That Would Be Me (dot net)

Yes, I’m verbose.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

I think the whole “six degrees of separation” theory is based on faulty science, but has become so ingrained in the American Zeitgeist that anyone daring to disbelieve it is at best considered an idiot and at worst labeled a heretic.

That being said, I recently had a series of “small world” experiences.

I decided to join the social netorking site MySpace, in part to promote our book, and in part to see what all the hoo ha was about.  Not knowing quite how to build a circle of friends, which you need to survive on a social networking site, I’m told, I did a search for gay men in Los Angeles that were around my own age. I looked at their profiles one by one and those that seemed interesting I sent friend’s requests to. After the initial contact, I corresponded with very few of them. So much for social networking.

One, Peter, had been in my friend’s list for quite some time when he posted a bulletin regarding a blog in which he had linked a video discussing a conspiracy about possible government involvement in 9/11. In his blog, he was skeptical but intrigued by the notion. I sent him an email with my thoughts on the matter - there was a loud rumor that Roosevelt knew ahead of time that the Japanese were headed for Pearl Harbor but did nothing so he could have an excuse to enter World War Two. If we can believe that, why couldn’t we believe that at least someone in the government may have known about the imminent attack and not only did nothing but prevented others from doing anything in order to start, say, a war over oil - and he wrote back.

We started a delightful correspondence having little to do with politics. We talked about pop culture, travel, our lives thus far. And we made each other giggle. At least he made me giggle.

Shortly before this, my writing partner Steve and I went to a marketing seminar where we met (among other people) a movie director named Marc Rosenbush, who had made an independent movie called Zen Noir. I talked with him, picking his brain about movie making. (I’m picking the brain of anyone I can about movie making these days.) When he put up a MySpace page for his movie, added that to my friends.

One of the Zen Noir page’s friends was a strange fellow called The Alien. He was so weird, surreal and wonderful, I had to have him join me and invited him to be my friend.

Back to Peter. One afternoon, feeling I knew him well enough, now, to ask personal questions (we still hadn’t really met, mind you) I asked him if he had a boyfriend. He said he did, and that his boyfriend was one of my friends, The Alien, whose real name was Jon Harris and who was one of the actors in Zen Noir.

Well. I’m not done, yet.

Peter, Jon and I decided we should actually meet at some point, so I joined them for lunch at a charming little café in West Hollywood. During lunch our conversation was so easy and our sense of conection so strong, we all decided that we must have known each other through several incarnations. We were talking about our travels and lives and Jon told a story about when he lived in Seattle. He directed a play there and in it was this wonderful actress who made him laugh. Her name was Therese Diekhans. Well, I dropped my teeth (which is fairly amazing considering they’re all originals). I went to college with a wonderful actress named Therese Diekhans! We were both founding members of the original Interplayers Ensemble in Spokane, Washington. (Really. I still have letterhead.) Jon went outside for a moment and when he came back, he handed me his cell phone and said, “It’s for you.” It was Therese! We chatted briefly, caught up and have kept in touch since.

I now have two wonderful new friends who came at me from entirely different directions and have been reacquainted with an old friend who I cherish!

Small world.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Spy Magazine, that wonderful satirical magazine that slowly started losing subscribers as it slowly devolved into a bitch fest, had a great feature called “Logrolling In Our Time” which presented two members of American intelligentsia giving favorable, often glowing critiques of each other on their respective pulpits. It was surprising how many pairs of mutual admirers they could find to keep the feature fed for as many issues as they did. This is a different kind of logrolling, more in line with birling, where a lumberjack perches on a log in the water and spins it with his feet in order to keep his balance. This is an essay inspired by a movie based on a book about a man who wrote a book about a real life event. It is, therefore, at least five times removed from anything that could possibly be considered important to anyone. And so I roll the log.

The movie, of course, is Infamous, which I finally saw last night on cable, about Truman Capote writing his masterpiece (and artistic swan song) In Cold Blood. In this movie Sandra Bullock proves she can really act, disappearing completely into her role. I don’t know if she accurately portrayed Harper Lee, I’ve never met, seen or watched video of the diminutive writer, but Bullock convinced me, at the very least, that she was someone other than Sandra Bullock. It is also a movie in which Daniel James Bond Craig plays one of at least two conflicted gay men he has portrayed on-screen. This essay, you may have guessed, is not about them. The log continues to spin under my feet.

It is, moreover, not about why we are as fascinated by the masterful In Cold Blood as we are by Capote, the silly, pretentious little gossip who wrote it. So fascinated that, within a year, there were two movies made about him creating it. (And there was a movie based on the “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. And there was the Broadway play, called Tru, about Truman’s last years, as he faded into obscurity after bitterly betraying his high society friends by telling all their tales in one of the few books he was able to write after finishing In Cold Blood. And the television special based on the play. It’s not about those, either.) I think the reasons we are fascinated by him and by it, even though he and it seem on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, are really one thing: Voyeurism. We are a nation of voyeurs. We love getting inside the minds of criminals, watching them plan and execute their crimes. And then we love watching them be caught and punished for the crimes. We also love a gossip. And we surely love watching a gossip crumble and die. We love watching. And I love watching us watch. I’m a voyeur of voyeurs. Even though I’ve never read the book In Cold Blood. But, as you may have surmised, this essay is about none of that. I almost lost my balance for a moment, there.

So what, exactly, is this essay about? It started with a description of how a defunct magazine feature relates to a movie based on a book about a man who wrote a book about a real life event, then moved into a condemnation (or celebration, perhaps) of voyeurism and a confession of talking about something I don’t know anything about. It is about the random connections our spinning minds make, connecting immediate input with data stored so long ago its accuracy might be questioned, and thinking, in the moment the connections occur and coalesce in our conscious minds, that we have discovered or realized something brilliant that others will be moved or intrigued to read or hear. I have just plunged into the icy water and the log is now spinning on its own, quite out of my reach.

It’s not about anything, ultimately. It is logrolling. There is a website that sells a tee shirt that says, “More people have read this shirt than your blog”. I think I’ll buy that shirt. It makes me laugh every time I think about it.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

And what the hell is a continental breakfast? Where did it come from? Which continent? It sounds vaguely European, but somehow I doubt that they only serve Cherios, cornflakes, waffles, orange juice and coffee for breakfast in Brussels.

Yesterday at a rest stop, I climbed a steep hill (a triumph in itself) to look over into the rough cut valley of a Utah canyon. On the way up, I passed a small mound of sand in the rocky path that was swarming with red ants. Almost at the top of the hill there was a hole in the path that was swarming with large black ants. I predict a war in the near future.

Las night I actually sat in the Jacuzzi and swam in the indoor pool at the motel I was staying at. It was run by a handsome young Indian man (from India, not a Native American, who should be called Native Amercanian or something to avoid all the confusion. Or, perhaps, they should just be called “The People.” They were, after all, here first) and the pool area looked neat and clean. Shortly after I got there, a nice Morman family joined me. They may not really have been Morman, but when I asked the father where they were traveling to, he said, “We’re from Salt Lake City. We’re going to Moab,” so I assumed they were. The youngest son was the first into the Jacuzzi. I chatted with him for a moment, then went into the pool. He seemed to want to show off for me, diving and jumping and splashing and always looking sort of slyly my way to make sure I saw. Starved for attention? A budding actor? His older brother was much more reticent. Teenager, you see, and much too cool to care what some long haired stranger thought.

This morning, when I left my room to pack the car, there was a family of small lizards skittering around on the hot sidewalk outside my room. They were tan with a subtle striping and their tails were blue! Some just a dull blue-gray, some quite a bright, almost teal. They ran and jumped ahead of me, staying on the sidewalk, but seeming to want to get away from the large human with the suitcase pursuing them. When they ran by the door to the motel lobby, they jumped up against the door jam as if they knew somehow that it was sometimes open and they were able to get out of the heat that way. They did this to the door to my room, also. In fact twice, when I opened the door, one would get in. It wasn’t hard to get him out again, I simply stood by the corner he ran to (under the air conditioner both times) and he would run the other way and out. It was a different one each time, the first one was a little bigger and darker brown. I didn’t really mind them being in there, but thought if I left them there, they’d either stave to death or the next tenant in the room might be a skittish little girl and I didn’t want to be the indirect cause of any hysterical shrieking. I want my shrieking to be direct, by golly.

So far, besides the two heavy storms during the seminar, it has rained three times on this trip. Once going up the Rockies on the way east, once going up the Rockies on the way west and once in the middle of nowhere in the Utah desert. (Everywhere in the Utah desert, of course, is in the middle of nowhere, but this short, heavy storm was in the middle of that.) When the rain started in earnest in Utah, I took in the smell. For some reason I love the smell when rain first hits hot ground, an earthy smell, like dust. It seems both dry and wet.

Shortly after that last storm, I pulled into a View Area to put the top back down on the car and had a lovely conversation with a nice couple from somewhere back east who traveled around the country converting Thrifty Drug stores into CVS Drug stores. They were headed for a short stay in San Diego, then an extended one in Los Angeles. We chatted a while, I told them about the La Brea Tar Pits, which was near where they were staying, and told them about our book, Weeping Willow, and gave them a card. (I tell almost everyone I meet about our book, Weeping Willow, and give them a card. Have I told you about Weeping Willow? Would you like a card?) The woman seemed impressed and promised to look the site up. The husband seemed kindly aloof and smiled. I suspect he won’t be looking up our site.

This time through, Eastern Utah doesn’t seem quite so foreboding. It still feels alien, mind you, and empty of life, but I can more see how someone might actually like it. Someone weird. An antisocial loner. You’re not from Eastern Utah, are you?

Okay, I’ve been sitting at this rest stop long enough for one black leather clad motorcycle lad to come and go (how the hell can he wear black leather in this heat?) and another two motorcycles both doing double duty carrying quintessential biker dudes and their biker chicks to stop to stretch their legs. I should wrap this up, now, and finish it when I settle in tonight. I could slog through all the way to LA tonight, but I’d probably get in after midnight and what’s the point of that? One more day on the road should be a nice capper. And now I go. The road beckons. The land pulls me. The wild calls.

It’s seven o’clock, or there about. I’m at a Best Western somewhere off the highway near Lake Mead. Not sure how I got here, I pulled off to find a place to go pee and the road kept going and going. The sign had said “Gas, Food, Lodging” but hadn’t mentioned how far off the road said amenities were. The town I went through (once there was a town) was actually kind of nice. Green lawns and quaint houses. Horses. Cows. Trees. Didn’t seem like Nevada at all. I didn’t realize how hot I was until I got into the motel room and turned on the air. My skin instantly became soaked. I must have been perspiring the whole day, but it was so hot and dry, and windy with the top down, I didn’t notice it. I should have; I’ve been drinking a ton of water and barely needed to relieve myself.

I stopped in St. George, Utah, a fair sized town on the far western end of Utah’s stretch of Highway 70. I was sitting in my car writing down the milage in my little notebook, but the door was open. A thin older fellow in worn jeans and a dim white tee shirt looked over my way and said, “What the hell is that?” “A Mini Cooper,” I informed him. He shook his head and said, “I’d rather be shot dead than be seen in something like that.” He was smiling, but I didn’t believe it.

What an extreme reaction, I thought, and considered asking if he wanted a test drive. “It’s a cool car,” I said, completely unruffled, returning his smile. He looked in and studied the dash board. He seemed fascinated and slightly repulsed, like just looking might somehow make his feminine side bubble to the surface. “Does it really go 150 miles an hour?” he asked after seeing the speedometer. I let him know that it did indeed, that they raced them in England where they were made. He shook his head and said, “It’s just wrong, somehow,” and walked away. He had the same crooked smile the whole time, as if to say, “I really don’t like your kind, but this is a bright, public place and I can’t get away with stomping you.”

What a hoot. If I didn’t already love my little car I would now. It makes small minded people uncomfortable. It would really be poetic if I then sang for the next twenty miles. I didn’t, of course, but my heart cockles were warm.

I go, now, to wipe the sweat off my brow. And nose. And neck. And arms. And legs. Sheesh, I’m sweaty.

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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

Second Day Back, Saturday, August 19, 2006

The seminar was wonderful, informative and powerful. I am a changed man. The very foundation of existence has shifted. Life as we know it on the planet will never be the same. The universe has shifted three degrees into the blue. God wept. Okay, enough of that, this is a travel journal, and, although the seminar was a journey, the signposts of that journey will have to show up on their own here, I won’t consciously try to insert them. I did meet some great people who I think will be around for a while. That would be nice.

The seminar ended Thursday afternoon and Thursday evening four of us went into downtown Minneapolis to see a play at the Guthrie Theater. The Guthrie is one of the premier theaters in America and I’ve always wanted to see something there, but it didn’t even dawn on me that it would be right down the street (so to speak) until a friend back in LA said, “You’re going to Minneapolis? That’s were the Guthrie is!” So. I mentioned this to one of the guys at the event and he said he’d get tickets. We got directions from the concierge and four of us set off on our adventure (with a side trip to a good sushi restaurant for a little raw fish and saki). The directions were wrong. Seems that they’ve built a new Guthrie Theater, that this is the first season at the new theater, this the first play there (The Great Gatsby) and that most people in Minneapolis were unaware of this. Everyone we stopped to ask gave us a different idea about just where the place was. We traveled all around downtown Minneapolis until we stopped by an odd fellow who looked slightly off, friendly buy possibly schizophrenic, possibly occasionally homeless. He very clearly knew right where the place was.

By the time we found it, parked and picked up our tickets, we were about fifteen or twenty minutes late for the opening curtain (a misnomer, of course, there is no curtain on a thrust stage and the Guthrie stage - old and new - is about as thrust-y as you can get) so we quietly found our seats. The theater was amazing, large but intimate if that makes any sense, a wonderful facility. I’d love to work there. The play was good, a few of the actors were “acting”, the guy playing Gatsby was very good, the guy who played the gas station owner was amazing. Daisy was cute and alluring, but I couldn’t imagine her as someone who three men would destroy their lives for. The sets were great. They used very little to suggest the setting but did it in a very effective way. It even included a simulated swimming pool where Gatsby floated around on a rubber raft. Very cool. In any case, the experience was what counted and the experience was grand. The building has one long arm jutting out of the fifth floor, a cantilever that hangs out over the river (which someone on the balcony at its end told me was the Mississippi and I have no reason to doubt him) that was a highlight of it.

Back to the hotel, drinks with several of the seminar participants (one of whom was a handsome straight man who had thought he had lost it because I hadn’t flirted with him. After that I made a point of flirting with him whenever I saw him. What fun - safe flirting - who’da thunk?) then bed. Left the next morning after lunch with two of my theater companions, then on the road.

In the movie The Secret, Jack Canfield talks about driving from Los Angeles to New York at night. You can see about a hundred feet in front of your car. And yet, only seeing this much, you can make it all the way. He’s using it as a metaphor for life - know your destination (your goal) then just take the next step, don’t worry about the next two, three or fifteen steps, they’ll take care of themselves. This, maybe, is why I like driving. I know where I’m going, know I can get there even with a detour or two, and all I have to worry about is what I can see right in front of me.

Okay, philosophy aside, the parking lot of the motel I stayed at last night was full of small beetles. (I almost spelled that “beatles” but that would have been wrong, wouldn’t it?) The room was clean, but I got the sense the beetles hadn’t stayed outside. (The beatles probably did, though, I never saw any of them.) The clock wasn’t plugged in, so I had to pull the little bed side table out to find the outlet and noticed part of the cord was stuck in this little plastic tray filled with something sticky, and in the something sticky were more beetles. (Ringo may have been there, I didn’t study it long enough to find out.)

I thought about being creeped out but decided if I want to get any sleep I’d just have to come to terms with my roommates. I asked them all pleasantly to leave me alone while I slept and left it at that. The only one I actually saw (besides the unfortunate few in the sticky tray) was walking along the edges of the floor in the bathroom in the morning while I was sitting there voiding and reading. He circumambulated the room a couple of times, then disappeared into some crevice or other. I only bring this up because, as I sit at this rest stop in the middle of Nebraska (the motel was in Iowa) a lady bug decided that the top edge of my computer was something needing exploration. She (he? Who knows the sex of a lady bug. There must be guy lady bugs. Do they, like the one in the bug cartoon, have issues about that?) made the journey several times, decided she’d (he’d?) gleaned all she could from it and flew off. Normally I would have shooed her away as soon as she landed. I don’t mind lady bugs, mind you, but the instinct is to shoo away anything not congruent and lady bugs are not congruent with the top edge of a laptop. After all the beetles last night, bugs not nearly as pleasant as this little orange and black dainty, I realized that, if I can sleep with them in my room, I can let one explore my laptop.

It has been cloudy since I left Minneapolis. It rained for about ten minutes late yesterday afternoon, but I was on the highway and it stopped before I was able to pull off and put the car top up. It wasn’t raining very hard and was actually kind of pleasant. The wind is blowing a bit, now, and I’m trying to decided if I want the top up on the next leg of the journey or not. I will decided after I start the car. Perhaps, if I remember, I’ll record which way I went. Perhaps not. Some things need to remain a mystery to preserve that sens of wonder in the reader, don’t you think?

Since there is no Internet connection at this rest stop (did you know all the rest stops in Iowa have wireless Internet? Very twenty-first century, I must say. I didn’t use it at any of them because you only got a small, finite amount of time before they started charging and it seemed, somehow, pointless) I will post this once I touch down this evening. Til then, the road beckons, the next hundred feet await.

I took the top down. So much for mystery and wonder. I’m at a motel in Brush, Colorado run by a young, blondish poor-white-trash woman and her poor-white-trash husband. She has two young poor-white-trash children and most of the night’s tenants are poor-white-trash. The main exception being the oriental family two doors down. (I leave it to you to decide about me.) My immediate neighbors are a thin, blond grandmother, her two small blond grandchildren and at least two rowdy and possibly drunk men who I haven’t yet seen. I did hear them arguing with each other about how to use the key card to open the door, with a lot of back and forth about the timing of the little green light and turning the handle and a large double “Whoop!” when, I assume, they got it right.

The Internet connection doesn’t reach to my corner room, so I’m sitting in the gazebo between the parking lot and the pool, my blowing coyly in the evening wind, typing furiously, trying to get this written and posted before my coy hair drives me nuts and I have to go inside, away from the wind.

Ah, travel. There’s a Chinese restaurant with a bar right past the pool. Perhaps I’ll have a small drink before retiring for the evening.

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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

Second Day - Wednesday, August 10, 2006

Utah is in a different universe. And as you go further east (at least on the 70) it gets more and more alien. The western end has green and looks normal, but it starts to get strange very soon. I was told that, as you travel along the way, you go through every geological era. It’s beautiful, breathtaking, actually (how often will I use that word?) but off-putting. I can’t imagine living there. There is a stretch of the 70 highway where there are “no services” for over 100 miles. It’s no wonder. I can’t imagine any sort of people who would want to populate it enough for there to be services. When you cross the border to Colorado you are instantly transportede back into our universe, there is green and houses and people and horses. The only animals I saw in Utah were lizards.

Half way through Utah, I realized that a friend I haven’t seen lived somewhere in Colorado. I remembered the town Carbondale and looked at the map. It was only a few miles from the highway I was on. I had my little phone book with me. I called the last number I had for her and her husband. It was Michelle’s voice on the answering machine, but they weren’t home.

Just outside of Colorado, I stopped at a rest stop because the wind was so strong I had to put the top up on the convertible. Good thing I did, it started raining shortly after that and rained the rest of the day. Driving in the rain is a whole different experience. You can’t see as far ahead and the rhythm is different. I even think th e rhythm of my breathing changed a little. Slowed down or something. I could be wrong, perhaps I’m just trying to be poetic.

I called Michelle and Marvin again just inside of Colorado at Grant Junction. They were there, live in Paonia not Carbondale, they would love to see me and it would take me about two hours to get there from where I was. I had to go. They live in a small geodesic dome that they built as a “temporary” house while they built their big dome. They’d planned on being in the small one for a year. Well, Marvin’s job got exported to India, then he fell off the roof one winter and was in the hospital, so the big dome never got started. Until last May, seven years later. It’s pretty great, actually, very exciting. I took some video of it. (Yes, I finally started taking some short movies at rest stops, etc. Didn’t take me long to get off it…) I spent the night in their very funky home and visited.

Marvin’s network wouldn’t talk to my computer. Is it because I’m gay?

Third Day - Thursday, August 10, 2006

This morning, I got up and went into the big dome. The floor is still bare plywood, but most of the inner roof (ceiling?) is in place, as are the windows and a counter that will be the kitchen. Except for one corner that will be the bedroom, there are no inner walls, so it’s a huge open space. When I walked in, I felt dizzy. After a moment, it passed, but later Marvin insisted that the dome was on a vortex and that, when he was digging the basement, Michelle couldn’t stand in it because the energy was so strong she would almost faint. I’m not sure what to think of that, I’m one of those skeptic believers. I want to believe things like vortexes, even have some experience of things like that, but a big part of my mind says, “You were dizzy because you didn’t sleep well, silly.”

I had breakfast with Marvin and Michelle, then hit the road at about 10:30. While eating, they had the news on and it was full of reports of all the nonsense at the all the airports all over the country. Okay, yes, they captured a bunch of suspected terrorists. In England. Because the precautions being taken are working. So America responds with its normal, rational, considered reaction and goes nuts. I cannot convey how glad I am that Steve talked me into driving to my seminar. I was anyway, but now it seems more than propitious. Of course, I imagine certain people are ecstatic about the airport craziness. Divide and conquer, rule by fear.

I took the back highway from Paonia to Carbondale. Colorado is magnificent, beautiful, grand, green, immense, overwhelming. Driving down the twisty road listening to Beethoven’s Fifth is the only way to do it. Until Beethoven’s Sixth came on. Perfect. The fifth, so dramatic and grand, was the best way to see the mountains and the river by the road, the Crystal River. The sixth, the Pastorale, was then perfect for the lower end of the highway through the communities of local coal miners and hippy artists. The music ended just as I got to Carbondale and back on the main highway. Synchronicity, anyone? Of course, beautiful Colorado is also the state that voted in Proposition 2 all those years ago. Go figure.

I’m at a rest stop outside of Glenwood Springs. If I’m not too tired, I’ll write more this evening.

Fourth Day, Friday, August 11, 2006

Two nights with no Internet. Can I survive? The eastern end of Colorado is much more even, still beautiful, but it’s a gentler beauty. I’m now in Nebraska. I was told Nebraska would be boring. Flat and boring. Not true. Yes, it’s flat, but that makes it easier to drive, and it is lush and full green with lots of trees. The landscape is varied and very interesting. A lot of insects, though. I crossed the border at night and every time I passed a stand of trees I heard this arrhythmic whining buzz and clicking. After hearing it several times, I figured out it was some type of bug. Locusts? Who knows. I also kept colliding with bugs, and my windshield was a mess when I stopped. This morning when I cleaned the windshield off there were five dead bees and a wasp on the hood. Bees and wasps! I’m sitting at a beautiful rest stop with a thick lawn and tall shade trees with a stream running through it and the constant buzzing sound from the field behind me. And I’ve been bitten by at least six ants and a spider or two.

I think I’ve trained my bladder. As soon as I see a Rest Stop sign and decide to stop, it starts aching, as if it now has permission to get ready to void. Very odd. Useful, though, in a strange way.

I keep seeing signs for Buffalo Bill’s ranch, and there have been some highway-side attractions with tee-pees and covered wagons and it makes me wonder about the fortitude of people who traveled the same distance I’m traveling (in the other direction, of course) with their whole families and all their belongings and it took months and years. And there were no highways or rest stops. (Of course, if you think about it, the entire way was one big rest stop. When you have to relieve yourself just stop, go behind a tree and “rest”.

Last night the moon rose very late. It was completely dark and I saw this weird glowing orange dome on in the distance directly in front of me. I wondered what building would be lit like that. As I got closer, it got bigger and I realized it was the moon, huge, orange and distorted. When it broke the horizon, it looked like a glowing squashed pumpkin. It looked like that for about fifteen minutes until it was fully up in the sky.

I still don’t know why I love traveling so much. I was saddened that I would be going by myself and tried to think of a way to get a traveling companion, but I’m so glad I didn’t. Being alone on the highway is the point. I think. I’m trying to figure what it means to me. Maybe I shouldn’t try and just enjoy it. Today, I sang. For over an hour. To Simon and Garfunkle. It’s a good thing I am alone, probably.

I’m at a Best Western in Williams Iowa. Internet at last! (Oh, what a modern drone I am.) Iowa’s air is damp and dirty. I expected the damp, it’s high summer and this is the Midwest. But I didn’t expect the dirty part. During the day there was a faint brown hue to the horizon and as it turned to dusk, the air got damper and difficult to see through. Not like a smokey room, but dense and grey.

Nothing philosophical tonight. I stopped earlier than I expected and am just relaxing. I only have about a hundred and eighty miles to Minneapolis. I’m looking forward to the last leg of this part of the trip. I don’t know how many posts I’ll be able to do while the seminar is raging, but if the spirit and the opportunity present themselves simultaneously, I’ll write. If not, I’m sure there’ll be plenty on the road home, what with processing everything from the week and all.

Til then.
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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.