I wouldn’t assert that any of us in the beats class fancy ourselves particularly patriotic, or the contrary for that matter.  It seems a subject to which many of us, while perhaps opinionated on the connotations of the word itself, have remained largely ambivalent.  And while I would hesitate to call myself more a patriot following this trip, I must admit that it has certainly shaped my own perception of this idea of patriotism. 

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

These are the words that we were inspired to sing across the desert at White Sands.  Sitting in a semi-circle, looking out at the mountains, Ellen was the one to suggest the song and it couldn’t have been more appropriate.  These same words that we all learned in kindergarten, and that seem so corny from the point of view of our everyday local lives, could not have been more powerful and necessary at that moment.  On our journey across America we’ve seen skies in Oklahoma that stretch to fill every empty corner of our vision.  We’ve seen the great fields of grain in Nebraska that are endless and colorless and beautiful.  And we’ve watched the mountains in New Mexico rise to fill our world.  We’ve seen the purple with our own eyes and the effect ends somewhere between running around Joshua Tree at dusk and sitting quietly together at the White Sands, singing the corniest, most real song we could conjure up.  Maybe it has nothing to do with patriotism in the first place, but I for one found something in that song that described what I was experiencing far better than I articulate. 

-Cam

In these past two weeks, I have grown consistently more in tune with a sense of discovery that seems only to be possible in a state of constant motion.  There is something about never being in the same place twice that makes you all the more aware of your surroundings.  On top of that, the length of this trip being nearly a full two weeks, we have been given a very rare opportunity to live in this state of heightened awareness for long enough for the state of change itself to become the norm.  As a group, we are used to getting up every morning at a different Motel 6, and piling into the van two minutes too late.  That this variability has become the norm for us is in itself a unique situation to exist in, especially as a group.  The lack of a grounding location has molded our too-temporary beats world into one in which the only constants are this sense of discovering a new home for ourselves everyday- and the group we are traveling with itself.  An inherent tension is therefore present in everything we do; the tension between the external action of discovering the new, and the very internal one of discovering ourselves as a group.  I think that’s why this trip has been so good at what it does.  That is: remove everything from our lives except for the essentials of what we’re interested in.  For the purposes of this trip I think we are first and foremost interested in ourselves, as individuals and as a group, and I mean it when I say it took a cross-country journey in a van to really learn what we’re doing.  Nothing has had the ability to help me define myself to the degree of the perspective this trip has afforded me.  The experience of discovery is as fulfilling as you make it, and I think on that front, we have done well.

-Cam

If all goes as planned there are only 12 hours left on the Beats Trip.  We have developed such a rhythm during this trip that it is a little odd that tomorrow morning will be the last time we all pack into the van for any extended period of time.  Now I’ve been in a lot of situations where I have been with a group for some period of time (often over the summer) and then it is time to come home.  As a rule endings for things like these are particularly bad.  They often feel cheap and only serve to undermine some of what took place.

The ending to our trip on the other hand could not have been better.  Now I know that it isn’t technically over yet but for all intensive purposes tonight was our last group activity on the trip.  I have got to give credit to Simpson for coming up with such a good ending.  Essentially we wrote about one memory we had about each person and then about how that memory summed up their being and personality on the trip (all of this writing was done in a candlelit room which kind of made the atmosphere that much more effective).  This caused you to think very specifically about the trip and helped to recall parts of the trip that had already been forgotten.  Also this exercise kept the mood positive as we were constantly affirming what made each of us great.  All to often in stuff like this people mope about what they are leaving and make dramatic claims that they wish it could last forever.  I’m not saying I’m ready for the trip to end but I am exhausted.  I really am happy that the trip is ending in a positive realistic way then romantic, superlative filled rants that all to often accompany the endings of summer programs.

So I guess one thing I’m saying is that if you want to meaningfully end a trip of some kind take note of this exercise.  It leaves positive rather than negative feelings and allows you to really look at what made the trip special in specific rather than general romantic ways. 

Also while this might seem slightly contradictory to what I was just saying about romantic generalizations, I just want to thank Simpson, Gottlieb and everyone on the trip for making this trip a really interesting and unique experience for me that I will not soon regret.

-Ben

The trip is coming to a close and after spending the last night or two reflecting on it together (either out loud or silently scribbling in our sketchbooks) I’ve come to realize that my favorite moments have not been those when we’re all loudly chattering in the van, or a restaurant, or some random small town, or the motels (although those have all been great moments) but rather when everyone is completely silent. There have been a couple fantastic moments like this.

The first such occurred after we left Oklahoma City for Elk City. It was late and pretty dark by the time we got on the road for our last two hours or so of driving. For about the first hour we talked, although the discussion was less than energetic since we were all very tired. When the conversation died down I asked Mr. Simpson if we could put on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” an album we had planned to listen to that day but hadn’t gotten to. He did, and the mood of the silence that had been in the van noticeably changed. It went from an exhausted silence to a relaxed one. For the next hour no one talked. Some people slept but I didn’t want to. The music, the darkness outside, the blinking red lights on wind turbines we passed, made that ride one of my most vivid memories of the trip.

The second moment like this happened when we were on our way to San Francisco from Palm Springs. We had decided to take a more scenic route even though it meant a much longer ride. It was a great day, very sunny. It proved worth it to take this route, but soon we were all exhausted and almost everyone fell asleep, including me. I woke up to a live version of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain” which had a jam session that was at least fifteen minutes within it. I looked around and saw that everyone was asleep except for me, Ben, Mr. Simpson, and Ms. Gottlieb. We all silently acknowledged each other’s presence and for the next twenty minutes or so (until everyone else woke up) I stared out the window and watched parts of California’s wine country move past my window and could barely recall another instance when I’d felt so relaxed.

These moments were rare and few. There were plenty of times where we were given a kind of forced silence like when we were all writing in our sketchbooks, but there’s something different about a silence of concentration and a silence of relaxation. It is these silences of relaxation that I think will remain with me the longest after this trip ends.

-Hugh

I hesitate to write this blog entry because it’s proving difficult to write about without sounding unpleasantly haughty or suck-up-y (for lack of a better description).  Yet, I think it’s important to acknowledge the incredible success of this trip. Personally, I didn’t quite believe we’d actually go through with this… really until we pulled out of the parking lot eleven days ago. The trip was subject to a fair amount of scrutiny from the beginning… by students, faculty, parents, pretty much everyone. We got a lot of “BTRF”’s, as Ellen referred to it in her first blog entry, and a lot of condescending laughs. Getting into the van for the first time was terrifying.  Earlier this evening, we girls shared our first sketchbook entries, written 15 minutes before we were scheduled to leave. The feelings were unanimous: horrified by what we got ourselves into. 

It has been perfect. Not completely flawless, but still perfect. There have been obstacles, accidentally going to Colorado, for example. We get tense with one another on occasion. We thought we lost Kathryn once. But, how could you expect otherwise? We can laugh at our errors, and the moments of suffering make the best moments feel more rewarding. 

I feel like we’ve really proved something. I don’t mean we’ve proved ourselves, but something bigger than that. The ease with which we spend even the 12-hour days in the van, the unfailing enthusiasm for our destinations, the dedication to our sketchbooks …. it proves that the thrill of sightseeing across America is enough to bring eight teenagers and two teachers together. That is something near impossible in most situations. Many of us are 18, ready to be free of the restrictions and guidelines of our parents or a school environment. Yet our curfew and behavior has not been a problem. Simpson and Gottleib are as involved in our conversations and jokes as much as anyone because we respect their opinions and honestly enjoy their company. Even at our worst moments, we have not lost sight of our goal: to see America in a thoughtful, academic, and pleasurable way…. to see what the original Beats saw… to document and reflect on our thoughts. This not only validates the inspirational qualities that the Beat writers found in America, but the bond created intellectual companionship and common interest in literature and the arts. This says a lot about the Beats, as it implies their movement was more than merely a drug-induced rebellion against the 1950’s social norms. Their writing represents the value of American culture and landscape, and the power of academic commune. 

Here comes the part where I hesitate the most, but this wouldn’t have been possible without Simpson and Gottleib. Beyond the intricacies of planning and coordinating the trip (which they did phenomenally), they also subtly and unfailingly maintain our morale, encourage an enthusiasm and confidence in what we’re doing, keep us focused and thoughtful, and ultimately make the trip the brilliant experience that is. That takes a talent and understanding of high school students that many don’t have. They often say there isn’t another group of students they’d rather take this trip with. I think I can speak for the entire group, there aren’t two other people, even other classmates, that we’d want to experience this with.

-Emily 

I think all of us were surprised when we had our first big screaming argument in the van today. Not surprised because we were arguing, but surprised that it took us this long to do so. We are a group unafraid of disagreement, and most of us enjoy a good heated debate. Our classmates, who have to listen to us fight in the senior room all the time, will be shocked to hear that it took us this long to really start yelling at each other. So far on the trip we have certainly disagreed in a more polite way, we have discussed our contradicting ideas, we’ve had educated conversations. We’ve also disagreed in more petty, personal ways. We’re used to that kind of irritated snappish tone that becomes acceptable among people who spend so much time together, like when Cameron asks to have a sip of orange juice and Emily says “No!” and Cameron glares at her but in a minute they have both forgotten.

But the argument that we had today, the type of argument that we had assumed would be ubiquitous on the trip, fell into neither of these categories. It was the kind of argument that begins with a subject that we all have only a slight understanding of and ends with all of us claiming to be complete experts on the subject (String Theory almost always comes into things at some point- it’s the perfect example of something that we know just enough to ague about without have any facts or legitimate knowledge to back us up). Inevitably, we try to overcompensate for our ignorance by becoming louder and louder and louder. Today the argument began with a question of milk (which is healthier, skim or whole?), which soon turned into something about diet soda (does it cause cancer?), which brought up the question of obesity (Cameron asserts that it does not cause heart problems), and got more ridiculous from there. Somehow, we ended up at cannibalism (does eating your own species cause a health risk). There is a kind of jokiness in that sort of argument, an unspoken knowledge that nobody quite knows what they’re talking about and a complete refusal to concede defeat. We yelled about these things, furiously asserting our points, our subjects taking on huge importance. We yelled, really yelled, determined to prove our points. In reality, the argument wasn’t particularly important, but for those minutes we took it incredibly seriously.

Despite the seeming hostility of such a scene, I think it is demonstrative of the closeness that our group has built up. By arguing in that way, we are pushing to the boundaries of our relationships with one another. We are now at the point where we’re comfortable in long extended silence, we’re comfortable in all types argument, we’re comfortable sitting together and writing. Someone pointed out the other day that we have all fallen into similar ways of speaking. We all say “the extent to which,” and “problematic,” and “heightened,” much more than we probably should, but I don’t really mind. I like the commonness that we’ve created, the bizarre and nonsensical shared vocabulary.  I’m sure that if we could replay our argument from today we would cringe, we would be embarrassed for ourselves in our own ridiculousness. But I’m okay with that. I like that we are comfortable being embarrassing in front of each other. There’s a reason this type of argument took a long time for us to get to, it was the product our days and days spent together, the evidence of our togetherness.

-Ellen

It’s possible that the worst exhibit in San Francisco’s Beat Museum is the weatherbeaten Hudson they’ve lamely parked by the cash register and attached to a small printed note that reads, “Did Neal Cassady steal this car?”  Even the note looks embarrassed for having to be there.  The old car is just some old car, it may or may not have been in Denver around the time that Cassady was stealing such cars, and as if to hammer home the loose association this car can claim to the Beats there are a pair of skis lying across the passenger seat.  Did Cassady steal the car?  Well – it is a car.  So it’s possible.  But it’s not at all likely, and still less likely that he’d then gone, you know, skiing[1] or something.

Much of the Beat museum operates on the guiding principle that “Thing X May Remind You of Not-Present Thing Y”.  It’s less a collection of Beat Memorabilia and in fact more a collection of “Things Similar to Things Jack Kerouac May Have Used — or Not Used — When He Was Doing Something”[2].  As such you sort of split your time there trying to engage the collection in a meaningful way and just chuckling at the lunatic hokiness of the place[3].  But in a back room on the first floor they loop a Kerouac documentary that contains some reasonably startling video of mid-sixties Jack, bloated and crazy, vigorously explaining the vast intellectual distance between his work and “the damned commies and hippies” who followed after him[4].  Kerouac sounds impossibly self-involved and a little confused – to anyone with even a passing interest in the man it’s uncomfortable stuff.  But just after that footage, the documentary returns to his revelatory reading on the Steve Allen show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCF6hgEfto), where Kerouac is breathtaking and magical, where he speaks with clarity and authority, where he weaves in and out between the first and last pages of On the Road without ever turning a page.  Steve Allen gamely accompanies him on the piano, and Kerouac delivers the finest reading I’ve ever heard.

We were in Rock Springs for Kerouac’s recent birthday in reading aloud from On the Road in the morning and “Mexico City Blues” in the evening that disparity between the vital Jack Kerouac of the 1940’s and the lethargic, difficult Jack Kerouac of the 1960’s was once again omnipresent.   I’ve been thinking since that perhaps therein lies the real attraction of Kerouac – that he spent the bulk of his life trying to claw his way from beneath that magnificent legacy he accidentally created for himself, that his own mythos moved faster than he could, that he never quite could get out in front of his own terrible shadow.

[1] For those of you who enjoy detail, the skis were Volkls from about 1993.

[2] For a good example, the Beat Museum has collected “period furniture” (period not identified) as proof that Kerouac himself may have sat down.

[3] It helps not at all that City Lights sits about a block and a half away.  City Lights is somehow a more magical place than it’s own towering legacy: aside from being a terrific bookstore, it feels exactly how you hope it might.  Never mind the ghosts in the second floor, in the basement, of Kerouac and Kesey and Dylan and pretty much anyone you’d ever want to meet; nevermind the ongoing hope of bumping into Ferlinghetti himself and having the opportunity to say – in an offhand way – “Are you Larry?”.

[4] His assertion here is that the commies and hippies “missed it completely” but, as happens over and over with the Beats, though he is very clear on how badly “it” was “missed”, he’s pretty opaque when it comes to what the missed “it” is.

-Mike

Pinch pots out of Salt Flat Clay:

The Rocks at Medicine Bow:

Betty Hoop & Menagerie:

Adair, Iowa:

Sketchbooks (for more information, see the below).

The day we left Lancaster, about an hour before we piled into the van, we did a short writing exercise. We were told to walk somewhere private, to go be alone, to take our sketchbooks with us and just write down what was in our heads. So we took off in separate directions, found places where we couldn’t see one another, and filled the first pages of our sketchbooks.

            I sat against a tree and with freezing hands wrote a furious entry about apprehension and fear and exhaustion. I was terrified, I was regretful, I was digging my fingernails into the ground in a desperate attempt to slow our departure, to put it off for just a couple more hours.

            As I recall the half an hour or I spent writing about this, of course I’m now entertained by my cold feet. The trip has been unbelievably fun; I feel an incredible amount of gratitude. And, far from the cynical, shriveled world my first entry predicted, these past eleven days have been loaded with a sense of revelation, or, at the very least, transformation.

            I thought about this entry more, however, and I realized there is something far more interesting about it other than its remarkable inaccuracy. Those thirty minutes I sat scribbling pleas and regrets into my notebook were to be the last that I spent writing anything in private.

            Group work has become for me one of the hallmarks of the whole trip. And perhaps group work isn’t even the right phrase; I don’t mean that we as a group work together on a shared product. Rather, I mean that when we work independently, we are never physically isolated. When we do artwork and sketching by the side of the road, we sit in a circle and share supplies. When we write at the end of the day, we crowd into a small hotel room and write together, quietly. Even when we are in the van, we are shoulder-to-shoulder, we can see each other’s work, and it is often the case that when one person opens their sketchbooks in their lap, eight other people will do the same.

            Even now, I am accompanied as I write by my four roommates. On this trip, there has been no such thing as a quiet space to work. Even when there is no talking, even when we are writing “silently”, we can hear each other’s pens, we can hear each other turn pages, and we are persistently reminded of our sharing of (very limited) space, of being a group. And the most remarkable thing about this persistent lack of intellectual privacy is that, far from being bothered by it, I’ve learned to treasure it in a way.

            Something really cool happens when you work independently in the presence of other people doing the same. It’s a quiet kind of group momentum, but a really poignant one nonetheless. I think a small part of this potency has something to do with competitiveness: can you put as many words on the page as the person nearest you? But I think an even larger part of it can be attributed to something more intangible, a kind of loyalty to the group momentum. We all recognize our interdependence, and seem to have a tremendous amount of respect for it. This is a quality of the trip I never could have imagined, and sitting, writing, drawing, and sketching with my classmates had been one of the more thrilling things I’ve experienced in the past eleven days.

-Kathryn