey subs and BLTs. Their sandwiches, haunted as they are by the ghost of long gone songs and guitar stories, do not taste like ordinary American sandwiches. Even an average egg salad will leave the consumer humming softly as they return to their car or SUV.”

2nd October 2014 – Esther Haller-Clarke

“Approximately 5 to 10 years after their term in office ends, American presidents are discretely relocated to the Mall of America on the outskirts of Minneapolis/St Paul. There they are permitted to spend their retirement in the glorious anonymity offered by four square miles of retails options. Shuffling from one branch of Barnes and Noble to the next, they become virtually indistinguishable from the other seniors taking their daily constitutionals, Starbucks cup in hand. And, if the urge to declare war should come upon them suddenly like a misplaced memory, they can always tip over a rack of citrus hand wash in Bed Bath and Beyond, and stand, damp-footed and complicit, in their own mess.”

3rd October 2014 – Nathaniel Joseph McAuley

“During the early months of 2014 the temperature in Minneapolis/St Paul dipped vindictively low. At minus twenty the glass in the Guthrie Theatre turned the impermeable colour of a Fox’s Glaciar Mint. At minus thirty the Mississippi lost momentum and, almost frozen, could barely keep to the sluggish pace of a just-pored malt. At minus forty even the ghost F. Scott Fitzgerald froze solid to the St Paul’s sidewalk, an ‘old-fashioned’ iced permanently against his blue ghost lips.”

Homeward Bound

I’m sitting at the departure gate in JFK having a quick flick through the hundreds of photos I’ve taken over the last two months. This was not the wisest decision. I’m struggling to hold back the tears. There are so many memories bound up in these photos, so many new friends and wonderful experiences. While a huge part of me cannot wait to skip the Atlantic and throw my arms around the people I love in Northern Ireland,  another part of me simply cannot believe the adventure is over. I’m a little bit sad. Sad and thankful. I’ve been reading Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley over the last two days. It’s a fantastic wee book and a perfect companion for some of the mixed emotions I’m feeling right now. Steinbeck spent a similar amount of time adventuring around the backroads and freeways of America with no one but his dog for company. (Though I don’t like dogs and keep thinking that it must have grown awfully smelly in Steinbeck’s car after a few weeks, this dog actually sounds like one of the more decent examples of the breed). He met a lot of very interesting people away, gained some fantastic insights into the American temperament and like myself, learnt an awful lot about himself in the process.

The book begins with this statement

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.”

I have always been a Steinbeck. Given the choice between sitting still and wandering, I have always chosen to adventure. I’m an itchy sort of person and cannot understand people who chose to stay local and have no desire to explore anything beyond their own backyard. This trip, if nothing else, has been a grand indulgence; an opportunity to push the limits of my own ability to travel. After seven weeks on the road, fourteen states, (maybe fifteen as I’m not too sure which state New York is actually in), countless planes, trains and subway systems all navigated faultlessly, every conceivable social situation under the sun, and infinite occasions when I’ve had to fall back on wit and guess work, I have to say I’m pretty proud of myself. All you naysayers who said I’d have down days and run out of energy and enthusiasm, can stand corrected. I never really hit the travel wall and when I felt it approaching, that one time, on the East coast, I booked myself into a hotel and slept it off. I’m not quite Steinbeck, and i’m definitely not Keouac, but I’m reasonably confident in my own ability to survive on the road now. I shall be doing this again.

Steinbeck goes on to say,

“In Spanish there is a word for which I can’t find a counter word in English. It is the verb vacilar, present particle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there, though he has direction.”

I love this. I feel like I’ve been vacilando since I first sat down in early 2014 and began to dream up this trip. I needed something of a quest to give me an excuse to roam and explore and adventure without being aimless. Of course the readings from Malcolm Orange Disappears have all been amazing experiences and it’s been such an unexpected treat to get to share my book with so many new readers over the last few weeks. And, I can’t even begin to explain just how over-excited and genuinely thrilled I’ve been to make so many Bob Dylan connections and to have the opportunity to research and experience things I honestly never dreamed I’d be able to; getting into Dylan’s childhood home was easily the best moment of my year so far, (after the book launch). However, looking back now, I have to admit that research and book promotion was never really my primary reason for embarking on this adventure. I needed a framework to hook my wanderings around, a topic I could use to start conversations with strangers, an excuse to draw a line under my Belfast existence for a few months and scare myself back into thinking bigger thoughts and taking more risks. It definitely worked.  Vacilando, indeed, I have arrived at a place I wasn’t really aiming at and it’s just perfect.

Finally, Steinbeck writes,

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

It’s going to take me months to process through everything I’ve learnt and experienced and lost on this trip. I’m not the same person I was two months ago. I don’t think I’m the same writer and it will be interesting to see how this realisation works itself out it in my stories. I feel like I am less fearful than I was when I left Belfast and yet, having seen some very difficult things along the way, I am also more afraid in regards to just how fragile and  hope-hungry we human beings are. People are indeed the greatest things and I have heard stories in the last few months which almost completely restored my appetite for other people. Most every subtle and astounding revelation I’ve had along the way has been instigated in conversation with others; some strangers, some old friends, some precious, brand new friends. The kindness I have been shown along the road has convicted me about my own ideas of hospitality and generosity and so to everyone who gave me a bed, drove me around, bought me food or a beer, let me hug your little ones when I was missing Izzy and Caleb, listened to me read, said encouraging things over me, played songs for me, prayed for me, sat up arguing late into the night with me, drove me round Bob Dylan’s neighbourhood like a slightly demented private detective, watched movies with me, ate with me, walked with me, hosted a reading or shared even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant slice of your life with me, a huge heartfelt thanks. I’m taking a little bit of you home with me, (this is probably why my suitcase is so heavy).

New York/New York – In Which I Am A House, Divided

I love New York.

I loathe New York.

I can’t quite make up my mind about New York and don’t really feel like anyone’s asking me to.

This was my second proper visit to the city and I have to say, having now spent a subtotal of ten full days on Manhattan, I honestly don’t understand why anyone would choose to live here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the most amazing city in the world to visit. When they say that New York never sleeps they are one hundred percent accurate. For the last five days I’ve been hearing the never sleeping city every night, right outside my window: yelling, singing, swearing, blasting sirens and hip hop well into the wee small hours, (not to mention the ever present Subway rumbling just beneath my bed). The flip side of this is that more than anywhere I’ve ever visited – even London- New York feels like a truly cosmopolitan city. You can get whatever you want at every hour of the night. There are always people about and the public transport never shuts down, (note well Belfast!), as a result the whole city feels young, vibrant and remarkably safe.

There’s also so much to do in New York. My Lonely Planet is already dog-eared from four days cramming in all the usual sites, (Guggenheim, Central Park, Times Square, Statue of Liberty), and my own personal pilgrimage round Bob Dylan’s old haunts in Greenwich Village. I’ve walked miles every day and still come home feeling like I haven’t managed to see everything there is to see. New York is a city which feels like it’s constantly expanding with new experiences. As such it’s a perfect place to visit and, (despite it’s far from perfect signage system), I can’t think of a place I’ve ever been which is better equipped to host the short term tourist. However, saying all this I simply could not see myself living in New York or even staying here more than a week.

Much like LA, the pace of life makes me feel anxious and a little overwhelmed. People don’t ever seem to sit down here and everywhere is busy and bustling and designed to keep you moving on through, like a factory conveyor built. It’s dirty and quite smelly, (no one warms you about the smell), and so sticky hot on the Underground that I’ve spent all week longing for a proper bath. There’s a big sadness here too. It’s perceivable everywhere you look: poverty and lonely people, folks crowding under the cinema in Times Square to take photos of a man about to jump, old ladies trying to swap me fake pearls for the shoes off my feet, homeless people who’ll actually follow you down the street begging. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to look in New York or how to respond to what you’re seeing. The business and the crowds are overwhelming but the weariness of the average Subway commuter was much harder for me to stomach.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a great time here. It was wonderful to get to read in the Irish pub, An Beal Bocht last night and better still to sell most of my remaining copies of Malcolm so I don’t have to lug them back to Belfast tomorrow. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to attend a poetry reading in KGB and, have to say, the Guggenheim was one of the best and most striking art museums I’ve visited in a long time. Central Park in the Fall was as beautiful as people tell you it is and I even took a certain pleasure in conquering the Subway system but, after seven weeks on the road, New York was just a little much for me this time. I’m tired and right now my skin is thinner than usual. I felt like I was fighting a battle every time I emerged from my apartment to contemplate the A train and by the end of the day felt drained and in need of a half day’s sleep. I don’t feel like I did New York justice. I should have scheduled this earlier in the adventure when I was still running on full enthusiasm. I’ll come back and try again when I’m better rested.

Two Nights in Baltimore

It was bound to happen eventually. No one, not even Kerouac himself, can spend two straight months on the road without occasionally wishing for a stable place to call home. Exhaustion finally caught up with me in Baltimore, Maryland and, in all honesty, it was the perfect city to fall apart in. It was raining for most of my visit and I had very little clue where in American I actually was. (Best-illustrated by this FaceTime conversation with my brother in Belfast- Alan, “where are you tonight?” Me, scanning environs quickly for any geographical clue, “in the bedroom.”)

After weeks and weeks of being constantly social and mostly eloquent and also capable of repacking a suitcase at the drop of a hat, (never fold, always roll),  I was feeling a little weary, a little burnt out on being so persistently in the company of other people. Baltimore was the only stop on the trip where I didn’t have a reading planned and didn’t really know anyone in town so it seemed like the perfect place to book myself into a nice faded-glitz hotel, (the sort of hotel Agatha Christie might have had Poirot holiday in), and simply rest for a few days. A layover in Baltimore was the best decision I’ve made in weeks.

I walked miles around the beautiful inner harbour, avoiding the Octoberfest merrymakers and the many, many folks in orange sweatshirts who were not as I first imagined, Malcolm’s welcoming committee, but rather locals, off to support some ill-defined sports team. I drank nice wine in the hotel lobby, writing beside the open fire and ate good food and watched trashy American TV shows in bed whilst eating crisps. I went to one of the strangest museums I’ve ever visited outside of Northern Ireland and was charmed and, somewhat confused, by the positioning of Egyptian mummies, oil paintings, butterflies, stuffed animals and armour all within a stone’s throw of each other. (I should not have been confused for the Ulster Museum seems to operate a very similar policy in regards to its collection).

I went to the cinema in the middle of the afternoon and I purposefully picked a movie that would make me cry because I wanted to cry. I brunched with the lovely Joan Weber, (my good friend Nathaniel’s surrogate American mother), read The Year of Magical Thinking cover to cover in one sitting and slept ten hours in a bed made of cotton wrapped marshmallows. I did not feel even the smallest ounce of guilt for any of this. I only wish I’d had the energy to do Baltimore justice.

Ten Things You’re Entitled To Feel Smug About When Visiting New York

Managing to get on the correct Subway train every single time. The folks who designed the New York underground system seem to believe that most New Yorkers run on a subtle blend of native instinct and hard-learned habit. The humble station sign/route map/direction indicators favoured by the London Underground and just about every public train system I’ve ever stumbled upon, (Brussels being the only exception), are few and cryptically far between in this neck of the woods. Riding the Subway involves a lot of guess work, some running and a fair amount of squinting at extremely small station signs as they fly past the train window.
Not flinching when the third crazy person of the day gets right up in your face and yells very loudly for no apparent reason.
Locking yourself in a toilet cubicle before consulting the Lonely Planet map section so no one will ever know you’re not a seasoned local.
Eating three square meals for less than twenty bucks.
Having at least one of the afore-mentioned square meals be something that is not a slice of pizza.
Leaving Manhattan, (even if it is just en route to the airport on the way home).
Managing to fall asleep whilst the entire building vibrates each time a train passes beneath and the televisions on all four sides and above are still blaring some pseudo-Jerry Springer type shouty show at 1am and, outside the window, what sounds to be a particularly violent episode of The Wire is just gathering pace.
Maintaining a stony-faced disregard of the squirrels. They are not cute. They are not photogenic. They are basically just giant rats with tails.
Hailing a cab in the street and persevering despite the fact that approximately two hundred of the little yellow bastards have driven past, pretending they don’t see you. Not taking this personally and wondering, with a mounting sense of insecurity if you’re holding your arm out the wrong way.
Fighting people bigger and scarier and more-business-suited and glarier than you will ever be to get an actual seat in Starbucks because you don’t want to drink your Americano standing up at a bench or striding between skyscrapers or perched on the edge of a step in some downtown park where you will be constantly approached by slightly crazy people who want to sign you up for charities you’ve never heard of/convert you to religions not available in Northern Ireland/give you some fake pearls in exchange for your shoes, (really this happened).

Postcard Stories – Duluth

28th September 2014 – Elizabeth Donaldson

 “All the people on the West Coast of Ireland look like Nancy Reagan,” she says.

And her friend who is almost as old as the building itself and flaunts her age with leopard prints and Barbie pink lipstick, stirs two sachets of Splenda into her coffee and replies, “you don’t say. When you been to Ireland, Martha?”

“Course I never been to Ireland,” says Martha, “Ain’t been no further than the Twin Cities. Saw all about Ireland and Scotland too, one time on a PBS programme.”

29th September 2014 – Brid Gallagher

“It was decided that the giant 25 foot Loon, commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the World Famous Loon Festival in Virginia, Minnesota, should be allowed to remain, floating on the town’s lake, long after the festival ended. The ordinary birds and ducks of Virginia, intimidated by this ill-proportioned rival, developed inferiority complexes, checked themselves into the local gym, took vitamin supplements and considered surgical enhancement. With all reasonable avenues exhausted the began to spread rumours around the town, questioning the Loon’s parenthood and sexual preferences; insinuating that he was merely a common duck in disguise.”

29th September 2014 – Brendan McLoughlin

“There are whole cows floating, petrified beneath the gloom gray water of Lake Superior. In the years before the polar ice caps lost their convictions, when the waves were wall-high and manageable, a railroad rain from one shore to the other. Like Christ himself, walking on, or above, the waterline it skimmed the waves, sewing Minesota to Wisconsin to the wild world beyond. The trains ran for years, backwards and forwards across the lake, loud and low with livestock and iron ore. Until, in the latter days, the waves grew high as hillside houses, dragging carriages, cows and penitent railway men, off the tracks and underwater to become photographs of themselves, still and suspended in the darkening brine.”

30th September 2014 – Marc and Ashley Knowles

 “Just before Exit 214 of Highway 73 you will come across the ‘Fires of 1918 Museum.’ You may not have particularly intended to visit this museum and yet, intrigued by the flames and the very peculiar smell, (burnt pine and charcoal), you will stand outside the door of Denny’s and deliberate between spending your last five bucks on the entrance fee, or getting another double cheeseburger.

 “How,” you will wonder, “have the kept that thing blazing for almost a century when even the Olympic torch falters from time to time?”

1st October 2014 – Sonja Leggewie

 “In 1917 when the prospectors discovered iron ore beneath the streets and just-built basements of Hibbing, a move was inevitable. Every house, church, school and free standing shed would need to pick itself up and slip two miles South so the miners could move in. Progress was slow by hand and foot and individual brick and, once settled in its new location, the question remained, “was Hibbing a specific spot on the Iron Range, or an idea of a town as transient as a passing cloud?”