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dear fellow passengers

voyage is fractal. every space ship in every compart ment holds a flotilla of no-less-spaceships. and you’ve known all the pilots, or will.

I find myself wrapped up in interstate bus travel, enjoy the wilds and snows of connecticut and new york, the surprising springtime in boston, ahead of schedule and surely asking for a stern rebuke, and comfort and glory of travel itself, that precious time to ourselves, wherein we can discover whether we truly

enjoy

the company

we keep.

nothing like the metro north trains up the harlem line to the western tip of new york state, connecticut, and massachusettes, passing schoolchildren sledding and frozen swamps, whose barren trees poke out of their icy skirt, willfully demonstrating, it seems, that we have no idea how deep and tall they actually are. as a guest here, and a farmer, I wonder what people eat, if agriculture is possible in such climes, why – if indeed those scarred cones were once hale and productive apple trees – there aren’t still farmers coming out every wednesday to sell a new variety of apples they had been storing for

just

this

moment

winter apples and storage apples that don’t even ripen towards february. as it is, all the humans I know insist on shopping indoors, at big corporate organic supermarkets, where the apples come from washington or chile or new zealand. what ever happened to buying bulk in season? storage and preservation? shouldn’t there be a warehouse full of dirty local beets and cabbage and potatoes and carrots from earlier in the season, to buy 20 pound boxes of? isn’t that how we’re going to train people that you can always eat locally and of the land, that it’s not such a boogie fashion trend to breed new slivers of identity? are we talking about food or just another commodity?

the answer, of course, that the god’s always throw to us in times of need, is

MAPLE SYRUP

during my estancia with lizzie and baba (www.lizzieandbaba.com), the best music on either side of the mississippi, as far i’ve been concerned, we went out daily to harvest and drink the sweet coconut-water of the northern climes, cold as the driving snow, right from the tree. raw, unpasteurized, innocent of refineries and rbgh, non-gmo or anything but divine.

and then you can boil it, down down down to the 40:1 recommended ration (that’s 2.5 gallons to the cup) to get the hot sticky syrup that contains (I swear to the gods, all of them)

vainilla, butter, caramel, pine, butterscotch, rum

in every warm mouthful. maple syrup. it must be what these strange northeastern native survive upon for the winter season, because god knows there’s nothing else around but snow and firewood.

anyhow, back to the voyage at hand. fellow sojourner and truth-seeker

(responsible for these photos of our bicycle trip through india: http://mangolandia.org/photos/twopass/

)

TOMAS WERNER

TOMAS WERNER

(www.tomaswerner.com)

has departed his native slovakia and temporary asylum in mexico to run rough-shod over the north of amerika, by bus and photography, through the following states of the union:

NY-DC-VA-NC-SC-GA…..all the way to San Francisco

(which is a state)

He is a consummate artist and (easter) european. You will not be disappointed. Please host him on his travels, or at the least, send the modern de Toqueville a message of support (not more than 160 characters, please).

His phone number is: 347-574-6862

As for my own self, I’m in Boston for the week and entering the fog thereafter. Perhaps a weekend in DC in mid-march, and totally lack of clarity for April. I’ve started working for The Man again, a few hours a week, in the material form of two cool Michigan dudes based in San Cristobal (I can’t imagine a better look for The Man), so I may head back down there for a spell.

As always, tomorrow never knows, but the idea of actually living out a season on a farm calls to me deeply, and it’s unclear how long I can, or should, resist.

one love

many instruments,

ankurbhai