The Road travelled by Jack London (Rutgers) is quite a different one. The first in Rutgers’ Subterranean Lives: Chronicles of Alternative America series, London’s Road contains all of the stories that he wrote about his hobo days at the turn of the nineteenth century, riding the rails with tramps who sported “monicas” like New York Tommy, Pacific Slim and Syracuse Shine. In “Hoboes That Pass in the Night,” London tells how he tramped “clear across Canada over three thousand miles of railroad” in 1894, following close on the heels of a hobo named Skysail Jack.
In Paris, during a recent visit, I find myself thinking about my father’s hands. Walking along the streets and watching thousands of tourists using their digital cameras, I remember the way my father held his old Kodak when he took photographs. He would hold the camera near his stomach and bow his head in order to look at the little prism on the left side of the camera’s accordion-like body. Many years later, after he died, I learned that he had held it near one of the important chakras, the vital points in human body where energy flows in or out, or just sits there waiting to be used. Had I known it earlier, I would not have felt ashamed when he made my sister and me stand motionlessly in front of an old synagogue somewhere in Israel.
Canada’s new five-dollar coin features the world-famous Canadian actor William Shatner. The new 9.2-gram coin shows an effigy of Shatner, star of film and television.
Rick laughed. I walked away. I was irritated at Henry, at Lee for getting stoned and being paranoid and leaving without saying goodbye, at Rick, at everyone. A few days earlier, we had all been walking together in a field of mud, after driving to King City to trespass through a field to see a Richard Serra sculpture that had been built there years ago. It had been a cold, cloudy day. My boots got all muddy. We had been fucking happy then.
