I packed the wrong reading material for this trip. I grabbed Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, a collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield. I grabbed The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl, because if I don't read that on a three day train ride I never will, and I have my Collected Poems by Philip Larkin. I'm not sure about Matthew Pearl, but the rest are Brits. And Pearl is writing on Dickens, who is as English as the Queen. I should be reading Jack Keroac and Walt Whitman. I've never read Keroac, but I've heard he's best when you're young. Michael Moore was my Jack Keroac. I watched all his movies when I was in high school, even the bad ones. I thought he was a genius and a godsend. Then a couple years later after the recession he came out with Capitalism: A Love Story and it was just bad. Hard to watch, biased as all hell, angrier than it was biased. Oddly enough, that sentence there could describe my adolescence. Maybe that's why I liked him so much.
I don't have much packing room for this trip, both because I had to bring enough food for myself and because I can't check a bag from Chicago to Boston. As such, I only brought books I really wanted to either read or have for the summer. Pearl's The Last Dickens was purchased for my Charles Dickens class, but got cut. The Mansfield collection was an impulse buy because it was this delightful pocket-sized paperback and included "Feuille d'Album"--one of my favorite pieces of writing ever, and I didn't own it. I brought Larkin along because I feel naked without Larkin, and four months is too long to be apart. And finally Wilde was included because I kind of sort of want to put on The Importance of Being Earnest at my school. I don't have the time, or the expertise, but basically I just really love the play.
Still prairie. Also cows, lots of cows. The road sign says we're in Hinsdale, for what that's worth. We're smack dab in the middle of America. And we'll be here for a while.
It is 8:18, I should make myself a sandwich. I need to eat up my turkey cold cuts before they go bad from the lack of cold. They certainly don't make it easy, train travel. There's a little cafe and a sit down car where you can get $15 dollar frozen dinners, but other than that you're on your own. If you were stupid, you'd be in trouble. Luckily I'm not stupid. I went shopping before I got on board. I bought two things of Fred Meyer Chips Ahoy knock offs, two 8 oz things of cheddar cheese, almost a pound of turkey, two loaves of bread and a thing of english muffins, a tin of almonds, a box of granola, and some honey. I like honey. It can go on english muffins, in granola, and that's about it. Probably my least practical purchase, but I like honey. All told it cost $40 dollars. If it feeds me for the four days I'm on the road (counting saturday before I left) it'll be a good investment. Of course that doesn't count the Doritos and Twix bars I bought stoned in Spokane. It pained me to break the budget, but when in Rome you do as the Romans do, and when you're stoned in Spokane you buy junk food. If I wasn't hungry before, I am now after writing about food. It's eatin' time.
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