Log Book
Log Entry 25/01/2009 - 16:03:07
Finally finding a quiet moment to write a few words to go with this image. As David mentioned, I became very excited when we rounded a curve and the resting truck came into view. The image was somehow already arrested, so perfect and startling with the mountains and cobalt sky behind. It seemed to capture visually many of my inclinations toward writing this project: something about inherent restlessness, a refusal to sit still for very long. The trucks looks to me as if it might awaken at any moment, and begin again.
Log Entry 23/01/2009 - 19:30:03
Home again. Infinite thanks to David and Bev for their kindness and hospitality, and to Johanna for all her organizational assistance. Indeed, I nearly absconded with poor Daryl's rig, was feeling power-drunk sitting so high above everyone. Fortunately, Dave was there to help put my feet back on the ground, quite literally. The trip was a sort of effortless whirlwind. Have spent today writing and looking at photographs - will post a few tomorrow. Thinking about the other selves we create when we travel, the sort of rootless, placeless beings who become us when we are far from home. How fast they disappear as routine consumes once again. How it must feel to travel perpetually, to refuse to stay put long enough for singularity to capture.
Log Entry 08/01/2009 - 16:47:18
Hi all.
I, too, am very excited about working on this project, which has awakened in me a curious sort of traveller's nostalgia. I grew up in the American south: first in Alabama, then Kentucky. In parts where highways have only recently begun to link places in which, only a generation ago, most people were content to live out their days just miles from their parents and grandparents. Trucking is very much a way of being there, and trucking culture has become embedded within southern culture.
I suppose the quintessential aspect of this is the truck-stop, a dying traveller's refuge that was scattered across the map of my childhood, now sadly being replaced by all night convenience stores with fast food restaurants attached. The true, original truck stop was a family-owned business, usually containing a gas station, a diner serving 'home food' (an all day breakfast menu always included grits, or biscuits and gravy), and a small store. The abandoned husks of old truck stops can often be found on the old two-lane highways, themselves eerily vacant now that all the traffic has moved to the interstate.
Some, thankfully, are still operational, like The Coffee Cup, a diner about 10 miles from my old home. Equally popular with locals and travellers, if you wander in after midnight you can find all manner of folks: truckers, drunks, teenage revellers trying to sober up before sneaking home, shiftworkers, students from the nearby university looking for a (relatively) quiet place to study, drink coffee, and smoke -- and yes, poets.
Our partners © 2010 The Red Room Company Highway photo by Bill Strong