Writer • Musician
Tales from the Road
Jude Moonlight's Journal | Last night I went out walking and I heard the distant sound of drums playing late in the night. At first I couldn't quite find where they were coming from but I walked farther down the street and deeper into my neighborhood and I heard the sounds grow louder, so I …
Continue reading "I do feel like playing. Last night I went out walking…"
If there’s anything that I try and avoid writing about, its writing. That being said, I’ll keep this beginning part short. For starters, I really don’t even think of myself as a writer at all. I’m no Hemingway or Kerouac or Walt Whitman. I don’t know how any of those guys fell into the …
I stopped in a small town somewhere in the desert for a quick breakfast. Then I drove farther north until I reached the last town before the mountains. I stopped there to fill up on gas and get supplies, which consisted mainly of sandwich bread, fruit, two cans of tuna and some peanut butter. Then …
I felt like a thief in the night. Maybe it was guilt, a sense that I was betraying someone, or something. I remember a sign, standing tall on the side of the highway while I was driving through the desert. “Blessed are they,” it said, “Who trust in Him.’ Four years ago, I moved to …
My new life in LA was wearing me thin and I decided that I needed to get away. The plan was to drive up to San Francisco and stay there for a few days. I was told that I should take the 1 Highway, that even though it was a longer route, it offered a …
It was early in the morning and I couldn’t see the peaks of the mountains. The mist in the air was cool and no cars drove on Highway 1, also known as the pacific coast highway, in central California. This was a place I’d only heard of but never seen. It lived in my mind …
On Pioneer Square in downtown Portland is where I met the pirate. He's a traveller of some kind with a long black beard and a rag on his head, a strong Moses-like cane that he doesn't appear to need for walking, a long sheet that he is wearing as a cap, old pinstripe pants …
From the airport I was driven into town on a shuttle service that prides itself on being eco-friendly whatever that means, and the driver's name was Khan, as in Kubla, and he was a Pakinstani man who smiled a lot, who was raised in Malaysia and so who identifies more with Malaysia, though he did …
Flying Elephant Free refills of coffee here, By George! It's great in this city! And how can I leave this comfortable nook when the coffee is bottomless and the afternoon is freezing and rain-soaked. But there is much to see and I've only got a day before work tonight, an operation with the Ford Motor …
All throughout my time in Portland I was trying to get working on 'Saints' but instead found myself drifting onto other matters, so I was only able to get a modest bulk of thoughts down late one night. A lot of it concerned Texas and the hero's view of it as the great canvas upon …
Northwest Tech At the convention hall last night it was nice being amongst journalists again, my ol' blood brethren. I studied journalism at the Unviersity of Florida and so it reminds me of those days, in which I chose a major for its own sake so I could hurry up and move to LA, and …
And so the last night brings me back to Pioneer In the fiercest rain, amidst old friends And to the fine people of Portland, Goodnight. Oh, fair city. Not that you need it. ~Quinn Some final notes about Portland as I fly back now to Los Angeles. Last night, though I wasn't hungry and my …
There was a time that when I'd think of my mother and my father, I would see a great life divide that illustrated perfectly the divide within my own mind; and one afternoon it greeted me in raw earthly form across the expanse of West Texas, that region which begins for me just a few …
Continue reading "Oh Texas, oh great American lands. To the mothers and the moon."
Before all this began, there was December of last year when I wanted to be Arthur Rimbaud and I stood in the corner of a bookshop, where I was becoming a ghostly regular reading a 'Season in Hell' and wondering what it would take as carols played soft on the radio. It was Christmastime. From …
The plan was to get to Frisco after things settled with the LA move, but I hand't been able to swing it since; and so it wasn't long after getting back from Coachella and hiking the desert mountains there that I began thinking about mysterious Big Sur in the north and finally making what would …
'...It all died with Kennedy,' said I from beneath hollow ground. 'I see it all so clearly. Does it still live with Kennedy? Still...' 'What's that?' asked my neighbor, I couldn't make out his face. 'The American Dream?' 'What's that?' he asked again. 'Some kind of peace? Some prosperity?' I didn't answer him for I …
Big Sur. The most elusive, and the darkest of places which now felt like a legend in my mind. The home to writers who could never truly write about it and who would always ultimately resort to telling whoever was listening that they just had to go see it for themselves. I was on my …
The waves crashed violently on the coast of San Simeon. But from my view, watching the sun disappear at last and leave the sky cast in some mystical grey and blue, it all appeared very peaceful and necessary. I watched it while I stood parked on the cliffs with 'Mama You've Been on My Mind' …
Big Sur is freedom. It is eternal youth smiling to you and shining above you with God's great sun gleaming high as the waves crash in a morning tempest over the sharp rocks below. On this winding road you hang over the Pacific Ocean, and you hug tightly the green cliffs and the redwoods that …
I went to Frisco for the first time when I was a boy, with my mother when I was six years old. We stayed with her cousin back when she used to live in the city. Now she lived across the bay not far from Berkeley. We talked a little of that time but not …
Ren Michael 