road trip?

    Ok, younguns, I found two places in cyberspace where real people seem to hang out a good bit of the time. The other day, both of them caused me to start itching to do a road trip, just as I was starting to feel some better, like I might want to run a few more new rivers before the Lord comes to fetch me. 

    Here’s the first.

Morel Mushroom Forecast 2024

Its spring and its time to get out in the woods and get some ticks! 

FREE RADIO RULO

Morel Mushroom Forecast 2024

Morel Mushroom Forecast 2024 Free Radio Rulo Its spring and its time to get out in the woods and get some ticks!

[Transcript]

We got a special guest today and a free

radio Studio, yeah he'd like to remain anonymous

he's got some good moral mushroom hunting tips for you!

[Music]

well me and my cousin we like to

put up some some signs to keep the

tourists out like Road closed or bridge out

no trespassing

it works pretty good

but to be honest if you really want to

find some morel mushrooms you might even

want to look for one of those signs and

go right on around it there's probably a

whole mess of them

because all the tourists have been kept out

[Laughter]

could you tell us a bedtime story

about

mushroom hunting it's old folklore from

the forest hmm

nothing you don't got nothing

there's never a good time you're always

grouchy I'm not grouchy I just uh

sometimes it's like hard for me to you

know

but then when you're like when you're

like man do this do this do this I can't

it's really hard for me

preparations for Morel hunts

I don't know morel hunting

pigs anything going on with Jenny I

don't know what about are there any

Springtime specials I used to be a lot

okay a lot of what mushrooms a lot more

that's what happened to them

um

no no no

(Rock Music)

hey there I just wanted to take a moment

of your time to let you know that this

coming Saturday we'll be having a mower

wash fundraiser that's right come on

down this upcoming Saturday morning at 8

A.M to the Pizza Hut on Main to be first

in line to have your lawnmower Washed by

a true lawn mowing Enthusiast from the

local synchronized lawn mowing Team all

proceeds will be going towards you

guessed it the sixth annual lawn Fest

happening later this summer we'll even

have a genuine mower stroller on display

so you can take a look at that grab a

bite to eat and get your mower washed to

spake and span just in time for this

lawn mowing season all while supporting

a great cause again that's this upcoming

3:08

Saturday morning at 8 A.M at the Pizza

Hut on Main don't be late hope to see

you there

thank you

[Foreign Music]

what are the steps you need to take to

train your dog to snip out some

mushrooms

what's the first step

on the mushroom one of your dog

accidentally eats a psychedelic mushroom

[Music]

for sure Beauty

it would be uh pretty freaked out and

what if you accidentally eat a

psychedelic mushroom there's a mutually

chill environment for everybody it would

be advantageous is it jeans jacket

weather

hot chocolate

I got salty snacks any type of Chex Mix

pretzels

I suppose I suppose they would all work

okay and then what kind of soundtrack

are you listening to what about these

okay what's the second step

trees

no on the plants

no specific artists or yeah no

nature sounds like the your hair

exercise regimen

it's a hillbilly okay what's the second

step

okay okay what's the second first step I

think you need to

show them the mushrooms let them sniff

it okay what's the second step

that

if they can smell those

for you

it could be rewarding for them to do so

what's the reward for them probably a

treat mushrooms or dog treats plus dog

treats

well the big government says you're not

supposed to eat or pick the mushrooms if

there's been a flood

something to do with the nuclear power

plant and

all that cattle run off and pesticide

and fertilizer run off but

not gonna let them tell me what to do

and never hurt me much

now there's a couple good spots I'd like

to share with you Indian cave

uh

I hope you just want to go tell

everybody but since since we're good

friends

a check down there

and a check down there in the one way

just

[Music]

uh just south of uh the Old Saint

Deron's Schoolhouse

by the water plant there I've had some

good luck

[Music]

now last year it was way too dry I just

had no luck whatsoever but you know

between the old between the old town of

Saint Jerome between the half-breed

cemetery there in the Missouri River on

the south facing slope

next to those old cottonwood trees and

had some good luck not last year last

year were two trap but the year before

that I had some good luck there now my

grandpa always told me

after your second mow in the spring

about May 1st

on a on a waning gimbus moon

banana Saturday afternoon

it's a good time to

go look for mushrooms now

I like to get a couple practice runs in

every year so

you know as soon as the as soon as the

May apples are up

you know it's a good time to start

looking there usually

next to the big Cottonwood or you know

elm tree

good luck there

(foreign music)

I might have to eat a peanut butter

sandwich I'm still a little hungry I'm

8:32

feeling like hungry hungry like we've

8:34

already eaten three breakfasts this

8:35

morning this is how does the rest of

8:38

this territory this is pre-lunch this is

8:42

pretty much warm up so you only how many

8:44

breakfasts can you have and breakfast

8:46

one breakfast too and then it's

8:47

automatically free lunch or no you can

8:50

have three breakfasts okay there's like

8:53

a pre and post breakfast and an actual

8:55

breakfast just like with lunch pre and

8:56

post lunch but there's an accident

8:58

wouldn't those be called snacks

9:01

breakfast second breakfast and a snack

9:05

would you tell me about the health

9:06

benefits of mushrooms

9:09

well it makes it hard to leave your

9:10

house

9:11

sometimes

9:13

what are the best kind of mushrooms for

9:16

improving your life

9:20

all right

9:22

oh I don't know maybe the morel

9:24

mushrooms because you have to form a

9:26

find them it's like a reward it's a game

9:29

so it's approaching morel season do you

9:31

have any tips or tricks for us

9:33

on the hunt how to find a good spot how

9:36

to find the shrooms how to be one with

9:39

nature

9:41

you just gotta get out there and look

9:44

okay

9:45

what would Captain beefheart say about

9:48

mushroom hunting

9:51

you probably say

9:53

[Music]

9:56

his feet can't find the ground so uh

10:01

um yeah I don't know he would be uh

10:18

[Music]

10:29

yeah me and my cousin well we like to

10:33

set out decoy morels too throws off them

10:37

city folks don't want any of them taking

10:40

me and my cousin's morels

10:43

foreign

10:46

sometimes we like to put out decoys in

10:50

the good spots too try to attract them

10:53

little fellas with the prospect of a

10:55

mate

10:56

[Music]

10:57

[Applause]

11:00

well the legend has it that the day

11:05

after the first Warm rain

11:08

after the second mode of the season

11:13

it's when you really want to get out in

11:15

those woods to go looking for morels

11:19

that reminds me did you hear about the

11:24

mower wash coming up this upcoming

11:27

Saturday morning at the Pizza Hut on

11:29

Main to help fundraise for launch the

11:33

sixth annual lawn Fest

11:38

[Music]

11:39

foreign

11:42

[Music]

11:50

[Applause]

11:58

foreign

Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter

Liked by Free Radio Rulo

Jesus f-ing Christ, 

ya keep this up, 
ya gonna wake the dead, 
maybe the zombies will love ya for it,
maybe they will try to bite ya and
make ya into one of them, 
the Church of Dudo ain’t no joke,
it don’t need no psycho mushrooms
to make its points,
but bring them on anyway, 

for them who need jet stream assist.

Gawd, I do truly wish I wuz younger, 
feel up to driving from Alabama to Rulo
to hang out round your Wonder Bread truck,
sipping water with fresh lemon slices, 
as my ailing body no longer tolerates
the fruit of the vines, hops, corn, barley, etc.
And dear old Mary Jane,
she leave me with a migraine next day.
But I somehow outsmarted fate,
or something did,
cause I can go sit in the public 
park across the street from 
this old apartment building, 
where I end up living
everytime I quit running away from home,
and I sit on a park bench, 
pull my baseball camp down
over my shut eyes,
tell the trees, shrubs and park creatures
I’m back-
as if they need to be told,
and I am open to whatever they, 
or whatever, 
wants to do or show me,
and after a while,
I’m off on another trip,
feeling definitely not of this world energy,
seeing this and or that abstract 
through my closed eyes
just hanging out,
sitting on that bench, 
aware of people and their dogs walking by,
in my own world,
or a world briefly loaned to me,
which leaves me feeling rejuvenated
for a little while.
Ya know,
I wonder if might have the juice
to drive to Rulo, 
I hope to get a sign,
I think maybe I ain’t gonna feel entirely right
if I don’t see that Wonder bread truck
before the Lord takes me, 
but I probably won’t eat mushrroms,
‘cause they come out of me just like
they went in,
my proessing plant don’t 
seem to recognize them,
and I never took the psyco kind, 
nor any psycho kind of plants
or psycho chemicals,

it’s been au naturale for me. 

Free Radio Rulo

I just like a good deep fried morel mushroom and a cold PBR, all while picking ticks off! I need to make it to Alabama some day as well. You got any morels down there in the wudz?  

Sloan Bashinsky

Liked by Free Radio Rulo

Me and mushrooms reached a truce, I don’t hunt and eat them, and they don’t hunt and eat me :-). When I was a kid and did something disturbing, my momma was likely to say, “Only a mother could love it.” It being me. Gwad only knows how many blue ribbons I drank. A mom and pop store sold them out the back door to my underaged friends and me for $5 a case of 24. Now they are $5 a can in fancy bars. 

The Fossil
A world briefly loaned to me… I like that. And suddenly feel like going back to Nebraska even more than before.  

Sloan Bashinsky
My grandchildren call me Grandfossil and sometimes I write to them at Grandfossil’s Tales to His Grandchildren, grandfossil.blogspot.com I had a dream about going to Rulo. Not sure I want to risk testing my old Toyota van that much, and with my lower legs and feet always numb, and my hands going numb after long stretches on the steering wheel, I considered call a travel agent about flying to St. Louis or Omaha and renting a car. About same time, Erik Rititenberry wrote something spectacular at his Poetic Outlaws about him needing to get a away and taking a long road trip and stumbling into a for real Jedi, who ives in his home on 4 wheels and gets by barely with some writings on his website that people pay to enjoy.

    Here’s the second.

POETIC OUTLAWS
APR 6

"On the innocent trail of their hunger,  he walked silently over the pastures  of the world." - Rilke

I’m somewhere in the western part of the United States slicing through a beautiful wasteland with my windows down and my old notched heart soaring higher than a bar-headed goose on a sunny day. 

I had to get away. 

Away from the asphalt world of guidelines and horrifying headlines and tedious talks of endless growth and prosperity, away from high-rise cities and interstates packed with vultures and machines racing to get nowhere.

Persistent bad news, division, violence, famine, and war dominate the airwaves. Politicians and news pundits are beyond horrendous and most of our leaders are criminally insane. Good folks everywhere are tired of the fear-ridden narratives and life-denying demands heaved at them from the sanctimonious political class.

I had to extract myself from the septic sludge of it all. 

And here I am, my ragged old jeans stained up pretty good and my boots might need replacin’ soon, but it doesn’t bother me all too much. It feels mighty fine to be alive and to breathe in the emancipated air out here in complete solitude as the desert sun sinks slowly toward the horizon. 

Despite the raging uncertainty in the world today, it feels good to be sitting here in the late afternoon shade of a juniper tree, my ass in the red dirt, a gush of that spring air filling my lungs, the song of the cactus wren in my ears, this little tumbler of wine in my left hand, the unregimented days, the “hell yes” feeling of being alive at this moment in time. 

Hell yes. 

Fresh air and freedom — that’s what I needed. That’s what we all need. To get away and revitalize the soul and fire up the imagination. To untangle our world-weary souls from the domesticated web of our undoing. 

And I couldn’t think of a more worthwhile way to remedy this crushing sense of claustrophobia than to hit the open road. As a poet writes, “When your mind is suffocating in its own sludge, move it.”

So I did. It was the only way. I packed the truck with old books, cold beers and wine, food, a tent, and a few essentials. Then aimlessly drove west. 

Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac were right — America’s last frontier is the endless highway. I’m off!

I’ve been on the road for a few weeks now, boondocking on the banks of wildflower creeks up in the mountains and deep in the heart of the desert, living like a passing bum desperately trying to elude the red tape demands of this sad epoch. I sleep for free on the earth and eat very little. There’s glory in the gamble. 

But this isn’t about me. 

This is about a fascinating spirit who is more alive than me. Someone more alive than most.

Somewhere far in the desert, I met a fellow camper named Charley. 

Charley was a homeless sage, a menace to the mundane, dancing like a wild man around his campfire. As soon as I laid eyes on him from my solitary little campsite across the way, I felt that this peculiar creature had it all figured out.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say “homeless,” because Charley lives quite the serene life in his 30-year-old van. He is a poet-philosopher, an artist, who belongs to the night, a man who no longer identifies with the crumbling charades of the artificial light. He stands before the veil of the cosmos naked and awe-struck, and despite being out of joint with the times, he’s aware more than most.

My curiosity won over. I grabbed two beers from the cooler and made my way over to this dancin’ shaman of the night. And, of course, he ended up being the friendliest, most poetic goddamn soul I’ve come across in quite some time.  

We slurped beers together that night around the fire beneath the fiery stars of the southern Utah sky. He told me about his life and how he recently left it all behind when the pandemic hit. He’s been living the vagabond life for two years now and smiles more than he ever has. 

He told me about his beautiful wife, and how, about a month before the pandemic hit, she left him for a tunic-wearing, crystal-fondling, kundalini yoga instructor who liked to quote Deepak Chopra between chants. Shortly after that, the virus hit, the lockdowns ensued, and his job let him go. It was a vicious month for old Charley, at least initially. 

One fine spring morning, he tells me, he woke slightly hungover to an email that informed him he’d been furloughed. He sipped his black coffee out on his back porch in the early dawn with a strange sense of joy as he read the email seven times. Slowly. Out loud. 
 
It was a soulless job, sure, but it paid well and the benefits were pretty damn good. Ten years with the company and one little measly 25-word email to inform him that he’s no longer welcome. He sat there, sipping his coffee in the soft morning light, overtaken with a peculiar sense of freedom in his heart.

“What is this?” He kept asking himself this one question. “What is this feeling I have sloshing around in me?”

He should’ve felt apprehensive and sad and maybe a bit angry, goddamnit, but he wasn’t. By losing the one thing that brought him security and normalcy, the one thing that kept him chained to the heavy stone of monotony, he now felt this incredible weight on his shoulders slowly fall away. 

The time was now. The time was now. The time was now, he whispered to himself. 

To say yes.

To say yes to the inner calling that’s been poking at him since his youth. To say yes to the unknown, to the gamble of the GO, to his artistic aspirations. To do the deliberate work of the soul. He’d always been an avid reader of the greats and he loved to write and create art. But life always seemed to have gotten in the way of these passions. He never found the time to live out his soul’s yearning. 

“No more.” He told himself. “No more.”  

After a few weeks of dull logistics and planning, Charley packed up a couple of boxes with only the essentials along with his favorite old books — Emerson, Pessoa, Hesse, Whitman, Yeats, Nietzsche, Camus, Kerouac, and all the great Russian novelists — and threw them into an old van that he’d recently bought with the cash made selling all his possessions. The van was furnished with a writing desk, a small cot, and a little compartment to store food. 

With the campfire blazing in his fierce eyes, he looks at me and says, “What else do you really need in life?” I nod in agreement. 

With the house sold and his penalized 401k cashed out, he sipped whiskey in a little motel at the edge of town on that stupendous night before his great escape. 

In the morning, as the birds sang and the rising sun splashed rays of golden light across the jasmine-scented land, he headed west along the backroads of life with no particular destination in mind. 

No striving, no goals, no clear direction — with Tom Petty turned up loud, Charley was freefallin’ into the unknown, and he’d never felt more alive.

Two years on the road now and the bearded rambler has found his groove. His skin is worn and his clothes are ragged and his scent isn’t the most pleasant, but he’s alive, madly so, and lives on his own terms. He told me that from an early age, he knew this was the life for him — a life of wandering and writing and living untethered from the prosaic ideals of the over-civilized. 

It takes a lot of fucking courage and a radical sense of BEING to live the life Charley led. It’s not for the faint of heart as anyone who has lived it can tell you. To leave it all behind and completely abandon oneself to the chaotic current of life with little money, no security or safe havens, just wits and freedom and struggle, nursed solely by a sense of “what’s next?”

I asked Charley how he makes it out here. How does he earn the funds to venture around in this gas-guzzling van and eat and live?

“I need very little money these days,” he says. “Frugality is an art form in itself and you get good at it over time.”

He told me he’s a self-taught writer and photographer who makes a meager living selling his works online. Once or twice a month, he’d hit up an old wifi-friendly dive bar or coffee shop and send out his writings and photography into the digital abyss. His blog receives generous donations from dedicated readers that he’s accumulated over time by simply writing about his nomadic adventures across the land.

“The modern world is hungry for life,” he tells me. “I offer them a way through my writings and art. That’s the only thing I have to offer in life. Nothing else. Just my useless sentiments hurled out into the void.” 

I asked him what he has learned out here living this ramblin’ way of life and what’s the biggest change he noticed in himself. 

“The more you move around the more human you become,” he tells me. 

“When you leave behind the dryness of the safe and secure life, the senses become heightened, which of course makes you feel more alive. You feel at one with your surroundings. The earth becomes more intimate, more giving, more of a close friend. Your blood is no longer sluggish. Your vision becomes more lucid and you tend to get a birdseye view of the boundless vistas of life. You rediscover the moving power of your own unique existence on this planet.” 

He goes on. 

“Out here on the road of life, you create your own reality instead of catering to someone else’s, you see? You create a reality suitable to your deepest longings, you make the dream, flesh. With little, you become more. You unearth the true essence of who you are, you know? 

I nodded.

“Your daily death allows you to live innumerable lives and it provokes a radical sense of god-like awareness. This is what all the sages of the past were trying to teach us. Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus — they were all saying the same thing. All the great spiritual teachers taught us that eternity is right here, right now. As Jesus once said, ‘the kingdom is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.’ Or Confucius, ‘The heavenly realm lies within each individual. It’s right there.’” 

“It’s through opening ourselves up to the sublime that we learn to live in the spirit,” Charley says. 

“On the other hand,” he went on, “people who harbor a diminished spirit feel the need to constantly consume and work their asses off to sustain the façade of success — material success. It’s empty as all hell but this is what we’re all bred to do here in the land of the so-called free. It’s a soul killer. You can see it in the eyes and in the demeanor of the nervous and frantic folks you come across — folks running amok in this country, for what? Nietzsche once said that haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself, and it’s true.”

The fire crackled, the beers flowed, and a shooting star raced across the dark above us. He raised both arms and looked up into the starry night, “look at this, look at this unimaginable world we all inhabit. God, how we take it for granted, huh?”

He takes a swig from his beer and paces around the campfire while gazing up into the cosmos. 

“We’ve turned this whole damn planet into a senseless graveyard through ignorance and fear. People are afraid to say YES to life, afraid to obey the deeper laws of their BEING, afraid to give themselves up to the direct experience of life. They’re forever stuck in the clutches of their cultural conditioning, and they’re sick and sad and needlessly sapped of their vitality because of it. A whole generation of people severed from the sacred. I know, I was there for many many years.” 

As I sat and listened to Charley for hours on end I knew damn well that I was dealing with a man endowed with the long-lost spirit of Whitman. A man who dabbles with the gods and dreams and jives like a lighthearted prophet under the fleeting clouds of the infinite. A man always goin’ and never arrivin’, a man who has learned to shun the fast-paced profane life of modernity for the simple sacredness of the natural life. 

He’s a dreamer, a drifter, a seeker with a childlike soul strapped with a furious appetite for the forbidden fruit of life. Unlike the good folks who live in the world, he now lives among the dirt and rocks and fields of the earth. 

“Blessed are the solitary,” Jesus tells us in the Gnostic gospels, “for you will find the Kingdom.” And Charley has indeed found the Kingdom.

To be aware, divinely aware of the splendors of creation — the seas, the hills, the trees, even the dead leaves in the gutter, the determined ant climbing the stem of a dandelion, the stoic black crow perched upon the light pole — that’s where it’s at. 

“Awwww, yes!” he suddenly proclaimed while raising his beer to his lips. 

“Leave it all behind if you have to…put an old rucksack on your stressed-out back and go taste the earth, damnit. Get out there and unearth the wonderous nature of your own being. Live Live Live! Reach out for the Golden Eternity.” 

It was late and I told Charley I had to get some shuteye. Before we said our goodnights and excused myself from his poetic presence, I asked him, “where’s the great journey of Charley leading to, where can I find you in the future?”

He slowly reached out and put his primordial palm on my shoulder, looked directly in my eyes, and, with a whispered voice, slowly recited a verse from the great American poet, Walt Whitman:

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

 

Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Apr 6
Liked by Poetic Outlaws

Gwad Almighty, Erik!
You done gone and done
stirred just about every jealous
bone in my dinosaur head, body and tail.
What a mean thing to do,
escaping like that, 
leaving me here stuck in Alabama’s largest city,
with only a small public park across the street,
where I can escape to
and sit on a park bench,
pull my baseball clap down over my closed eyes,
and wait on Mother Nature and her plants and creatures, 
or Something,
to take me on a ride to a place
that feels like it has nothing to do 
with my life or this planet,
quite wonderful, actually,
rejuvenating,
But, alas, 
brief,
and I come back,
and I’m maybe too old, ailing,
afraid to do 
what you did,
yet it hurts my feelings
that you called me out,
because I’m too chicken,
or maybe it’s just not my time,
but I have been thinking about 
heading down to a state park
south of Birmingham,
which has rental cabins 
by an old lake built during the Great Depression,
where I spent a night once with my daughters and girlfriend,
and hang out there for a few days, alone,
wishing that old girlfriend was with me,
oh my Gwad, 
our passion was not of this world,
but she was a lot younger,
I was really messed up, 
and she found a young guy
that suited her really good,
and went on and had my own life,
which was not like anything 
my wildest dreams ever could have imagined,
in the thick of things,
in cities, mostly,
yet still, you have made me jealous,
as has the Jedi you met,
Oh, my Gawd,
what do ya think were the Las Vegas odds
of ya meeting him?
Maybe zero?
But the God odds were 100 fucking percent :-)

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com