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America The Beautiful
I was keeping my eye out the window on that star hovering over the Lower East Side as I laid comfortably awake on a couch that was deceptively comfortable. I would leave when I couldn't see the star anymore and go move my vehicle parked nearby.
In the parking lot I studied a map for a minute but who am I kidding, I don't read maps that well. Winging it had me on Delancey going the wrong direction and right before the Williamsburg bridge with the sun in my eyes blinding me to the reality that cops are everywhere I jumped a piece of real estate that we call neutral grounds in New Orleans and other people call medians but in New York the cops call...
...rushing across the street two NY traffic cops are gesticulating, at me I guess.
"Sir, what the hell are you doin, you wanna tell me that, just what the hell you're doin? Jumpin a sidewalk? Are you crazy, you can't jump sidewalks, where are you from?"
"I know I'm a f***up but I'm turned around again and I can't go over the Williamsburg Bridge, I'm tired of my mistakes and I have no business in Williamsburg." I said all this in pleading voice.
The lead cop paused to look at my inspection sticker, with it's distinctive upside down white crescent on red background, and said, "Oh, you're from New Orleans, I just got back from New Orleans two weeks ago, great town, I go a couple a times a year!"
It was barely seven in the morning, cars were rushing off the bridge from Williamsburg, looking at me up on on this sidewalk/neutral ground/median hanging out the window talking, now just talking, conversationally, to these two cops.
"You know, it's more expensive down there than I would have thought."
"You're staying in the Quarter?"
"Yeah."
"They get you pretty good there and all up Canal, yeah."
"I go twice a year, like in October and April; the weather was perfect this last time."
"Those are good times; don't go in the summer though, it will break your heart."
"Yeah, it get's hot I hear. Hey, where you goin, you goin back to New Orleans now? You need directions, you want me to lead you out of here," the lead cop said happily.
I told him my plans, the most immediate being the entering of the Holland Tunnel and about Virginia and New Orleans and how I was thinking about moving after all that, maybe next spring. The second cop said,
"You're not thinking about moving here!" I think he meant it in a nice way like you seem all free spirited being able to consider moving any place you like so why the hell would you consider New York. I have so many thoughts. I could have told him a few of them but it might have been embarrassing for all of us so I just spoke the blanket truth.
"I don't know where I'm going or where I'll end up most of the time."
The lead cop gave me directions, making sure I knew the Bowery and how to spell it, and then the right on Canal, easy as pie.
I got lost three more times between the tunnel and my eventual departure from Jersey City, where I spent the earliest part of the morning napping upright on a bench with a sack full of books between my knees and a sliver of the sun on my face listening through my headphones to Catpower and every so often smelling the sweet aftershave or perfume of morning passersby. I would open my eyes to look at a dog barking at a puppy or a mother pushing her baby on the swingset and since it was Halloween there was also a dog or two in full costume: capes, hats, dinosaur suits and such.
Very close to where I stay, in familiar territory, someone took down all the pertinent road signs, so I got lost again, added an hour to the trip, against my will exploring new roads through the pastoral beauty of farmland backdropped with mountains backdropped with an exploding red, white, and blue sunset while my hand got numb from squeezing the steering wheel because I was trying not to fall asleep at the wheel.