Day360 Wednesday 08/24/11

ran 2.4 miles

Here is Chapter 20 of "I am Erica". To read from the beginning click on "I am Erica" in the Categories section.

Chapter20

Jonas and Erica sat trembling across from one another in an abyss of black. There were desolate noises and occasional grunts that didn’t quite seem human. Although the blind darkness had set Jonas and Erica seemingly far apart, they were actually positioned closely enough to one another to reach out and feel the cuts and bruises on the other’s face.

Their hands were tied behind their backs and their feet were bound together. Each had a gag in their mouth, which forced their breathing through broken noses and crimson, coagulated nostrils.

In the darkness they were unaware that the frightening sounds they had kept hearing were their own. They didn’t know that they were facing each other for the first time in what seemed like weeks. The heavy breathing of what sounded like a fierce animal snarling was themselves right in front of one another.

All of a sudden there was a loud click like a generator being turned on. Slowly, the room began to fill with light. At first it was soft, hazy and nearly nonexistent. Second by second the light intensified until it was absolutely blinding. Jonas and Erica had seen very little light in recent days. Their eyes squinted and burned for minutes until finally Jonas focused through a single eye an image of what appeared to be Erica directly in front of him. The sight of her exaggerated all of his facial features in a writhing torrent of pain. He squirmed desperately in his bindings until he realized it was useless.

“Erica?” he said through his gag in a low mumble. She sat across from him barely moving. It had taken her longer to acquiesce to her new surroundings and Jonas could see terror in her eyes

Somehow she managed what appeared to be a smile, only detectable through a slight and brief squint in her eyes and attempted to speak Jonas’ name. Nothing came out but muted mumblings.

Seconds later menacing footsteps grew louder and louder heading in their direction. They were even and swift and had almost reached them. Jonas and Erica took a moment to roll their eyes around the room they were in. It was a huge space and even slight noises seemed to have made echoes. It seemed to be an airplane hangar or a space the size of one, absolutely empty except for Jonas, Erica and the footsteps that had just arrived behind Erica. A man stood and met Jonas’ painful gaze. He stared Jonas in the eyes and was not going to stop until Jonas blinked first or averted his own stare, like a master asserting superiority over a dog. Jonas unlocked his sight and looked down at Erica. The man spoke.

“Isn’t that better?” he said as he removed the gag from Erica’s mouth. She coughed achingly and gasped for air. The man walked around to Jonas and patted him on his head and rubbed his hand through his hair.

“Are you going to behave, Jonas?” He removed the gag and said, “That’s a good boy.”

Jonas bit for his hand snapping his teeth together just after the man had safely recoiled. The man immediately countered with a backhanded slap to Jonas’ face. All included, Jonas, Erica and this mysterious monster of a man were extremely surprised when Jonas actually managed to grip a large portion of his foe’s swinging hand with his teeth. The government man was clearly in pain and had not expected this outcome. His right hand was stuck from pinky to middle finger in the gnashing teeth of Jonas Martin Cassidy. This act only served to humiliate and piss off the nameless man. He pulled out a pistol with his other hand and hit Jonas over his head with it. Jonas refused to loosen the grip in his jaw. He bit even harder.

The man turned behind him and struck Erica with all of his might square in her nose. She was completely unsuspecting and squirming to help Jonas in case this may have been a predicament for escape. She fell completely over on her chair’s end, unconscious. Jonas immediately loosened the grip of his teeth and then his jaw altogether. The enemy hit him squarely in his forehead with the butt of his pistol. He fell over, blankly, upending the backside of his chair.

1,012.6 miles to go.

Day353 Wednesday 08/17/11

ran 3.4 miles

Chapter19

Torture. Humiliation. Atonement. Recantation. Dissolution. Death.

Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
When the jester sang for the King and Queen,
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me…

Jonas opened his left eye as much as the swelling would allow him. His right eye was matted shut with bruising and blood. He grinned, painfully, for the simple sake of defying the guard who was watching him in his cell. The guard took no notice. He couldn’t. Jonas’ face was too bludgeoned to identify any facial expressions.

Oh, and while the King was looking down,
The jester stole his thorny crown.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict was returned.
And while Lenin read a book on Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died.

Erica stood in a cell with her hands gripping the bars before her. She thought of Thomas and Mason, how easily they were disposed of. They were treated like hunted serial killers or fugitive terrorists. “How?” she had thought to herself, “Could millions upon millions of people in this forgotten country sit so quietly and idly over the loss of America. The sacrifices people like Thomas and Mason had made affected hundreds of millions of lives in what used to be America. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.”

She said it again out loud this time “Nobody cares. Nobody cares.”

“Nobody cares!”

Everything was quiet again. The guard struck Erica with the butt of his rifle through the bars of her cell. She fell back and slammed the rear of her head into a concrete and urine slab of sleep. North Americanadexico was now a step closer to scaring all of its people to sleep.

We were singing,
“Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
And singin’, “This’ll be the day that I die.”
“This’ll be the day that I die.”

1,030.9 miles to go.

Day346 Wednesday 08/10/11

ran 3.9 miles

Chapter18

Did you write the book of love,
And do you have faith in God above,
If the bible tells you so?
Do you believe in rock n roll,
Can music save your mortal soul,
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Well, I know that you’re in love with him
‘cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym.
You both kicked off your shoes.
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues.

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died.

In a flat-black room of concrete and echoes, Jonas sat in a plain metal chair. Crimson red flakes were matted on his nose and lips. His eyebrows were pressed with blood. In front of him was a single, continuous pane of glass framed within an inescapable structure of re-bar, aggregate and cement.

“Concrete,” Jonas had thought to himself. “I must talk without talking for now.”

Jonas lifted his battered body out of his cold chair and stood. Blood was still dripping out of his left nostril. His plain white t-shirt was now red. He ran, all of a sudden, into the elongated window like an elephant attempting to head-butt a skyscraper.

The window paid no acknowledgment to his effort. Jonas froze in pain for a moment. What sense he still had left afforded him no profitable rationale.

“Tell them nothing,” he had mumbled to himself. “Tell them nothing,” he repeated over and over in his head like a hatter.

“Jonas Martin Cassidy, You have been deemed treasonous by the NorthAmeriCanaDexican Government. What have you to say?”

He had hesitated and then responded, “A bear and the pope walk into the woods…”

He had laughed to himself, further sputtering blood onto his red t-shirt. The humor and the self-defeat of the situation had put a sardonic smile on his face. “One says to the other…”

A fist came from out of nowhere shocking Jonas in his right temple sending him stumbling to his left and crashing into a wall, slowly sliding down to the floor.

“Jonas Martin Cassidy, we don’t think you understand the severity of your circumstances. Your life is in jeopardy as pertains to your actions and words. You have done nothing yet but make a fool of yourself and a mockery of everything you wrongly believe in.”

“I am guilty of nothing.“ Those words were all Jonas could utter and they were hardly audible or coherent as he was nearly unconscious and completely beaten and exhausted.

“I am guilty of being free.”

Jonas was now unconscious. Many in the room thought he may have been dead. But his mind went on quietly above the words of his interrogator.

“I only want to live. I want to be challenged. I want opportunities like the ones our old country, America, once gave everyone who sought something worth fighting for. You are the government. You are the enemy. Your deceit and destructive legislation, not for and against the people, you behind the glass, in the dark, hidden away and out of touch,…you! Ask me anything you want to know and I swear I won’t tell you!”

These words went unheard, aired only in the subconscious of Jonas’ battered and unconscious body.

“His antics will not last for long. There are others among us who would have him tortured and killed for his deviance, alone. I think we still have use for him. Clean him up and keep him alive.”

Jonas suddenly stirred with one last stroke of cognizance. “Show me your face so I can at least die knowing I beat you and your lies! Show me your face! Show me your face!”

“I pity you Jonas Martin Cassidy. You are a waste of intelligence. You chose the wrong side.” A set of black boots slowly strutted toward Jonas. Everything went black again.

I started singin’
“Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die.
This’ll be the day that I die.”

1,052.9 miles to go.

Day339 Wednesday 08/03/11

ran 3.3 miles

Chapter 17

Amidst the noise and wind of the helicopter had come a swarm of vehicles surrounding Woodard’s car. This had been very, very planned. The same thought had permeated in Jonas’, Erica’s, Thomas’ and Mason’s mind all at once.

“We should have killed you and thrown you in a dumpster,” Mason grunted in Ben’s direction.

But it was too late.

After the smoke had cleared and the noise had stopped, Jonas and Anna were put in two separate vehicles. Black cloth bags over their heads had swallowed the world around them.

This they knew: Ben, the traitorous informant who should have been shot earlier, was now shot and dead. Michael Woodard had barrel rolled out of the car and fled. That left two. Two more shots had been fired.

This they assumed: Thomas and Mason were dead. It was reasonable to assume they had been executed on the shoulder of an interstate in Americanadexico like common drug dealers or fugitive rapists.

This they foresaw: Torture. Humiliation. Atonement. Recantation. Dissolution. Death. And any other words imaginable to what the leaders of a world spinning out of control are capable of when they are so desperate to perpetuate a path toward a dead end rather than just turning around and finding their way back to common sense.

Before Thomas was ripped out of Woodard’s vehicle by the storm of continental police he had known what the outcome was to be. His revolver was loaded and he was determined to go down in a blaze. He looked Mason in the eyes and they shared a moment few other human beings have ever shared or will ever share. A tear rolled down Mason’s rigid cheek. It was not a tear of fear or cowardice. It was moistened bravery and respect between two men who were about to meet their end after taking out as many of the enemy as they could first.

Mason extended his hand to Thomas and they shook on death. Their grip was tight and they met eye to eye without one single word. Erica turned to Thomas. She whispered in his ear, “Carmen. My name is Carmen. Thank you, Thomas.”

The siege was quick. Thomas did not even have time to pull his trigger. Mason was shot in the back of his head. In his hands were two North American officers’ necks. It was over.

Jonas was in a black Lincoln Union with tinted windows and Erica was behind him in an identical model. They sat in two separate backseats with identical black cloth bags over their heads as though they were on their way to visit an executioner. They both knew that was going to be the end destination. But first, there was to be torture, humiliation, atonement, recantation and dissolution. And any other dark ideas that came to their minds.

Erica had always thought about this day. She had wondered how she would have reacted. She and Jonas had decided long ago that their cause was worth fighting and dying for. Through belief and commitment they had hardened themselves and established acceptance of any circumstance. They could accept any circumstance as long as it was in the name of their dead country, America, being resurrected.

The first night Jonas was reunited with Carmen they had stayed up all night talking. They did not talk about their long ago past with one another. They spoke of things red, white and blue. They discussed topics spangled with stars. They talked about men from nearly 250 years ago who had founded the idea of America, which was now dead. And lastly, they pretended to be captured one day and to suffer all of the punishments Americanadexico could possibly inflict upon them.

Jonas had said, “If, or I should say when, they do catch me I will tell them that I have my God and I have my country and that they have neither. After that I imagine they will beat me nearly to death to convince me otherwise. But they will convince me of nothing. I would like to sing something that screams ‘America’, which they would never understand, like some Don McLean, whenever they put a gun to my head. Can’t you just see it? They would have a gun pressed to my temple screaming, ‘Your country never was! America was a failure! This is Americanadexico and you are a dead treasonous rat!’ And then the coward with a gun in his hand would say, ‘Confess.’ And I would then sing like a madman.”

Carmen had laughed. That’s what he called her when they were alone, Carmen. He put his hand over hers and told her that everything was going to be all right,

“Jonas, I’m terrified. I would never show it, not even to a firing squad. But I’m terrified. What happened to us? What happened to this country? Why are people so content to be slaves? This continent is like a plantation from the old south and the government is the slave master. Why do people want to sit so idly and slowly die with no sense of challenge, risk or accomplishment? How did Capitalism turn into Communism and why does nobody talk about it?”

“It’s numbers, Carmen. I don’t know what went wrong or when it happened, but all of a sudden those who lacked all ambition, those who bathed in laziness, those who only worked hard to breed with complete irresponsibility, creating more and more misguided mouths to feed, multiplying welfare and food stamp recipients at the price of everything that was once good and noble in this country being utterly robbed and destroyed, health care paid for by so few and given to so many at absolutely no cost to the squandering, ungracious majority…it’s just numbers, Carmen. Those who destroyed America kept our democracy, a system where the majority of voters wins elections, in place until it was no longer necessary. The new majority no longer cared. Nor did they know or care about the history of how America had began.

What I find to be a reasonable and responsible member of society is a couple who has an amount of children that is within their own means to pay for. They have jobs and the security to raise their reasonable amount of children to be intelligent and respectful children who hunger to find their own happiness in the future, whatever that may be. just as long as it is theirs and it was their choice to work for it. But what we have is millions upon millions of unreasonable and irresponsible individuals who do not contribute to society whatsoever. And their genuine belief that they are entitled to other peoples’ money through the vehicle of government checks is an injustice to themselves that they cannot even recognize. But that argument is useless now. The government gave and gave and gave, destroying Capitalism and American ambition, until the few who were paying for so many simply quit. So here we are. Broken, shattered, and powerless.

This is the new majority, Carmen. And the explanation is that they simply outbreed people like us every day by the thousands.”

Carmen laughed painfully to herself and said:

A long, long time ago…
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile...

Jonas, with his black cloth bag over his head, was in his Lincoln Union being interrogated and beaten. He was pistol-whipped and threatened to soon publicly recant his ideas and his manifesto that he had written so long ago. The butt of a pistol struck Jonas square on top of his head. In his agony and humiliation he slowly lifted his head and began to sing in garbled syllables:

And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while

But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.

Erica, blinded by black and terrified, tried to calm herself down.

“Don’t show the enemy any sign of fear. Be strong”, she kept repeating to herself.

“Erica, you are going to tell us your real name. You are going to tell us your name and everyone you know and then we are going to kill you. Your death will be a public execution. Jonas will die, too. But first we will turn you on one another. You will die hating Jonas Martin Cassidy and he will die hating…what is your real name?”

There was such calm in the tone of voice in the man who was speaking. Erica knew the words she had been hearing had come from the mouth of a ruthless, unmerciful monster.

“Breathe, Carmen, breathe”, she said over and over again in her head.

A fist suddenly shocked Anna’s left eye. In all of her blackness and in all of the blackness that was to come, Anna opened her black eyes and parted her black lips and began to sing in garbled syllables:

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

So bye-bye Miss American Pie.
Drove my Chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’ “This’ll…”

Blackness.

1,072.2 miles to go.

Day332 Wednesday 07/27/11

ran 0.6 miles

Chapter 16

The last thing Jonas could remember was the sound of a helicopter and the voice of Danny’s MVAS. The chopper sounded like a weed-eater at full throttle trimming the hairs off his earlobe. Before it had drowned every other sound into a silence that could only have been described as pure noise, Woodard’s electronic girlfriend demanded that he ceased acceleration. She insisted that she would yield to inertia if he did not change his momentum and direction. Her tone of voice was that of a woman having an orgasm.

The last moment Jonas remembered exactly was the look on Danny’s face when he realized his femme car was capable of something he had not foreseen. His pride was diminished to nothing as he slowed his speed. Just as a man would do, he refused to touch his brake. Instead he put the transmission in neutral and let it idle down toward nothing like watching an ice cube melt.

Danny looked at Jonas exchanging a lost glance. He could not find one single word. For Danny, it was like America looking into a mirror and realizing what it had done.

“I’m sorry, Jonas. I don’t know how this happened.”

“Come on, Woodard. You sound like a career politician that just did something right and lost his seat for it. Take your dignity and jump out of this car. They’re not after you.”

Then came the hum. It was unbearable. Like a murder of crows flapping their wings and picking for food inside Jonas’ brain, his mind rattled with torture and suspense of what would happen next. Jonas craned his neck to the back seat and looked at Erica, Thomas, and Mason. Ben laughed with his hands tied behind his back, sputtering blood through his gag. Danny Woodard was gone.

For the last few moments of consciousness Jonas had within him he saw a black sack fly over Erica’s face. A blunt object immediately attacked his direction. As Jonas’ eyes closed and Carmen’s soul screamed, there was a gunshot. Ben’s blood spackled across the windshield was the last thing Jonas saw as his eyes staggered to close completely.

Erica and Jonas were brutally escorted away with black sacks over their heads, bound and gagged, sputtering blood like Ben only moments before. Thomas and Mason were executed on the shoulder of an Americanadexican Interstate running north through what was once Texas.
“Take them to New Carolina. We need the woman to be coherent for torture. Jonas…make sure you keep him alive.”

1,097.0 miles to go.

Day325 Wednesday 07/20/11

ran 4.2 miles

Chapter15

“Woodard has never let us down. He’ll be here in a minute.” Anna said this half-heartedly with feigned hope.

“Where’s Jonas and why is he not back yet?”

“Why does he always lose the group?”

“He never follows your orders.”

Erica took a deep breath. She wondered the same things but refused to let anyone else know.

“He is not a soldier! He is an asset! And whatever he is doing right now, there is a reason for it. I know where he is and that is all you need to know. Mason? Thomas? Do we understand?”

Danny Woodard leaned into his right turn like a lathed axe poised to split any wooden obstruction placed in front of it. His car screeched along the street drowning the Motor Vehicle Advisory System his automated console was attempting to warn and urge him against.

Between the excessive friction of rubber and asphalt he could hardly hear the simulated female voice but he knew exactly what she was saying.

“Please decelerate. Please decelerate.”

Danny had a straightaway and a yellow light approximately 500 feet away. It was a poor assessment of judgment to assume he’d reach the intersection before the light had turned red.

“Stop accelerating! Stop accelerating!”

It did not help to have a sexy femme voice programmed into his Advisory System. Her voice was silky and seductive. She was redundant and her tone of voice contradicted itself with serious matters. All Danny heard was “Harder on then gas!" and “Don’t stop!"

He pressed his shoulder forward into the wheel and pushed his foot further into the gas.

“Warning! Warning! If you continue to disobey the speed regulations I will be forced to decommission this vehicle and the authorities will be alerted.”

Danny eased off the pedal as soon as he had crossed the intersection. His console printed a speeding ticket between his stick and cup holders.

“You have one more warning, Danny Woodard. I repeat, one more warning.”

Jonas entered the car.

“This is it, Woodard. Erica, three others, and me. Can you take us to the new capital?”

1,112.3 miles to go.

Day311 Wednesday 07/06/11

ran 4.8 miles

Chapter 14

Jonas was in a new place. He stepped into a tub of hot running water. A particular and rare kind of peace had fallen over him. It was one of the seldom moments when the entire universe stood still in all of its clarity---but only long enough to catch a glimpse of its simple geometry for a mere perplexing second. Jonas saw, somehow, men stripped and women bare with shame and confusion for so many questions they had so few answers for; children branded, tagged like so many heads of cattle in a herd, branded and tagged like commercial images in young impressionable minds content to follow those in front of them, behind them, and on their sides regardless of where it leads them; so many distractions to occupy and obstruct the precious little we would all like to know but don’t know how to ask for; to clothe, layer after layer, so many fabrics and materials of thin and delicate armor to protect what is so quietly inside of us all and to shield what is so piercingly intent to get inside.

Less than a breath later and Jonas returned back to the clumsy, lethargic reality that consumed his and everyone else’s lives.

Jonas thought about the poem he had read earlier. It was page thirty-four of Anna’s untitled book. He now understood that there was more to all of this than he had previously understood. The circumstances of Jonas acquiring that book were unquestionable. The intentions were still unknown but his puppet strings were being pulled and twitching with curiosity.

What people need now is another Henry Thoreau
to aspire towards on rainy days.

What we need now is a sunny gloom to rekindle
the hopes of our warm shadow’s rays.

People need to peel their hands from the mouths
of their souls to allow for noise and the power to not do what they’re told.

What we need now is quietude and screaming
at the inversely appropriate times that they would commonly behold.

Jonas sat in the hot water sweating in comfort. He thought about his mother. She used to always tell him, “If it sounds too good to be true than it probably is.” He wondered if something was too bad to be real if it couldn’t be. It did not go both ways.

1,157.1 miles to go.

Day297 Wednesday 06/22/11

ran 3.9 miles

Chapter 13

The moon hung swallowed in darkness unadorned by stars. Like a lone pearl lazily strung on a frail thread the night sky seemed determined to part with its one dim speck of light. Silence as vast as the darkness engulfed the hour.

Two figures stood under a flickering streetlight. They were identical in their shadowy appearances. The edges of their trench coats rustled against their knees in an eerily gentle gust. The moon surrendered to black and the air suddenly stood still, like prey frozen in fear, as one of the figures leaned into the other and spoke.

“Your associate failed to complete his mission. He had succeeded in infiltrating the rebel group but was unable to complete the end task. What we know is that Jonas Cassidy is currently in the presence of who we think is the leader of the rebels. Her underground name is Erica Darco. She is with two other men whom we do not know the identities of. They are inconsequential. The objective remains the same except for one thing. We now want Jonas alive.”

A cricket chirped a rusted tune as a dark cloud formed above. Tides rose and children fell asleep. Men thought of plans and women worried. Teenagers walked the streets of their night world with blind rage and visible disbelief. News was the same old news and on the face of every Ex-American was the same old, lost American face. The chirping stopped as the second figure spoke.

“Regardless of how futile their ideas and resources are they continue to be a step ahead of us. We need to take a different approach.”

There was a pause like the space between a bad joke and a fake laugh. It had seemed only a moment for one but an eternity for the other.

He continued, “I understand what these people are after. I used to be like them. Jonas Martin Cassidy is a trumped up bluff. I don’t think he even fully understands what he is doing, why he is there or where he plans on going. He has no direction and yet he is driven. Insanity is his only motive…none of his decisions make any sense.”

The other man laughed quietly and employed sarcasm.

“Yet United North America with all of its government resources cannot apprehend or figure out this troublesome man? Insanity seems to be on his side. You are telling me, Mr. Corso, that ‘insanity’ is the best scapegoat you have to resort to as an excuse? I would like to believe that you could do better than that. This national continent is the strongest government in world history and you have the audacity to tell me that ‘insanity’ is our largest obstacle in apprehending one man? One man, Mr. Corso, is all we ask of you…and your deceased associate. Can you do what we are asking?

Mr. Corso was shaken. He was curious about the awry fate of his associate and he was fearful of the ultimatum just placed on his head. His lone ally on this cold, dark night was stolid and stern. He spoke in a tone of voice that demanded full attention.

“Let me explain something to you, Mr. Corso. It’s very simple. You are completely missing the larger picture with all of your words and ideas. I don’t want to hear words. I want to see Jonas Martin Cassidy in our custody. There is nothing more or less that you can do for me. And I don’t care if you think you know Jonas or if you used to be like him. You’re not him. You are not nearly as dedicated or focused, or as ‘insane’ as he is.

Listen. Let me explain something to you. There is a common fabric uniting all causes and actions. No cause lacks importance and no action goes unnoticed. The common fabric is selfishness. Nothing is done to any end without some kind of self-gratification. Actions take on importance and notice only because people want to be important and noticed. They are selfish. In Jonas’ case he feels guilty and obligated to atone for something; which in essence is a selfishness to fulfill one’s own needs. What he feels guilty about is what we need to find out. Every man has a corner deep in his mind and soul that orders his being and decides his actions regardless of what he thinks is right or wrong. Some men or motivated by irrepressible guilt and others are moved by sheer power. Jonas is not after power. He would rather die an unknown soldier than indulge in fame. We need to find what it is that Jonas Martin Cassidy is so willing to sacrifice everything for. What is it that he is so willing to die for?”

The streetlight above stopped flickering suddenly as though someone had a point to make. It did not beam on high power or cut out completely. It hummed a continuous, low voltage hint of light respective to the moon above it.

“The world, Mr. Corso, is a slippery chessboard with contracting and expanding boundaries. Rows after endless rolling rows of pawns mill away their time in tiny squares performing tasks and doing random things that not even they fully understand. Often curious what their purposes are and why it is they continue their questionable routines each day, they assign value to their actions and pride to their beliefs. This is what makes them human even though they constantly sacrifice and give their lives for Kings and Queens, often, whether they choose to or not. However, it is actually the knights, bishops and rooks that weave the world’s fabric.

You are a knight, bishop or a rook. You can choose. You are a play to ensure the survival of your King. We need you to capture an pawn. You need to understand how important this is.

Kings and Queens, Presidents, Czars, Prime Ministers, Shahs and Emperors possess no power without knights, bishops and rooks. Similarly, pawns have no voice or direction without the guidance or deceit of knights, bishops and rooks. Pawns are like ants that swarm and make a big fuss for a mere three or four minutes when a foot kicks their hill, only to pick up the pieces and to forget about it. And as it is the foot of the King or Queen, hung from puppet strings, that keeps kicking their anthill, it is the knights, bishops and rooks grinning in the shadows.

Knights, bishops and rooks are the weavers of everything that has led to our continental union. They are manufacturers of disillusion for the greater cause and freewill for the lesser few who understand the shackles of freedom.

To not accept the human element, the historically provable fact that we are by nature often selfish and destructive, that our good intentions rarely ever tip a scale of altruistic worth, and that we are completely unpredictable from one decade to another from one country to another is suicidal to human progress.

Knights, bishops and rooks…they are the only pieces of the world game that do not need to follow the rules of kings or queens and most certainly do not need to listen to millions of pawns. People like you, Mr. Corso, are certainly a convenience but do not overlook how dispensable and replaceable you are. We want Jonas alive and we want him now.”

1,202.5 miles to go.

Day291 Thursday 06/16/11

ran 2.2 miles

Chapter 12

Jonas pulled his backpack off his shoulders. The room panged with uneasiness as Mason, panicking, slowly reached for a knife he’d had in his back pocket. Ben and Thomas flexed like a couple of cowboys in what they thought might have been a Mexican standoff.

Erica rushed over to Jonas and grabbed the remaining strap of his backpack. She threw it to Mason and told everyone to be calm.

“Mason, keep your blade folded. Ben, tell your friend to sit down. “

Thomas remained standing with an insubordinate look of conviction in his eyes. Erica saw doubt in Thomas and attempted to control the situation. “Sit down, Thomas. I can tell you everything that is in that bag.”

Thomas opened his mouth to talk. Nothing came out, but he perverted a sense of calm that was growing incessant second by second. Mason’s hand pressed down like an anvil on his shoulder before he could get a word out.

“Empty the bag, Mason.” Erica looked to Jonas to see if the bag contained the specific contents he was supposed to bring. Jonas nodded as Mason emptied the bag randomly, piece by piece.

The first object Mason pulled out was a plain white book with no title or name on it. It was curled up, torn and fringed.

“Every object Mason pulls out of this bag belongs to someone in this room. They are personal items that will either allow each of us to trust one another more or make each of us trust one another less.

”The second object Mason pulled out was a crumpled piece of newsprint paper folded over six or seven times. He had set it down with a tiny thud. The third object was a stack of beat loose-leaf paper folded in a pink sandwich bag. Mason had known exactly what it was as soon as he had placed it on the table. Everyone else had known what it was, too. Erica had turned it over to get a better look.

“What else, Mason?”

Mason had two objects left. There was what felt to be a pocketknife and what seemed to be a rock. A simple stone was placed on the table. There was nothing apparently special about it. An aged red pocketknife with a Boy Scout insignia was placed next to it.

“Is that all, Mason?” Erica sat down, crossed her legs, and patiently made eye contact with everyone in the room. She connected her eyes with Jonas last. And then, like a nun who had found virtue in breaking her vows, she placed a revolver on the small end table to her left. Everyone else in the room flinched and conspicuously prepared for what might have happened next,

“One of us is going to be exposed in a few moments.” Erica looked at and touched her gun to reinforce the urgency of what was about to unfold.

“Jonas, you are the only one that we can all trust. Grab your pink sandwich bag and pick up that gun. Stand in that open corner by the door and help us figure this out. Thomas, Ben and Mason, among us four someone is a liar and a traitor.”

The three men exchanged glances with one another as though they were all confident they were not the one.

Erica spoke. “Mason, that one is yours. The folded newsprint paper is yours.”

Mason unraveled the paper and pulled out his Purple Heart from years long gone. He had thrown it over the fence at the White House during the 2008 election. She knew what it had meant for him to throw it over that fence and she knew what it would mean for him to see it again, right there in front of him at that time.

“But how…” He was befuddled as Erica asked him to stand by Jonas. “I’ll explain later, Mason.”

Erica picked up her belonging. It was the curled up, torn and fringed book with no name or title. As she walked toward Jonas to stand by him and Mason she whispered something in his ear.

“I understand why you left, Jonas.”

Jonas’ heart thumped and then fell into his stomach. His brain echoed memories of how many times he had opened that book to a random page for guidance to continue his journey. That book was a guiding light for him, and Carmen Elise Sanders had written it. She was the author of his vision and the editor of his endeavors.

There were two objects left. A rusted single-bladed pocketknife and an old rock lacking description were the only two things separating Thomas and Ben.

“Ben and Thomas, one of you is with us and one of you is not. I don’t know who is who but this will settle it.”

Erica took a deep breath and said, “Ben, is the pocketknife or the rock yours?”

“The rock,” Ben said. He had no hesitation.

“Thomas, is the pocketknife or the rock yours?”

“This is not fair, Erica. I have been with you for over a year and all of a sudden you are calling me out? Ben has been with us for only a couple months. He is the suspicious one. He could have easily said the knife or the rock was his.”

“What are you so nervous about, Thomas? One of these two objects is yours and you should be able to identify it.”

Erica’s tone of voice was concise and calm. “Which one belongs to you, Thomas?”

Thomas’ voice became more controlled and his words began to fall more succinctly. “I don’t know what to tell you, Erica. Neither of those two objects have any significance in my life. But I am no traitor to our cause, either.”

Thomas sounded believable and yet it was curious that he did not have an object to claim when everyone else did. All eyes were on Ben.

“Ben, what is the relevance of that rock?” Erica leveled her stare into Ben’s eyes with ruthless conviction.

There was a stark silence. Jonas stepped forward and intervened. “I placed that rock and that pocketknife in my backpack less than an hour ago. I found them on the road on my way here and neither of them have any significance to one of you or the other.” Jonas said every word with his eyes aimed at Ben.

His glare was piercing and it had become apparent that Jonas knew something that only one other person in the room had also known.

“Mutiny,” Jonas said, “Is what our leaders had dealt America and its people. If anyone in this room thinks that politically uniting the continent of North America was a reasonable or humanitarian thing to do, raise your hand.”

No one moved.

“If anyone in this room believes the North American Government has any genuine interest in its people or their thoughts, raise your hand. Raise your hand if you enjoy being controlled and if you find comfort in not thinking for yourself. If you are satisfied with nothing, no self-motivation, no will to succeed, no voice to be heard, no concept of what it means to be alive and to be free, step forward.”

No one moved.

“Thomas, step forward.”

“It’s not me, Jonas! Erica?”

Erica reached into her pocket and pulled out a small paper box. The box was slightly larger than a matchbox and it fit in her palm. “This is your possession, Thomas…”

Ben suddenly lunged for the gun. He knocked Jonas over in his wake of desperation. There he stood with his back in a corner with the gun unsteadily pointed from one side of the room to the other and back again.

“You are the source of mutiny!” Ben pointed the gun at Jonas with an insane glare of hatred in his eyes. Mason took a step forward.

“Get back! Up against the wall. All of you!”

Erica took a couple steps toward Ben. He pointed the gun at her. He was trembling with fear. Erica was as calm as a cloudless day.

“Ben, may I just say something?”

“No! Shut up! You are wrong. People are not accountable. They are lazy and aimless. They desire guidance and they need a government to direct them.”

“Ben, “ Erica said calmly, “Let me speak.”

“Shut your mouth and get back. Get back! You people cannot even trust each other. Not one of you even knows the name of anyone else in this room.”

There was a quiet pause and Ben exposed a villain’s grin directed at Jonas.

“Except for you. Jonas Martin Cassidy. You are the reason I am here. You are the reason I have had to pretend to care so much about you people and your causes. I have been waiting for you and this moment for a long time. I credit you this, Jonas, that you have a real talent for writing political propaganda but it is a shame you wrote for the wrong side.”

Erica walked up to Ben with no hesitation. With no second thought she stood in front of him, tilted her head slightly and stared at him.

“Get back, Erica! It is Jonas that I want.” The gun was aimed right between her eyes an inch away from her forehead.

Erica slowly raised her hands up to Ben’s arms and advanced, moving her fingers down toward the gun.

“I swear to God I will pull the trigger, Erica. Put your hands down.”

Erica’s thumb found the trigger and she pushed it away from her. The gun made a hollow click.

“You have no God, Ben. You have no country either.”

Ben stepped back and pulled the trigger himself. Nothing. He pulled the trigger two more times with the gun pointed at Anna and then at Jonas. Hollow click. Hollow click.

Erica grabbed the gun out of Ben’s hand as he stared at it blankly. She gripped the barrel of the gun in her hand and wielded the weapon like a hammer to the left temple of Ben’s head. Mason picked him up off the ground and held him up with one hand. His other hand was a white-knuckled fist and he unquestionably wanted to end Ben’s life. Ben hung limp and lifeless in Mason’s grip.

“No, Mason. I know what you want to do. If you do it you are no better than him and I’d hate to lose the respect and trust I have in you. Put him down.”

Erica walked to Thomas and handed him the gun and his possession.

“Thomas, I am sorry you had to be treated as a pawn.

When we first met I had asked you if I could hold on to your gun. You had trusted me enough to part with it and now I trust you enough to give it back. Here is your gun and here are the six bullets that were loaded in it when you gave it to me. I only hope that you have learned in the last year you have been with us that we have not needed to use that gun one single time until now. And even now it was not fired off.”

1,219.3 miles to go.

Day283 Wednesday 06/08/11

ran 3.5 miles

Chapter 11

A hero for the twenty-first century Americanadexican was a charismatic politician, a propaganda guru, or a media marvel. This hero was a man or woman who had no interest for any other people except that they continued giving them money for all of the prefabrications and lies he or she had seduced them with. It was at this point that America had finally gained eight more letters behind it. People actually wanted to emulate these politicians, gurus and marvels of mass destruction. There was a reason why only a few factions of people so desired to control everything. Very few are sure what exactly that reason was but it was obviously a big one because it has always been this way. The weak realization that millions of people aspired to follow and to be like these select few at any cost was the festering wound that America had become.

America had turned into a wasteland of opportunity where personal endeavors were discouraged and reliance on government and patriotism were enforced. There was no answer to what had happened in America in the first decade of the twenty-first century but there was a general understanding that absolutely nothing made any sense. The greatest shame in America’s slow, millennial suicide was that the last existing generations who had known better had not spoken out. Their children and their children’s children were born into a chaos that no founding father would have ever wished upon any one or any other country. Things were so good at the cost of other things being so bad elsewhere that they had no discretion in their selfishness. And the children were not to be blamed; the children who became men of every generation were to be blamed. The parents of Fear, Ignorance and Indecision bred Old America’s demise.

1,242.6 miles to go.

Day276 Wednesday 06/01/11

ran 4.6 miles

Chapter 10

Jonas always felt something was wrong. It was something greater than he could explain. He did not know how to take out of his heart the feeling he could not explain. The next best thing for him to do was to throw away everything he knew and to pursue this inescapable calling that demanded his every fiber of existence. After years of flowing from underground puddle to underground stream to underground puddle of so many unaccepted, black-marketed thoughts and actions that the rank-and-file surface no longer accepted or was brave enough to reclaim, he now found himself at the bay of his destiny.

Jonas inhaled. “Americanadexico”, he had thought to himself.

That was it. It was what it was. He did not know what he was going to do or what would happen if he had done it, but he knew he had to do something.

As a boy every man dreamed about being a hero. They all wanted to do “good” and to protect others from harm. Every man once wanted to battle villains and to bring criminals to justice. They wanted to stop evil and to save the girl. But something had happened along the way. Boys had grown into men. Very few men had remembered their dreams but they had recalled enough to recognize the confusion they had felt any time they saw something un-American or unfair. They were holding onto an almost unrecognizable smidgeon of American patriotism that their grandfather’s grandfathers had bled for them.

America had reached a point where the only choice left to sustain itself was to expand and socialize its people. America was dead. Everything that George Washington, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, and hundreds of thousands of other unnamed heroes had given their ideas and lives for was gone. As tragic as that was it was even more tragic that people simply did not care. They no longer had the ability, the passion, or the intelligence to care.

In the eighteenth century, a tiny coastal sliver of what America was to become took on the international leader of that time. England was the unequivocal King of the world and America was nothing more than a futile, unattainable idea. Whether it was God or human perseverance that allowed a man to be defeated by a mouse was of no consequence that thirteen colonies had defeated England, became America, and grew for many more than two hundred years into a religious and political paradigm of strong and faithful people that had been unmatched anywhere until now.

1,267.6 miles to go.

Day270 Thursday 05/26/11

ran 4.2 miles

Chapter 9

It seemed things used to make so much more sense when Jonas was younger and more confused. As a child, Jonas remembered his house being an entire universe. His backyard was a neighboring galaxy. To ride in the car with his mother to go to MacDonalds for french fries or to pick out a candy bar at a gas station seemed far more exciting to him at four than traveling to the moon would have been when he was forty. Now that Jonas was well-invested into his thirties, MacDonalds menus were written primarily in Spanish and the moon, often shadowed into a mysterious crescent like a sharp edge in the hand of a madman, mocked everyone in its path with a cold, mercurial gleam. The shine of its reaper’s edge was a glowing reminder hanging in a vast sky devoid of what was once hope and imagination that everything was what it was and that there only just so happened to be a huge, majestic jewel in the sky that refused to stop watching us.

Jonas exhaled. He thought about the decisions and steps in his life that had brought him to where he was. He was both selfless and proud, yet disparaged, and constantly looked for courage. He thought about his country and what it once was and where it once started. Things were not always like this. His country was gone. It was now a continent. It was augmented with the same superficial and silicone motives that enlarged breasts. Things were not always like this. The rest of the world laughed at us. It had been determined by our own leaders that when their country was too hard working, too economically incomparable per capita, and too driven to succeed at all costs, that their own people should have been tempered into a less resourceful and more docile population of equal rights regardless of ability. Things were not always like this. It had somehow become America’s responsibility to level a proverbial playing field of opportunity for anybody of any age, gender, or ethnicity. In doing so America lit a fire under its own ladder and prioritized an agenda of appeasing everybody and every country it was better than. Things were not always like this.

Professional football players made ridiculous amounts of money for being the best they could be and not one of them would ever ease up on their competition because ability or race was questionable. Lawyers have one of the most respectable titles in the world, doctors and architects demand distinction, and not one of them would ever compromise litigation, a triple bypass, or a set of World Trade Center Towers because other methods or designs were weak, inexperienced, or had said, “It’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair” was the weakest and most supple condition used. It’s based on sympathy and charity. Charity was the worst thing to give anybody and sympathy was the water that extinguished the American fire to succeed. Things were not always like this. America had churned like butter into a fluffy froth mutilating its original design and intention of rigid perseverance and stout will to succeed.

Things were not always like this.

1,291.4 miles to go.

Day262 Wednesday 05/18/11

ran 3.3 miles

Chapter 8

The door opened achingly with a dull creak like an old man slowly extending his jaw to form words with garbled consonants and muted vowels. It was dark inside as a single figure emerged before Jonas. A dull lamp directly behind the figure’s head distorted his shady features.

Jonas had a cynical wit for detecting trouble and at that moment nothing had felt right. The figure in front of him looked vaguely familiar and particularly threatening. Jonas could see it was a large man and there was something in his hand. After a few seconds of silently staring at Jonas the figure stepped forward into the light and spoke.

“You don’t look like much. Come in.”

Jonas immediately recognized the man as both a friend and a stranger though he had never personally met him. In the underground world, which they were both cast into, real names were rarely ever used, close friendships were a burden of too much emotional gravity, and staying in the same place for too long was considered dangerous. The underground was larger than any of its enemies had estimated, yet this rendezvous had much planning and very specific purposes. For now, 216 Fifth Street was Jonas’ temporary destination and the man standing in front of him was a face he had seen not very long before.

Upon entering, Jonas felt coy and small. The space was confined and the windows were boarded up. The interior had an odd presence similar to that of a fortified brown paper bag. The walls were chipped all over with various rotted materials. A derelict, thin curtain hung over an obscured window, which looked like it would tear in half were a tiny mouse to cling to it. The floor was a decrepit stretch of wood-paneled unreliability that creaked with every step. In many spots the outside ground was visible through cracks and holes.

There were two other men sitting at a small table in a corner and neither of them acknowledged Jonas’ presence. He heard a toilet flush in the back of the house and asked, “How many of you are here?”

“You make five. The two over there are harmless, Ben and Thomas. You can call me Mason. I’m sure you know names don’t mean a thing around here.”

There was an awkward pause similar to that of the moment a truth may have suggested falsifying itself.

“And you are Jonas Cassidy, one of the few most admired and hated men on this new continent, Americanadexico.”

A voice came from afar. It was a woman. Her voice was familiar yet distant.

Mason was the crescent shaped man on the side of the road. The object in his hand was a pack of cigarettes. Grinning, he asked Jonas with a mild nudge and a restrained push, “Got a Bic or a match?” Ben and the other two men started laughing as she suddenly walked into the room. A brisk silence fell over everyone.

It was Carmen.

“Hello, Jonas. Outside…we had to do what was necessary to ensure no one was following you or watching us. We could not bring attention to ourselves.

Carmen was now wearing plain, loose clothing. She was a fugitive in white cotton and baggy denim.

“From this point forward you will address me as Erica.”

Jonas and Carmen were the only ones in the dimly lit room who knew one another’s true identities. Jonas could sense no one else knew and that Carmen wanted to keep his and her history hidden.

“It is dangerous to be free in this country and too many people are looking for us. I know you are already aware of our disposition but I don’t want you to misinterpret our first impression with you. We are good at what we do and we believe in what we do.”

Jonas was impressed and in awe of Carmen. Moments ago he had felt sorry for her and he was disappointed in her. Now he had discovered that she was like him. He saw that she was one of the few people that were not afraid.

“These are my friends and now they are your friends. If they introduced themselves already then you probably know them as Ben, Thomas, and Mason. I do not know their real names and they do not know mine. We choose to know as little as possible about each other. However, we all know who you are and unfortunately everyone else does, too. I hope you will trust us, Jonas. And if you don’t, I will personally hand you over to the authorities with no remorse. You’ve come this far, Jonas, and if you don’t challenge yourself to succeed right now then what was it all for? You can either testify your faults to the government or you can falsify the government with your truth.

A curtain suddenly tore in half as a tiny rodent fell to the floor and scampered across the splintery terrain with a rather large and weightless strip of yellow flowered pattern falling further apart with each tiny step.

“Jonas, we know who you are and we know what you are. Our task is to make sure you understand what you are."

Jonas had a look of excited terror on his face. Everything was happening so fast. Minutes before he was content to wander aimlessly in what seemed to him a museum of uninitiated existence. It was so comfortable and easy to sit aside and watch things rapture and to blame others instead of expressing his ideas and making his voice heard. Jonas had always dreamed about the rapture and rising above the silence, but now that he was at his destination, he was afraid.

Carmen, or Erica, could sense the urgency and immediacy of the moment in Jonas’ despairing eyes. She slowed things down to give him a chance to catch up.

“This man that keeps shoving you around and asking for a Bic or a match is Mason. Ten years ago I would have said that he was a patriot, a proud American and an enemy to anyone who threatened the preservation of America and its freedom. If I were to call him a patriot now he would be offended to hear that I was referring to him as an ungrateful and disillusioned man who had the overrated ability to passionately recite words from newspapers, television shows and radio programs like a talking head with a string drawn from the back of its plastic skull that was incapable of acting upon his own thoughts. If I were to call him a proud American now he would be enraged by the notion that I may have thought he approved of the actions of his government. And now that America’s greatest enemy is its own government, Ben is an enemy to his own country.”

Jonas grabbed the pack of cigarettes out of Mason’s hand and lit one. He looked at Erica through a cloud of smoke and said, “So what do we do now?”

“That’s what you’re here to tell us, Jonas.”

Jonas was now alone. Like a lake, hidden, he was surrounded on all sides but he was by himself. The two that went by Ben and Thomas looked at Jonas with critical eyes carefully sizing his silence. Mason lit a cigarette. The sound of the match igniting seemed to vibrate in the ruinous walls and the odorous smell of sulfur emanated through the still of the moment. Jonas and Carmen stared into one another’s eyes. He knew this would be the last time he could think of her as “Carmen”. They both wanted to say so many things they each knew could not be said.

The vacancy of emotion Jonas displayed was a disappointment to all. He had tentatively received the honor and respect of an unlikely leadership for a cause that pervaded and illuminated his very being. For someone who often felt the world and all its creatures to be nothing more than a random pocket of change jingling in the cosmos, he was in awe.

Jonas elected not to display his awe like a stoic poker face concealing a hand. He was still unsure whether his cards were good or bad and if it were not for Carmen’s presence he would have probably left 216 Fifth Street as quickly as he had found it. He did not know these other rogues and he was unaware of how they expected he should have reacted. What Jonas really wanted was to run and that was precisely why he had stayed. Although fear compelled him it was the tragedy of eventually dying with the regret of cowardice and the torment of unanswered questions that truly terrified Jonas and his unknown fate. He was still unsure of any certainties and he did not understand at all what exactly these four individuals had wanted from him.

1,312.3 miles to go.

Day255 Wednesday 05/11/11

ran 1.4 miles

Chapter 7

Jonas stood uncertainly at the door unsure of what or who was behind it. There were a few faded newspapers scattered around the foot of the door lending to the house a sense of vacancy. Across the top of one of the tattered papers in bold print read the headline “Incumbent Confident For 2016 Election”.

“It’s not even November of 2016”, Jonas said under his breath. Polls, debates, scandals, skeletons, and baby kissing were all in full gear. Mind numbing senselessness would soon inundate the delicate fabric of rational thinking through any media outlet it could find. The only aspect of this election Jonas found even mildly amusing or interesting was a sardonic curiosity of who the next untapped mass of voters would be and how sinisterly they would impact the existing and dwindling minority of traditional American beliefs in government. Jonas believed the 2012 election exploited an immense frontier of new voters when his country allowed millions upon millions of illegal aliens to legally remain within U.S. borders and become naturalized citizens (and voters). The message to the world was that this country granted unlawful deviants amnesty and that its laws were pliable and easily revised by criminals. The numbers, and the power created by the numbers, had grown exponentially over a small matter of years. And just a few years was all it took for an entire continent of three countries to go through the preliminary steps of becoming one single nation for reasons even the government had much difficulty lying about and Americans found impossible to understand.

The government began blatantly opposing the demands of the people it was supposed to be protecting and treated their votes and ideas as though they were nothing more than blank scraps of paper in a permanently sealed suggestion box. It took years for the people to finally stir and to understand that something was wrong. And when they did it was far too late. Their reactions were meaningless and as useless as a 6:20 train ticket at 8:00.

Jonas was one of a group of rogue individuals who had allegedly committed crimes of “unAmerican-thought”. He was accused of thinking and speaking against his country. Something had been wrong for a very long time and it was being ignored like a highly detectable cancer. There was a general feeling among many that something bad was coming or that something good was going away. But few felt compelled to speak out about it or act on it. They were convinced that everything they were told was to be unquestioned and they were comfortably powerless with their surroundings. Freedoms, one by one, were being limited or taken away. Much had changed for the worst in a short period of time and nobody had seemed to care. The rights and will of the government’s people thinned away like a shallow, muddy puddle evaporating all of its hope into a cloudy void. The people’s government was the proverbial atmosphere collecting the hope and it was not going to precipitate a drop of fairness any time soon.

Governments do not claim mistakes and they do not retract or negotiate fault.

Jonas did not rob or shoot anybody. He was not a terrorist. Not once had he ever placed another human being in potentially fatal harm. Jonas simply wrote a manifesto, which became something larger than he had ever expected.

When something is done or said by the government it will be seen through until it works or until the people get tired of hearing about it, only to forget.

Jonas and those like him were considered threats to the new nation. They were threats to continental democracy, which many would call progressivism, and accused of treasonously hating their own country with intentions to plot against its people.

Governments do not die. Nor or they living things yet they control us.

Those who aided and abetted Jonas and those who thought like him were dutifully encouraged to publicly denounce their beliefs or to be immediately exiled from the country, United North America, once apprehended.

The only tools a government should need are simplicity and common sense. To imply that there is anything else necessary is both ill-intended and opportunistic.

Jonas refused to believe what other people had said about him on the radio and what newspapers had printed about him. The media portrayed him as a monster regardless of the truth. He chose to risk exile by his own country. Before the God he knew in his heart, before all the wars his and other governments created, before all of the wasted life so many seemed to sit idly by, before welfare recipients and the large percentage of them who lacked so much belief in themselves, before congressmen and governors who had been holding on to impossibility for far too long, before Hollywood, New York, Houston, Ontario, Cancun and the rest of the continental union, before the lack of sensitivity and the abundance of selfishness that made this entire world go around, before the President and all of his men, Jonas decided that he would have no part.

Things were not always like this.

1,337.0 miles to go.

Day248 Wednesday 05/04/11

ran 3.1 miles
Here is Chapter 6 of “I am Erica”. To read it from the beginning click on “I am Erica” in the categories to the right.

Chapter6

Jonas followed his defrosted path back to Fifth Street. Now exhaling smoke instead of steam, the sun prevailed over the cold moisture. Leaves would soon be crackling and rustling instead of sticking together like cold, wet flakes of oatmeal. Whitened rooftops would once again be faded back to black and birds would soon be foraging on a newly moistened earth.

His knock grew inpatient tapping against his denim pocket. His left toe touched street with every other step through his worn sole. The meager weight of his backpack snapped another of the final threads on his shoulder strap. His jacket was not at all sufficient to warm him in the cold evenings. Jonas’ rare feelings of neglect and compromise were usually immediately followed by an urgency of strength and a familiar will to succeed. He was empowered by the frustration of adversity. But for an instant he felt like one of the paper shamrocks that gas station clerks asked customers to donate a dollar for towards muscular dystrophy. Most people would rather not part with their dollar. They often felt that because they had donated a dollar earlier in the week that the month of March’s charitable donation quota had been reached. Jonas was admittedly one of these people, himself, and he did not mind feeling the way he did. Suffering was in his nature and part of what he believed to be the greater part of existence.

He thought about the dollar he had found earlier and suddenly perceived it to be an unexplainable form of charity that somebody or something had donated to him. Offended by the idea that mere luck or chance proximity may have taken pity on him and given him a dollar immediately devastated his pride. Jonas crumpled up the dollar and threw it back in the street as though it were an insult to the integrity of his struggles. He preferred to remain blighted and ignored like dystrophic muscles in children or a stale box of Girl Scout cookies.

The aged, frayed and weather-beaten door stood like an immense monolith that a common, run-down house just happened to be squeezing. The cuts and scratches were like hieroglyphs of a forgotten history. The undulating knots swelled with stories that would never be told. There were numbers stenciled by the sun where a two, one, and six once hung at eye level. The doorknob was porcelain fired on cast iron and it tilted downwardly as though a couple screws were hanging on by a final thread. Jonas determined the door had to be at least a century old. One hundred years of weather, openings and closings, friends and enemies, good news and bad news, all passing through various decades over a vast amount of time.

Jonas was certain he would never live to be one hundred years old. Nor did he find himself capable of standing in one spot for even one hundred minutes. He wondered about the occurrences the door may have been a part of and then reflected on the underwhelming little he had seen in his own young life.

Jonas Martin Cassidy was thirty-five years old. He was born into the Reagan administration and the first big post-hippie “Just Say No” movement against drug use. John Lennon had died the year Jonas was born and, before he had quit collecting baseball cards or had crashed into puberty, the Berlin Wall had fallen.

Compared to one hundred years there was little Jonas had seen. What he had seen had amounted to even less as half of it had been viewed through primarily adolescent and juvenile eyes. He could not possibly have had any idea of the scope of events that had occurred over the last century.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, San Francisco and the most damaging earthquake in U.S. history, Reverend Algernon S. Crapsey found guilty of heresy, Charlie Chaplin, Nan Aspinwall, the Ludlow War, WWI, the influenza epidemic (202 deaths daily), John Scopes’ evolution debate, deep channel green and rich windsor maroon, the Great Depression followed by the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, FDR, John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, WWII and Normandy, Bernard Baruch coins the term “Cold War”, the Korean War (165,485 American casualties), Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Grenada, invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, intervention in Bosnia and Herzegonia, 9/11...

These people and events cannot sum up even a small fraction of the past century. They are loose reflections of an uncertain future that is begging for direction and meaning. What history distinctly earns through patience and concision the future squanders in blind repetition and excess.

1,359.0 miles to go.

Day241 Wednesday 04/27/11

ran 3.0 miles

Chapter5

There was a time when people believed in gods and prophets. Saints and angels watched over everyone with an eerie sense of selflessness. Churches and priests filled their holy sanctuaries with religiously biding congregations. Families gathered, children sat still, lovers prayed, and widows wept for an hour at least once a week. That is all gone now and it is easy to say that religion was not about who was right and who was wrong or that faith in one belief was stronger than conviction in another. It was not about a cross or a sword. It was not about holocausts or crusades. It was not about inquisitions, jihads, genocides or any other forms of hatred that have been documented throughout world history.

It was not about Tibetan monasteries. Religion was not about Hanukah, the belief in reincarnation, or the slight variations in man-made doctrines among different denominations of similar beliefs. It was not about a caste system. It was not about monotheism, pantheism, theocracy or democracy. It was not about Buddha or any other –ism.

Religion was about families gathering, children sitting still, lovers praying, and widows weeping beneath one roof for an hour at least once a week. It was about daily thoughts and prayers within a home or a holy sanctuary built for gathering, regardless of what those thoughts, prayers, and buildings may have been called. Everything else was ill-intended and opportunistic.

The history of religion is so vast it would take more than a lifetime to encapsulate even a significant morsel of its long, diverse origins in any one given geographic region. Yet for thousands of years leaders of men have been so pretentious and ingenuous as to control, divert, and redirect people’s beliefs and actions, generation by generation, through the power and manipulation of religion.

Now people believe in nothing. Belief and thought have been replaced by control and fear. The churches are bare and the stained glass windows are broken and boarded. Families no longer congregate, but clamor. Children are a supreme burden of overpopulation, which only the lowest and least educated classes continue to propagate with no apparent restraint for making their own and other’s lives unbearably harder. This was a time when love only complicated survival and softened one to too great a state of vulnerability. Widows wept alone and civilization as we knew it had become uncivilized for the first time in a very long time.

1,382.4 miles to go.

Day234 Wednesday 04/20/11

ran 1.4 miles

chapter4

“Carmen Elise Sanders?”

Jonas hadn’t felt this confounded since 2002 when he first saw a television commercial for a prescription drug that claimed to remedy anxiety even though one could contract outrageous side effects such as infection, injury, nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth, constipation, decreased appetite, sleepiness, dizziness, sexual side effects, nervousness, tremor, yawning, sweating, abnormal vision, weakness, and insomnia. Furthermore, in the event that one was a teenager, which was a very loose term, one should also watch out for increased suicidal thoughts or actions, severe changes in mood or behavior (example: being anxious, agitated, panicky, irritable, hostile, aggressive, impulsive, severely restless, hyper active, overly excited, or not being able to sleep). Finally, abruptly stopping the medication can result in dizziness, sensory disturbances, electric shock sensations and tinnitus, abnormal dreams, agitation, anxiety, nausea, sweating, mood fluctuations, headache, fatigue, nervousness, and sleep disorders. May also be present in breast milk so tell your doctor if you are nursing.

Once again, Jonas was nearly speechless. Carmen was the first and only girl he had ever cared about. She was his first kiss and the closest he had ever come to being in love. They had spent their time rediscovering the stars together at night and had made their own constellations. Under a blurry cotton-balled sky they spent their days together talking about how they were going to change the world. She was going to be his queen and he was going to be her king.

They had been together for two years before losing their virginity to one another at an obscured echo point within the heavily wooded property of a Natural History Museum. A bricked path had led to a small cul-de-sac whereupon people could stand in the center and create rhythmic waves of sound with their voices. It was on the dark, grassy earth behind a bench lining the circumference of the bricked echo circle that Jonas and Carmen decided to break up and then unexpectedly made love like two awkward and disoriented uncommon species.

The one thing that was supposed to be a final bridge to their commitment to one another ended up being an undermining act against everything television, their parents, and society attempted to convince them of for their entire lives. They felt deceived and victimized for being born into a societal epoch of lowered expectations where everyone around them was already so convinced that the shackles on their wrists were lifeblood and that the routines they performed daily were actually as meaningful as they thought. In the name of everything that was wrong with the world, they sexually rebelled and never spoke again, until now.

That was a long, young time ago and neither Jonas nor Carmen could fully understand the extent of their actions during that time. However, the act they had made was a powerful statement of why youth was increasingly waking up and acting out. They could not put their fingers on what the problem was but they knew something was wrong with the world each day as they woke up.

The media was a poisonous mushroom of lies that looked appealing to any starving consumer of misinformation. Through whatever medium news was broadcasted its sole purpose was to scare the consumer nearly to death, regardless of age, and to control that person with fear. Teachers were scolding and condescending toward twelve-year-old boys and girls in an attempt to purge through humiliation their child-like natures in order to hasten the process of dying into an adult, only to justify their own misunderstood existences. Parents spent little to no time with their children expecting that televisions and computers would rear them properly, and then wondered why they were all of a sudden pubescent and simultaneously pregnant or arrested. The media, teachers, parents and many others, never once suspecting that they had anything to do with the problem, had convinced themselves that everything was alright by telling their poor, misled children and future generations a certain few words of encouragement.

“Welcome to the real world. It only gets better from here.”

Their sarcastic tone of voice, their condescension, their having given up on themselves, their pessimism, and their wish to simply roll over was an inappropriate disaster that they had no right to impress upon the young, sponge-like minds that would be their future.

It appeared that Carmen had turned over to the other side and became exactly what the system desired her to be, weak and powerless. Jonas had to admit that the chances of him running in to her today, under these circumstances, were astronomically incalculable. He was at a complete loss of not only what to say but how to react in any physical or emotional aspect, whatsoever.

It was as though a mighty fist had grabbed Jonas by the spine and squeezed with such paralyzing force that he could not twitch a toe or blink an eye. The other fist of irony had squeezed Carmen into paralysis, as well, allowing only a lone tear to slowly flow down her soft, delicate misguided face.

There was an emotional stupor and a physical silence that briefly demanded their pebble of the universe to stand still. For a moment they both traveled back in time and grinned inwardly. Jonas remembered her shy smile and how she would blush when he’d tell her she was beautiful. He remembered her strength and all the goals she’d had. Carmen remembered the night at the echo point with Jonas and how innocent he was. She remembered being certain that Jonas was the best man she would ever find. Carmen remembered how good Jonas once made her feel.

And then it was over.

Carmen rubbed her eyes dry and Jonas wiped the surprise off his face. All of a sudden, as though a defense mechanism had clicked, like a safety pressed on a gun, they both pretended to not know each other. It was easily the most awkward position either of them had ever been in.

They were now in a standoff to outdo one another with indifference.

Carmen went right back into character and Jonas reclaimed his mission to find a light. With a fair amount of melodramatic sass, Carmen reached into her purse and put on a set of dark sunglasses to avoid eye contact with Jonas.

“Do you want to follow me?”

Jonas was still tangled in the ether of impossibility that this was really happening. He had worshipped and hung upon every single breath this girl had taken for two years and now she was a prostitute offering herself to him for thirty bucks.

“There’s a spot in the alley behind Ike’s.” She ran her fingers along his arm smiling in denial.

Out of options and at a gross loss of ideas, Jonas played into the act like a giant wooden dummy with the hand of an impatient, heartless ventriloquist forming his words.

Jonas turned down her advances, grabbed her roaming hands, and looked her right in the eyes. Through her gawky, tinted sunglasses he penetrated her with a glance of deference until he knew she understood that he was not going to bite into a rotten apple.

“I’m sure your shorts are full of sugar but I’m just looking for a Bic or a match. That bump on the road over there may be dead and you are the only other person around. Got a light?”

With an understood amount of attitude Carmen lit up one of her own cigarettes and handed it to Jonas. As he reached for it she broke it in half between her fingers and let it fall to the ground. He had expected no less of a reaction. Jonas picked up the lit end off the cold, damp concrete and ignited his own cigarette with it. They exchanged a confused and meaningless look at one another.

Things were not always like this.

1,396.0 miles to go.

Day227 Wednesday 04/13/11

ran 4.5 miles

chapter3

Jonas unclenched his hands, not realizing how tightly he was frivolously gripping at the steamy air in front of his face, and took another step toward the door. He raised his right hand slowly as though a weight was upon it and pressed through his cloud of breath with the intent to knock. His hand fell effortlessly into question. Unsure, like a squirrel that couldn’t decide whether to stay on one side of the road or the other as cars drove by, Jonas’ thoughts scurried left and right of right and wrong. He placed his knock back in his pocket, turned around, and mashed a new path of red and yellow tracks.

Next to what remained of a skeleton-like crepe myrtle Jonas found a seat on the curb of a quiet road a few blocks over. Lining the concrete edge were numerous cigarette butts, smashed acorns, occasional beer cans, endless leaves, random fallen branches, and unidentifiable scraps of paper. Nestled between a busted shoe and a faded can of beer was a wet dollar bill nearly torn in half. Out of the corner of Jonas’ eye was what appeared to be a wayward bum curled up in the fetal position, sleeping. His body was a crescent shape like that of a cat or dog trying to keep in their body heat.

Jonas was amazed that such things would simply be found on the side of a road. He picked up the dollar bill and put it in his backpack almost unconvinced that it was real. He was one block from a set of train tracks, a halfway house was across the street, a police car was advancing in his direction, an unsavory prostitute was giving him eyes and skin from the parking lot of a closed down barber shop on the other side of the road, a man was sleeping on the curb of a street next to him and, amidst all of this, he happened to find a dollar bill.

He thought nothing more of it and took a seat among the rubbish. Jonas pulled his book of unknown poems out of his back pocket and opened it up to page thirty-four as randomly as if he had opened to page seventy-eight.

The type of poetry Jonas liked most, as though quality and good craft were a gaping pair of incorrigible bucked teeth, tended to be strikingly inferior and poorly crafted. His opinion was that anything widely popularized was almost automatically incredulous. Wide popularization was the money idea put forth by the same opportunists who placed Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” on coffee mugs and made Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” a ring tone on cell phones. Inferiority and poor craft, according to Jonas, were equally as beautiful as anything else and stood no chance of being ruined or diluted by mass production, corporate sponsorship, general commercialization, or posthumous infringement of original intent and purpose. Jonas felt that a long road of potential progress before him was far greater than reaching an ultimate end of exploitation and misunderstanding. Jonas felt sorry for any fool who spent his entire life trying to make millions of people from any one given region concur on a single topic, an idea or a painting, foolishly conjectured or crafted in the name of politics or art. These people ended up on t-shirts, coffee mugs and posters until their messages and their ideas became so generalized and unremarkable that the most undeserving and uneducated minds available picked them up in thrift stores because they were fashionable five years before.

The poems in this book were important to Jonas for the one reason that the book had no author, no name, and all of the poems were untitled. At a garage sale, under a set of fluted plastic salt and pepper shakers and on top of a broken clock radio, Jonas had found the book and purchased it for $0.37. He had talked them down from $0.45. It drew him in as an act that another person had made with the full knowledge that there would be no payoff. Why would somebody spend hours writing letters, words, sentences and paragraphs on pieces of paper when they knew there would be no distinguishing factor or monetary reward, thereafter? It made perfect sense to Jonas and that was exactly why he had been carrying the untitled book around for three years.

He tucked the book back into his pocket and stood up. He breathed in the urban decay of his own generation’s self-wrought surroundings, ignored the redheaded hooker at what used to be Ike’s Barber Shop, and advanced in the direction of the crescent figure sleeping on the curb. Jonas gave him a mild nudge. When the man did not respond he gave him a restrained push. All Jonas wanted was a Bic or a match but he could see that nothing short of accosting the prostitute or standing on the man’s despondent head would get his cigarette lit.

He attempted to glance unnoticeably at the young woman across the street. She saw him looking in her direction and gave him a wink. Jonas stepped over the curled up man, brushed by the skeletal crepe myrtle, and walked to the old barbershop. She saw him coming and smacked her gum a little harder like an excited dog wagging its tail for attention. She spit out the gum and lit a cigarette as though inhaling smoke through her lungs and blowing it out of her mouth somehow made her seem like a better product or a more attractive business proposition. She was playing the role of whore like an amateur porn star in a poorly directed, underfinanced, failed adult film.

Jonas contributed nothing in capturing the scene as he walked up completely disinterested in everything she represented. As he got closer and closer she suddenly fell out of character. She tucked the hint of flesh she was teasing him with back into her armpit-soiled tube top and quickly zipped up her raggedy jacket. She took an unnaturally long drag from her cigarette and stood paralyzed with disbelief. Under her breath she mumbled three words as though she were asking an impossible question.

"Jonas Martin Cassidy?"

1,419.5 miles to go.

Day220 Wednesday 04/06/11

ran 0.3 miles

chapter2

Jonas shivered as a fall gust up heaved a small tornado of leaves just behind him. The tiny whirlwind left a wake of smothered, damp grass that was further rustled over by even more endless red and yellow hued debris. The earth was hard, slightly frosted, and premeditative with the onslaught of a cold, cruel winter ensuing. Jonas felt how bitter and dank the weather was outside but he drew a source of warmth from within. Based on a few of his less than tolerable prior experiences and the fact that he had been through much worse than this current position, he soldiered on shrugging hunger, the cold weather and the fact that he had no home or sure destination. He immediately felt better and began thinking about how long it would be until spring would arrive, even though winter was still yet to come.

There was nothing coincidental about the four seasons that composed the intentions of a single year. Nor was there anything coincidental about Jonas being at that exact location at that precise time with a determined purpose. Spring was rebirth and summer was life just as fall was an infliction and winter was death. Jonas was a means and the door of 216 Fifth Street was an end.

Everything, in its commonly peculiar way, was just as it should or should not have maybe or perhaps not have been. It was in this light, yielding to the loose and hazy chaos surrounding him, that Jonas felt divinity and solace, comfort, at its most clutching moment. He would sooner conduct conversation with a tree than confide in a priest. He would rather read Emerson on a patch of clovers than go to a church. And, aside from his dissident interpretation of organized religion and its questionable history, Jonas believed in a God and a way of life that was bejeweled with gems of thought that few others seemed to find any value in.

He was a spiritual man who contemptuously despised religion. He was a humanitarian who understood that charity was the worst possible thing to give to anybody. He belonged to nothing that claimed to have substance or power, except for his temporary jobs. They granted him sustenance and various roofs over his head, but he still felt violated for having to perform even the most menial of tasks for such uninspiring men and the corporate machines they were gears of. Jonas was always on the move. In a farcical manner he behaved the way other people expected he should when it was necessary only so they would leave him alone and not draw attention to him. He had no interest in long-term commitments or faith in any one thing. He had no pride in ownership or shame in poverty. Jonas, no matter which direction the currents of life pulled or pushed him, had only one concern and that was to watch the colors change.

Jonas, when challenged, penetrated those around him with an intimidating look of honesty and simplicity. Often mistaken for sarcasm, the look in his eyes forced others to think before they spoke or to say nothing at all. His thoughts in any given conversation were well articulated and his words were sophisticated and diverse; however, what made Jonas appear to be illuminated in respect to the gloom that surrounded him was his honest and simple belief that he knew nothing. Of life, of history, of religion, of facts and untruths, Jonas Martin Cassidy proudly admitted to himself that he knew nothing. Regardless of how many books or newspapers he had ever read, how far back in history his mind had delved, or how many religions he had studied, he realized one day as a summation of his efforts to learn as much as he could, that he knew nothing. A point in anything seemed elusive yet he found everything to be perfectly necessary. He believed in disbelief and this worked well for him.

Because he came to terms with this curious truth he chose to deliberately exploit the fact rather than hide behind its awkward reality by capriciously owning objects he did not need and owing worthless debt he had no desire to pay so that he could appear to be somebody who he was not. Jonas sensed early on that there was an imbalance of priorities that existed in everything that was Human. It had much to do with power and money, both of which concepts have been emblazoned upon Man’s most inner precepts since the first traces of human civilization.

Generally, people in this country either have more than they need or they have more than they want. If a person has more than they need then they have too much. Having too much creates fleeting and sparse feelings of guilt, but only every once in a while. These feelings of guilt are easily diverted by purchasing more things, which in turn alleviates the doubt that anything is wrong at all. When people become so easily persuaded and disillusioned as to believe that purchasing overpriced appliances and electronics in excess or financing unaffordable vehicles or homes, which they know will only put them at a financial disadvantage for years to come, becomes a measure of character, soul and integrity, something is wrong.

If a person has more than they want then they, also, have too much. However, these people do not suffer from guilt. They are completely apathetic to those around them who have much less and they intend to keep things that way, while convincing people otherwise. The masses of those who ungraciously have more than they need constantly praise and desire to be like those who have more than they could ever want. Allowing this absurd goal to pummel their pockets and fetter their futures with fear and greed, only expressing blurry glimpses of moral discontentment within the silence of their own homes, they strive to become the enemy that they are so envious of.

Jonas had an inclination that others felt this same way, too. But there seemed to be more allure for others to simply blend into society and its programmatic ways. Every few weeks or couple months people seemed to get the sudden urge to sporadically buy a CD, unnecessary home décor, uselessly elaborate electric appliances, a new computer because the one they got nine months before was apparently obsolete, or a new high definition television with surround sound just because the one they had was a couple inches smaller and the newer model was a few decibels louder. And once the purchase was made everything became all right again, at least for a while. They had succeeded in occupying themselves for a couple hours and it had made them feel important to make a purchase. What they had missed from the beginning when they had found themselves alone, sitting with nothing to do, impatient, bored, and desperate to not have to be forced to think about the most simple and obvious of natural thoughts, was the idea that everything just might have been wrong. And the reason they couldn’t sit still was because they knew they were a part of the problem.

What separated Jonas’ cloaked intelligence from the others was the fact that they seemed to think they knew everything and that if they ever doubted themselves they could simply medicate their arrogance with commodity purchases and the financings of unaffordable objects. Jonas, on the other hand, had thrown away everything he owned long ago to begin searching for something he was fairly certain he would never find: a reason to join society. His largest obstruction was the unwritten law that one could not join society; one had to blend into society. Jonas did not look at himself as a soluble ingredient for a social elixir.

Jonas had no available answers for the most minute of philosophical dilemmas, but he would utterly and accurately disprove any idea set forth by another. He could find no meaningful reasons for the movements he made in one direction or the other on any particular day, but he was determined to keep making them. And he lived by one single creed, which encapsulated his uncertainties in certain terms. Where there are problems one will always find solutions and where there are solutions one will always find problems. Even he knew this and he knew nothing.

1,447.9 miles to go.