Reading in the Car

The following is something I wrote in a rediscovered drawing journal sometime last year. It's a good example of the kind of stuff I write in my pysical journal (that is not a ppoem). I think I wrote it while on the Capitol Corridor train on my way between SF (where I lived) and Davis (where I apprentice).

Some History: My family lived in a van and travelled "Blue Highways" style for a year in 1993. I was 13, my brother was 9. I slept in a tent, and Jordan slept in a hammock that went across the front seat of the van. We got REALLY good at reading in the car. I think that year inspired this.
While the essay is meant to be humorous, everything in it is absolutely true. It took me forever to type it, since I can't type. Enjoy!!!

My parents kept pointing things out. Rock formations, giant trees, birds which I saw as nothing more than a faint blip against the green screen of underbrush. "Look!", they'd exclaim, and if they got no responce Pop would reach back and swat whatever peice of me was closest- "Check it out, Kai!" Mom would be aweing and ooohing obediantly, trying to enthuse us into excitement about some new facet of the same old Nature we were living in every day. Jordan and I would stare stonily everywhere but at the new and exciting feature outside of the car, usually down at the huge tomes of whatever fantasy epic we were currently losing ourselves in. In escape from the majestic wilderness and neverending stream of campgrounds we plunged into majestic make-believe lands peopled with elves, often camping elves, but without the very un-epic mosquitoes and nylon tents and mangy squirrels. We would much rather fight an army of orcs with dark-hewn weapons in their scabbards, than listen to another drunken family have a campfire sing-along to Bob Seeger Silver Bullet band.
Obviously, these fantasy novels (the longer the series the better- if we could stack the volumes up to a vertical height that surpassed our knees then we were set) were another thorn in our parents' sides. So blatant in their hollow escapism, so formulaic, we took comfort and laughed at their rehash of the LOTR plot; over and over a small band of outcasts- each of a different race and each with their own special weapon, animal familiar, and cultural prejudices- manage to see through their differences and band together to save the whole world from the encroaching tide of pure Evil and Darkness. Our parents point out a waterfall tumbling along next to the road and the way it has worn boulders into primitive sculptures. Jordan and I are fixed to the pages, car-sickness be damned.
As basically obediant and good children, our small rebellion involves not looking, or, equally bad; not looking and exclaiming. We would numbly not when asked if we saw said feature, then be asked again and again, louder and more angrily, until we explode with an indignant "YES!!" and everyone braces for the upcoming lecture about our ingratitude towards our parents, and the natural world in general, and our future as TV-watching, good-for-nothing, junk-food-eating, Republicans who probably live in the LA basin and don't recycle. Lectures like this are infuriating, as we would all hate to be that person, and no matter how much we deny it- it seems inevitable.
Mom is quiet through these exchanges, sometimes she would try to draw the focus back to the trees that we didn't look at, like she missed the angry tirade, and the mopey kids shooting each other looks of righteous hatred in the back of the van. She would utter a pealing sigh of awe and happiness, as if she was so intoxicated by the verdant greenery that she had been struck deaf for the last 10 minutes. Mom just wanted us to be a close, nice, happy family of innocents. Pop went for a vision of politicaly-savvy, physically-fit group of fearless outdoorsy individuals who make friends and leave a wave of popularity and achievement in their tanned and muscular wake. Us kids dreamed soley of a family where we were allowed to retreat fully into a world of books, could read all day long, in very situation, even during dinner, and never had to engage in any physical activity- even walking.
The world swept by these four, my brother and I missing monuments in the surly indifference of youth,and our parents hanging on every plaque and rock formation like it was the fountain of this aforementioned youth. And maybe it was.
I grow older and find myself magically changed into a dorky adult who marvels at stands of trees, formations of geological splendor, and the simple existance of the grasshopper and the echidna. I find myself excited by going to the zoo, on a camping trip, on a bikeride or by the sight of a tree bursting into delicate plum blossoms. I exclaim to my friends, who call back to me "LOOK! LOOK!" with the same awestruck excitement. And we look and we know finally for sure- that youth is wasted on the young.